Page 117 of Sins of Arrogance

He’d taken ad­van­tage of the fact that it was seanathair who made the prom­ise to Róise’s dad, both now dead, not to force my cousin into an ar­ranged mar­riage. The prom­ise had been pred­i­cated on the agree­ment of my un­cle to take his right­ful place as boss when seanathair died.

Only Un­cle Derry died be­fore my grand­fa­ther and never took over as boss, nul­li­fy­ing the prom­ise. At least as far as Bro­gan was con­cerned.

“Do not mis­un­der­stand me, Kara. I will not al­low him to ar­range a mar­riage for Fiona.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause I keep my prom­ises and I won’t work for a man who doesn’t keep his.”

And the only way Mick stops work­ing for my dad is for Bro­gan to re­tire. Or die.

Or for Mick to.

A shiver skates up my spine and I force the dis­turb­ing thoughts from my head.

“You agreed with him that he wasn’t re­spon­si­ble for hon­or­ing seanathair’s prom­ise to Un­cle Derry?”

“Yes. Derry should have planned for that even­tu­al­ity and en­sured a dif­fer­ent word­ing on the vow.”

“You think he should have planned for what would hap­pen if he died be­fore seanathair?” I ask, more ap­palled than I prob­a­bly should be con­sid­er­ing the life we live.

Mick un­buck­les his belt and slides it out of the loops on his pants, catch­ing his backup hol­ster as it re­leases from the belt. “I have.”

“What do you mean?” I lick my lips, watch­ing in fas­ci­na­tion as my hus­band be­gins dis­arm­ing him­self, one weapon at a time.

I’ve seen him do this hun­dreds and hun­dreds of times and it still makes me wet.

“Your fa­ther has signed a blood con­tract stat­ing that if I die, nei­ther he, nor any other Boss of the Shaugh­nessy Mob will at­tempt to force you to marry again.”

“You never told me.”

“I don’t plan to die.” He shoves his trousers down his legs, re­veal­ing mus­cu­lar thighs that an ac­tion hero would envy.

“But you made ar­range­ments in case you do.” How do I rec­on­cile this with the way Mick dis­misses my feel­ings so eas­ily about other things?

Like Dier­dre.

Un­but­ton­ing his shirt, my hus­band asks, “Are we done talk­ing now?”

“Why?” I give him a sus­pi­cious look. “What else are you plan­ning to do?”

He picks up his tie from the bed and lets it dan­gle from his fin­gers. “Do you re­ally need me to tell you?”

“No.” And I don’t mean he doesn’t need to tell me.

I mean no to the tie. No to sex. No to all of what­ever he’s got planned.

“No?”

“That’s not how this works, Mick,” I tell him flatly.

“What’s not?” he asks, like he re­ally doesn’t know.

How could he watch me like he says he does and be this ob­tuse about how I feel?

But then he doesn’t watch me for the sake of emo­tion. Clar­ity bursts in my brain. I’m not an ob­ses­sion. I’m a re­spon­si­bil­ity and Mick watches over me.

“You don’t get to leave with the cum still wet be­tween my legs to go wine and dine your ex.”