Something was off.

Slade couldn’t put his finger on it, but something had shifted between them. For a moment Slade thought Mandisa somehow knew about the break-in at her store. He texted Aaron to find out if Kandi had spilled the beans. According to Aaron, he was certain Kandi hadn’t called Mandisa.

It was probably his own guilt making him so jumpy. If she knew, there was no way Mandisa wouldn’t have gone off on him. Now that he’d neutralized Bull, he could tell her everything and give her the opportunity to decide to work with L.I. with no monsters looming in the shadows.

He’d protected her. She’d be mad about it, but Slade was certain she’d see reason in the end about why he’d made the choices he had.

Slade swallowed the seed of guilt sitting in the back of his throat as he pulled into the gates of his ranch. This place, his land, was his redemption. He could remake himself as many times as he needed to on this land. He could be the man Mandisa believed he was when his boots touched the soil of Havenheart.

Slade parked the SUV and was about to open his door when Mandisa jumped out of the car and ran up the front steps of the house. Puzzled, he walked in the house behind her, just in time to see her racing up the stairs toward the second level.

“What did you do, Slade?”

Slade turned his head to see Mama Indy sitting at the table sipping coffee.

“What do you mean? I just walked in.” Slade walked into the kitchen, stopping as he stood next to the table where Mama Indy was seated.

“I just asked that child if she wanted a cup of coffee. She looked at me like I just asked her to cut off her right arm and ran upstairs. What did you do, Slade?” Mama Indy popped him on the arm to emphasize her desire for an answer to her question.

“Ow, Mama. I didn’t do anything. She barely said anything in the car. She’s probably just tired, that’s all.”

The older woman crossed her arms over her chest and squinted. She pressed two fingers to her temple as she gingerly massaged the area. “Good Lord. It cannot be possible that I raised a son this stupid.”

She fixed her gaze to Slade and stared him down like she used to when he was a child. Whenever she’d caught him in the middle of some trouble he didn’t belong in, whenever she was disappointed in him, she’d glare at him and make him feel like he was two feet tall.

He understood her ability to do that when he was a kid. But now that Slade was grown, it baffled him how she still managed to make him slump his shoulders in shame whenever her weighty assessment of him overran him with guilt.

“I like that gal, Slade. Whatever you did, you better undo. Now go fix it.”

Slade eyed his mother carefully. Indira was a sweet and nurturing woman. But if you found yourself on her bad side, there wasn’t a devil in hell that could protect you from her wrath.

His mother’s concern for Mandisa’s welfare grabbed at his heart. His fear of the older woman pushed Slade toward the staircase. Slade walked the stairs carefully as he recounted their morning together. There was nothing there that sent up red flags about Mandisa’s current mood, but he kept searching through his memory anyway.

He knew something was wrong the entire way home, but he’d chosen to ignore it. Their time together was limited. He didn’t want to focus on anything but the happiness they could steal in these next few days. His mother was right. Slade needed to find out what was going on.

He walked the few steps to his bedroom and lightly pushed the door open. Alarm bells rang inside his head when his gaze met an opened suitcase he recognized as Mandisa’s.

“Mandisa,” he called out into the empty room. “I know you like to get things done early. But don’t you think packing three days before you actually have to leave is a bit much?”

The silence in the room was palpable. He was about to leave the room when he saw her walking out of his closet with her hands filled with her clothing. She didn’t acknowledge his presence or the fact that he’d called her name. She just kept pulling things off hangers, folding them neatly, and resting them gently in her suitcase.

Her motions were eerily calm and calculated. Robotic and measured, her movements lacked any indication of emotion at all.

He stepped toward her, carefully placing his hand on her shoulder to cease her motions. Mandisa took a step away from him, pulling her shoulder from beneath his hand and leveling a cool look that kept him from attempting to touch her again.

“What’s going on, Mandisa?”

“It’s called packing, Slade. I know someone with as much money as you probably has never packed his own bag, but us regular folks have to fend for ourselves.”

Slade’s eyebrow rose. Sassy-sarcastic Mandisa was familiar. She made him laugh and tickled him with her biting wit. Nasty-sarcastic Mandisa wasn’t recognizable to him. This wasn’t Mandisa joking. She was serious.

The good thing about being six-four was the long arms that came with his endless legs. He reached over Mandisa and closed the suitcase lid, forcing her to stop her folding and look up at him.

“What’s going on, Mandisa?”

He watched her, looking for any resemblance to the fun-loving woman he’d spent time with. But she wasn’t there. Instead, angry lines carved into the angles of her face as she glared back at him.

“I’m going home today, Slade.”

“What the hell? We have an agreement. You’re not due to leave for another three days.”

