Page 116 of Sins of Arrogance

“The night you and Róise snuck out to cel­e­brate her birth­day.”

Kara slides out of the chair and puts dis­tance be­tween us, but at least she’s fac­ing me now. “No. You couldn’t have.”

“I did. You’re good, love. Our black­gloves couldn’t have han­dled the cas­cad­ing dis­abling of alarm trig­gers any bet­ter.” I’m still proud of her in­ge­nu­ity and in­tel­li­gence.

“Then how did you fol­low us?”

“I watch you,” I ad­mit.

Her hazel gaze dark with an emo­tion I can’t de­ci­pher, she asks, “What do you mean you watch me?”

“On the se­cu­rity feeds. With your phone tracker. I al­ways know where you are.”

KARA

I al­ways know where you are.

Mick’s words re­sound in my brain like a clang­ing bell. Only in­stead of feel­ing like the alarm they should be, they warm some­thing in­side me that’s been cold since he left ear­lier.

The pain is still there, but this at­ten­tion? Ob­ses­sion? It im­plies that I’m not nearly the nonen­tity in my hus­band’s life I’ve al­ways thought I was.

But if he watches me so much, he should know I’m not tak­ing any classes for the sum­mer term. “You don’t watch me all the time, or you’d know I don’t have any classes right now.”

I’m work­ing on fi­nal plans for the big La­bor Day cel­e­bra­tion, not be­cause they couldn’t wait un­til to­mor­row, but be­cause I couldn’t sleep.

“I for­got.”

He for­got? “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“No one is in­fal­li­ble, a stór.”

But Mick usu­ally is. Did his din­ner with Dier­dre rat­tle him in some way?

That’s not a ques­tion I want an an­swer to, so I ask a dif­fer­ent one. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew I was tak­ing col­lege cour­ses?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were tak­ing them?” he coun­ters.

My hands fist at my sides, my fin­ger­nails dig­ging into my palms. “I was afraid if I did, you would make me stop.”

“I am not your fa­ther.”

So, he thinks, like me, that Bro­gan would have in­sisted I stop? “I guess not.”

“I’m glad you’re still in ther­apy,” he says, with the air of a man get­ting ev­ery­thing out there at once. “In fact, I think you should con­vince Fiona to see an on­line ther­a­pist too.”

“You think…” I can’t get enough air into my lungs right now.

My en­tire se­cret life is not ac­tu­ally a se­cret at all. And I have no idea how I feel about that. Con­trary to my fears, Mick is not try­ing to make me give up a sin­gle thing I’ve kept from him.

Not even the ther­a­pist.

Mick shrugs. “It might help her.”

“So my dad can marry her off to some­one for an­other al­liance?” I ask painfully.

“That can’t hap­pen. Bro­gan gave his word to your cousin. Fiona’s free­dom at the cost of hers.”

“My fa­ther is good at get­ting around the in­tent of a prom­ise by fi­ness­ing the fine de­tails.”