Page 25 of Mr. Strategic

“Put this on.”

When still I refused, he growled in his chest and pulled my pajama top roughly off me, exposing my pink nipples to the cool air. Then he forced the dress over my shoulders, down my body, letting the silky fabric swirl around my feet.

I examined myself in the mirror, the unusual stubborn tilt of my chin, then pulled my long hair out of its bun and let it cascade down my back.

Michael hissed in displeasure.

“I want your hair up.”

When I continued to ignore him, he grabbed a clip and attempted to tie it up again, but he was not used to fixing my hair, and the arrangement was a mess on my head, bits and pieces falling out as he hissed and snarled.

His fingers tapped impatiently on the back of my chair, and he stuffed high heels on my feet, and pulled me savagely to the door.

“I am very displeased with you,” he snarled, pushing me against the car.

My nipples tautened against the sleek metal, but I only went limp in his arms.

“Do what you want.”

He growled again, and picked me up by the back of the dress and put me firmly in the car.

On the way over, he had restless, angry energy, while I sat there, composed and silent, looking out the window at the palm trees gently waving in the breeze.

“I’ve been very gentle with you,” my husband warned me as we walked into the Country Club. “You leave me no choice but to force you to accept my control.”

“Pretty weather today,” I replied sweetly.

Michael gritted his teeth audibly.

“I have been discreet for your benefit. But now that I see you are being a brat, I’ve changed my mind.”

What was that supposed to mean?I wondered, but said nothing.

He was getting nothing from me.

The annual St. Angeles Chamber of Commerce Banquet was attended by the biggest movers and shakers in town.

Michael moved easily among the most powerful people in St. Angeles, comfortable and at ease, shaking hands with our taciturn, powerful Mayor Ellis Christianson. It looked like his wife Maggie was pregnant again.

Was that what Michael really wanted? I couldn’t believe it. He was just throwing out anything he thought would change my mind.

We were seated at the same table as famous theater owner Nicky Lennox and his new wife Sterling, who were taking turns bouncing their nine-month-old baby between them.

I didn’t know them very well, but at least we weren’t seated next to Dr. Ben-David and Alix.

“I heard you were opening a new musical,” I said as Michael shook Mayor Christianson’s hand.

Nicky made an expressive face and waved his hand dismissively. “Mere pablum for the masses.”

His wife Starling was very pretty, with her long hair pulled loosely back, daisies wound through each plait of her braid.

“There’s going to be a life-sized animatronic elephant,” she said eagerly, her face sunny with excitement.

“Apparently if you pander to the lowest common denominator the theater isn’t dead anymore,” Nicky said harshly, but the fact that he was cutting up cooked carrots into tiny pieces for his baby meant I couldn’t be too afraid of him, especially since he had clearly gone to a lot of trouble for a theater production his wife loved.

The sting of something irrevocably lost prickled me as I watched them with their baby.

This was what I had always wanted with Michael, but babies just didn’t fit into his schedule as a surgeon.