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Lucky for him he didn’t have to give that option any real consideration. Thanks to Tasha’s father, he wouldn’t have to see her again. That was probably his point. No matter what the man said, if he knew his history, he wouldn’t want the son of a prostitute and a possible criminal to marry his daughter.
“You only say that because you don’t know Big Tag. If he didn’t care about how you are going to feel about Tasha and his family, you would be tied to something way worse than Ben was. He would find a way to force you to work this op.”
It didn’t surprise him the man was capable of violence. He had to be. “He sounds like a peach.”
“He does what he has to do. He doesn’t hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it. They usually deserve it because they’ve heinously harmed innocent people. He’s actually quite kind. A lot like Tash.”
He figured out Zach pretty quickly. “Why did you send her in if you’re in love with her?”
Zach huffed out a laugh that held not an ounce of humor. “I didn’t think she’d do it. I’ve always thought she would look up someday and see me. Now I know she always did. It wasn’t the same for her as it was for me. I don’t know how much of it was real and how much I just wanted to be a part of that family. I’ve been on teams all my life. When I was a kid it was baseball or football or anything I could scrape up the money to afford and get myself to. I thought I was sports obsessed, but it was about being part of something. I didn’t feel like I had a family so I tried to make myself part of one. Now I wonder if I’m going to get fired. None of that is your problem, and I would bet you’re not feeling particularly sympathetic.”
“You would win that bet.” Though there was a part of him that did respond to the words. Hadn’t he felt the same way? Hadn’t joining that first club and finding his people opened a new world for him?
“I know she hurt you, but you’ll be a fool if you let that woman go. She’s one of the kindest, most authentic human beings I’ve ever met. If you let her slip through your fingers, I’ll be waiting. I won’t be patient this time. I’ll go after her and I’ll figure out how to make her want me. I’ll figure out how to be the man she needs me to be. I’ll figure out how to be you.”
They would be a lovely couple, and didn’t that make him want to put his fist through a wall? “Why would you even give me the warning then? Shouldn’t you want me to walk away?”
Zach leaned forward, an earnestness on his face. “Because one of the things I’ve learned from this team is that when you truly love someone, you want the best for them even if the best for them isn’t you.”
He didn’t want to think about how those words made him feel. “I hardly think I’m the best for her.”
“She picked you. She loves you.”
Dare had a counter to that claim. “Yeah, well she loved that asshole, too. Maybe she just has terrible taste in men.”
“Whittington is charming and good at hiding who he really is. It’s precisely why he’s an excellent operative. I suspect if you asked him, he would say he loved her. He could compartmentalize. In his head, he didn’t cheat on her. In his head, there’s the job and his real life. Although I suspect at some point he would have cheated on her outside the job. My point is he seems cool. He’s excellent at pretending to be a nice guy. Did you ever pretend with her? Are you hiding who you are?”
“I’m so fucking bad at hiding who I am I had to scramble that first night to keep her from walking away,” Dare admitted.
She’d made a big deal out of it. Had she been trying to rope him in? Give him a taste and then see how far she could push him?
If she’d wanted to get close to him, why would she have looked at him with sad eyes and told him she couldn’t go through with it?
“Why would she walk away?” Zach asked. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
He shrugged off the aggression. If Zach was in love with her, he would seize any opportunity to protect her. Even if the transgression was in the past. “I wasn’t comfortable talking about D/s with her. Not in public. I was somewhat ashamed. She didn’t like that. She thought if I was ashamed then I might take it out on her. I wouldn’t have, but I understand. She thought if I was ashamed, I would be ashamed of her, too, and she wouldn’t accept that.”
