Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(49)

She was affectionate with her family. She wasn’t with anyone else but her lover. No. God, this couldn’t be happening to him again.

Not with Laurel. Please not with Laurel.

He felt a piece of himself go cold. If Laurel was cheating, he had to go cold. If Laurel was sleeping with someone else, he might never warm up again.

“Call me if she leaves and get photos. I want to know who this man is and I want the information soon. I don’t care who you have to get on it. Find out who he is and how long she’s been seeing him.” He hung up.

“What the hell is going on, Mitch?” Will followed him as he started out of the apartment and toward his car.

He didn’t want to have this conversation now. He needed to get there. He needed to see for himself that Laurel was exactly like all the rest. She was looking out for her best prospect, and he’d always known it wouldn’t end up being him.

“It’s between me and your sister.” The last thing he needed was Will coming with him.

“I don’t like the look on your face. You need to calm down.” Will kept following him.

Mitch made it to his car. He wasn’t about to tote her brother around. He was sure Will would make a hundred excuses for her. He had to see it for himself and then he could figure out what to do.

He got in and immediately locked the door, started up the car and backed out. Will stared at him, shaking his head. He immediately got on his phone, very likely trying to warn Laurel that hell was coming her way. Poor Laurel. She’d left her phone behind so he couldn’t interrupt her date, and now that action was going to come back to haunt her.

He drove toward her work like a man possessed.





Laurel sniffled as she hung up and passed the phone back to Flynn. “He seemed happy.”

Flynn slid the phone in his pocket. “I’m sure he was. You have no idea how much not having Mitch in his life has haunted my father. I think he made a choice at one point. He decided it was too hard to deal with Mitch’s mother and Dad gave up. He would send money, but not fight her on seeing him. He thought after Mitch turned eighteen they could start over again.”

She could have told him that would never have worked. Mitch was far too stubborn to allow that to happen. Though he didn’t talk about his father, she knew Mitch had to be angry with him. How could he not be?

She’d been angry with her mom. Her mother had battled addiction throughout Laurel’s childhood, but at the time all Laurel had been able to see was the fact that her mother consistently chose drugs over her children. Now she could look back with more mature eyes and see how hard her mother had it. Nothing was ever cut and dried. There were always two sides to a story and rarely was any one person perfectly good or perfectly evil. Most people tried. Her mother had come from an abusive family and despite her struggles, she’d never gone back, never exposed her kids to her fist-wielding father, though Laurel was sure at some points it would have been easier for her to have gone home. She’d come to peace with her mother, and it had been freeing to not have all that rage in her heart. She wasn’t sure how she could go into being a mom without it.

Mitch needed to see his dad. He needed to come to terms with his father before it was too late.

“I’m sure Mitch was stubborn. I’m surprised he took the money your father offered.”

“That was all Margot.”

He’d met Mitch’s ex? “Did you know her?”

Flynn frowned. “Yeah. When I met her I’d recently started college. I was pretty excited to meet Mitch since I’d heard about him all my life. Margot was an interesting woman.”

There was something about the way he said “interesting.” “I know she cheated on him with his business partner.”

Flynn’s eyes wouldn’t quite meet hers. “I would suspect that was just the tip of the iceberg.”

“What happened? Did she hit on you?”

“My father. I walked in once and she was all over Dad. He turned her down, but she was always looking for the best bargain. I remember that’s pretty much exactly what she said. She asked why would she go for the imitation when she could have the real thing. Dad tried to talk to Mitch about it but he wouldn’t hear anything he had to say. There was a huge fight and a few years later, Margot had Mitch’s firm and Mitch pretty much spent everything he had left to pay Dad back. When he started up the second time, he didn’t engage my father at all. I never met his second wife.”

Mitch had a lot of reasons to distrust relationships. From what she’d managed to uncover, his second wife had cheated on him, too. “His mother had a lot of relationships.”

“Oh, yes. From what I understand she went from wealthy man to wealthy man. It didn’t matter if they were married or single. If they could take care of her, she was okay with it. She’s been married five times, but there were many more men. She moved often. I’m sure that had an effect on Mitch.”

He held on to things that didn’t matter because he found them comforting. All those places he’d lived and likely not a one of them had been a home. He couldn’t trust the ground underneath his feet. It was constantly changing.

She could see him as a child. Alone. Confused. Afraid.

That would not happen to her baby. And it wouldn’t happen to Mitch again either. Not if she had any say in it.