Page 170 of Sins of Arrogance

“I’m not. We don’t do date nights. We do din­ners with im­por­tant peo­ple where I play my role and you play yours. Re­quired ap­pear­ances. The only time we eat alone to­gether is break­fast some­times when Fitz sleeps in.”

“You en­joy those morn­ings,” he says like a chal­lenge.

I don’t bother try­ing to deny it. He’d know me for the liar I would be. “That’s not the point.”

“That is ex­actly the point.” He crosses his arms, un­mov­able.

My heart gives a ridicu­lous lit­tle lurch, and I hate how easy it is for him to undo me with five words and a tight jaw.

I lean back against the long dresser, now filled with mine and Mick’s clothes, and cross my arms. “What makes you think I want to go on a date with you now?”

“You said you did.”

He’s talk­ing about the Dier­dre de­ba­cle.

All the soft­ness his words en­gen­dered dis­ap­pears. “That was be­fore.”

“There will be no di­vorce, there­fore there is no be­fore,” he says, prov­ing he knows ex­actly what I meant. “There is now and al­ways.”

“And you think if you say that, it makes it true?” I de­mand, mak­ing no ef­fort to hide my crank­i­ness.

I’m not the per­fect paragon Kara any­more.

His ex­pres­sion says yes but he’s smart enough not to say the word out loud.

“Why now? If you wanted to go out with me, you would have said so some­time in the last seven years.”

“Din­ing in restau­rants cre­ates a se­cu­rity risk I pre­fer not to take with you.” Sud­denly, he’s in­vad­ing my per­sonal space.

How did he get so close?

“What do you mean? We eat out for our an­niver­sary.” As well as the events I just men­tioned.

His hand set­tles on my waist, like he needs to touch me. “I prep the lo­ca­tions be­fore­hand.”

“In what way?” I ig­nore the breath­i­ness of my own voice.

“By the time we ar­rive, there are two full teams of se­cu­rity ded­i­cated to your safety in place. One in­side the restau­rant, or venue, in­clud­ing the kitchen to over­see the prepa­ra­tion of our food. The other team stays out­side, with two snipers in place.”

No won­der we don’t go out to din­ner on a whim. “Isn’t that overkill?”

“Noth­ing that keeps you safe is too much.”

“Did you make those prepa­ra­tions for your din­ner with Dier­dre?” Some­how, my hand is hold­ing his belt and I’m stand­ing even closer to my hus­band.

De­sire flares in his green gaze. “Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Be­cause she’s not worth the ef­fort.”

“But I am?”

“Can you doubt it?” His hand not hold­ing my waist cups my nape un­der my hair, com­pletely sur­round­ing me with him.

“I wouldn’t have asked for the di­vorce if I didn’t.”

Un­der­stand­ing dawns. “You don’t think I value you?”