Chapter 1

“I’m fine Willow, the taxi just turned down my street.”

“I’ll just stay on until you get inside the house.”

“Seriously Willow, I’m not going to get murdered in two blocks. It’s Bain, Missouri for gosh sake!”

My ability to humor Willow and her mothering significantly decreased the tireder I was. We had been friends for most of our life, but she still didn’t think I was capable of taking care of myself. When I had a few guys living with me, she tended to calm down a little with her worry, but lately I’d been on my own, and that was causing a lot of tension. Of course, Stanley was still nearby, though, he’d decided to move in down the street and not with me, though. He was trying to find a wife, which wasn’t at all what I was looking for in life.

“Are you at the house yet? Did you get inside?”

“I’m paying my taxi driver now,” I said and then walked up to the door to my house and looked for my keys. Unfortunately, I had forgotten them inside the house.

Nothing to worry about, though. I had a spare key, somewhere. If only I could remember where I had put it.

“Walking up to the door … unlocking the door … going inside,” I lied to her.

Willow was the kind of friend that would leave her house in the middle of the night and come help me look for my key. As much as I loved that about her, I didn’t want to ruin her night or pull her away from her family. A small little lie to ensure she could get to sleep that night wasn’t that big of a deal.

“Alright. Remember to take some Tylenol and drink some water. Do you have orange juice for the morning?”

Since losing my parents, Willow had tried to fill in the emptiness. Her heart was always in the right spot, but she never understood what it was like to be without any family. Moving into my grandparents’ house and remodeling it was the best way I could cope, at least for now.

I loved that Willow worried about me and tried to take care of me. We had a special relationship despite her not totally understanding my personal life. She just couldn’t wrap her head around my need for more than one man. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I could wrap my head around it. Maybe I’d change and find a man that I felt was all I needed? Or maybe I’d find a perfect combination of men that I wanted to keep together. I was open to what life might bring, and I really loved that Willow let me have my alternative life without always judging me. Instead, she concentrated on loving me; which was exactly what I needed.

“Yes, I will drink orange juice, take two pills, and call you in the morning.” I laughed excessively because of the large amount of alcohol in my system.

“Great, yes. Call me when you get up,” Willow said.

“OK Mother Willow. Talk to you tomorrow.”

With Willow off the phone, I went to work looking for where I had put the spare key. I remembered putting a spare somewhere around when I had visited my parents and my mother was too sick to get up to the door. But after she died, I moved the key again. I moved it to a spot that I remember thinking was easier to find, yet in my inebriated state, I had no idea where that spot might be.

Really it shouldn’t be all that hard to find a key, but when you forgot things as fast as I did; you would understand. This key was going to be near impossible to find. My mind felt a little mushy as I started moving around the front porch in search of the darn key.

After searching the mat, flowers, and all the rocks around my grandparents’ old Victorian home, it finally dawned on me that I had put the key over in the neighbors’ rocks. The fake rock that held the spare key fit perfectly with their rocks, and since the home had been empty for at least five years, it seemed like a good place to hide the house key.

Now if only I could remember which rock I was looking for. At two o’clock in the morning, it was amazing how every single rock looked exactly the same. I knew the general area of the key, though, and got to work trying to find the fake rock.

I was crawling around on my knees in the wet grass and looking for the house key to my dead parents’ home. Well, the house was actually my grandparents’ home, then they passed it to my parents, and then to me. On my hands and knees in the grass was not how I wanted to be spending my Saturday night.

Why couldn’t I just have a normal life? Like those girls at the bar tonight. The kind of busy life with friends and parties all the time. But no, I had by far the most boring life in the history of Bain. Except for my sex life, of course.

Fixing up my grandparents’ house was the only thing interesting on my calendar for the next three weeks. Oh, how I longed for some excitement. Maybe a man or two to warm my bed and please me? But there were no prospects on the horizon. Even Stanley wasn’t coming over to visit as much as he used to.

