“Is that the case?”
She balked. “What!? No. I never said that to him, and I don’t know where he’s getting it from.”
I tilted my head as the grip I had on my own hands behind my back grew tighter. “So, it isn’t true that your fiancée likes to wake you up with sex in the mornings without your permission.”
She paused. “Well, I--.”
“Do you enjoy it when he does this?”
Her gaze sank in defeat. “Not necessarily. Though, sometimes it isn’t the greatest.”
“Do you guys ever have a conversation about it beforehand?”
She blinked. “A conversation about what?”
“Sex. Waking you up with it. Has he ever talked about it with you?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t there come a point in a relationship where you really don’t have to have that conversation.”
Anger bubbled beneath my skin. “So, let me make sure I have this right: he doesn’t ask for your permission, you don’t always like it, and he doesn’t have a conversation with you about it beforehand. But, he still has sex with you, when you’re unconscious.”
Her brow furrowed and her gaze grew unfocused. “I mean, I guess if you wanted to boil it down--.”
“That’s rape, Naomi.”
And as she slowly turned her back to me, the shaky breath she drew in sealed my afternoon plans.
“I can take care of him,” I said as I stared out over the ocean waters above her head, “if that’s something you want.”
She shook her head softly. “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”
“It means whatever you’d like it to mean.”
“I don’t know what you’re asking, Dutch,” she said as her voice grew hardened. “But, I don’t want him dead, if that’s what you’re trying to ask. I’m not a shithead, like you guys.”
A smirk crawled across my face before I forced it back down into the pit of my gut. “So, your fiancée’s a cop?”
“Good to know Trooper’s got a big mouth,” she murmured.
“In your opinion, Naomi, is he a threat?”
She peered at me from over her shoulder, and even with the anger and sadness that swirled behind her pristine peridot eyes, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said breathlessly.
I locked her stare with my own. “Is he going to cause us trouble? Is he going to come after you?”
I had my answer when she refused to give hers. But, a movement caught the corner of my eye, dragging my attention down to her hands. They were perched on the wooden deck railing, her fingers softly playing with the engagement ring still seated on her plump little left hand ring finger.
What a pathetically small diamond.
That told me everything I needed to know right there. No man ever cheaped out on an engagement ring unless he didn’t care for the woman he was proposing to. What purpose any man would have to propose without actually loving someone was beyond me. But, something told me it had to do with his career advancement.
Because while I’d never met her fiancée, he struck me as the kind of douchebag that would do whatever it took to get ahead.
“Are you done with your questions now?” Naomi asked.
I turned around and started inside. “If you need somewhere quiet to think, there’s a hidden door in the hallway off the living room. Third panel on the left. Press in and push up.”
