Page 40 of A Taste For Trouble

“Why do you like it so much?” I asked, realising that I had never asked him this before.

He sighed into the phone, and I curled up on my lumpy couch to talk to him. The search for the coke could wait. This was way more important.

“Because of what it stands for,” he said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after my father died, our weekly dinner at your place was the highlight of our lives for many years. Your house was our safe space, where the rest of the world wouldn’t intrude. It was the only place my mother wasn’t fighting some kind of battle.”

“How come?” I asked softly.

“You were very young when my father died, so you might not know how it happened, Rosie. But he died in a car accident, and he wasn’t alone. He was driving his current mistress home that night when he swerved to avoid hitting a deer and drove into a tree.”

I gasped in shock because I hadn’t heard that part of the story.

“After he died, the media descended on us in full force, and it was a very traumatic period for my mother. On the one hand, she had to fight to retain control of the company, and on the other, her personal life was turning into a media circus, with mistresses crawling out of the woodwork and trying to stake a claim on some of our properties with fake papers. My mother was forced to accept the reality of her awful marriage even as she grieved the man she had loved despite all his faults. Aunt Polly was theone person who didn’t expect anything from us. She just gave us her unconditional friendship and acceptance.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I remembered how fiercely loving my mother was, and how she had loved the Carlisles like her own family. Now I understood why Dom wanted to repay her love by protecting me. I couldn’t grudge him that, I realised. Some things were bigger than just my feelings.

“I wish I could hug you right now,” I whispered tearfully.

“You can hug me twice at night, I promise,” he said, with a laugh.

‘Only if your little princess allows it,” I reminded him.

Scary Mary had laid claim to Dom quite unequivocally. She allowed me near him, but only on her terms. Luckily, she was starting to respond to Sweetpea’s slavish devotion, and more often than not, the two of them wandered off to one of the cat trees Dom had installed all over the apartment, as soon as Dom and I cuddled up together. And he’d bought them spacious cat beds of their own, placed in one of the spare bedrooms that he now called the cats’ room.

Trevor had bought signs for the door with individual nameplates, even though I told him it was too early for my cat to have a room in Dom’s house.

“I’ve got to go now,” he said, and I resolved to find Joe’s stash as soon as I could so Dom and I could get on with the rest of our lives.

CHAPTER 19

ROSE

After I ended the call, I examined my house critically and had to admit that Dom’s housekeeping team had worked miracles on the place. It was as clean now as it used to be when my mom was still alive. She was quite house proud, unlike me.

I caught sight of myself in my gothic-style floor-length mirror and was taken aback at the change in me. On the outside, I still looked the same, if a more polished version of myself. But on the inside, I felt like a completely different person. Sure, I was more confident in some ways, but I was also aware that I was now irrevocably tied to Dominic, mind, body, and soul. My well-being depended entirely on his, as did my happiness. It felt like a very dangerous situation, because what if he didn’t feel the same?

What if I was weaving this whole narrative in my head while he was just waiting for me to leave so his life could get back to normal?

I pushed these thoughts out of my head because I was a woman on a mission right now. I had to find Joe’s stash before I went back to Dom’s house, and I didn’t have a lot of time left before he realised I wasn’t at the salon. I began by searching each room. The living room was the most difficult because I had a lot of shelves and drawers to go through. By the time I got to my bedroom, I was exhausted and hungry.

I made myself a bowl of instant ramen and went back to work after I’d slurped it down. I wished I’d asked Mara to help me search, but she would have spent all our time together grilling me about my relationship with Dom, and I didn’t want to talk about it to anybody right now. Not when I didn’t know where we were going, either.

I wandered into my bedroom and noticed that things had been moved from their original places, and I began to tidy them absently, as I tried to map the room in grids to carry out a more efficient search. I dragged Sweetpea’s cat bed over to the corner by the window, and noticed that one of his favourite toys had fallen behind the radiator.

It was a large purple dragon, which was the only toy he hadn’t mauled to bits because he liked to cuddle it while he slept. I hadn’t even noticed it was missing when I packed the rest of his toys for our stay at Dom’s place.

I pulled the dragon out and dusted him off before I placed him back in Sweetpea’s bed. Just then, the door to my bedroom slammed open, and Dominic ran into the room to pull me away from the window. He threw me to the floor just as the window shattered.

I saw him lurch and I realised he was hurt. I was getting to my feet when he pushed me down again.

“Stay down,” he snarled as he crouched over me. “Gunman.”

“Ohmigod! Are you shot?” I cried as I ran my eyes over him.

My heart stopped when I saw a streak of red spreading over his sleeve.