The rock that held my house key was an enigma, it certainly wasn’t about to make finding it very easy. I screamed out in frustration and threw a rock from the neighbor’s yard to my own.

“Can I help you?” a man’s voice said from somewhere in the dark.

My breath caught in utter excitement as I looked up to see a staggeringly muscular built man standing at the corner of the house. He looked to have been just woken up and stood there with sweatpants and no shirt.

The no shirt part was what had me so distracted. Even in the moonlight, I could see more muscles in his stomach than I probably had in my entire body. His arms bulged with definition, and my body soaked with a desire for him that was so unexpected I instantly clenched my legs together out of fear I’d start dripping down my leg.

“Um. Well, I uh … I’m looking for my house key.”

“And you keep it in my flower bed?”

The way he stood there looking at me it was like I amused him. He watched as I struggled to stand up and then fidgeted with my dress. As much as I tried to hide the level of my intoxication, I’m pretty sure there was no hiding it. The look on his face showed enough sympathy toward me that I knew he could tell I was drunk.

“I’m uh, yes I did hide it here. It’s a rock. Well, it looks like a rock. It’s a fake rock with a key in it. But I can’t find it because they all look the same. It was a good idea to buy the fake rock, but it has made it surprisingly hard to actually figure out which rock it is,” I babbled on and on. “I know, I know. I probably should have thought of a better plan, but here we are. I have a key in here somewhere, and I’m locked out, so I need to find this fake rock.”

I watched as the mystery man walked closer to me and looked at the rocks surrounding the house. His gaze was powerful, just like him, and I instantly thought about how fun this guy would be in bed.

He was probably a dominant type. Maybe he liked to tie his girls up? Or perhaps he preferred all night sex that turned into sweating sessions of love? Mmm, my mind went blank as I decided right then and there that I really wanted to have this man in my bed.

“What’s your name,” he asked me.

“I’m Isabella. Isabella Peterson.”

I waited for him to respond with his name, but he did not. Instead, he reached down and grabbed a rock from the back of the pile of rocks. He handed it to me and I instantly knew that it was the rock I had been looking for. It was light, and I could hear the jingle of the key as I moved the rock in my hand.

“There you go, Isabella.”

His voice was smooth, seductive, and sexy, which was hard to pair up with the body that stood in front of me. The man in front of me looked more like a killer than a seducer. The muscles in his arms bulged with definition. Not bulk, but a refined sense of power. Even the way he clenched his jaw made me think of someone who was hiding something and wasn’t going to let you find out.

“Wow, thank you. That was pretty amazing. How did you know which one it was? You hardly looked at them? That was really awesome,” I said as I brushed my hair to the side and pressed my breasts forward in an effort to seduce him.

Was this guy even seducible?

“Just luck I guess,” he said as he looked me over.

I dropped the rock as I tried to get the key out, and he quickly retrieved the key from the grass. I’m not sure if he was so helpful because I was annoying him by waking him up in the middle of the night or if he was just a nice person. Maybe he was a horrible person and wanted to take me right there in the grass? But then again, I would have loved every moment of that.

He took the key and walked over to my front door. I tried to keep up, but my short legs and high-heels were just no match. I stumbled over behind him and finally made my way up the steps to the front door. By the time I got to my door, he had it open, and stood there with the key in his hand.

“Goodnight, Isabella.”

His hand touched mine as he passed me the key, and instantly my body reacted with a surge of energy. I didn’t know who he was, or why he was living in the old abandoned neighbor’s house, but he could touch me with those hands any time he wanted.

“So how long have you lived there? I didn’t know anyone had moved in,” I asked the gorgeous mystery man.

“I just moved in.”

“Ahh, so you’re new to town? How’s that going for you? Wait, why did you come to Bain? It’s not like we are a happening town.”

As I kept talking, I tried to force myself to be quiet, but I just couldn’t stop. The more I looked at this man, the worse my tongue-tied condition got. The light of my porch intensified his muscles, and I’m pretty sure my brain actually stopped working.

