Things were finally going back to normal.
Though I had a feeling they were going to be even better than before.
“You didn’t happen to make any coffee, did you?” came a voice from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder, already knowing who I would see. Dr. Stein watched me as he came into the room and stopped right next to me. I stirred my lunch a little longer than necessary before putting it in the microwave to heat up, needing something to do with my hands.
“Nope,” I replied. “There’s the machine right there, though. Help yourself.”
Because if the chauvinist actually thought I was about to make his coffee, I’d karate chop him in the throat. I’d always wanted to try that on someone. You know, just to test its effectiveness.
He chuckled. “I’ll grab an energy drink from the vending machine.”
I assumed our conversation was over, but he didn’t move. Talk about awkward silences. All I could hear was the steady hum of the microwave and my pulse pounding in my ears.
I wasn’t sure what his game was. But I had a foreboding feeling in the pit of my gut that it wasn’t going to be good.
“Were things successful between you and your husband this weekend?” he asked.
Did this guy really not understand boundaries?
“Don’t know what you mean by successful,” I muttered, my tone hinting that I was not interested in having this conversation with him.
He took a step toward me, his body language communicating interest. If the question he just asked hadn’t done it, the way he was now looking at me definitely signified the turn toward inappropriate behavior.
“You know,” he murmured, still creeping in, “did you two solve all of your problems? Or are you thinking of calling it quits?”
Anger snaked up my spine, causing ugly feelings to stir and simmer. “It’s really none of your business,” I said firmly. “To be honest, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop asking me about it. It’s making me uncomfortable.”
He leaned against the countertop, placing his hand way too damn close to mine. “Oh, touchy subject, huh? I get it. I wouldn’t want people to know that my marriage was failing, either.”
My head jerked around. “Excuse me?”
The bastard smirked. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like a lost cause to me. It seems pointless to stay married if you’re no longer attracted to one another.”
My temper was reaching a boiling point. “I never said I wasn’t still attracted to my husband. And how dare you say my marriage is a lost cause. I want you to get out and leave me alone. Now.”
He did the exact opposite by coming closer. His potent cologne about choked the life out of me, he had it on so thick. I would have backed up if the wall wasn’t right at my back.
“Or you could just stop fighting this,” he said.
What the hell?
“Fighting what?”
He flicked his wrist between our bodies. “What’s going on here. I’ve seen you looking. And if you need a little spice because you’re stuck in a boring marriage with a husband who doesn’t know how to get you excited, well…I’m happy to oblige.”
You have got to be kidding me.
One of the most respected doctors in the region was not propositioning me for sex in a hospital break room.
“I know how you married women are,” he continued before I could say anything. “Your husbands don’t understand what you need, so you’re all desperate for release. You like the idea of doing something wrong—something bad—because you probably never did anything fun before you saddled yourself with an average Joe schmo who isn’t going anywhere in life. So, if it will make you feel better to say you don’t want it, go ahead. I won’t tell.”
I was so frozen with shock, I couldn’t manage to say anything more than, “You’re unbelievable.”
“In bed, yes, I am,” he retorted, unaffected. “I can fuck you so good, make you come so hard, you’ll be ruined for life. Even for your husband.” His eyes fell to my mouth before lifting again. “Let me show you, Mickie.”
I felt like I was in an alternate universe.
None of this felt real at all.
“You are so out of line, Dr. Stein.” I was this close to slapping him across the face. “If you take a step back and walk out of here right now, I won’t report you for sexual harassment.”
“Come on,” he said, laughing. “No one has to know. And it wouldn’t even have to stop if you took that job in Jersey. I have family in that area, so I could always hit you up when I breezed through town. Give you a little something to look forward to.”
That’s it.
I’d heard more than enough of this son of a bitch’s routine. Judging by his comments, I was guessing I wasn’t the first married woman he’d come onto.
But if he was expecting me to be another notch on his scandalous, tainted bedpost, he had another thing coming.
Like a foot to the nuts if he so much as touched me.
For now, I used both hands to shove him back as hard as I could.
His grin faded a little but not completely. “I thought you might be the type to like it rough,” he said with a sneer. “I bet you’re so hot in the sack. All feisty. You probably like it dirty, too, don’t you? I swear I’m going to give you the best fuck of your life.”
“Shut. Up.”
I was so on the edge of losing it, I was worried I might pop a blood vessel.
Thankfully, Stein didn’t advance again, and now he was starting to look pissed off.
“I don’t know,” I began, having to take a deep breath before continuing, “why in the hell you think you have any right to speak to me like that. You’re slimy and disgusting, and imagining you touching me makes me want to vomit. But before I tell you one last time to get the hell out of here and leave me alone, let’s get something straight.”
I straightened my spine and pictured Dawson in my head. Thinking of him put an extra dose of steel into my voice. His face in my mind spurred me on.
