When a Man Loves a Weapon (29 page)

She had trusted Trevor—she’d trusted that she could be herself with him, and that he would be just as comfortable being himself with her. This was the man she had been going to freaking
marry
. She’d known that she had a lot to learn about him, and that it would take years, probably, to discover all of those little details that made him uniquely him, but she’d never dreamed that he was a completely different person than he’d represented himself to be. The shock of learning he’d hidden his real history from her was worse than when she’d learned Alex was a gunrunner. She felt like she was in some sort of warped Dr. Seuss story, where up was down.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about you—your—” Damn. She didn’t even know what to call it. Money? Wealth? “How is it that you thought omitting tiny little details like, oh, say, thirty-freaking-million-dollars, was okay?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he lied.

Her eyebrows slammed against her hairline at that whopper and he grimaced at her gasp. “Are you fucking kidding me? Forgetting to tell someone you opened a Christmas bank account and you’re squirreling away fifty dollars a month out of your paycheck is ‘not a big deal,’ bucko. And don’t tell me
you forgot to mention it because of the temporary amnesia brought on by my cooking that time you choked so hard I nearly had to do CPR. I’m not buying that one.”

He knew everything about her. Every freaking thing. He’d surveilled her for months before they met, lived with her after that, and he didn’t tell her
something this big
. Not just hadn’t told her—he must’ve gone through serious fucking hoops to keep her from finding out; he’d kept her busy, with the buying of the house and moving and working out and sex.

“I don’t have sole control over the thirty million—it’s part of the company.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna try to make it sound like it doesn’t matter because you can’t run out to spend it on Big Gulps tomorrow?”

“Would you have given me half a chance if you knew?”

“What the . . .” she sputtered, not even able to complete full sentences. When had reality spun completely off its axis? “What on earth makes you think I’d hold something like that against you?”

“You. You flat-out refused to date several rich guys who asked you out before—”

“You’re kidding me, right? You are kidding me. You’d have to be kidding me, because if you’re not kidding me, that means you researched the guys who asked me out before you came along—”

“Just the year I was surveilling you.”

She stared at him. He’d done background checks on everyone.
Of course he had—he alphabetized the fucking
soup.

Outside the painful little bubble of the Audi, the world raced by. She didn’t know who had radioed what, but someone ahead of them must be clearing the left lane, because it was wide open. (And an inordinate amount of LSU fans on their way to the game were flipping them the bird from the slowed-to-a-crawl right lane.) The high-performance tires beat a rhythm as it hit the expansion joints in the concrete interstate, and the persistent echo in the silent car seemed to be whispering
no trust no trust no trust
.

Her hands went numb and her vision blurred and she wondered if this was what having a heart attack felt like. Because the world seemed very very far away, colorless. Worthless.

“You know, I knew when we first met that you were the kind of guy who had a lot of stuff in his background—you’d worked for the freaking government, doing God knows what, and there was going to be a lot of stuff you didn’t want to talk about. Not just couldn’t talk about, but didn’t want to talk about. And I got that. That was fine. I saw the man you were, and I knew you. I fell in love with that man.”

“I’m still that man.”

God, the pain in his voice sliced her and she held herself tighter. “How in the hell am I supposed to know that? You lied,” she choked out past the lead weight where her heart used to be.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t elaborate when I should have”—he held up a hand, stopping her from interrupting—“and I know that’s splitting hairs, but think about it from my point of view: I had fallen in love with you—but I’d had time to get to know the real you. I had inside information about you and an understanding of who you were when that first crisis with your brother developed. I knew
you
. Your heart.

“I wanted a chance. I wanted for you to make this choice based on us—not all of the other bullshit that can surround . . .” He paused, looking resigned. “Money. Look, Sundance, who you’ve seen is the real me. I live off what I make from the Bureau. Nothing else.”

She waved pointedly at the car and he amended, “Usually.”

