Forged in Desire (The Protectors #1)(33)

“The reason I thought it was best to end things with Scott is because the relationship was going nowhere. He thought his work was more important than me.”

There, she’d told him. Not the full story but enough. Now they could talk about something else. Like the weather. The championship game of football that would be played this weekend. The new president. But from the way he was looking at her, she had a feeling he wasn’t ready to move on to another topic.

“He was a financial adviser, right?”

She lifted a brow. She hadn’t told him that, so she could only conclude he’d done some digging on his own. “Yes. And I’m not going to waste my time asking how you knew.”

He shrugged. “Part of my job to check out everyone in your life.”

“Scott is not in my life. We should be concerned about an assassin, not Scott.”

Instead of commenting on what she’d just said, he asked, “It’s typical for financial advisers to work long hours, isn’t it?”

Now it was her time to shrug. “Apparently so. Scott and I spent a lot of time together in the beginning. But then he started hosting all these dinners with clients and potential clients. They spent more time with him than I did.”

“Did the two of you not talk about it? Did you not tell him how you felt?”

Margo scowled. Did Striker have a side gig as a relationship counselor or something? “Of course I told him how I felt, but he figured since I had a man making a six-figure salary that I should be smiling all over the place.”

“The two of you were together for almost a year. Yet you never told him about your wealth. Why?”

Margo released a long, dramatic sigh. “Our relationship was not based on money but on mutual respect for each other.” Or so she’d thought. “The issue never came up. He knew I had an uncle living in Virginia and that my parents were deceased. That was all he needed to know.”

Striker disagreed. There was no way he would ever be seriously involved with a woman for almost a year without knowing everything there was about her. Both mentally and physically. Especially a woman like Margo Connelly. And she was not a woman a man could neglect. What was wrong with Dylan? What had he been smoking? “So he refused to change his ways and spend more time with you?”

She frowned at him. “Look, Striker, I wasn’t this needy person who required a man’s attention 24/7. However, I felt that if you’re claiming to be my boyfriend, the least you can do is spend time with me on occasion. After a while he didn’t even do that. He was too busy, going out of town or going to important dinners.”

“Why didn’t you go with him out of town or to these dinners?”

He could tell from the tilt of her chin that his question had hit a nerve. “I was never asked.”

He stared at her. A part of him knew it took a lot to make that type of admission. What woman would want to admit that the man in her life had neglected her? He felt the hand that was holding his cup of tea tighten. Scott Dylan was an asshole, just as he’d thought reading the tone of Dylan’s message on the card accompanying those flowers. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want a woman like Margo by his side, every chance he got? The answer to that question came easily. A man who had a chick on the side.

Striker wondered if Margo had even thought of that possibility. He couldn’t see her not doing so. She certainly didn’t come across as being the kind of woman a man could easily fool. Although she wasn’t saying, he had a strong feeling she suspected such a thing, which was probably the real reason she’d dumped the bastard. Emotions swelled within him that he wasn’t used to feeling. The thought of any man treating her so shabbily pissed him off. “So why keep those flowers he sent?” he asked.

“Why not? He paid for them out of that six-figure salary he liked boasting about. They were pretty and I saw no reason to take out my irritation about Scott on a beautiful arrangement of flowers.”

“He’s trying to get you back,” Striker said, wanting to reach out and touch her hair, push a wayward strand away from her face, but knowing he couldn’t do so.

“Yes. He got offended that I called it quits in the first place. He thought I should have been grateful for any amount of time I got to spend with him.”

She paused a moment and then added, “Scott knows my position. Before I left New York, he made a nuisance of himself. I guess no woman had broken things off with him before. He didn’t take that well and his ego got bruised. I had to threaten to go to the authorities if he kept it up.”

“Kept what up?”

“Making an ass of himself.”

“In what way?”

She shook her head. “Not important.”

He wondered why she wouldn’t say. Was it really not important as she claimed? What had the man done to make her threaten to go to the authorities? Had she ever confided in her uncle about it? For some reason, he doubted it.

“I have another question,” he said, finishing off the last of his tea and squashing the cup to toss in the trash bag.

“No more questions about Scott, Striker. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a closed subject.”

For her sake, he hoped so. Not caring at the moment that his thoughts were too territorial, he knew Scott Dylan was the last man he would want to see her with again. “Okay, no more Scott Dylan questions. This one is about you. How did you develop an interest in designing wedding gowns?”