Everything Gained (3 page)

Nina wasn't a sad person. She was naturally bubbly and happy, and when she wasn't he was just miserable, even when he was the direct cause of her tears.

They had been unbelievably happy for so many years, that he'd almost forgotten the worst argument they'd ever had, probably the closest they'd ever come - and would ever come - to separating, but sometimes his mind sought it out to worry it over, like a tongue finding a sore tooth.

And it had been pretty much his own fault.

Chapter Three

They had been blissfully married for five years. And blissfully wasn't a relative term; they were frighteningly compatible, and there had rarely been any raised voices in their tiny little apartment. The business was starting to come around, and their small business loan had just been paid off. They had a little more money, although not much because they were actively saving for their first house. They could have moved into a bigger apartment in the mean time, but Nina hated to move even more than she hated their cramped quarters, so they had mutually decided that they were going to just put up with it until they had enough in the bank to cover both the down payment and the inevitable fees involved in assuming a mortgage.

They were both working extremely hard. Gain opened the shop on Saturdays and was absolutely flooded with work. Nina, who worked in the back office at a bank, and, despite the fact that Gain grumbled a lot about it, she also took a job working at the local paper, writing short, local color pieces.

Nina had always loved writing, and she was born and raised in Hampton, Maine. She was ecstatic when she got the job.

Gain was somewhat less enthusiastic.

Gain really hadn't wanted her to take a second job. Heck, he hated the idea that she worked at all, frankly. It had been a small sore point that they had had to work through. Nina wasn't in love with the job itself in any way, shape or form, but she adored the people she worked with. They made trudging in there every morning more than worth it. It wasn't a particularly challenging job mentally or physically, and there was plenty of time for social interaction, plus it got them health insurance, which would have been absolutely astronomically expensive for them to get, otherwise.

He knew how much she loved working with those people. Nina thought that Gain gave in relatively easily because this was a job that she enjoyed, and that wasn't too stressful for her. The people she worked with were all her good friends by now - their good friends, since she was always having them over or they were going over to their places for get togethers.

The newspaper was something very different - a venture into a new area, and it had made him smile to see her so enthusiastic about what she was doing. She had a small expense account, and interviewed local people and went to local sites, then wrote about them. Her editor was apparently very impressed by her, and she began to spend more and more time there when she wasn't at work.

Gain, who was working himself to the bone, too, began to see less and less of his wife. It didn't help that they were both exhausted when they crawled into bed, largely too tired to make love, and that was a big thing for their usually insatiable selves.

He began to question what was going on between his wife and her editor - not that he'd been given any cause for concern, other than the fact that she was never home between her two jobs. He wasn't home much, either, but he missed her when he was.

Gain knew Dunn "Moose" Plourde. They'd gone to school together. Gain had played football during high school - as a full back. Dunn had been the much-celebrated quarterback. He'd gone off to college while Gain was paying his dues and breaking his back in someone else's shop, learning his trade. Dunn had come back to take over the position of editor of their small town newspaper - a position he inherited from his father, who owned the paper, as well as one of the local television stations.

Dunn hadn't had to work - really work and get his hands dirty - a day in his life, and he never would. The Plourde family fortunes would cushion him from any financial losses that might come his way.

And the kicker was, that as much as Gain needed to be resentful of the man for some reason he couldn't quite discern, he was a damned fine man - not uppity or obnoxious. He didn't lord his money over anyone, and he had friends from every possible social strata.

He was also a ladies' man, who was a tad shorter than Gain, but with a lot of the same physical bulk. He'd been known to squire the most eligible of ladies about town in limousines, taking them to the best restaurants, and/or flying them down to Boston, or even in once case, to Paris for dinner one night.

When Gain came home unexpectedly, he found his wife trying to struggle out of Dunn's arms, valiantly leaning as far away from him as she could, saying very loudly and without a trace of hesitation, "No, Dunn, let me go!"

Gain had never been so happy that he'd been feeling awful in his life, but the churning in his stomach didn't keep him from grabbing Dunn away from Nina, turning him so hard that he still had forward momentum when his jaw connected with Gain's balled up fist.

