Mickey stood at his back deck, staring at the shadows of the trees, his house quiet and dark behind him.

He sucked back a pull off his beer.

You’d already given me everything I’d ever need just letting me sit at your dinner table with your family.

He felt his jaw get tight.

She hadn’t been lying.

He knew by the wounded look in her big hazel eyes, Amy said those words and she hadn’t been lying.

His gaze dropped and through the dark he saw the light of one of Cill’s Frisbees lying in the backyard.

The Calway Petroleum heiress lived right next door and she spent her days with an old lady who thought she was a Nazi and came over to his house, ran around the backyard and played Frisbee with his kids.

Rhiannon had not pulled her shit together enough to bring her son a present.

Amy had hustled her ass to a store she probably had no clue existed until she had to find it so she could rain goodness down on his boy.

Before he kicked her out, Mickey had not had sex with his wife for eight months because at night she’d be passed out before he could try, and he didn’t have the stomach to touch her any other time just remembering that shit.

He’d kissed Amy once and she’d been so hot for him, he knew he could have yanked up the skirt of that amazing dress, yanked down her panties, fucked her against the wall and they both would have got off on it.

Huge.

And something was up with his girl and when he’d phoned Rhiannon months ago to see if she’d noticed anything or could find a time to sit down and talk to her, Rhiannon had told him she had no idea what he was talking about. And when Mickey pushed it and his ex made a lame attempt to see if there was anything there, she’d reported to Mickey that all was fine and they had nothing to worry about.

Amy studied Ash in a way Mickey knew she saw it too; it just wasn’t her place to do anything about it.

“Fucking shit, I fucked that up,” he murmured.

Mickey had no idea why Amy didn’t have her kids.

But he knew not having them was bringing a slow death and she was fighting with all she had to stay alive and kicking.

And she was into him; she’d made that clear from almost the start.

And fuck, he was into her. Those eyes, Jesus, they said everything. He could look into them for hours and know every thought that crossed her brain and better than that, the woman she was, he’d be interested in it.