Well, wasn't that just peachy. Yet another thing Melody had seen fit to involve him in only after the fact. She'd come to talk to him before she formalized it, whatever that was supposed to mean. His hands were clearly tied here. She'd gone out of her way to ask for the job, so now if she didn't take it, it could only have been because he'd put his foot down and said no. Which would forever establish him as the controlling, brutish husband — the mistake that Melody Finch had made that would haunt her for the rest of her life, which was already what some people were saying.

She was doing this intentionally. She had to be. There was no way that she could have just kept cutting him out of the loop like this and not realized what she was doing. This wasn't a matter of not thinking; not every damn time.

"We don't need the money," he said with thinly veiled hostility. "If that's what you thought."