Dunn's face snapped back at an awkward, thoroughly satisfying angle, but he didn't go down as Gain had intended. He stepped back, giving Gain a wide berth and rubbing his jaw.

Gain took a step towards him, a murderous look in his eye, but Nina's sharp cry and her small hand on his shoulder stopped him. "Do you even know what you have in her? You'd better shape up and start taking care of her, or someone less scrupulous than me is going to take her right out from under you."

Nina could see the muscle twitching in Gain's rock hard jaw, and wrapped both of her arms around his in what she already knew would be a futile attempt to stop him from going after Dunn.

He shrugged her off, taking two big steps towards the other man, who was already out the door and well on his way to his car. Gain would have gone after him if Nina hadn't reclaimed his arm, begging, "Please, no, Gain, don't. He didn't hurt me. I'm fine."

Gain watched Plourde as he walked to his car, twitching every once in a while as if he'd ignore his wife's pleading requests and launch himself at the man.

Then, suddenly, as if he'd snapped out of his rage, he remembered where he was and who he was with, and turned to Nina, who had moved to stand several feet behind him with her back to him. Gain walked over to her slowly; he could see that her shoulders were shaking. He turned her around very gently, but firmly, not letting her get away with resisting him.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Did that bastard hurt you in any way?"

Nina looked up into her husband's eyes and saw the anguish there. He was still looking as if there was something he needed to punch, although his touch was nothing but tender. She shook her head quickly, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. "No. He just kissed me, and I was trying to put him off without hurting him - "

That dark brow pulled together like storm clouds over his eyes. "Without hurt - Nina, the man is at least twice your size, and trying to paw you, and you should have fought him with everything you had!"

Her frown and snort made that look of his even darker. "Dunn wouldn't hurt me. He just got the wrong idea about us, that's all. He was moving back when you came in."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Just because it's a stressful situation - I certainly wasn't expecting what he did, and then I wasn't expecting you to come home and witness it and punch him out, either."

"Has he ever tried anything like that before?" Gain asked, his lips in a thin, angry line, not at all sure that he wasted to hear the answer.

Nina was suitably indignant, and as determined to squirm away from her husband as she was to get away from Dunn earlier. "No, of course not," she declared, succeeding in freeing herself only to have Gain grab her shoulder and whirl her around to bump up against him.

He looked deeply into her eyes, his face set angrily. "Are you sure?"

Finally, her own anger came to the fore. "Of course I'm sure. Do you think that if he'd done something like that before I'd still be working with him?"

There was a noticeable pause.

Nina was infuriated by the fact that he didn't agree with her immediately, as if he thought that she might have been running around on him with Dunn. She looked Gain in the eye and let her face go a careful blank, then took two deliberate steps away from him and turned to run up the stairs, throwing herself onto their bed and curling up into a ball.

She felt as guilty as she did angry, only the anger was harder to sustain. Why hadn't she noticed that Dunn was becoming attracted to her? The answer was all too easy: she was too wrapped up in her husband - even when they weren't necessarily connecting all the time - to even see another man. When Dunn had taken her into his arms she was so surprised that she'd actually wanted to laugh out loud, but she'd been able to stifle the impulse, barely.

She'd not wanted to insult Dunn's ego, although she was wondering exactly why she was worrying about that. He certainly knew she was a married woman - a happily married woman... although perhaps she'd been complaining about Gain a bit too much to him, about how they weren't able to be together much anymore since both of them were working all the time.

But she'd never in her life seen any man the way she saw Gain - as a husband, a lover, and a disciplinarian. He was everything to her and for her. He was her rock, her stable base. He'd always been there for her and he always would be. He let her fly free, but also knew exactly when the right moment was to reel her in.

She trusted him with her life - she did it every time she lay beneath him opened herself up to him, and, even more so, every time she lay over his lap, or bent over whatever piece of furniture was convenient, or even that rock hard thigh of his. He was a big enough man that he could snap her in two without so much as thinking about it, although he always treated her like she was made of spun glass - even when he was waling away on her bottom.

