“Because I won’t allow it.”
Roz was offended. It was as if he was saying that he did what he did because she allowed it. “You bastard!” she said as she angrily moved to get off of him.
But he pulled her back. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I wouldn’t allow you to work like I’m working is what I’m talking about.”
“Then why don’t you stop working like you’re supposedly working since you know I don’t like it? Since you know it’s that serious?”
“It can’t be helped. I’ve got competitors joining forces to outbid me in a rigged game. I’m going through the process of unrigging it.”
Then he took Roz by the chin and lifted her face up so that they were face to face. “I’m out there working. Not fucking around.”
Roz continued to stare at him with a baffled look on her face. “Are you done?”
Mick found her response offensive. “Am I done what?”
“Unrigging it?”
That was better. “Yes,” he responded.
But Roz was still staring at him as if she was mystified by him. “I’m nobody’s fool, Mick.” There was pain in her voice.
Mick considered her. “I know that.”
“You’d better know it,” she shot back as if to make clear to him just how up to here she was getting with him. Then she laid her head back on his chest.
Mick held her tightly in his arms. In a lot of ways their marriage was in shambles. There was no other way he could view it. Roz was the hardest woman he’d ever known. She expected more from him and took more out of him than any woman ever had. It seemed like it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to dump her and go find himself one of those pliable women that would walk on fire for him and let him do whatever the hell he wanted to do with them.
But that would require him to leave Roz.
That would require him to leave that headache of a woman when there was no way he could see himself doing that. If he left her, he would no longer have a headache on his hands alright. But he would most certainly acquire a heartache.His heart would ache for Roz. It would break too. And that, to Mick, would be infinitely worse than any other pain their coupling gave to him. And it gave him plenty.
Their marriage was hanging by a thread, alright, and most of it was his fault. But despite that reality, Mick still could not imagine a scenario where he would completely cut himself off from this unrelenting, never-easy, complicated woman he held in his arms. There was no way he could ever let her go.
Shewas his vulnerability.
Shewas his weakness.
And because he knew that, was it sabotage that he was not doing right by her?
Even if it was, he’d never admit it to her or anybody else on the face of this earth, as he rubbed his hand along her ass, craving her again, and held her even tighter.
Within seconds he was entering her. Within seconds she was moaning, giving him permission, and he was inside of her all over again.
And Roz, who never turned Mick down in bed, knew one day she had to. For her own sake and peace of mind and just plain sanity, she had to!
But like all those other days when she could not overcome her weakness for that man, this was not going to be that day.
He did her as only he could, and she was moaning and groaning almost as much as he was.
CHAPTER FIVE
Later that same morning, Mick arrived at his massive Sinatra Industries headquarters building and made his way from his private garage to his private elevator that took him up to the top floor. All of his army of assistants and secretaries rose to their feet when he entered the executive suite, including Ignatius McEnroe, his first male chief assistant.
But when Mick saw Deuce McCurry, his former driver, he didn’t see anybody else. He even smiled, which was a rarity for his staff to see, and began hurrying to Deuce with his hand outstretched.
“Deuce!” he said jovially as Deuce stood up and the two men shook hands. “It’s been a minute.”
“I told him you weren’t available to see anybody right now, sir,” said the prim and proper Ignatius, who didn’t seem to realize how happy Mick was to see his old friend. But that was Ignatius. Efficient to a fault. A man who knew the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Behind his back, the staff called him Iggy. “I insisted he leave, sir, because of your tight schedule. But he would not.”
