Free Taming the Moguls by Christy Hayes Page B

to you again. I’m
ashamed of that.”
    “I hope never to give you reason. You had
reason. I was an ass.”
    She tucked her hair behind her ear. “That’s
between you and God.”
    “No, honey, that’s between you and me. I hurt
you, and I’m sorry. You called when you needed help, and I didn’t
answer.”
    “I knew you were in a meeting, but I was
scared.”
    He’d thought of her alone on the side of a
busy highway. He’d beat his own ass if he could for not being there
when she called. “Course you were. I’m glad that neighbor came by
when he did.”
    “I didn’t recognize him at first, but he did
look familiar. I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “You shouldn’t have had to rely on a stranger
for help.” He stepped forward but stopped when he saw the wary look
in her eyes. “I’ll go to my grave regretting what happened that
night.”
    She cleared her throat. “That wasn’t the only
thing that happened.”
    Kevin scratched the back of his neck and
nodded. “No, it’s not.”
    “Do you really think I’d cheat on you?”
    “You’ve been trying to get my attention for a
while now. When I saw you get out of another man’s car, I jumped to
the wrong conclusion.”
    “You do think I’d
cheat.”
    “No, not really.”
    Shiloh’s mouth fell open. “What does that
mean?”
    “It means we’ve been in a bad place for
months.”
    “Since we bought the house.”
    “Since before we bought the house,” he
admitted. “I agreed to buy the house because I knew you weren’t
happy. I thought the house would make you happy.”
    “You thought the house would get me off your
back.”
    Kevin sucked in a breath and let it out
slowly. If he wanted a fresh start, he needed to be honest. “Yes. I
did.”
    “Great.” She sank onto the couch, pulling her
knees to her chest and burying her head between them.
    Weeks ago, Kevin would have rubbed her back
and told her anything she wanted to hear. That routine was getting
them nowhere. “We’ve got a long-standing pattern of me buying you
things to make you happy. This time, I bought you something too
expensive, and making you happy made us broke. And broken.”
    Her head came up. “Are we broke?”
    Here came the hard part and the real reason
it had taken him days to confront her. “Pretty close, especially
since I lost my job.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what the meeting was about. I didn’t
answer your call because I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not an
excuse, just the God’s honest truth. I didn’t want you to know I’d
failed.”
    She dropped her knees but didn’t stand. “You
didn’t fail. They were laying people off.”
    “I can’t provide for you right now.” He
lifted his hands. “I’ve got nothing.”
    “We’ve got nothing,
just like when we started.”
    “I put the house on the market.”
    She swallowed, but when she met his stare,
she nodded. “Okay.”
    “I’m working for Dodge over the winter. When
spring comes, I’ll run the crop duster if Manny retires like Skip
expects him to. If not, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”
    Her eyes looked huge. “We’re not going back
to Denver?”
    “Family’s here and enough work to get us
through until…until.”
    “Where are we going to live?”
    “I’m bunking with Lyle. He fixed up the cabin
along the river.”
    “You want us to live with Lyle?”
    Here came the tricky part. “No. I want you to
stay here with your mama and daddy. I’m going to stay with Lyle
until we sell the house and I can find us a place of our own.”
    She let out a strangled laugh. “Are you…are
you suggesting we live apart?”
    “For now. I screwed up, Shi. I don’t deserve
to have you, and you don’t deserve to sleep on a blow-up mattress
on my brother’s floor.”
    “Kevin, I—”
    “We’re starting over. Breaking bad habits. I
don’t want to go back to the way things were. We weren’t happy, and
it was more than my job and your overspending. Those were just
symptoms. The problem