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He pulled away from me, and I watched him circle the table, his eyes back down on the pieces, a long tumble of a sigh coming out of him.
I waited for a moment, then twisted my hair into a knot and tucked it under the neck of the robe, searching for a change of subject. “When’d you move to Vegas?”
“About thirteen years ago. Gwen and her father came to Biloxi to scope out our operations. I took them to dinner, turned on the charm.” He winced, and I noticed the dark turn of his features, the quick change of his eyes, a tensing of his build. “The charm didn’t work on Gwen’s father.”
“I heard he’s crazy.”
Dario didn’t react, he only flipped a five-sided piece over on its back. “Most people in this town are. But yes, if you run into him on the street, you should turn the other way.”
“I was a little more concerned about running into him in this hotel.” I gestured to the suite. “Or in here.”
He looked at me, and there was a real moment, one where he dropped any act, and I let him see my fear. “I’d never put you in danger. I wouldn’t bring you here, move you here, if there was any danger.”
They were words meant to reassure me. They didn’t. “So you agree—an encounter with her father would put me in danger?”
“That’s not what I said. But yes. I’m not going to bullshit you on that. Hawk won’t ever know about or understand my relationship with Gwen. He doesn’t know anything about what I do in my spare time, and he doesn’t know that she’s at our ranch right now because she likes the way our lead cowboy fucks her.” He rested his hands on the table and held my gaze.
“Doesn’t that … bother you?” It seemed crazy, for him to sit here with me, messing with a pile of puzzle pieces, while his wife was with another man. It seemed crazy that she would be okay with some sort of arrangement that lets him have mistresses. If he was my husband, I’d have a chastity belt around that man’s waist. I’d chop off one of his appendages in the middle of the night if he so much as kissed another woman. If he was my husband, it would break my heart for him to be here, right now, looking at a woman in this way.
“Does it bother you that Rick fucks Britni after work some nights?”
I threw up my hands and a piece of blue cardboard flew through the air, a laugh shaking out of me as I tried to hold the unexpected outburst in. “What the fu—What does that have to do with anything? How do you even know that?”
“Answer the question.” The words were an order, an edge to their corners, and a part of me swooned at the dominating tone. “Does it bother you?”
My response was half of a strangled laugh, half a snort of derision. “No.”
Not that I had even known about Rick and Britni. But … thinking back, there had been plenty of signs, all which had gone right over my head.
“Why doesn’t it bother you?” he asked.
“I don’t know … I—”
I scratched an itch on my arm and blew out an exasperated puff of air instead. I knew what he was getting at. “Because I don’t like him like that. Besides, he’s my friend. It isn’t the same. She’s your wife.”
“In name.” He slowly trailed his fingers through a pile of pieces, watching them tumble down the sides. “I imagine, if I had married a different woman, I wouldn’t feel the same way.”
“Meaning what? That you cheat on her, but wouldn’t cheat on another woman?” I snorted in disbelief.
He studied me. “My marriage is a clusterfuck of situations that would take an hour to explain—and it’s not my story to tell. It’s Gwen’s. We got married and both knew what we were getting into, and exclusivity wasn’t part of it. But I can be loyal. I haven’t needed to keep my dick to myself, so I haven’t. But if I fell in love, if I—” He stopped himself, his face tightening from the effort.
What had he been about to say? Where was he going with that thought? I can be loyal. If I fell in love, if I—…
He picked out a piece and looked away. I reached for my wine glass and fought the urge to reach out and shake all of the unknowns out of him.
* * *
On the balcony, the wind pressed against me like a Black Friday crowd. I watched him light a cigar by the railing, his hands cupped around it in an almost tender fashion.
“You smoke?”
He flipped the lighter closed and drew on the end of the cigar. “Occasionally. When I need a distraction.”
