Page 85 of Poison and Wine
He turned his head to me. “I almost kidnapped you on your birthday?” When I nodded, he sighed. “Fine. You can accompany me tonight to the opening of the club.”
At my happy shriek, he merely rolled his eyes and went back to his iPad. “I’ll need to go shopping for a dress.”
“Owen can take you,” he mumbled without looking at me.
“What time do I need to be ready tonight?”
“We’ll leave at seven. There will be press and some preliminary events before we open at eight.” He then turned his attention back to his iPad and didn’t speak to me again for the rest of breakfast.
But I didn’t care anymore. Tonight I would make sure he wouldn’t be able to look at anything or anyone else but me.
After the men left for the morning, the bodyguard Callum had assigned me, Owen, accompanied me to one of the high-end boutiques. With a beefy, bodybuilder physique, Owen appeared in his mid-thirties, and he was a man of few words. He didn’t even converse with the driver. Instead, he stared out the window on high alert.
He kept the same steely reserve when we entered the boutique as if at any moment he expected an assassin to pop out from a rack of clothes. Jessica, a saleslady I’d worked with before, immediately came over to help me. “Mrs. Kavanaugh, it’s lovely seeing you again. What are you looking for today?”
“I need a dress that will give any man with a pulse a hard reaction.”
While she laughed, Owen’s face remained impassive. “I think I have several numbers that might work,” Jessica replied before leading me over to the racks. After pulling several dresses, Jessica set me up in the dressing room. I slipped on the first one–a form fitting red dress with thin spaghetti straps and a bodice encrusted in silver sparkles that barely covered my boobs.
When I came out to get a better look in front of the tri-fold mirror, Owen’s eyes bulged out of his head. “Do you like it?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Mrs. Kavanaugh.”
“Why not?”
In a strangled voice, he replied, “Because your husband would kill me.”
Tilting my head, I replied, “From your response, I imagine you like it, but you’re too afraid to say.”
His expression became ashen. “Ma’am, please. I like my head where it belongs on my shoulders.”
My teasing expression faded. “You’re serious.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You really think my husband would kill you simply for telling me you liked my dress?”
“Mr. Kavanaugh spoke to all of us bodyguards about what respecting you entailed and what would happen if we didn’t.”
I blinked at him. I couldn’t believe Callum cared that his bodyguards might look at me. It wasn’t like we were in a real marriage. At the same time, I didn’t want Owen to suffer. “Then I’m sorry I asked you. I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”
Owen nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Without another word, I slipped back into the dressing room. Taking my phone out of my purse, I dialed Callum. “Hello, Kitten,” he mumbled after he answered on the second ring.
Without even a hello, I demanded, “Did you threaten the bodyguards that you would kill them if they looked at me?”
“No.”
“Well, Owen seems to think that.”
“I threatened them if they leered at you in any way.”
“Callum, that’s insane.”
“You are my wife, and you belong to me. If they disrespect you, then they disrespect me.”
“I currently have a three-hundred-pound bodyguard practically peeing his pants because I dared to ask him if he liked my dress.”