Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(52)

To his credit, the Cajun boy didn’t flinch. Still, it seemed like he was the honest type. “I told him you were having lunch with another man and you seemed cozy. You hugged him. You seemed close. You aren’t openly affectionate with other men. I’ve been watching you for weeks and the only men you’ve touched past a handshake are Mitch and your brother. In my defense, I was unaware Mitch had any family at all. Had I known you were spending time with his brother, I likely wouldn’t have mentioned the physical affection. That being said, it doesn’t seem like Mitch appreciated you spending time with his brother.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?” She settled her purse over her shoulder and started out the back door.

Guidry escorted her to his massive truck and helped her up. “I’ll bring you back after we deal with the police. I’ll follow you back to Bradford’s place and let you pick up your things. You’re being more reasonable about this than I thought you would.”

She was barely hanging on. She wanted to wail and cry and feel incredibly sorry for herself because she was going to be alone.

She would be alone without Mitch. Or would she? Why should she live the rest of her life alone because Mitchell Bradford was an asshat? She didn’t have to be alone. She’d wasted the last year of her life on him and she was going to have a child by him, but that didn’t mean she had to be alone.

“I’m always reasonable,” she said in a quiet voice. She folded her hands on her lap.

“You’re not being very reasonable right now.” He turned out of the parking lot and toward the freeway.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged as he maneuvered through the streets. “I’m surprised you gave up so quickly.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. She hadn’t given up. He’d told her she wasn’t good enough to be his submissive. And he’d never lied to her about wanting to get married. If she wasn’t his wife or his sub, she wasn’t anything to him. He’d proven that utterly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He made himself plain.”

“Did he?”

“Are you always this chatty with your clients?” How the hell had she gotten here? She was moving toward the police department to talk about the break-in at her apartment. Mitch had let her go pretty easily.

But didn’t he do that with everything? He let people go all the time. Things were harder for him. If she was an old concert T-shirt, he would hoard the hell out of her.

Objects were the only things Mitch could count on, so he tried to keep them. He simply didn’t think he could count on her. His head had immediately gone to cheating. She didn’t deserve that.

But wasn’t it kind of inevitable?

“We don’t have to talk.”

“He was horribly rude to me.”

“Yes. Men in pain are usually horrible. That boy’s got a thorn in his paw and it’s not coming out by itself.” He was quiet for a moment as he sped up to get on the freeway. “You two seemed pretty happy.”

“It was an illusion.” He’d always been waiting for her to screw up so he could get her out of his life. He’d been waiting to do it from the moment he’d heard she was pregnant. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“If you say so. I’m saying as an outside party, you seemed pretty happy, and since you two have a baby on the way, maybe it’s a little hasty to throw in the towel. Or the collar, as it seems. Men will say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re hurting, and finding out the woman they love is seeing another man behind his back would hurt a lot. I’ve looked into Bradford some and he’s the kind of man who hasn’t had a lot of support in his life.”

He’d had no support. None. She’d been surrounded by family. Yes, they’d been children, but she’d learned to lean on them, to trust and love her brother and sisters.

Mitch had learned that everyone left.

He wasn’t completely ignorant when it came to love. But she’d learned long ago that there was a difference between being ignorant and being dumb. Ignorance was merely an absence of education.

Mitch was a smart man. Could he be taught? Did he even want to be?

She was well aware that tears flowed down her cheeks, but she wasn’t capable of stopping them. Remy Guidry wanted to be her bodyguard? Well, he had to deal with her emotional state, too. And if he wanted to listen, then maybe she should talk. She’d kept quiet about so many things because she didn’t want her family to worry, didn’t want Mitch to look bad in front of them. Guidry seemed to know everything, so she could lay it all out there. And it didn’t matter because it was over.

Yes, she was seeking counseling from her ridiculously attractive bodyguard. “I’m worried there’s nothing for me to do. I can’t go back and erase the things that happened to him. I can’t right the past for him.”

“No, you can’t, but you can make him believe in the future.”

She’d been trying. How could she make him believe in a future when he was so tied up in the past? He kept things forever. Stupid things like old T-shirts and stacks of comic books he never read or looked through any more. “How do I do that?”

“Oh, that’s simple, chère. You be you. Don’t have to be any more than that. I’m going to ask you a question and it’s going to seem silly, but I want you to think about it. Let’s say you got this dog and he keeps coming around your house. He’s growling and barking every time you come outside. Now, most people would be scared. Most people would know that tangling with a nasty piece of dog is gonna get them bit. But there’s a few people in this world who look at that dog and see something else. There’s a few people who see deeper. Even though they’ve never been a mangy dog themselves, they seem to understand what it would feel like. So I’m going to ask you, how would you handle that dog?”