It was the combination of his size and his protectiveness that had always attracted her - even though he had always had a tendency towards bossiness, especially with her, and he'd laid down the line with her several times while they were dating. He'd threatened to spank her more than once, sometimes casually and sometimes more seriously, and she had been smart enough not to push him to see whether or not he'd actually do it. She had a good idea that he most certainly would.

And before he'd proposed, before he'd gotten down on one knee at the first restaurant they'd gone to together, he told her flat out that if they got married, he expected her to obey him, and that if she didn't he wouldn't hesitate to tip her over his knee when he felt she needed it.

She'd laughed nervously, but he'd been deadly serious - and when he'd presented her with a ring not three minutes later, she'd known exactly what she was saying "yes" to.

She'd never regretted it. Not once. She'd loved him for longer than she could remember - Dunn Plourde notwithstanding. How could he possibly think that she'd put up with Dunn acting inappropriately for one minute? Did he think the job meant that much to her? Did he think she was the type of woman who would lead a man on? Or even worse, actually go through with something like that?

If someone had asked her before this incident whether Gain knew her well, she would have answered with an emphatic "yes".

But now she wasn't so sure, and that uncertainty cut deep into her heart.

She didn't get much time alone to think about the situation, though, because Gain of course followed her up the stairs.

The first words out of his mouth when he appeared in the doorway were, "Are you sure you're all right."

"Oh, I'm fine," she answered angrily. "Except for the fact that my husband apparently seriously thinks that I've been whoring around on him."

Gain looked thunderstruck. He hadn't been thinking of it that way at all. He just knew how much this job meant to her. She loved it, and she'd blossomed in it. Writing had always been a creative outlet for her, and now it seemed she'd found the perfect place to stretch her wings that way.

He hadn't meant to accuse her of doing anything she shouldn't have, just of putting up with things she probably shouldn't have in order to keep the job, and that's exactly what he'd told her.

It hadn't helped his cause one bit.

"So you think that I'd let him take liberties that he oughtn't so that I could keep my job at the paper." Nina had rolled over and was looking him straight in the eye, her heart aching in her chest for him to say an emphatic "no."

Instead, he proved that he knew her better than she wanted him to. "I don't think you did that at all, but I do think that you probably didn't even see that he was looking at you that way until it was too late."

Damn. Sometimes she hated him. Just plain out and out hated him. Granted, it was usually when he was applying the paddle or some other heinous implement to her bare butt, but not always. He was just adding to her guilt. She really should have seen Dunn coming, but he was right. She was doubly handicapped - being completely and utterly happy with her husband, with absolutely no interest or reason to be looking around at anyone else, and also by her ego. She liked writing, in general, and, with Dunn's help, she'd come along nicely as a writer. She had begun to have a small following, and even get a trickle of fan mail.

Now she'd lost that job - there was certainly no way she was ever even going back to the newsroom. She never wanted to see Dunn again, and she knew that one of Gain's newest rules was going to be something along those lines, most definitely. She'd be lucky if he didn't want to follow her around for the next year or so, just to make sure Dunn didn't show up unexpectedly.

Gain had taken up a position next to her on the bed, stretching out his long length across from her on his side, but not touching her. He seemed to be considering her carefully, as if he expected her to explode on him or burst into tears or something.

He didn't want to crowd her. Gain knew that she was trying to process what happened, and although every instinct he owned wanted him to grab her and slip himself inside her, just so that she had absolutely no doubt about whose she was, he knew that a move like that at a time like this wouldn't be very welcome, although the Neanderthal in him was whispering into his brain that he didn't really need to worry about that.

When he was younger, he might have given in to that advice, at least to a certain extent, and tried to coerce her into making love, but right now he was too worried about the look on her face. It was too blank. Too emotionless. Nina was one of the most emotional people he'd ever met, and this stoic face she was wearing put him on high alert. She'd had too bad shocks in the past half hour - a sleazebag coming onto her in her own house, and losing her job, all in one fell swoop.