AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His lips thinned angrily.
“Or sex,” he bit out. “You barely let me kiss you, yet apparently the rumors that you’re sleeping with your new mechanic are true.” He flicked a finger toward her. “I know a hickey when I see one.”
“I’m not sleeping with Noah Blake.” She had to bite back her frustration, her irritation. “No matter what the gossips are saying.”
“You’re sure as hell not sleeping with me,” he argued, moving farther into the room. “Tell me, Belle, do all these pictures keep you warm at night?” He lifted his arm to indicate the mantel, the table. “Will they give you children? Will they hold you when you cry for him?”
His voice rose, the anger building inside him. Duncan was finally realizing that the warnings she had given him over the past months had been sincere. She didn’t want anything more than his friendship.
“Do you want to hold me while I cry for him?” she asked in frustration, jerking from her seat and grabbing the wine bottle and her glass before moving to leave the living room. “Is that what you want, Duncan?”
She set her glass and the wine on the L-shaped kitchen counter that doubled as a bar before turning to face him.
“And when Noah’s marking your face and your neck, are you crying for Nathan then?” Duncan sneered hatefully, shockingly, as he followed her into the kitchen.
“Stop, Duncan.” She threw him a wary look over her shoulder as she entered the brightly lit kitchen and moved to the counter. Where she felt safer.
She had never seen Duncan upset. Actually, she had never heard of Duncan becoming angry much at all. But it was obvious he was just a little pissed off right now.
She stared at him across the counter, seeing the edge of growing anger in his face as well as his eyes. His lips were thin, his expression flushed
“Do you think I don’t know why that mechanic m
ade it this far, and I haven’t?” he accused furiously. “You’re fooling yourself, Belle. You know you are. And you’re making a mistake.”
“It’s midnight, Duncan,” Sabella argued back. “I don’t want to discuss this with you tonight or I would have asked you over. You’re not in a position to make any type of decision for me, or to question the decisions I make.”
“He’s like Nathan.” He glared back at her. “That’s why you want him. That’s why your skin is marked by him, because he reminds you of Nathan. And he’s not Nathan.”
Sabella stared back at him in shock. “He’s nothing like Nathan,” she informed him, beginning to grow angry herself now. “Nathan was nothing like him. Nathan loved me, Duncan.”
“He loved you so much that he wouldn’t even consider leaving the SEALs.” Duncan said, sneering. “Do you have any idea how often I told him he was going to end up dead? That he’d leave you alone suffering. Did he care?”
Nathan had just been Nathan. A man and a SEAL. He would have expected her to go on, and it was that simple.
“You could end up dead climbing those damned cliffs you enjoy so much,” she shot back. “Nathan was a SEAL, Duncan. It wasn’t a job choice for him. It was who he was.”
“And you were the helpless little Southern belle to pamper his ego whenever he was home. That used to make me so sick I could barely stand it.” Disgust laced his voice, his expression, as she stared back at him in surprise.
“I was his wife,” she said, confused now by the direction of his fury. “I gave him what he needed, just as he gave me what I needed, Duncan. That was none of your business, nor was it your place to judge it.”
“ ‘Oh Nathan, the oil in the car needs changing’,” Duncan mimicked in a high-pitched, furious voice. “ ‘Oh Nathan, could you check my tires?’ You’d bat your lashes and act like you didn’t know shit. Then he died and you walked right into that garage and hit those cars like a professional. Hell, Belle, didn’t you feel just a little guilty, lying to your husband like that?”
She hadn’t. Nathan had needed to take care of her while he was with her. She had needed that single-minded focus he had given her between missions. Would it have changed as their marriage progressed? She had no doubt it would have. But the two years they had been together, it hadn’t mattered. Working on cars wasn’t her life’s work. She might have enjoyed it, but she enjoyed Nathan more. While he was on missions, she tinkered on her own car, sometimes she tinkered with his precious truck.
“I never lied to my husband,” she answered him quietly. “And I never lied to you about how I felt. I told you I didn’t want what you obviously wanted from me. I told you that a year ago and I’ve repeated it, several times.”
“But you do want it from that shiftless son of a bitch that stinks of oil and grease?” he snarled.
Sabella stared back at him, her own anger rising now. “I think we’ve both pretty much accepted the fact that’s one of my favorite scents.”
“No shit,” he snarled. “You stink of it continually. Maybe I’m sick of smelling the stuff while I’m trying to eat my dinner.”
She had never seen this side of Duncan, had never suspected it existed.
“You thought you were getting Nathan’s wife.” A bitter smile curled her lips. “The little woman that sat at home and, you thought, did as she was told.” Sabella shook her head. “You didn’t live in this house, Duncan. You have no idea how little I did that Nathan tried to order me to do. And it’s more than obvious that you never cared to see beyond the surface.”
He flicked her a furious look before turning and pacing to the window.
