Page 29 of Breaking Conviction
He’d fucked around on her all the other times, but last week was the first backslide since he proposed. It practically didn’t count, though. All that damn space he’d been giving her since their last argument was adding on to an already long sex drought.
If he hadn’t been so busy on assignment at work, he would’ve noticed more. But what was her excuse? Her refusal all pointed to her screwing someone else.
Best not to show his cards too soon. He needed to play it smart this time. Patience was something he’d been working on. If he’d had more of it when he worked at the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, he wouldn’t have beennot so gentlypushed out.
But Naomi didn’t need to know all that. It wasn’t like that was necessarilylyingto her. There was just a little more incentive to accept AIE Securities’ offer after he’d been fired. He’d gone off to do bigger and better things, and he liked that she thought it was solely for the sake of their family.
That need to impress her was gone now that he knew she was involved with BlackStone. He wouldn’t be able to stomach catering to her anymore.
According to Mr. Dickins’s descriptions, the men he saw with Naomi were Snake and Hawk. Dean didn’t know which one she was fucking, but he sure as hell knew everything else about all of them. He’d studied them like he was going to get fuckin’ tested on that shit.
Had she been using that dingy little store as her alibi when she was actually with the BlackStone Crew? He knew for a fact she was an actual volunteer there. He’d driven by every one of her shifts to confirm. But of course, the one time he decided to trust her, she proved how untrustworthy she truly was. She sure as shit wasn’t there this morning, even though she’d sworn up and down over the phone she got in hours ago from volunteering.
Dean lit a cigarette and leaned against the warm hood of the Murano, an obvious tell that she’d lied and just gotten home. After the first drag settled his nerves, he pulled his phone from his pocket and thumbed through the messages to look at the one that had made him fly off the handle at work.
Unknown Caller: Your girl’s at BlackStone. Doesn’t look good for you.
He swiped his face before deleting the message. No need to investigate who the ‘unknown’ caller was. There was only one person it could be, and they were both working the same job. Although he wasn’t sure what part the other guy played. Dean only knew they answered to the same giant-ass Russian fucker, Vlad.
The texter was right. Naomi’s affiliation with BlackStone not only didn’t look good, it’d be fucking humiliating if his team knew, potentially life-threatening if anyone else found out. Maybe he could convince them that Naomi was on the inside too, trying to infiltrate the BlackStone Securities team. That’d cast suspicion on her on their end, too, sending her right back to him. Except… the texter had said she’d turned over the guest list to one of the guys.
Fuckin’ retard.
How stupid could she get? She knew how secret that dumbass party was supposed to be, and yet, she was risking throwing away all the goodwill he’d used to get CTI to hire her in the first place. At least she’d eventually made up for her lack of a college degree by getting buddy-buddy with the CEO, so she wasn’t a total idiot.
Except now she was ruining everything.
The door inside the garage opened before dark auburn hair peeked out. Damn, it’d taken her long enough to notice he hadn’t come in yet. The woman was infuriating as hell, but she sure as fuck was just as sexy. Unfortunately, he was quickly realizing he couldn’t tolerate the first without getting to enjoy the second.
“Hey, you. I thought I heard your car. You, um… you comin’ in?”
He lifted his cigarette. “Just takin’ a moment for myself first. I’ll be there in a minute, sweets.”
She frowned but nodded. “Oh, uh, okay.”
Her indifference burned his chest more than the nicotine in his lungs. “Got you flowers, ya know.”
Big brown eyes widened with surprise before narrowing at him. “That’s… nice.”Fuck, she ain’t thankful for nothin’.“What’s the occasion?” Her face paled. “Oh god, did I forget something?”
He seriously thought about lying just to make her feel worse than he did at the moment. But there were multiple ways to do that, he just had to bide his time.
“Can’t a man get flowers for his fiancée? Just because?”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Um… thank you. I’ll put them in a vase right now.”
He couldn’t help his chest puffing up at her gratitude. God, didn’t she see that was all it took? If she just said thanks every now and then for his hard work and faithfulness, he wouldn’t have to get so firm with her all the damn time.
“Sounds good, sweets. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She gave him a small smile. “Alrighty, see ya inside.”
Naomi ducked back in. He vaguely heard Thea screaming something about her stuffed bear and that damn movie. The kid was cute, but goddamn, was she obsessed.
Thankfully, Thea seemed smart enough to know not to bother him with annoying shit like that. She wasn’t much of a talker anyway, and way more respectful around him than with her mom. It always pissed Naomi off that he was so much better at discipline.
There was an art to getting what you want, and going in guns blazing was only going to get him in trouble again. She still wasn’t over their last fight, so as much as he loathed it, he had to keep biding his time before he could reveal that he knew all her dirty secrets. He couldn’t wait to hear her begging him to take her back. She always did as soon as she realized how much she’d fucked up and how forgiving he really was. Then it’d be her turn on her knees.
The thought of her teary brown eyes full of regret as she begged for forgiveness was enough to make his dick twitch.
