He laughed and squeezed my hand. “Mar, don’t do this. You’re overthinking.”
My racing mind had me pick up my phone and check it. “Sorry, you know Priss is home alone.”
He nodded. “I don’t mind. I didn’t mind having a drink in your kitchen or mine.”
Priscilla was at our house—with Tito. Mick asked if I wanted to do happy hour, and my daughter being my daughter volunteered to dog sit.
“Did you get that dog for her?” I blurted. Sweat was forming on my neck, and my chest was tight with anger of some sort.
“What?” Mick schooled his face, but his tone let me know he was hurt.
“The dog. Did you get it to bribe Priss?”
“No.” Mick’s answer was firm, but I didn’t believe him. After all, he was a ruthless businessman.
“Us. When we met at the bar, did you just mean to sleep with me?”
Another firmnocame from his mouth.
“And now we’re sitting here having a drink, like we’ve been doing this for decades.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It is, considering how we met, and then Priscilla’s fall, and then Tommy, and then just everything.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
I gulped down some wine, my throat raw with emotion and my skin on fire with my feelings. “I’ve spent most of my life with a dark cloud following me. Now it’s all rainbows and glitter. I can’t trust it. It’s too good.”
Mick gathered me close enough that our foreheads touched. Classic Bee Gees started piping through the bar, and I pictured us in a cheesy eighties rom-com.
“Mick,” I whispered. “It feels too fast, too good. I’m scared.”
“I hear you. I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring your feelings, but you’re wrong.”
“What if Tommy changes his mind and reverses our agreement?”
Mick ran his thumb over my cheek, and I caught his bartender, Wes, looking at us. “Contracts, I know. When someone rushes a deal and gives the person everything they want, they’re hiding something themselves.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” he said firmly.
Blinking at him, I froze. “You do because of your experience, or you really do know?”
My mind ran through a range of possibilities. Had Mick interfered in the proceedings? Did I misjudge him? If my anxiety was high prior to this conversation, it skyrocketed in this moment.
“This isn’t turning out to be the relaxing night I’d hoped,” Mick said, still holding my hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I don’t want you to hold in your feelings. That’s not fair, but I should be honest. A while back, I was at a business dinner and heard Tommy talking at the table behind me ...” Mick went on to tell me about not knowing who Tommy was at first, but then putting it all together. “It was a gross display of behavior for anyone, let alone who I came to know as your husband.”
A lump the size of a cantaloupe formed in my throat, and I could barely swallow.
“You never said anything?” I asked, unable to understand why. “I thought we were being one hundred percent honest with each other?”
“Mar—”