“So let me get this straight . . . you had the luxury of getting to know me for a whole year when you did surveillance and then meeting me in person. Yet apparently I’m not smart enough over here for you to give me the whole truth? Is that it, Trevor? Or is it that you just don’t trust me?”

They raced up the ramp for the Mississippi River bridge and Bobbie Faye had to close her eyes—taking that bridge in the best of circumstances, with no traffic and at a snail’s
pace, would have made her heart plummet into her toes. She was pretty sure they’d topped out over 120, and would have gone faster if the cop cars in front of them could have.

He had to focus a moment to downshift and manage the exit off the bridge, a sharp curve to the right.

“It sure as hell isn’t about you being smart enough—you outthink most people I know. And it damned well isn’t trust—you know I trust you with my life. You have this terrific sense of fair play,” he said, “which can drive me fucking nuts sometimes. But it’s who you are, and I get it, and that’s okay. But I also knew that you would never in a million years say yes even to a date if you thought—wrongly, stupidly—that there was something completely uneven about us that you’d never overcome. My salary as an agent was bad enough.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“No? Are you kidding me? Do you know how much that card table in the dining room cost?” When she frowned and shook her head, trying for the life of her to remember, he continued, “I know exactly how much it cost. $49.95 plus tax, which came to $54.45, and you know how I know it? You insisted on going over to the goddamned ATM machine and pulling out the cash from your account and giving me half right there, before we left the store. I knew that put you down to less than five dollars in your account, and you stood there and calculated whether it was okay for you not to eat lunch for a week and make me happy by getting the table or to tell me you couldn’t afford the goddamned table, and you picked
not eating lunch
. You wouldn’t let me buy it if it was for ‘us’—we had to split it, because that was only ‘fair.’ Well
fuck
fair. I don’t give a good goddamn about fair. What I care about is you. You are my home.
You are it for me
. You make me laugh and you make me sometimes want to tear out my heart because it hurts so much with wanting you, but loving you is the only thing I can do. And you cannot hold it against me that my family happens to have money, Sundance. You want to talk about fair?
That’s
not fair.”

“That’s a neat trick, Trevor, making it seem as if I would
hold your wealth against you. Yeah, it might’ve intimidated me, but we’ll never know, will we? Did it ever occur to you that some of those guys who asked me out just might’ve been assholes hoping to call the Contraband Days Queen a notch on their expensive belts? And that they were so vain and obnoxious, they would’ve insulted a trust-fund baby? No, it didn’t. So when were you going to tell me?”

“If I was really lucky, after we were married.”

She turned in her seat to gape at his profile. She was agog. No, that didn’t quite cover it. Her Agog had slammed completely up against You Didn’t Just Fucking Admit That and lost in a complete TKO.

Holy breathing
hell
.

He reclined his head against the seat. “I realize now that was stupid.”

“Ya think? Our dating, our being together, is not some damned mission, and you didn’t have the right to decide what I am capable of knowing.”

He scowled, his anger palpable. “Is that what you think? That I’ve manipulated you?”

“Well,
duh
. How in the hell am I supposed to know what is true about us when none of it’s based in reality?”

“So you’re telling me that you don’t know how you feel about me? That you think what we have is only a result of manipulation?”

A thousand daggers sliced straight through her. Her skin burned, flames licking through her heart until she thought there would be only a pile of ash left on that leather seat. She wiped the tears from her face, rubbing them onto her jeans.

“Well?” he asked, his voice harsh, cracked.

He’ll never really know
. He’ll always wonder, he’ll always question her motives. The fact that he’d hidden his wealth meant that anything they had together emotionally was always going to be viewed under the microscope of manipulation. If they stayed together, would he think it was out of loyalty? Guilt? By not being himself with her from the beginning, not telling her the truth, would he always doubt that she could love him, the totality of him?

And now he’d manipulated them right into their worst nightmare: doubt.

She didn’t know how to live with that.

“You should have trusted me,” she said. “You should have asked for a prenup, then you’d know, then—”

“No.”

