The Dom Identity (Masters & Mercenaries Reloaded 2)

Michael let out a long breath and then backed away. “All right. Please come home tonight.”

She frowned up at him. “Where else would I go?”

“You can yell at me all you like.” He reached out and smoothed back her hair. “As long as you come home.”

She hated how this man could make her feel. But wasn’t that the point? He could make her feel safe and loved and he could irritate the fuck out of her. Because somehow he’d found a way to make himself a place in her stupid, never-endingly open heart. “You should have told me.”

“I’ll have a list of everyone I’ve ever slept with by tonight. It’s not as long as you think it is,” Michael promised. He swept in and kissed her.

Asshole. “I don’t need that.”

“No one needs that, Michael.” His mother looked horrified. “Please tell me you don’t actually keep a list of your conquests.”

“No, there’s not a list, Momma.” Michael’s hands had come up. “It’s just that I remember the women I shared a bed with. And they are obviously not conquests. Could you stop making me sound like a seventeenth century duke working his way through the women of the ton?”

Tessa’s jaw had dropped, and she leaned over and whispered to Vanessa. “I don’t know which is more horrifying. The fact that Michael is talking to his mom about the women he’s slept with or the fact that Michael knows what the ton is. Do you think he’s been reading historical romance?”

“Well, I’m sure at least the duke would have mentioned to the love of his life that he’d been engaged to a woman she knew,” his mother argued. The petite woman got into his space.

“I didn’t think about it.” Michael backed off. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her. Did you hear my whole ‘I should have waited for her’ speech?”

He was an adorable asshole. Especially when he was being taken down by his mom.

“And JT’s done way worse.” Michael threw his brother under the bus. Or at least he tried to. “What about all the times JT said he was me so he didn’t have to deal with a woman he’d previously slept with?”

Vanessa kind of wanted to watch this play out because Ava started in on what felt like a long speech on how JT had left his playboy past behind him. Michael argued that unlike JT he’d never actually had a playboy past.

“They’ll be at it for a long time.” Tessa finished her coffee. “We should sneak out or they’ll start asking us to pick sides.”

“I would pick Ava’s side.” Vanessa knew she should still have anger thrumming through her but it was at a simmer because watching Michael have to deal with his mom was fun.

This was what family felt like. They could argue and fight and it was okay because they would get through it all. There wasn’t a question of whether Ava would turn her back on her son. She wouldn’t. Michael could throw JT under a bus all day, but they were still brothers.

She and Nicki hadn’t been taught this. They hadn’t been taught how to love like this. When they’d disappointed their mother in any way, she simply shut them out. She would never have spiritedly argued, pointing out what a douchebag one of them had been, all the while obviously adoring them.

She hadn’t been taught how to fight and forgive and love through it all.

George had been easy to love. All he’d wanted from her was companionship and comfort and someone to talk to about his daughter.

She hadn’t been his great love. That had been his wife who’d died years and years before. She’d been a way station, a nice place to rest while he was waiting to be reunited with his soul’s mate.

“Could we not do this around Vanessa?” Michael was clearly exasperated. “Could we hide the crazy until she can’t run away?”

“Well, she should know what she’s getting into,” Ava replied.

Ava had called her the love of Michael’s life.

Vanessa brushed away tears. He was almost certainly the love of hers. She needed to think, needed to figure out if she could learn to love the way he did.

“We should definitely go.” If she stayed she worried she might tell him to take her to Vegas and marry her before she could change her mind.

She started for the door, Tessa following after. “Hey, are you okay? I know he’s in the wrong here, but…”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. I need to get to work.”

Maybe at work she could think about something other than Michael.

Maybe…

* * * *

Where else would I go?

He held on to those words as he walked into the elevator that would lead him up to the McKay-Taggart offices. Vanessa had said the words with an unsounded “duh” to them. Like it was a foregone conclusion that the condo was now her home, and he should think about that because she could be the one kicking him out.