“I’ve already had the best fuck of my life, and I married him.” Stein’s expression hardened. “Don’t assume that all of us married women have boring vanilla or non-existent sex lives. Or that we all read kinky erotica just to get our jollies because our husbands can’t do it for us. We don’t all lose our sex drives after we get married. In fact, they can even get stronger. There isn’t anything you could show me that I haven’t seen in a better version from him. And trust me, you could never make me come like he can.”
Mic. Drop.
Damn, that felt good.
I suddenly felt like I could run for miles, or lift a giant anvil over my head. The look on Stein’s face only added to my pleasure.
“You’re a fucking bitch,” he snarled. “I’m glad I dodged a bullet by not tapping your frigid ass. No wonder your husband is sick of you. You’re cold and—”
“You want to back the fuck off my wife, asshole?”
Ohmigod.
Oh, my God.
“Dawson?”
Where had he come from?
He stood there menacingly, hands fisted at his sides, breathing through flared nostrils, murdering Stein with his eyes. Shit, he really might kill him. His gun was holstered right there on his hip, too close to his hand for my comfort.
Granted, he wouldn’t need a gun.
His fists were lethal weapons in their own right.
And judging from Stein’s widening eyes, he knew it. He was swallowing nervously, licking his lips. I had to admit, seeing him like that was almost as good as telling him off. Almost.
Dawson walked toward Stein.
Oh, shit.
I couldn’t let him go to prison just to teach this jackass a lesson. I lunged forward to intervene—
But I was too late.
Dawson cocked back his fist, and sent it flying into Stein’s jaw. Stein flew back onto a table, toppling it over, and sending both it and him crashing to the floor. I watched as blood spewed from his nose, whi
ch was probably broken. He held his own blood-covered hand to his face, moaning in pain.
I should have seen that coming. Dawson had always been the act now, ask questions later type.
Or not ask questions at all, and just let his fists do his talking for him.
I stepped in front of Dawson, putting my hand to his chest when he leaned toward Stein, towering over the man.
“Stay. Away. From. My. Wife. You’re lucky to even still be alive right now. Be glad she’s standing here. But I swear to Christ, she won’t be able to stop me if there’s a next time.”
Dawson stared him down for another long second. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me from the room. We passed Lanie and Cynthia, who had obviously heard the commotion and were standing in the hallway, looking stupefied. I didn’t say a word to them, and just allowed Dawson to lead me down the hall and into the stairwell.
When the door was closed, his whole body whipped around. “When were you going to tell me about this job offer in New Jersey?”
What? What was he—?
Oh, noooo.
If he had been standing in the hallway during my altercation with Stein, he must have heard him mention the job.
Fuck.
“There is no job offer,” I told him. “Not anymore. I turned it down.”
He narrowed his eyes. “But there was one. And you never thought to mention this to me?”
I exhaled heavily. “Yes, but I didn’t think it would be a big deal if I wasn’t going to take it. I didn’t see the point in stressing you out over nothing.”
That didn’t placate him. “How long have you known about this?”
“Over a month now,” I replied, meekly.
I should have known this would blow up in my face.
His mirthless laugh made me cringe. “So, after all this time of you giving me crap for keeping things from you, you’ve had a secret yourself, all along. How does that work?”
“It wasn’t really a secret,” I insisted, knowing those words were a lie. “I just didn’t want to bring it up while we were trying to get back on better terms. I was afraid it would cause an argument, and we were already fighting and—”
“Wait, hold on,” he cut me off, throwing his hand up. “You must have applied for this position.” Uh-oh. Not good. “When did you submit your application?”
I swallowed around a dry mouth. “Two—” I had to clear my throat. “Two months ago.”
Silence.
His face went blank, paling a little. I was pretty sure mine had turned green, because I felt sick to my stomach.
“You were looking for other jobs,” he said slowly, “in other states, after I moved out?”
“It wasn’t serious,” I rushed to say, my voice pleading. “I was just curious about what was out there. I didn’t think anything would come of it.”
“Obviously, it was serious if you turned it down. Which means you’d been considering taking it. When did you tell them you were turning it down?”
This just kept getting worse.
He was taking this completely the wrong way, and I didn’t know what I could say or do to make it better.
“When, Mickie?” he demanded, taking a hard step toward me.
I lowered my gaze, whispering, “This morning.”
He retreated, chuckling under his breath. The sound was full of disappointment.
“You mean you decided to turn down a job in Jersey only after we spent the entire weekend fucking like rabbits?”
I winced. “Don’t say it like that.”
“What was the plan, huh?” he asked. “See how things went with us, and if they didn’t work out you could just skip off to Jersey without me? Were those your contingency plans if I didn’t straighten my act up?”
“No!” I shouted frantically. “I never wanted to take it. I’d never really planned to. I just wanted you back. I wanted our family to be together again. Here, in Baltimore. I wanted us to be happy again.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, well I never wanted to leave. I would never have left you. Yet, you were forming a Plan B in my absence.”
No! How could he think that?
This was so messed up.
He turned to walk down the stairs, away from me.
