Page 31 of Take Me, Sir

Dean

I hadno idea what I'd done wrong. One second, she was in my arms, rubbing against me like a cat in heat. Next second, she was pushing away from me and glaring at me like I'd kicked her dog.

“Are you seriously asking me about my finances?” She pulled the sheet up to cover her chest as she moved to a sitting position.

I managed not to frown as I pushed myself up too. “You said that Dalton was arguing with you about how you were paying for things, so I thought if we told him how you were making money, maybe he'd ease up in general.”

“If we told him?”

My explanation hadn't made anything better, and I didn't understand why. “Yes, since he thought I was giving you money, I want to set the record straight.”

She climbed out of bed, letting the sheets fall behind her. “And here I thought it was about the relationship between me and my brother…about how he thought of me when I should've realized that it was about how he thought of you.”

“Wait a minute.” I needed to be standing for this conversation. “That's not what I said.”

“What is it with the men around me thinking they have a right to know anything they want about my life?” She grabbed her clothes, yanking them on hard enough that I was surprised they didn't tear.

“Your brother just wants to protect you,” I said, reaching for my pants.

“What about you, Dean?” She turned toward me, shirt in hand.

As hot as she looked, standing there in her shorts and bra, I was a little more focused on how pissed she sounded.

“What do you get from all this?”

“I'm not trying to get anything,” I said. “I'm just trying to look out for you.”

“I don't need you to look out for me. That's the whole fucking point.” She put on her shirt. “You, Dalton, my family...everyone seems to think that I need them to take care of me, but I've been doing just fine on my own.”

This wasn’t going the way I'd imagined a morning after conversation going with her. Not that I'd really thought about it. I'd spent more time thinking about the things we'd do the night before.

“I don't understand what the fuss is about,” I said, my own frustration bleeding through. “Just tell him where you work.”

She spun toward me, her face framed by wild waves of hair, cheeks flushed. If I hadn't seen the anger in her eyes, I would've told her that she looked stunning.

“It's none of his damn business where I work, and it sure as hell isn't yours!”

“Love–”

“No!” she snapped. “You don't get to call me that. I'm not your love or your sweetheart or any other form of endearment when we aren't fucking.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that I hadn't meant anything by it, but she wasn't done.

“This is why I never wanted to do the whole relationship thing. Guys either lie about wanting to be in one so they can get laid, or they want to be in control.” She glared at me as she stormed out into the main room. “I should've known that sex with a control freak could never be just sex.”

I didn't know what I was supposed to say. I wanted to defend myself, but even though my intentions had been noble, she was right that I'd been telling her what she should do based on what I thought about her situation. I didn't have an older brother poking his nose into my business or a little sister who I wanted to help. I'd always been my own person, and I couldn't truly understand what she was going through.

I should've asked her what she wanted to do, offer to help her if she was okay with it. Kept my mouth shut if she wasn't.

Instead, I stood there like a slack-jawed idiot and watched her walk out the door.

I'd made it halfway to the door before I remembered that I couldn't go after her, at least not right away. I had a meeting this morning that had taken two weeks to get set up. I couldn't blow it off, no matter how much I might want to. Thinking about how pissed Kyndall was, giving her time to cool off seemed like a good idea.

No matter how good of an idea waiting was, it didn't mean she wasn't on my mind as I showered and dressed. And while my driver made his way across the city. And when I met with one of the board members of the Armitage Foundation.

Aramina Mueller was a few years older than me, happily married, and quite beautiful. She was also a talented DA and was one of the people who'd come up with the idea for the foundation. They offered science, engineering, and mathematics scholarships to inner city kids from all over the country, and working with them would help me with the non-profit I'd decided to start.

Clean energy sources and more environmentally friendly technology had been the area I'd finally chosen for my foundation. Instead of looking for people at the top of their fields and trying to convince them to donate their time or take a pay cut at the very least, however, I'd gotten the idea to offer internships to minds with less experience, but maybe more vision.

---