He glanced at me before going up the stairs. He didn’t even reply. Did my words not even require a response?
I went up the stairs after him, noting how he was studying the house with his construction-based eye. I’m sure this place was too small for him, too outdated and too quaint. It was all the things I thought made it special.
Turns out all those fancy things he said we were going to have weren’t that important to me after all. I’d rather have a man who loved me.
A man like Gavin.
I shoved away the thought.
“Nice view,” he said.
“You didn’t come here to talk about the view.”
He spun and took in my appearance from head to foot. I was still in my pajamas. I put them back on after my shower. I still wasn’t wearing a bra and I hadn’t bothered with a drop of makeup since I got here.
“You’ve had your time to pout. Get your stuff so we can go home.”
How dare he come here and talk to me like that! “Pout?” I snapped. “You think I came here to pout? I came here because I couldn’t stand to look at your face.”
“I know you got fired from your job, Talie.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if I was a little more like your secretary, I would still have a job.”
His eyes narrowed. “He fired you because you wouldn’t sleep with him?”
“It wasn’t the official reason, but yeah.”
“That son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Doesn’t he know who my family is?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not everyone cares about who you are, Blake.”
“He wanted to ruin my name. He wanted to start rumors.”
“This wasn’t about you. It had nothing to do with you.”
“He was trying to sleep with my wife!”
I snorted. “Please. Like you care. You weren’t sleeping with me anyway.”
His face turned beet red. I rather enjoyed it. “Maybe we should go home.” I began. “Maybe I will go and get my job back, keep up with the family name. You can have your piece on the side, and I can have mine.”
He looked like a vein in his head might explode. “You little bitch. How dare you talk to me like that?”
My stomach knotted. He never called me curse words. “You made the rules, Blake. I’m just following them.”
“You will not cheat on me.”
“It sucks thinking you don’t have what it takes to satisfy your spouse, doesn’t it?”
He stormed across the room and grabbed me by the shoulders, giving me a little shake. His eyes were furious. I grew nervous. It was fun taunting him, but perhaps I pushed him just a little too far.
“Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again.” His fingers dug into the flesh on my arms, squeezing me until I wanted to cry out.
“You’re hurting me,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “Let go,” I growled.
He released me and stepped back.
“I’m tired of this, Talie,” he said, turning his back on me. “People are starting to talk. People want to know why you no longer work at the doctor’s office. People want to know where you are.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Tell them I’m out of town.”
“You’re hurting the business.” He spun to look at me.
“How could me being out of town hurt your business?”
He glared at me with a tight jaw.
“Oh,” I said, the truth dawning. “This is about your father. Does he know?”
“About my little indiscretion? Yes.”
“And?” I asked, wanting to know what my father-in-law thought of his son treating a woman this way.
“And he told me to tell you to get over it and get your ass back home.”
I gasped. “He did not.”
“He did, Talie. He says that whatever happens in our bedroom needs to stay there. Our marriage is not a community matter. People shouldn’t be talking about it.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have made it a community matter when you invited a slut into my bed!” I yelled.
“I told you I was sorry,” he ground out.
“Yes, and then you told me you would do it again, just more discreetly.”
“My father won’t turn the business over to me until you’re home and we’re happy pillars of the community. He wants a certain family image for the company.”
“The baby,” I whispered, laying a hand on my stomach, thinking of the baby that wasn’t even there. I looked up at him. “You were only going to give me a baby because he told you to.”
“What difference does it make if you get what you want?”
He made me sick. So incredibly sick. I couldn’t believe I wasted years on him.
“Get out,” I said, my voice hoarse. I didn’t think he could hurt me anymore than he already did.
I was wrong.
“Get your things.”
I looked at him like he was an alien with four heads. “I’m not going anywhere with you. We’re over. I want a divorce.”
“I won’t give you one.”
“You will.” Anger rumbled up in me. An anger unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
He walked up to me, toe-to-toe, and looked down (he was taller than me too; everyone was.). There was a challenge in his eye that I had no problem meeting. “It’s over,” I said, low.
“I will not let you cost me everything I’ve worked half my life to build,” he growled. He reached out and snatched my arm. “Now go pack. We’re leaving.”
I began to struggle in his hold. Just the mere touch of his hand made me want to vomit. My God, how could I have ever fallen in love with him? His grip tightened and a look of determination crossed his features.
“Let go.”
“Not until you learn who the boss in this relationship is.”
I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. “It sure as hell ain’t you.”
I cried out when his nails bit into the flesh of my arm. “Don’t make me force you.”
I’d never heard that tone before. It scared me.
I gave one last violent yank of my arm and at the same time he shoved me away, toward the bedroom. The force of us both sent me flying sideways. I hit the back of a chair and bounced off, falling onto the floor with a hard thump.
I rolled onto my back and looked up just in time to see a large hand reach out and spin Blake from behind. Seconds later, Blake was sprawled across the floor beside me.
I looked up, wild-eyed, to see Gavin standing there with glittering angry eyes. Beside me, Blake moaned and sat up, his lip busted and bleeding, already swelling to twice its size.