Page 84 of The Honest Affair

At that, she sat up and looked down at me, apparently forgetting that she was naked. “I will not have you ruin your life for me. I will not have it, Matthew. Absolutely not.”

I frowned. “I wouldn’t be ruining my life. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been pretty fucking miserable without you. That’s not going to change if I end up getting my job back, which is looking more and more unlikely these days.”

Cardozo had been dodging my calls for weeks. Gardner’s trial wasn’t for another couple of months, but I figured that by now, my boss would at least have a plan for bringing me back unnoticed.

Unless he didn’t.

“So, what will you do instead? Tend bar?”

I cringed. I wasn’t going to admit it, but I hated working at Jamie’s. Nina was right. I missed…well, not the office, per se. But I missed my work. Investigating a case. Putting together an argument. I liked the puzzle work of the law as much as the satisfaction that I was doing some good with it. I missed knowing every day that I wasn’t a total waste of space on this planet.

My reaction was clearly all over my face.

“What if I could ask Eric to give you—” Nina began gingerly.

“Don’t even think about it,” I cut her off sharply. “If you even think the word allowance or trust or imagine for a second that we are getting married without an ironclad prenup, you don’t know me for shit, Nina. I am not marrying you for your money, and I won’t have a single person even thinking it. No arguments.”

“But if it’s because I cost you your job—”

“For the last time, you didn’t cost me my job,” I barked. “I cost me my job, Nina. And I’m getting a little tired of saying over and over that I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I made my choice. I’ll take the slap on the wrist, maybe get fired, and move on. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it still meant falling in love with you, so just drop it, all right?”

She had the decency to look contrite—so much that I felt a little sorry myself for snapping at her.

“Look,” I said, turning to cup her face. “It’s going to be all right. It’s a job, not my life. Besides, now we don’t have to hide, right? That’s done with now. It’s over.”

But for some reason, that gleam didn’t return to her eyes.

“Nina. Isn’t it?”

“Matthew,” she said quietly. “You don’t know him like I do. He’s vindictive. More than you can possibly imagine.”

I almost asked her why she thought that, but decided against it. I wanted to know where she was going with this.

“Think about what he’s already done,” she said. “Matthew, he forced his cousin to pretend to be me for ten years to get what he wants, and it can’t have only been because using my name got him what he wanted for his business. He wanted to ruin me in the end, at whatever cost to himself. Calvin is…”

“An uncouth, egomaniacal, sociopathic motherfucker,” I finished heavily as I reached the same conclusion. “Who is unfortunately not as stupid as I thought. And the second he knows that we’re together, much less engaged, he’s going to fuck things up for me permanently. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

“I can’t imagine he won’t try,” Nina said.

I chewed on my lip. As much as I wanted to believe that Calvin’s potential threats had no teeth, I knew the truth. It was one thing to admit I had fallen for a defendant’s wife and allow myself to be put on administrative leave. It was another to be splashed across the New York tabloids and have every detail of our relationship picked apart by the press, even if I managed not to lose my license. Calvin and Nina were national news, and I couldn’t afford to be blacklisted in every state and county.

The truth was, if I didn’t have the ability to do my job in any capacity, I didn’t really have much of anything beyond the woman next to me. And as much as I wanted to say that being her husband would be enough…she and I both knew the truth. It wouldn’t be. That’s not who I was.

“Fine,” I agreed irritably. “You’re right. But I have to see you. Nina, we have to see each other still.”

“Of course,” she said, capturing my face between her hands and kissing me.

I slipped a hand around her waist and pulled her close, kissing her for a good long time, more than was really necessary just now. But Nina gave as good as she got. We were both feeling that desperation.

But when we broke apart, she continued speaking.

“Matthew, tell me you understand. Until I am fully divorced and Calvin’s trial is finished…no one in New York can know about us. Not even Jane and Eric. You know Jane. She can’t keep a secret to save her life.”

Slowly, I nodded, hating myself more every second. “No one can know.”

Nina pressed her forehead to mine. “We have to be quiet. We have to be careful.”

I inhaled her scent of roses, feeling that heady high of love, not fear. That’s what would keep me going for the next several months. The promise of this scent. The knowledge of this night.

“We keep it quiet,” I repeated, every word tasting like lead. “Until the trials are over. No one will know a thing.”

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