Page 91 of Finally Mine
“She’s being threatened by Diller, and last night, his mother confronted her publicly,” he pointed out. “When is the ‘procedure’ going to start protecting Gloria from that family?”
This situation was the perfect shit show of everything Aldo hated in life: Glenn Diller and feeling helpless.
“I’m sure we’ll get all this worked out,” the sheriff said mildly. “Gloria, you go ahead and send these pictures over to your insurance company, and they’ll take care of you.” He bustled away with the notebook in which he hadn’t written a damn thing.
Gloria stared glumly at the letters carved into her paint. “I have a thousand-dollar deductible.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Aldo urged her. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.” She rounded on him. Even though she was shooting the look at him, Aldo was glad to see some fire in her eyes.
“Why the hell not?”
“You’re not paying my deductible. You’re not paying my anything.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
She shook her head. “It’s a huge deal.”
Aldo bit his tongue. Fuck. Glenn had held the purse strings and likely wielded it over Gloria. For the first time in her life, she was responsible for herself financially.
He closed his eyes, changing tack. “Glo, this is like me being out of laundry detergent and you having some. You’d share your detergent with me, wouldn’t you?”
“Aldo!” she said in exasperation. “Money is different. Money means power and control. And I’m not comfortable accepting money from you for my problem.”
“Your problem is my problem,” he reminded her, his voice steely. But she didn’t flinch. Instead, she rolled her eyes at him.
“That’s such an annoying alpha male thing to say.”
Aldo prayed for patience. “What I meant to say is that we’re in this together. My resources are your resources. My problems are your problems and vice versa.”Come on, woman. See the logic. Accept the help.
“Aren’t we a little early in this relationship to be talking about ‘sharing resources?’”
“Gloria, we got matching fucking tattoos tonight. We are not in a typical relationship. There’s no use pretending that we are. We’re dating. You don’t want to be driving around town in a vandalized car. Let me fix this.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not taking your money,” she hissed.
“Fine. I’ll hire you.”
“If you say you want me to water your plants I am going to scream bloody murder, Aldo Moretta.”
“Paint my house.”
“What?”
“The walls I mean. Everything is beige and off-white. I want some color in my life.”
She stared at him, considering.
“Paint my house and the entire town won’t be talking about what Glenn’s mother did to your car.”
It was the right button to push.
“Fine,” she said, grudgingly. “But let’s not make this money thing a habit. You don’t have that many walls.”
50
He fixed her car. Took her for tacos. Met her for lunch. Aldo did his best to dazzle Gloria in every way that a man can dazzle a woman. Except one.