“Dawson, wait! It wasn’t like that at all. Please, just listen.”
He peered over his shoulder, not bothering to fully face me. “You needed some time apart from me to think, right? That’s how all of this got started. Well, now it’s my turn.”
I went to follow him. “Dawson, don’t—”
“The part that hurts the most is that you were clearly never going to tell me.” He sounded so dejected. “For all the plans you’ve been making lately, I guess that one didn’t work out so well for you, huh?”
He turned and was down the stairs, out the door, and gone.
Feeling my body going numb, I slid down the wall and buried my face in my knees.
And I cried.
Chapter Forty-Four
Mickie
I left work early because I’d been far too emotional to be of any use by the time Lanie and Cynthia tracked me down in the stairwell.
I didn’t ask what had happened to Stein. I didn’t really care if I got fired at that point. Dawson didn’t answer his phone when I called, nor answered any of my texts.
Not that I’d expected him to.
But a part of me still held on to the possibility that this was a quick spat which would blow over quickly.
It wasn’t looking like it.
After I’d picked up the kids and brought them home, I needed some time to myself. Really, I just didn’t want them to see me at my worst. They shouldn’t have to witness their mother’s emotional breakdown.
They seemed content with watching cartoons while I held a pity party for myself in the other room. I was in the middle of said party when the doorbell rang.
Hoping it was Dawson—yet knowing it wouldn’t be—I glanced in the hallway mirror.
Yikes.
That was hard to look at.
There was no helping my splotchy face, so I just opened the door.
“Surprise!” Margot yelled.
It took me all of two seconds to work through my confusion. This was the weekend she was visiting, and I had completely forgotten.
I tried to infuse cheerfulness into my tone. “Hey, you’re here.”
She squeezed me to her. “Yeah. Milo leaves for camp tomorrow, but he wanted to stay at a friend’s house tonight, so I decided to leave a day early.” It was then that she really took stock of my appearance, her eyes flitting over my puffy red face and haggard hair. “Oh, my. And it seems I’ve arrived just in time.”
A sob escaped my mouth before I could wrangle it back in. “I’m such an idiot,” I wailed.
“Aw, honey.” She tucked me under her arm and led me toward the kitchen. “Come on. I’ll make us some tea.”
After wrestling with the kids and their screams of “Auntie Margot’s here!” Margot and I were left alone at the kitchen table, drinking our tea.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Is it Dawson?”
I hadn’t spoken to her since our weekend on the boat. Which meant she also didn’t know about me turning down the Trenton job.
“Yeah, but it’s not what you think.”
She listened carefully as I explained what had happened over the last week. Her smile had gotten wider and wider, up until I started recanting the events of the afternoon. Then it faded, little by little.
By the time I reached the end of my story, I felt even more miserable than I had before.
“I could say I told you so,” she said, her expression grim. “But I won’t.”
I rolled my eyes. “You basically just did, so that’s redundant.”
“Then I’ve made my point, so let’s move on.” She sighed. “I’m sure he just had to blow off some steam, Mickie. He had a right to be frustrated. He’ll be back once he’s calmed down.”
“You think h
e’ll forgive me?” I whispered.
She patted my arm. “Of course. Everyone makes mistakes. He knows that.”
I played with the string on my tea bag, needing something to do with my hands. “Not just for that. Do you think he’ll forgive me for kicking him out? It’s basically my fault we’ve been apart for two months. He doesn’t always forgive easily.”
Her eyes softened. “With you, he will. It sounds like he already forgave you for that, anyway. Today was just an excuse for him to let some of his frustrations loose.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a mistake. Kicking him out.”
She sat forward in her chair. “You did what you had to do to keep your family together. Deep down, I’m sure he realizes that. You knew it was going to be hard, and you knew you were going to look like the bad guy. But you did it anyway because you knew it would awaken something in him. And it worked, didn’t it?”
“It was working,” I muttered. “Until today. It feels like I doomed this from the beginning by applying for that job. Like it was all for naught because I ended up failing in the end.”
“Oh, my God, you didn’t fail,” she said. “He knows you love him. And because he loves you, too, you guys will work through this. You just have to show him that you’re not willing to give up, either. Don’t let another two months go by without proving that to him.”
“How?” I asked. “How do I prove that to him, so he won’t doubt me?”
She shrugged, taking a sip of her tea. “I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out. But I’m sure you’ll think of something dramatic.”
I snapped my eyes to hers. “You think I’m dramatic?”
She shot me a deadpan expression. “Mickie, when we were kids, you literally divided our bedroom in half with a line of masking tape, just so I wouldn’t touch the stuffed animals on your bed. And for every time I stepped over that line, you hid one of my CDs from me.”
True. That happened.
She didn’t stop there, though.
“Then in high school, you went to the school board with a petition complaining that the cheerleading squad wouldn’t let Vicki Chambers be on the team.”
Always Mickie (Cruz Brothers Book 3) Page 26