She nodded, but somehow her agreement didn’t soothe the panic that was building within him. “It’s true. I was supposed to stay for a few more days. But, when I get a call from my contractor asking me what paint color I want to select for the renovations I apparently sanctioned after one of my stores was burglarized, I think it’s probably best if I carry my ass home immediately.”

His mouth suddenly dry, Slade swallowed slowly. It was both from physical need as well as an attempt to stall for time for him to get his bearings.

On some level, he’d always known this moment was coming. He’d assumed he’d have time to prepare her for it, get her to understand the purpose of his deception. Explain the role he played in this lie so he would look more like a savior than a sinner.

Not like this.

Like this, he could see the anger burning in her molten eyes. He could see the anguish of his lie in her rigid stance. With each labored breath she huffed, he could see the cracks in the foundation of their relationship.

“Darlin’, you need to let me explain.”

She squinted, sharp lines spreading on the side of her eyes as her steely gaze evaluated him.

“Let you explain what, Slade? The fact that you used our wager to hold me hostage in Texas while someone was ransacking one of my stores? The fact that you went behind my back and enlisted my best friend and employee to lie to me about something important going on in my company? Or are you going to explain how you could violate my trust the way you have? What exactly can you fucking explain to me?”

She stomped away from him, returning to the closet. When she re-entered the bedroom, she flipped the lid to her suitcase open and threw the armful of clothing in without bothering to sort or fold it.

The sound of the zipper closing pulled him out of the deep freeze he’d been standing in. He closed in on her, not caring if she belted him for invading her space. Lord knew he deserved it if she did. But he had to try.

“Mandisa, I know you’re pissed. You have every right to be. I should’ve told you. But I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because your store being vandalized was just one step in Bull’s plot to force you to accept his original terms of purchase. I was trying to protect you.”

“Bull might run shit in Texas, but for damn sure he doesn’t have shit to say about what goes down in Brooklyn. How was my store being vandalized going to force me to sell to him?”

Slade released a long, heavy breath, and sat down on the side of the bed. He moved the suitcase out of the way and motioned for her to sit next to him. It almost killed him when she looked at him as if he were asking her to jump off a ledge.

Not long ago she would’ve trusted anything he asked of her, but now a simple gesture was met with disdain and mistrust.

She took a moment more before her curiosity won out and she sat next to him. He went to rest a hand on her arm, and she pulled away. Apparently sitting beside him was where she drew the line.

“The Pitkin Avenue store was supposed to be the first of your stores to be hit. Aaron uncovered that Bull actually planned to have all of your stores destroyed. With all your stores gone, you couldn’t’ve afforded to rebuild. The only thing you’d have left worth selling was the name and your formula.”

Her eyes danced back and forth as her mind attempted to process Slade’s revelation. He could almost see the pieces clicking into place for her in her head.

“Why is my formula so important to a place like Venus? It can’t just be about tapping into the African American market? He could hire people to create a cosmetics line for him. Why does my formula matter so much?”

“It doesn’t matter at all to Bull. But it matters to C.E. Stuart. They want your formula. It would take them years of study to develop what you’d already created. Buying the rights to all your research and your line would have saved them millions. Bull knew his time was coming to an end with my company. He was attempting to secure a cushy position with C.E. Stuart. He was going to buy your company, then sell it to Stuart before he left L.I.

“Once we discovered what Bull was up to, I knew I had to do whatever was necessary to protect you.”

She stood up and walked to the foot of the bed, looking around at the room as if she was cataloguing everything. “You did this to protect me? That’s what you’re telling yourself?”

“Mandisa?”

“Slade, just stop. This is bullshit, and you know it. Yes, your father was apparently doing some sneaky, dangerous shit. Please explain to me how keeping me in the dark about it protects me?”

Slade understood her anger. But quite frankly, she was beginning to piss him off with the attitude. Yeah, he’d kept some shit from her, but ultimately he’d kept her safe and stopped the threat against her business.

He stood up, stalking around the end of the bed to meet her. Being as tall and big as he was, Slade was always aware of his body language. He was always afraid of others perceiving him as a threat because of his size. But with Mandisa standing directly in front of him, arms crossed, eyes wide, and chest heaving with anger and defiance, the only person in that room that was possibly in danger was him.

“Slade, I don’t really want to hear your bullshit. You lied to me. That’s all I care about. That’s all that matters.”

God, she was stubborn and headstrong. Those qualities had seemed so attractive when he’d met her in New York. Had made his blood sizzle when she’d unleashed her wit on Bull and Macy at the dinner table. But standing in her wake right now, Slade was torn between wanting to take her over his knee and throttle her hide and kissing her until the fire she directed at him was fueled by her passion instead of her anger.

