Page 95 of Guarding Over You
“What does that mean?”
“That you were causing a scene and he’d just come home and witnessed it.”
“The guy who was watching us?” Billy asked. “How do you know he hasn’t been watching you all along?”
She blew out a breath. “He hasn’t been. I’d lived there a few days. You showed up and made a commotion and he stood there to see if he had to intervene. You saw it. Then he went inside. The next day I was called down to the ER. He’s an ER doctor. We ran into each other. It just progressed slowly from there.”
“So it’s been a few months?”
“Friends for a few months. Dating about a month.”
“And you call that important?” Billy asked, waving his hand. “That’s having sex.”
She growled. “Don’t you dare pass your thoughts of your life and actions on to me. You should know better and the type of person I am. And I’ve got Gracie with me so if you think it’s easy for me to do any of those things, you’re nuts.”
“I hope to hell you’re not doing shit in front of our daughter.”
“What do you take me for, Billy? I barely touched you in front of her and she’sourdaughter.”
“That’s right, cold as shit.”
She didn’t know why she did this here.
Maybe she thought he wouldn’t make a scene like he was. That Julie would want to know what was going on and she was going to state it there too.
Full transparency on her part.
If Julie wanted to meet Blaze prior, she’d arrange it. He said he would. She’d hold off letting Gracie know about her more personal relationship, but it wasn’t stopping her from spending time with the man who she was slowly losing her heart to.
Billy wasn’t going to have that hold on her life ever again.
She gathered her control like she’d been doing for so long in their relationship. “Your opinion of me and our marriage is irrelevant. You didn’t think those things about me before and you know it. I’d like to get to a stage in our lives where we can co-parent our daughter, but your reaction to every little thing makes it hard.”
He leaned closer, his eyes hard as steel. “My reaction? You’re the one accusing me and my girlfriend of ridiculous things.”
“They aren’t ridiculous if they are happening to me. I don’t think you even care if I’m being threatened.”
“Hey, I brought your job up in our marriage. I said I didn’t like it. When you came home moody or upset, I told you to quit and find something else, but you fail to rememberthosetimes. When I cared and you said I didn’t.”
He was half right. He’d said those things, but it wasn’t because he cared about her safety, it was just what he’d said. Her moods.
“Like you’d want me to change jobs and make less money. You’re the one who said the pressure of having a child was too much for you.”
The silence he always greeted her with came out just now. The one that said she was right and he was trying to remember his points and not hers.
She wasn’t trying to be right.
She didn’t want to argue either.
She just wanted some peace in her life and it never felt as if she was going to get it.
“Here comes Julie,” he said when the car pulled into public parking. “Are you going to tell her about this doctor you’re dating? You didn’t even say his name.”
“Blaze Ridgeway. Look him up. His brother is the Warren County Sheriff. Another owns Ridgeway Hard Cider; his sister’san attorney and the youngest brother a fireman in Glens Falls. You’ll find all sorts of things on him and his family. I’m not hiding a damn thing and I’ll let Julie know it all.”
She turned away from him, waited while Julie got out and walked closer.
“Everything okay?” Julie asked, her gaze between Arden and Billy.
