Your nose, my fist,Dustin thought.Now.But instead, he consciously slowed his breath and said, “Oh, I thought I’d buy something beautiful for my wife.”
Both women gasped, and Frederic looked nonplussed.
“You’re married?” Onyx exclaimed.
“And speaking of my wife,” Dustin continued in that same controlled tone, “I’ll thank you for letting her hand go.”
“Dustin!” Chantelle and Onyx exclaimed simultaneously, but for entirely different reasons.
Onyx leaped to her feet, her creamy skin flushing hot pink. “You never said—”
Frederic’s hand was frozen in place, still covering Chantelle’s, so Dustin also rose, placing both his hands on the tabletop and leaning forward so that this idiot could better read his lips. “I will only repeat myself once. Remove your hand from my wife’s or lose it.”
And just like that, lunch was over.
Chapter 15
“You had no right to do that!” Chantelle railed. “None at all!”
“I had every right,” Dustin replied. “You are my wife.”
He’d decided to drive them both to lunch that day, in Chantelle’s beautiful two-door luxury Fiat. They’d even driven to the restaurant with the top down, as it was a gorgeous sunny day. Now, on the way back, the top was up and the interior of the car was as frosty as the exterior was warm.
The lunch party had broken up awkwardly, with Onyx pouting and whining about Dustin “leading her on” before storming off in her cheap, white, plastic boots. Which made Chantelle wonder exactly what had gone on between them during all those days at the convention, and the evenings of planning sessions for their competition. Not that she really cared, one way or the other. What Dustin did on his own time was none of her business.
Frederic, probably in fear of losing his hand as Dustin had threatened, had immediately released hers, letting her go as if her skin burned. Which made her want to reach across the table and smack Dustin.
She let him know that. “That’s where you’re wrong. I am your wife only on paper. Only as a formality. We agreed. You lay no claim to my body, and you get no say in who I speak to, who I like.”
“You like him?” He sounded incredulous. “Thatguy?”
“Yes!” she insisted. “He was funny.”
“I could tell by the way you were laughing, twirling your hair and batting your—”
“I do not twirl my hair!” she said hotly. “I am not fifteen!”
“Well, you looked really into him.”
“We had interests in common. And besides, I didn’t care about the fact that you and the Hello Kitty girl were making eyes at each other. I don’t give a damn what you do. Just adhere to the terms of our contract and stay out of my way.”
“I wasn’t making eyes at her,” he contended. “She was making eyes at me.”
“Any idea why that was?”
“I dunno. Charm, good looks, personality….”
“You think highly of yourself.”
“Someone has to.”
If she wasn’t so mad, she would have smiled at this. Because he did have a point. He was the kind of guy that women gravitated toward. Handsome but not pampered, pleasant, easy-going. Chantelle could see why Onyx had been so smitten, but she was good and mad, and wanted to stay that way thus she didn’t let up. “Maybe you shouldn’t have led her on.”
He scoffed. “I thought it was only men who thought that being nice to someone constituted leading them on.”
He was talking sense, and that annoyed her even more, so she dragged the conversation back to a safer place. “Whatever. You went all caveman on me, all ‘hands off my wife’—”
“Which is what a man does when he sees a man pawing his wife at the table—”