Page 36 of Tamed
Proving she’d made at least one good decision tonight, Isabel stayed quiet. But those sparks in her eyes could have ignited all of Manhattan.
Another tense silence descended, and I let it sit there, the air thickening with static and electricity, building like a storm front.
Silence was a good technique when it came to getting people to do what I wanted, and it was working on her. She shifted again, breathing fast.
“Did you listen to anything I said to you last night?” I asked eventually. “Anything at all?”
“Yes, but I was—”
“Because if you had,” I continued on over the top of her. “You wouldn’t be standing here right now with the door locked, your security detail fired, and me contemplating shutting you in my apartment for the next ten fucking years.”
She blinked. “Fired? What the hell?”
Naturally, she’d focus on that part of the sentence.
“If they can’t keep track of one idiot girl, they’re worse than useless,” I said dismissively.
“They didn’t know there was a door at Stan’s,” she shot back, her arms dropping as she took a few impulsive steps forward. “You can’t fire them for—”
“I can fire them for whatever I fucking like. They’re my employees.”
“It was my fault I ran away, not theirs.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you ran away then, shouldn’t you?” Somehow, I’d taken a step forward too, even though I hadn’t meant to, my whiskey still in my hand and my patience in tatters. “You’re a silly,sillylittle girl, Isabel. And you don’t listen. And you don’t think. You—”
“And you’re not listening to me, Caleb,” she interrupted furiously. “You never do and not Dad either. The pair of you treat me like I’m stupid, like I’m a kid who doesn’t know anything and I’m sick of it!”
She was trembling, yet not with fear. There was only fury in her eyes. But I knew where that fury was coming from, because Isabel always got angry when she was hurt. And she was hurt now, though I had no idea why.
Perhaps if I’d been a different man, a kinder man, I’d have backed off. But I wasn’t a different man and I’d certainly never been kind. She’d done nothing but test me since she came to work at Cross, making a nuisance of herself, and kicking against all the boundaries Ten and I had set. Boundaries that were there for her own safety. She hadn’t listened. She’d done what she always did and went off half-cocked like badly packed powder in an antique rifle. And now it was blowing up in all our faces.
But the worst thing about this, the thing that made me extremely fucking furious, was that she’d lied to me. Something was going on with her and it was something serious because she was refusing to tell me about it.
I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t have her not listening, I couldn’t have her not doing what she was told, I couldn’t have her not trusting me. Not when her safety was at stake and not when I’d promised Ten I’d protect her.
“If you want me to treat you like an adult then start acting like one.” I knocked back the rest of my scotch and put the glass down on a nearby side table with a precise click. “You could tell me the truth, for example.”
She took a breath, the material of that golden dress pulling over her breasts, and I found myself glancing at the round, full shape of them.
Shit.
“So, that’s it?” She was too angry to notice my split-second glance down. “I’m supposed to tell you whatever you want to know, whenever you ask for it? When you tell me nothing at all about you? What’s being an adult got to do with that?”
Tell her about me? What the hell was she talking about? She knew all about me. She’d grown up around me. Sure, there were some things she didn’t know, details I kept to myself, because she didn’t need to know them. No one did.
I decided to ignore that. “In this instance, when it’s about your safety, being an adult is called putting what you want aside for one goddamned minute.”
For the briefest second, hurt flickered across her face, and then it was gone, yet more fury taking its place. She took another step toward me, her anger pouring into the space between us, along with something else, something bright and sharp and electric. “What if I don’t want to?” Her hands were clenched tightly. “What if doing what you say is that last thing in the world I want to do?”
I hadn’t meant to take another step, to get close to her, so close that there was almost no distance between us, yet that’s exactly what I did. She needed to learn to listen to me. She needed to learn boundaries. She needed to respect me. But most of all she needed to trust me, and I was going to fucking teach her.
Because it was suddenly very clear to me what lay at the heart of her issues, and it was something I’d known for weeks. Yet I hadn’t taken action. I’d thought that by leaving it alone, it would eventually sort itself out, but that hadn’t happened. And now it was undermining our relationship at a time when it needed to be rock solid.
It was that crush of hers. The fact that she wanted me, and couldn’t handle it, and so she was using her claws on me. Kicking against me. Deliberately disobeying me and being a brat, and all to get my attention.
Which would have been something I could have handled easily in the normal run of things. But this behavior was putting her at risk at a time when risk was something she couldn’t afford, and that was unacceptable.
So, I closed that gap, I took that step, getting close to her, looming over her. “Don’t be such a fucking liar, Isabel.” I stared down at her. “Doing what I say is exactly what you want to do.”
