“Clean cut. Surgical.” He was still whispering.
The kettle whistled and I moved to it, taking it off its flame.
“Yes. If you would, please,” I requested, not looking at him and moving back to my mug.
“All right then, Amy. I did it,” he stated.
I poured my tea. “Did what?”
“Took my inheritance.”
I set the kettle with a crash to the cement countertop as my eyes flew to him.
“What?” Now it was me who was whispering.
He didn’t answer me.
He turned and walked away, disappearing into the hall that led to my bedroom.
I stood wooden where he left me staring at where I last saw him. This must have lasted some time because by the time I came unstuck and was about to move into the hall, I saw him prowling back down it. He did this in a way that I quickly backtracked, walking backward.
I stopped in the kitchen.
He stopped at the end of the counter and threw what he was holding on top of it.
I looked at it and saw it was the letter from Addison Hillingham that I’d shoved in a bathroom drawer I didn’t use so the kids wouldn’t see it.
I’d forgotten all about it.
“Forget to tell me something?” he asked.
Again, my eyes flew to him.
“Mickey—”
“You’re not gonna live any way than what you’re used to living. They yank your money out from under you, I cannot give you that. So I set about makin’ it so I could give you that as best as I can. Called my dad. Had a chat. He already wanted to do it so he was all over it. He talked with Sean, Frank and Dylan and they were all in. Then he went to his accountants to finagle whatever the fuck they gotta finagle so the IRS wouldn’t take a huge fuckin’ chunk outta what my dad wanted me to have. They did their conniving, got it sorted, Dylan was on board, so Dad gave both him and me fifteen million dollars. We signed away any claim to the company, that’s Sean and Frank’s. I can’t touch the money unless there’s an emergency but I get the interest. When I die, it’s split and my kids get it. The interest is a fuckload. And it might not be what you had, but you aren’t the kinda woman who needs that anyway. It’ll still be better than what I could give you without it. So I did what I had to do to make it so you don’t feel the hurt your parents wanted to lay on you for whatever fucked up shit they got in their heads that made them strike out and make their daughter bleed.”
And again, I stood completely still, staring up at him, speechless.
He kept going.
“When we get married, I sell my house, pay back Dad’s investment, the company is ours free and clear to make a go of or fuck up, however that goes down.”
When we get married.
That rattled around in my brain and it was no surprise, since that was happening, I continued to be incapable of speech.
“I get home after spendin’ a lot of my vacation on the phone with my dad, mom, brothers, gettin’ Fed Ex’ed shit to sign, goin’ over papers and emails, I come to my woman and she doesn’t even fuckin’ kiss me?” he asked and before I could answer (not that I was yet able to do so) he demanded, “So, tell me again how nothin’ is up your ass.”
“It’s a ploy,” I forced out and his stormy expression turned thunderous.
“What’s a fuckin’ ploy?” he bit out.
“That.” I made my arm move to indicate the letter from Hillingham. “It’s a ploy. It’s Dad and Mom’s way of saying they’re pissed at me. Trying to get me to react. Playing their games. I’m not going to lose my trust funds. Hillingham called me a week ago saying he’s shared that with my parents and I have nothing to worry about.”
Mickey scowled at me.
“You didn’t have to take your inheritance, Mickey.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that shit went down?” he asked, also tossing out an arm to indicate the letter.
“Because it was a nuisance,” I replied. “It didn’t mean anything. I got it on Thanksgiving and obviously that day other things took my attention. And to be completely truthful, I forgot all about it.”
Mickey drew breath in through his nose and looked over my head.
I stared at him.
He took his inheritance for me.
I kept staring at him.
He took his inheritance for me.
“All I need is you,” I said softly.
His eyes moved down to me.
Do what I gotta do.
He’d found that letter when he’d spent the night the first time all our kids were together.
And he’d done what he had to do.
“First, I have the Bourne trust fund, Mickey,” I began gently. “Prior to me turning thirty, if I did something that the board or my parents petitioning the board meant they could withhold it from me, they could have withheld that money permanently. Once I receive it, there are no caveats. It’s irrevocable. And that has enough money in it to live on comfortably.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek.
“Second,” I went on, “it could all go up in a puff a smoke and I wouldn’t care. Yes, I might eventually want better countertop appliances when we moved in together, but even that wouldn’t matter and not because I have my own. Because I’d have you. I’d have you and Auden and Pippa and Ash and Cill. If I had all that, since that would be having it all, what else would I ever need?”
“I got here, you barely looked at me,” he returned.
“You’ve been pulling away,” I shared. “I thought you were going to end things with me.”
His face again went stormy. “Are you fuckin’ crazy?”
“Think about it,” I returned. “Our conversations have been perfunctory. And you didn’t say you loved me once since you were in Phoenix.”
“That is not fuckin’ true,” he growled.
“‘Same here’ is not ‘I love you,’ Mickey.”
“It fuckin’ is, Amy, especially when Chop’s around. We been best buds since we were five. He takes every opportunity to bust my ass about anything and he’s good at it ’cause he’s had a lot of practice. Makes the boys at the firehouse look like amateurs. Then again, he gives me shit because I give it back. It’s what we do. And with me, Ash and Cill yammerin’ on about you, he knows what you mean to me, he’s lookin’ forward to meetin’ you, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t take his opportunities, and he got a lot in. He made a point of hangin’ close when I’d call you just to get the chance to give me shit. I wasn’t gonna give him more openings. And it may sound fucked, but I’d never hear the end of it. And seein’ as that would be about me tellin’ the woman I love that I love her, it might piss me off. I didn’t take my kids to Phoenix to visit a man who’s like a brother to me and then spend that time bein’ pissed off. ”