Yes, I wanted that but I also wanted more.
I wanted to make him feel all the things those eyes could communicate to me. I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to make him laugh. I even wanted to make him annoyed.
But most of all, in that moment, I found myself wanting, in a myriad of ways, to make those beautiful blue eyes heated.
Yes, standing in my brand new house facing off with the love of my life, my ex-husband, the man who I lost, a man I didn’t think I could get over but knew I had to find a way—for him but mostly for our children—that was what I thought.
I wanted it all from this stranger.
And I wanted it immediately.
“Who the fuck are you?” Conrad asked irately, jolting me out of these thoughts.
“I’m a man who doesn’t like it when another man shouts at, threatens and curses at a woman. Now, I said, step back,” the stranger replied.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Conrad informed him.
“Man sees another doin’ what I just saw you doin’, ’fraid you’re wrong. It is my business.” He delivered that and didn’t even pause before he said, “I’ll say it one more time, step back.”
Conrad turned to me. “You know this asshole?”
Before I could answer, Conrad was no longer standing at my front door.
He was off the front walk, several steps into the yard, and I had the back of the stranger to me as he’d positioned himself in my door between Conrad and me.
I’d seen him move, I had to. Yet it happened so fast, it almost seemed like I didn’t.
But it happened and there he was, this stranger, unknowingly standing between me and my gravest mistake.
Protecting me.
I’d never had that. Not in my forty-seven years of life.
I didn’t know if it was right to like it, I just knew I did.
Okay, yes.
Absolutely, one hundred percent yes.
I didn’t know him but I knew I wanted it all from this man.
“Go somewhere. Cool off,” the stranger ordered. “You know this woman and got somethin’ to say to her, you do it a lot more calm and with a fuckuva lot more respect. Am I understood?”
I looked beyond his back (which was a difficult endeavor, the t-shirt clung to his shoulders and lats and it was a pleasant visual) to see Conrad was even more livid after the man had pushed him into the yard.
However, Conrad wasn’t stupid. He was tall and lean, fit because he worked at it. But he was no match for this man and he knew it.
“You obviously don’t know her,” he spat.
“Don’t need to know her to know you never got call to treat a woman like that,” the stranger returned. He waited the barest of moments before he continued, “You’re still standin’ there.”
Conrad scowled at him then turned that scowl to me. “This isn’t done.”
The stranger moved, leaning forward an inch, and Conrad instantly (and wisely) turned his attention back to him. It was wise because I only got the back of it, but I still knew that inch was a significantly threatening inch.
He glared at the stranger for a second before he turned and stalked to the drive where he’d parked his Yukon.
I stood and watched.
The stranger stood and watched.
Only after Conrad got in, reversed out too quickly and took off even more quickly, did the stranger turn around to face me.
I looked up into his eyes realizing that it hadn’t been a figment of my imagination just minutes before.
They were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.
“You okay?” he asked.
The honest answer to that was that I wasn’t. I hadn’t been for years. Decades. Perhaps my entire life.
“Yes,” I answered.
His eyes moved over my face. The sensation was pleasant at the same time disconcerting.
Before I could get a lock on how both of these could be, he shoved a hand my way. “Mickey Donovan.”
I looked at his hand and so as not to appear rude, I didn’t study it like I wanted to. The squared off fingers, the closely clipped nails, the roughness, the strength, the sureness.
Instead, I took it, raised my eyes to his and said, “Amelia Moss…I mean, Hathaway.”
His fingers remained warm and strong around mine in a way I liked before he let me go and asked as if to confirm, “Amelia Hathaway?”
“Yes. I, well…I was Amelia Moss. I’ve recently changed it back to my maiden name. That was my ex-husband.” I tipped my head to the drive and went on hesitantly, “We have a…somewhat rocky history.”
He nodded once, doing it shortly, taking that in as understood without making a big deal of it or asking anything further, something that brought me relief and made me like this Mickey Donovan even more.
“I’m really sorry you had to step in on that,” I said.
“No problem,” he replied, shaking his head and flipping out a hand. “Woulda done it just if I saw it but,” he grinned a highly attractive, somewhat roguish grin that made my stomach flip, “I’m your neighbor.”