Page 63 of Colton's Secret Weapon
When he continued to face straight ahead, not acknowledging that he’d heard her, she pushed harder. “And you didn’t want to tell me until you had proof because you knew it would upset me.”
Nice. But…she couldn’t go there. Most particularly not with him.
But really, not with anyone. She might need his help and physical protection against an attacker at the moment, but that didn’t make her any less capable of handling the crappy challenges that life dumped on her. It was all part of the journey. Even if it meant she made mistakes. She had to be allowed to fail.
She’d asked for the help she needed.
He continued to drive. She continued to stare at him. Hard. “You didn’t tell me because you’re getting all manly on me, thinking I need protecting from emotional pain, rather than seeing me as an equal work mate,” she accused.
And Mitchell nodded.
There was no point in avoiding the truth. A fact Mitchell had learned probably from birth. And while he did not like, or want, his newfound awareness where Dove was concerned, he knew better than to avoid it.
Most of the problems his clients—and his family members—brought to him were the result of avoidance. Not wanting to deal with something. Hoping it would go away.
Many things did work out as one hoped. There were times when possible problems didn’t materialize. But that didn’t mean you didn’t prepare for them just in case.
And in his case, avoidance wasn’t really even a choice. He was in the middle of a huge pile of muck. He wanted a woman he had nothing in common with.
To the point that he’d allowed her to convince him that sex was only body parts. He’d known better than that. A man didn’t get a law degree—with a required class in family law—without gaining an understanding of two major truths. Emotions were a huge factor in problems between family members. And emotions were unpredictable. One couldn’t see into the future.
Couldn’t predict that a young love could turn so deadly.
Or that someone who adored another one year decided five years later that they no longer did. Nor could one predict how one would feel if they found out a spouse had cheated on them.
And how did it all pertain to him?
He’d known the messiest emotions of all stemmed from sex. Often even when one didn’t want, or expect, them to do so.
Because sex was the ultimate form of physical expression. And if it was great sex, it often created a new awareness of that person. Which then, due to the way human beings reacted to needs within themselves by seeking to fill that need, created a need for more sex with them. Which led to an emotional bond between them. A bond that—due to a human being’s ability to reason, to realize that the other’s well-being directly affected their own emotional state—spilled out of the bedroom and into their lives.
He didn’t make the rules. He just lived by them.
All of which flew out of his brain when, at Dove’s request, he made a stop at the marina before taking her to the hospital to sit with her father. She’d called in. Bob St. James had not yet regained consciousness but had taken no turn for the worse. And she’d wanted to see for herself thatLadybirdwas okay. To look at the area. And check the office, too.
If anything was out of place—if Wes Armstrong had messed with anything Mitchell took that to mean—she’d be the most likely one to be able to tell.
They didn’t make it to the office. Though it was only six in the morning when they pulled in, the sun was already shining, and his brain was just registering the sight before him when he heard Dove’s sharp intake of breath. Followed by “Oh my God!”
She had her door open before he’d come to a full stop in the drive, but he was right beside her as she ran down to the docks.
He’d been looking atLadybirdas he’d first pulled forward, and supposed she had been, too.Wicked Winningshad been moored beside her.
The trawler’s radar station and pilothouse were intact, but the forward hull, starting with the gunwale, were splintered, bashed in, as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to her. Or had had her out for a joyride and crashed. All of the damage they could see was out of the water, but that didn’t mean the immersed portion of the hull wasn’t also damaged.
Racing in front of Dove, maybe to get there first, to somehow protect her from the horror she had to be experiencing, he said, “If she’s taking in water, she’ll sink.”
He was already on the trawler by the time she’d caught up with him. And while he wanted to stop her from climbing aboard—even just to ask her to please let him get a look around first—he didn’t do so. She’d made her point quite clear in the car. The fact that they’d had sex gave him no further influence over her. She would not tolerate him trying to take her autonomy from her.
He made a quick check of all at-risk areas, ending up in the pilothouse. She was sitting at the helm, staring out at the trashed hull in front of her. “She was our greatest hope,” she said to him. “Our way to make enough money to keep the business going.”
“She still can be,” he said, words pouring out of him almost faster than he was thinking them. “There’s no water coming in, Dove. While the damage is extensive, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, placing both of her hands on the wheel. “We can’t afford the repairs.”
His lawyer brain was in full gear. “You might not have to,” he told her, placing himself so that she could just as easily see him as the damage in front of her. Wanting her to focus on him.
Not the destruction.
