Tell Me You Want Me (Search and Seduce, #2)(46)

“Came to get a drink with East,” he said.

“Um…” She glanced between her dinner guests and him. “These are my parents, Cynthia and Wayland. Mom, Dad, this is Dex.”

“Hello.” Her mother nodded.

Dex bowed slightly. “Ma’am, it’s a pleasure.” He shook her hand, then Michelle’s father’s. “Sir, nice to meet you as well.”

Michelle gave him the slightest smile, but it was so short and fast he barely registered it as a smile. She was uptight and nervous, and it was freaking Dex out. He’d never seen her like this. Like the woman with passion and fire was nowhere to be seen, and in her place was a rigid, borderline frightened girl with sharp edges.

Her mother looked him over like she would a rodent, and he tried not to fidget and brush his jeans. Why hadn’t he gone home to change first?

“Is this the one you were telling us about?” her father asked her.

Dex’s heart soared. She was talking about him. To her parents.

“Yes, Daddy. Dex has trained me in—”

“Yes, yes, the wilderness and what not,” his father said, shaking her off.

Michelle went cold. Frozen. Silent. This wasn’t the woman he’d come to know. The woman he’d met, the woman he’d made love to, would never let someone interrupt her and wave her off like a simpering fool. She just stood. Silent.

Where was the Michelle he knew? The one with spunk and stubbornness and…flare.

“Michelle here is really great,” he said, feeling like an idiot but also feeling the need to say something. Anything to get a glimpse of the fire inside her. “She certainly knows how to survive in an array of environments.”

He smiled, but no one else did. Not even Michelle.

“Well then, I should thank you for keeping my daughter safe,” her father said. “But her time here is over. Have you paid the man for these classes or training for whatever it is?” he asked Michelle.

Paid him? And what did he mean her time here was over? It annoyed him that her father’s mind went straight to money. It wasn’t like that between him and Michelle. Yeah, he got to spend time with her and get some hours for his recertification, but this was never about classes that involved money. Was that what she’d said to them?

He didn’t know, because she wasn’t admitting or denying anything.

“Your time here is over?” he asked Michelle.

She opened her mouth to say something but her father cut her off again. “Yes, it is,” he confirmed. “Her business is—”

“Just fine,” she snapped. Finally, Michelle was looking like the woman he recognized. With fire in her eyes and heat in her words. But Dex couldn’t help but notice the small tremble she was trying to hide in her shoulders.

“Are you really okay?” he asked softly. “Is your shop okay?”

“No, it’s not,” her father said. “Perhaps if she spent more time using her accounting skills and less time gallivanting around the countryside with you, she wouldn’t be losing it.”

“I’m not losing anything,” Michelle interjected. But Dex’s chest was aching and burning up at the same time. Her father’s words smacked him hard. He was the bad influence, and Michelle was suffering because of him.

“I’m a business owner, something I’ve done on my own. Dex is nothing and has nothing to do with anything I’m trying to accomplish here. I’m not failing.” Her voice broke on the last word, but Dex was struck by the several that came before it. He was nothing. Nothing to her. Nothing in her world. Nothing. All the time they’d spent together, the training, the moments he thought there was more…he’d been wrong.

She glanced at him but then looked away. A mask of fear and anger was written all over her face, and Dex couldn’t handle the intense feeling of his chest drowning in his own blood. Surely that was because his heart was ripped open and pouring out everywhere.

“You can’t afford to stay,” he father said to Michelle.

“I’m not giving up,” she responded in a definite tone.

“You have maybe six months left before you’re totally broke.” Her father threw his hands up.

Dex frowned. He knew that would be a hell of a spot to be in, and despite his ribs splitting from the kick her earlier words gave him, he couldn’t help but offer… “We can figure something out,” he said quietly and for her ears alone.

“We?” she asked. “There is no we. I have care of me.” The way her voice gave out on that statement made his heart sink. “I won’t fail,” she whispered.

“Well, about the payment,” her father cut in, obviously trying to get rid of him. “What do those classes of yours run?”

“No payment is necessary,” Dex offered. He was too busy trying to pick up the pieces of his shattered soul out from under Michelle’s expensive stiletto.

“Nonsense, working man like yourself depends on this kind of income, I’m sure.” Her father reached for his wallet, and Dex looked at Michelle.

She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Maybe because she’d said enough earlier. Hell, Dex had heard enough. He knew when he wasn’t wanted. It had never hurt this bad. To make it worse, her father was on the brink of paying him for his services, which would make him—