And those eyes. Those eyes that were angry now but I knew with one look they could be many different things. They could be warm. They could laugh. They could be frustrated. They could be impatient. They could be determined. They could be joyful.

They could be heated.

And I knew with that one look I wanted to see those eyes every way they could be.

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.