Page 182 of Sins of Arrogance

With her blood­thirsty at­ti­tude, I don’t know how moma held her­self back from putting the Ethe­lyn Gly­col in seanathair’s Irish whiskey.

I will take my so­cio­pathic hus­band over my nar­cis­sis­tic grand­fa­ther any day of the week.

“What are you think­ing about?” Mick asks me. “You’ve gone silent.”

I tell him, omit­ting the part about pre­fer­ring his ASPD over seanathair’s nar­cis­sism. But I’m pretty sure it’s im­plied.

Mick kisses my tem­ple. “I took care of it for her.”

“That should bother me, right? That you…” I look around us. No one is close by, but I still say, “Did that to him. Only it makes me feel pro­tected.”

“I will al­ways pro­tect you.”

“I’m start­ing to be­lieve you again.”

“There will be times you will have to point out that your feel­ings are at risk from oth­ers. I won’t al­ways see it.”

He sure hadn’t with Dier­dre and he hadn’t lis­tened when I tried to tell him. “Will you hear me? Will you care?”

“Aye. Now that I un­der­stand the cost to you of me putting busi­ness ahead of your emo­tional well­be­ing, I will not do it.”

“Don’t go mak­ing prom­ises you can’t keep, but if you try…if I come first some of the time, that would be good.”

“You don’t un­der­stand, but you will. I will never again risk los­ing you.”

The words send a ten­dril of warmth through me and there’s noth­ing I can do to stop it from reach­ing my heart.

When his sol­dier ar­rives with our food, he brings a por­ta­ble ta­ble as well and we eat our din­ner look­ing out over the Hud­son River. At least I do.

Mick looks at me.

When we fin­ish eat­ing, Mick hands me a pair of no-show socks and my fa­vorite light­weight ten­nis shoes that cush­ion my feet like clouds. “Put these on so we can walk.”

“They don’t ex­actly go with my dress.” But I’m al­ready slip­ping off my heels and hand­ing them to him.

He gives the Chris­tian Louboutins to one of his sol­diers for safe­keep­ing, then of­fers me his hand.

I take it and we start walk­ing along the park path.

“Why did you stop com­ing to my of­fice?” Mick’s voice breaks the com­fort­able si­lence be­tween us.

“You didn’t even no­tice I was there.”

His hand tight­ens around mine. “I bleedin’ well no­ticed when you didn’t come any­more.”

“Did you miss me?” I ask face­tiously, know­ing he didn’t.

“Aye.”

I stop walk­ing to stare up at him. “You did?”

He nods, his jaw taut.

“Why not tell me? Why not ask me to come?”

“At first, I thought it was be­cause you needed the time to take care of Fitz. He started crawl­ing and he needed space to play.”

I nod. Be­cause that had been part of it. But I would have fig­ured out a way to make it work if I thought my hus­band wanted me there.