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Of course, her friends would all think she was a bit unbalanced if she said that out loud and she supposed she might be. She’d never actually want to leave her quiet house and her neat office and her steady routine. Thoughts of abandoning it all jumped into her mind sometimes, but they were easily put back into place by clear, logical thinking.
She finished the last of her coffee, tossed the empty cup in the bin beside her desk, and started responding to her emails.
* * *
She was too tired to care about the car or the hydrangea by the time she made it home. The other neighbors shot her sympathetic looks as she drove by, especially the ones who lived directly across the street from her and had to look at the mess. Jackson and David were a lovely couple, and she was sure they didn’t appreciate the sight that now faced them when they walked out of their own front door. She waved as she stepped out of the car, and they waved back, but they were watching the house next door skeptically and she wondered what her new neighbor had been up to while she was at work.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take her long to find out.
“Welcome home, sweetheart,” he called, and she took a deep breath to brace herself against a surge of fresh anger.
She shoved it down, unwilling to put on another show for the neighbors, and bit back a sigh as she turned to face him. He was back on the porch, leaning against the railing and smiling at her, dimples showing full force. At least this time he was wearing a shirt.
This one, too, was black—she wondered irritably if he owned other colors—and it was stretched tight across his chest. She looked him over, gaze following the path of his tattoos from his wrist to where they disappeared beneath his sleeve. She knew how far up they went now, how they played vibrantly over his muscles.
It was a pity he was so arrogant and rude and so … not her type. Not her type at all, despite the objectively attractive nature of his form. She ignored the low swooping pull her observations caused in her belly and frowned across the yard at him.
“My name is Eloise,” she called back, curt voice just loud enough to be heard across the yard.
He bounded down the porch stairs, legs long and impossibly thick in black pants and heavy black boots and came to a stop just in front of her, blocking her from her own porch unless she wanted to step off the driveway and onto her grass. He smiled, revealing a flash of white teeth behind the quirk of his lips and in the brighter light of day she could tell his eyes were blue. Not the soft powder of her own, but dark and sapphire deep.
“Eloise.” He repeated her name back to her, giving it a seductive drawl she’d never heard before. “That’s a nice name.”
“I’m sure my grandmother would agree since she had it first.”
“A family name.” He glanced over her skirt and the ponytail she’d tried to fix in the bathroom at work. She had been only partially successful and she curled her fingers into fists to keep from trying to smooth it down as he evaluated her. “It suits you.”
“Thanks, I guess.” She edged toward the front door, trying to put some space between them. It wasn’t a subject she was comfortable discussing.
She’d never really known that particular grandmother or any of the rest of her grandparents. Her parents hadn’t been the sentimental types that made a lot of room for time with her extended family and her grandparents weren’t any better. They’d dropped a present in the mail for Christmas and her birthday if they happened to remember, but that was the extent of their involvement. The name had been given more out of tradition and obligation than genuine connection.
“Listen, I’m sorry for the whole flower … bush … thing.” He ran a hand over his hair, the nervous gesture drawing her attention back to the patterns inked into his skin, following them from wrist to the line of his T-shirt across his bicep. The colors were now close enough to form shapes- snakes, spiders, and skulls danced eerily up his arm, a silent testament to a life she understood nothing of.
She sniffed and tightened her mouth into a firmer line. Let him do his best to intimidate others with those displays. She wasn’t the kind to back down from a confrontation when it was well deserved, no matter who the recipient of her ire was.
“I loved that hydrangea.” She tore her gaze away from his skin to look back up at his face. If her mother had taught her anything useful while she was growing up, it was the power of a pointed statement followed by expectant silence.
“It was an accident.” He tapped his fingers against his thigh and there, too, she found suggestions of violence, as a ring of silver crafted in the shape of a human skull glinted in the sunlight.
“Does that change the outcome?” she asked. Then, said even more pointedly, “Your car is still parked on my lawn.”
He rolled his eyes and broke into a light jog to get ahead of her again when she stepped around him. “Come on, sweetheart, work with me. I don’t need my neighbors hating me already and calling the cops every time I have friends over and, no offense, but you seem like the type.”
“I’ll ‘work with you’ when your car isn’t still parked where it shouldn’t be.”
He huffed, cheeks puffing out with the air that escaped from between barely parted lips. “Listen, I’m trying to be nice here, but you don’t want to get into this type of pissing contest with me.”
She froze, body rigid as the implications of his words hung between them. The air nearly crackled with tension when she turned slowly to face him. “I’m sorry?” Her tone was glacial and she was not sorry.
“I’m a pretty laid-back guy but?—”
“But?” She took a few steps forward, her heels making her eyes just level with his chin when she drew herself up to her full height. Even in her tallest shoes, she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze, but she didn’t look away.
“Some of my friends aren’t as friendly as I am.”
“Are you threatening me?” She took a deep breath, puffing up and crowding into his space as he had crowded hers the night before.
He looked down at her, lips twitching as he tried to hold back a smile. “I wouldn’t dream of threatening you, sweetheart. I just didn’t want to see you tangle with someone more stubborn than you are. You might get hurt.”