The car slid easily through the nearly deserted Baton Rouge streets—game day, everyone was either at the game, tailgating, or at home, partying with family.

Oh, God. Family. She sunk her face in her hands. Trevor’s family must think she was an absolute gold-digger. Geez. And Riles. No wonder he’d been such an ass.

Not that he was off the hook for his assiness, but at least she saw a motive.

“It’s for your protect—”

“
No
.”

“I’m not comfortable with—”

“Then get over it,” he bit out. “Get comfortable with it. Because I’m not starting off our marriage with some sort of contract that implies that somewhere down the line, we might not make it. There is no negotiation about that, Bobbie Faye. Not a single solitary damned bit.”

“You have to at least have something for beneficiary purposes, so that if something happens—”

“No. Do you understand the word
no
? Because we’re not going to compromise on this one. I will live in a hut with you, on a dirt floor, if that’s what you want. I will live in a hammock or a tent or in a house with white walls and no furniture. I will eat bologna sandwiches with you for the next fifty years. We will live on our salaries and nothing else, but I am not, under any circumstances, going to be able to live with myself if I know you aren’t taken care of if something happens to me. And in my line of business, it could. So everything I have, is yours. Everything. Because I want everything you have in return.”

“Well, there might be some spare change in the sofa in storage, and I think I tossed in a box of toothpicks somewhere, but you’ve pretty much got the only thing I have, which is me.”

“No, I don’t. I never did.”

What? What the hell? She whiplashed at the vehemence of his words, and her heart boomeranged, thudding with pain at the expression on his face.

He understood her confusion without her having to voice it, and his expression softened as the ache showed through. She knew he was letting her see into his feelings, that he was exceptionally capable of hiding from her. Seeing that amount of pain in him sent a rush of emotion that logjammed in her chest, and she couldn’t swallow, much less talk.

“You have to draw the line for Moreau,” he said.

She gaped at him—with everything else that he’d just admitted, how in the hell had this become about Cam?

He had to turn away from the shock in her green eyes. And the fact that she was about to defend the man, even now.

“He doesn’t mean to—” she started, and his disgusted grimace cut her off.

“Yes, he fucking
does
. He wants you back. He’s made that clear. He is, in a lot of ways, a good man. Jesus,” he swore to himself, pissed off that they were having to discuss this. She was being purposefully obtuse.

“He knows the truth, Trevor.”

Trevor pulled the car into a parking lot one building down from the S&M club, veering away from the two cop cars and Riles’s Porsche, and parked. He faced her, his gaze sliding over her face, wondering if
she
even knew the truth of how she felt.

Was this her heart talking? Or her loyalty because she wore his ring?

She glanced down at her hands fidgeting in her lap.

“Cam will get used to it and—”

He glared at her. She was out of her mind. He counted to five before he could open his mouth and without telling her so. She crossed her arms and glared back.

“Quit defending him.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I know us, together, and I know
you
.” And he did. He knew her, but what he didn’t know was if his faith was enough for
them both. “But Moreau is trying to work every angle to come between us, and he’s doing a damned good job. If he wasn’t always present, I don’t know—maybe . . .” And he had to think about this a moment. Had to allow himself to admit this, as galling as it was. “Maybe I would have felt a little safer telling you more.” That was a low blow, and he could read it in the hurt in her eyes, but it was the truth and she waited for him to finish. “I want you to have your friends. Even if it’s him. Even as much as it kills me that it’s him, you’ve had a lifetime of friendship and I don’t want that to end. I can deal with it, when it’s platonic. But that’s not what Cam wants and you know it. What I cannot deal with is him touching you constantly, reaching out for you to comfort him, or to comfort you, physically.

“If the roles were reversed—if that was a woman I used to sleep with, reaching out for me, how would you feel?”

Her face slacked, her frown receded and she stared at him. She was so used to thinking of others first, so used to trying not to hurt Moreau, that she hadn’t thought she could hurt
him
. Christ, he’d been so determined to be so fucking strong for her, she had no clue how much he needed her.