“Mandisa, I know you’re mad. You have every right to be. But I wasn’t going to let Bull hurt you. I was willing to do whatever I had to do to ensure the safety of the woman I loved.”

The raw sound of his voice shook the air around them, causing him to stumble slightly. He grabbed for one of the posts on the bed to steady himself as the surprise of his declaration washed over him.

Was Slade surprised that he loved Mandisa? No. He’d been privy to that little fact almost since the beginning. Certainly since she’d defended him in front of Bull and Macy. But he hadn’t meant to say it the way he had.

In his mind, he’d imagined he would create some magical scenario where he bared his soul tenderly to her. He’d profess his love, she’d be overwhelmed with emotion, and they’d make love.

They weren’t supposed to be arguing. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to be so full of anger and mistrust that she couldn’t even bear his touch.

How far was he from the vision he’d created in his head? His pulse was throbbing in his ears with anger and frustration while he was yelling his feelings at the woman he desired.

“This shit doesn’t feel like love, Slade. It feels like control.”

Her words hit him like a blow to the gut. He could feel his center tighten in response to them. “I never tried to control you, Mandisa. I was trying to help you. Control and manipulation are my father’s game, not mine.”

She threw her head back and laughed loudly. “You’re delusional if you think Bull Hamilton is the only one that’s a master manipulator. Slade, you thrive on bending people to your will. How did I end up here in Austin with you? You made a wager to get me down here when you didn’t like the initial no I’d given you. You couldn’t stand to lose. Once you got me down here, you did everything you could to convince me to stay here with you. Even though I’d made it clear I had no intention of leaving Brooklyn, no intention of selling my company to you, you still insisted Austin was what I needed.”

“So I’m wrong now for being a persistent businessman and showing you a good time?” He walked over to the dresser, smashing his hand against the heavy wood of its surface. “I’ve always wanted you to stay with me. I’ve never hidden that. Why is it suddenly so wrong now, Mandisa?”

“Because, Slade, that’s not love, that’s control,” she whispered. The acute softness in her tone alarmed him, drawing his eyes back to hers. “You thought of everything you could to keep me in Texas with you, even when I told you that wasn’t a possibility. When my business was in danger, you kept that from me. Not because you were trying to protect me, but because you didn’t want me to leave. That’s manipulation, Slade. That isn’t love.”

She walked over to the bed, pulling her stuffed suitcase to the floor. She stood it on its side and extended the handle. She pulled it next to the door and then turned to him.

“Love would’ve had you trying to figure out how to meet me halfway. Love would’ve had you trying to come up with some sort of schedule where we could take turns traveling back and forth. Love would’ve had you attempting to calculate how long it would take for you to set up shop in your lover’s hometown, so you could work and love in the same place. Love would’ve made you do anything to make this work for the both of us. Instead, the only person you worried about this working for was you. If it was really love, you would’ve thought about all of these things, Slade. I know, because I thought of every single one of them.”

The anger painted across her face melted into anguish. Her eyes glassed over with tears as her voice thickened with pain. His first reaction was to go to her, to fix it. But, when he moved toward her, she took a step back.

When did we get to the place where comfort wasn’t welcomed?

“Mandisa. I run a multinational corporation. I have to be here. I can’t just let Logan Industries fall to waste. You just—”

The moment he let those two words slide from his lips, he regretted them. He watched her stiffen against them, straighten her back, and square her shoulders as she left her suitcase at the door and stepped back inside the room to move closer to him.

“I just what? Play in face paint? Make people feel pretty? Obviously, in the real world, in your world, that has no value. The successes I’ve had are meaningless because my work isn’t as important as yours? And there is the real problem, Slade. You don’t see value in what I do in comparison to yourself, so therefore it makes perfect sense for me to give up my entire world to love you. But Slade, if you ever loved me, if you even know what love is, you’d have done anything to be with me. Even concluding that maybe the only way you could love me was by leaving your world behind and following me to New York. Real love is ready to sacrifice anything, not just manipulate things to make it convenient for you.”

She returned to the door, standing there in the doorway without turning around as she spoke.

“You’ve shown me you can’t be trusted, Slade. If I can’t trust you, I can’t do business with you. Whatever deals you had on the table, please consider this my official notice of intent. I will not be authorizing the sale of any percentage of my company to you. As for the debt I owe you for the renovations, I’ll have my attorney contact you about repayment of those funds.”

Before he could tell her there was no debt, she quietly slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her. One fuckup—albeit the mother of all fuckups—and she was gone. What the hell was he supposed to do now?