Page 61 of Mangled Memory
That name won’t do. I quickly change it in my phone to just Christian. But not before I look up to the corner of the room and extend my middle finger where I think the cameras should be.
Christian: Is that a no?
Me: I always need more coffee, but the creepy, stalker man behind the screens pisses me off.
Christian: The man with the cameras is fully fluent in how to work Georgio.
Me: The woman being watched hates being monitored like a prisoner.
Me: I would forego Georgio’s amazing elixir to avoid feeling like a ward in my own home.
Me: Unless this isn’t mine or ours.
Me: If the house is *yours* and not *ours*, then… Well, that changes things.
The bedroom door opens and Christian enters, phone in one hand, coffee in the other. He extends the one I care most about while sliding the device into his pocket with his hand.
“Prisoner?”
I tilt my head before taking a sip.
“And what, wife, would it change if the house were in my name versus ours?” He slides his other hand into his pocket, his face going hard.
“I don’t like the cameras.”
He nods to the mug in my hands. “Coffee delivery bothers you that much?”
“I’ll concede some... conveniences.” I lift the coffee to mylips and avoid humming in appreciation. “But on principle, I do not want them.”
“The night I was shot, you didn’t find them convenient?”
I still have no resolution to the masked men and why Fitz went the wrong way. Isawit with my own eyes.
“In that case, we could enable them as needed. That was needed. What happened when Ren went over the footage?”
He flicks a hand dismissing the question.
Heat rises in my body as anger sizzles along my nerve endings. “Don’t dismiss me like that. And don’t watch me like a perv. I’m not a child and I’m not your property.” I slam the mug down, sloshing coffee on the end table, and move to the bathroom.
He slides in front of me blocking my path. “A perv? Watch your mouth, Ayla. I’m your husband.”
“Yeah? How did that come to be?” I throw my arms over my chest. “It seems unlikely that someone like you—” I extend a hand painting the air between us from top to bottom. “And someone like me ended up in a happily ever after just in time for me to have a TBI and amnesia.”
“What are you accusing me of?”
“I’m just saying?—”
“You’re just saying what?” His voice goes lethally cold.
I take a step back. “It’s convenient, that’s all.”
He looks at me as if seeing me for the first time, turns on a heel, and stalks from the room.
Oh, hell no. I pull a thin robe around my body and follow hot on his heels. “Nope. Nuh-uh.”
He spins, and his eyes level me. But he doesn’t get a word out.
“Do we always fight this much?”
