Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little #1)(50)

“Yes,” he says.

“What did you have to give him?”

“It’s not important.”

I sigh, and fight back the anger that’s rising up inside of me. “It’s important to me.”

“I’m being literal here,” he replies patiently. “What I had to give him isn’t important. Not in the grand scheme of things.”


“Oh god.” All I can think about is that he’s given up shares in his company, or something huge that’s going to come back to bite him later.

“Mia,” Caleb whispers, tilting my head up. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m telling you…it’s nothing that’s more important to me than you are. Besides, I told you. I’m an excellent negotiator.”

“It’s just…it’s a lot. For me, a person who came into your life and brought trouble right along with me.”

“No,” he says with a smile. “Brought happiness along with you.”

A wave of unexpected warmth floods my body, and I press a soft kiss against Caleb’s lips. “You make me happy, too.”

“What I need you to understand is that I didn’t do what I did out of some kind of overbearing need to protect you.”

I raise my brow, and he gives me a sheepish look.

“Okay,” he replies, smiling. “It’s not just about that.”

“What’s it about then?”

“I want you to be happy. You’d never be happy if you were running from somebody.”

That answer earns him another kiss. This one, it lingers.

“And you’re really not going to tell me what you agreed to?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t agree to anything, really. Turns out, I know quite a few people who have done business with Jack Kemp, and he’s screwed over more than a couple of them. Not to sound like an *, but I’m five times the businessman he is, and ten times as rich. All the shit he pulled on those poor, unsuspecting people who couldn’t stand up to him? That doesn’t work on me. ”

He does sound like an *, but in a ridiculously hot kind of way. I decide not to tell him that, just to make my life easier in the future.

Caleb’s eyebrows scrunch together before he starts talking again, and his eyes get this distant, faraway look in them. “Getting him to tell me where you were, that was the most difficult part. I did have to…make some concessions to get that information, and I was more than willing to do that.” He looks down at me tenderly, and cups my cheek. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

I turn my head, and kiss the palm of his hand. “I’m sorry I scared you. I did it for what I thought was a really good reason at the time.”

“I know you did,” he says, nodding. He looks more like himself now. “I’m going to be mad at you about it for a really long time, though.”

“I know,” I admit quietly. “Does it mean anything if I tell you it won’t happen again?”

He nods. “It helps. It would mean more to me if you promised me that in the future, if you’re ever in any kind of trouble where you even consider doing something like you did with Kemp, that you’ll come to me before you do anything…”

Caleb hesitates before he finishes that sentence. “It’s okay, you can say stupid.”

“Okay,” he laughs. “Come to me before you do anything stupid. I know this thing between us is still new, and I don’t know where it’s going to go, especially now that you can safely go back to Chicago, just…come to me first. Please.”

To be honest, I hadn’t even considered the thought that I could go back to Chicago. I’m guessing it means something that the thought didn’t even enter my mind until just now, when Caleb brought it up.

“I can’t imagine another situation where I’ll need to steal from a sleazy slumlord to pay someone’s medical bills,” I reply, trying to lighten the mood.

With Caleb the way he is right now, laser-focused on the task at hand, there is no lightening this mood. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Caleb lets out a sigh of relief, and gives me a squeeze.

“May I ask what you got Kemp to agree to?”

“Forgiveness of the two million,” Caleb replies. “We both agreed that he owed you that and more for pain and suffering, so he wrote me a check, which I’ll give to you later.”

“I don’t want his money,” I tell him. Maybe that’s foolish of me, but I really, really don’t.

Caleb squeezes my shoulder. “I didn’t say you had to keep it.”

I grin. “Fair enough.”

“He’s going to continue paying for your friend’s mother to get treatment for her burns. And he’s going to get all the other buildings that he owns up to code, so this doesn’t happen again. I got him to sign a contract to that effect, so there’s no backing out of it now.”

I’m struck by a swooping sensation in my stomach at Caleb’s confession, and I have to blink back the tears that are stinging my eyes. The fact that Caleb not only went to bat for me, to get me out of the ridiculous mess that I got myself into in the first place, but that he went above and beyond to make sure that Amelia was taken care of, and stopped Kemp from being able to let this happen to another person? It makes me fall in love with him a little more.