Page 173 of Sins of Arrogance

“Nah. It was nec­es­sary.”

Not will­ing to ar­gue that des­ig­na­tion with him, I ask, “How do you think I’m re­bel­lious?”

“You kept see­ing a ther­a­pist af­ter you came home from The Mar­lowe Cen­ter even though you knew your fa­ther didn’t want you to.”

“You called him my fa­ther.”

Mick’s brow fur­rows. “Aye.”

“You usu­ally call him my da.”

“Not now that I un­der­stand why you don’t.”

Ob­ses­sion. De­vo­tion. Loy­alty. I might be de­ceiv­ing my­self, but Mick’s def­i­ni­tion of his feel­ings for me are sound­ing more and more like love.

“One re­bel­lion does not a rebel make.”

Mick laughs and the gen­uine hu­mor in the sound makes me smile too.

“You are go­ing to col­lege se­cretly, you hacked our se­cu­rity feeds so you and your cousin could sneak off the prop­erty, you taught our son to read de­spite his teacher telling you not to.”

“Ex­pect­ing me to hold my son’s nat­u­ral de­vel­op­ment back for her con­ve­nience was ridicu­lous. Be­sides the deed had al­ready been done.”

“You read the let­ter she sent to par­ents about what she ex­pected our son to be pro­fi­cient at be­fore com­ing into kinder­garten, just like I did.”

“His first-grade teacher is much more fo­cused on chal­leng­ing his stu­dents,” I say with ap­proval.

“You like him.”

“I do.” I roll my eyes at the dan­ger vibes now em­a­nat­ing off my hus­band. “Not like that. Rein it in psy­cho boy. The only man I like in that way is you.”

“I don’t want you to like other men at all.”

“Not go­ing to hap­pen. But you never have to worry about me flirt­ing with other men, or al­low­ing them to try to un­der­mine our mar­riage.”

Mick winces. “I mis­cal­cu­lated the dam­age Dier­dre could do be­cause I knew I wasn’t in­ter­ested in her.”

“Would you make the same choices again?” I ask, be­cause this re­ally mat­ters.

“Not a chance in hell, even if my men call me the devil.”

“That’s good to know.” Maybe my hus­band can learn to be the man I need him to be in our re­la­tion­ship. “So, you think I’m a stub­born rebel?”

“I think you’ve been se­lec­tive about your in­tran­si­gence and re­bel­lions, but that is go­ing to change.”

“It’s al­most like you know me,” I tease, feel­ing a lit­tle over­whelmed by that truth.

“Bet­ter than any­one else. But un­der­stand­ing you is some­thing else en­tirely,” he ad­mits.

But he wants to.

And that counts for a lot.

“What should I wear for this date?”

Chap­ter 43: Un­masked at Al­ti­tude

MICK