Page 93 of Between Love and Loathing

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He bellowed. “Don’t start the conversation with bullshit, Clara Milton.”

“I’m not. This is something I’ve been dealing with and it’s not really something my boss needs to be burdened with.” I looked away, unable to meet his gaze with me obviously attempting to remind him of the barriers between us.

He wasn’t having any of it.

“Your boss?” he repeated in a whisper. Then he barked out a laugh before rubbing his jaw. “You sleep in my fucking bed. We live together. Call me just your boss again, cupcake, and I’ll bend you over this breakfast bar to remind you who I really am. Go ahead, see how it works out for you.”

I sighed and folded my hands together, trying not to get emotional. “Fine. I just didn’t think—”

“I don’t even want to know what you thought, Clara. You have a disease, one that’s hurting you every single day, and you didn’t tell me?” His tone was full of pain, not anger.

I met his gaze finally and saw how every muscle on him was coiled with some sort of grave emotion along with his anger. The room practically shook in fear of his wrath, and I felt his fury deep in my bones as I tried to diffuse the situation. “It’s really actually not that big of a deal. My doctor back home—”

“You’re painting without a mask—with that fucking cough—knowing you have lupus?” He seethed. His eyes grew wider as he glanced around. “Do you have any of your ventilation fans going ever?”

“Okay, Dominic, you need to calm down. Like I said, my doctors back home—”

“Back home?” he cut me off. “Does that mean you haven’t seen one here?”

“Well, okay.” I waved off that question. “We’ve been pretty busy.”

He paced up to me and snatched my hand into his. “We’re going to the doctor right now.”

“Erm, no thank you,” I replied and turned to go back to painting, then stomped my foot when he yanked me back around. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“We’re days away from Sugar and Spice opening and—”

“We could beminutesaway from it, and I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t give a flying fuck.”

“Okay, so you’re mad.” I tried a different angle. “But if we finish painting—”

“You’re not finishing shit today, Clara,” he corrected.

“Dominic, this means a lot… to all of us.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It meansnothingto me without you healthy. We’ll hire someone.”

“I can’t hire someone! I don’t have the—” I wasn’t about to admit I was actually painting because I couldn’t afford painters at this point.

“Don’t have what?” he pointedly asked, enunciating each word, and his jaw ticked up and down as if he was egging me on to finish the sentence.

“Well, you know since you already so rudely dug into my finances that we all don’t have grotesque amounts of—”

“Didn’t I tell you once if you think you need something that you should own it and buy it under my damn tab?”

“Okay, but that was in the heat of a moment.” I blushed at remembering how he ate me out on his island countertop just a few nights ago.

“But I meant it foreverymoment.” He frowned at me like I should know better. “You’re done for the day, cupcake.”

“No. But I—”

“Actually, you’re done for the whole fucking week.” His voice ricocheted off the walls of the bakery, loud and powerful. “Until the opening. If you want to, you can stand in the lobby, but you’re going to rest and get that cough checked out.”

“It’s not even a real cough!” I tried to reason with him, but he was storming out of the lobby and dragging me with him, and I was actually really pretty tired, so I didn’t fight him too much.

When he got me into the SUV, he turned on me again, his eyes that piercing green, like he was going to search my soul for answers. “How long have you had this?”