I tried not to make a fool of myself, but his body was just too much for my brain to comprehend. Muscles so defined he looked like he could be one of those Navel Seals or something like that.

My eyes fixated on his naked chest with the desire to feel it against my body. Every impulse jetting through me said not to touch his chest. Yet my hand had a mind of its own.

Sure enough, without warning, and likely fueled by the large alcohol courage I had …

… I touched his chest.

Right there on my front porch in the middle of the night and without warning. My drunken hand reached out and touched his chest!

It would have been bad enough if that’s all that happened, but I couldn’t stop myself. My verbal garbage kept coming out. It had been a month since Stanley had come to visit, and I had no men living with me. I’d gone from having sex two or more times a day to having zero sex. My body was on fire; it needed a man, and my body had a mind of its own as this gorgeous beast of a man stood right there in front of me.

“Oh, my God, you work out. Yeah, you definitely work out. Is that all you do all day long is workout?”

He stood there with the same calm and cool look as when he first saw me on my knees in his flowerbed. He was the quintessential strong silent type. His face was serious and observed me with just the slightest bit of a smirk forming at the corners of his mouth.

“To answer your first question, I’m here to relax and get away for a little while.” He looked down at my drunken hand still sitting on his chest. “Yes, I work out.”

Maybe it was the alcohol wearing off, but I suddenly realized my hand was on his chest, and I removed it. My eyes looked at his and then down at his chest again. What had come over me? This was not my usual behavior. Then again, a sexy guy like this on my front porch was not my usual evening, either.

I could feel the flush of embarrassment start filling up my face. I stopped looking at his chest and made eye contact with him, but that was worse than looking at his chest. This wasn’t a man who knew me or knew my desire for sex. This was a stranger who I should have been more cautious around.

“Oh, alright. Yeah, I kind of thought that you were a workout kind of guy. I like to run. But I don’t get out as much as I would like, and I certainly don’t run for long distances. Maybe down a few blocks and back. Like one mile tops. I take pictures. That’s what I like to do. You know photography … that kind of stuff?”

My mouth had apparently joined the self-governing philosophy revolution and would not stop. I wanted to stop talking. I just couldn’t send the impulse from my brain to my mouth to make it happen.

“Well, you have a nice night, Isabella.”

He turned to walk away, and I stood on my porch and watched him. I waited for him to look back at me, ready with one last wave goodnight. Ready to try and seduce him if I had any possible chance, but he didn’t turn around.

“Goodnight!” I yelled as he disappeared around the corner of the neighbor’s house toward the back door.

I closed my front door and stood inside pondering who this man was and what he was doing in tiny little Bain, Missouri. He had this quiet calmness about him that was fascinating. I had never met a man who seemed to have so much self-control, like a vigilant soldier with his senses finely tuned.

I turned the lights off in my house and tried to look out at the neighbor’s house. I just wanted to see if there was any movement inside of his house. Perhaps I secretly wanted to get one last peek at that chiseled chest of his? But I was disappointed, and there wasn’t a single sign of movement throughout his house.

As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t help fantasizing about being with the gorgeous neighbor. I had not even considered another man as a sole partner since Michael’s death, so it surprised me how easily this man was filling my thoughts. I had so much desire for this mysterious neighbor that I actually thought of having him and only him.

Normally, the memory of Michael and our years together was just too much for my brain to even consider. He had been my first love, my high school sweetheart. After losing Michael a year before, I never thought I could ever move on. Having multiple boyfriends was the only way I’d found to fill that void. And I loved this new life. I loved having men around to care for me and please me. It was a different life than Michael and I would have had, but it felt like home to me.

The thoughts I had about the gorgeous stranger made me so happy because they were the first true signs that I would someday be able to move on. And perhaps my fetish for having multiple men would just be a phase.

As I drifted off to sleep, I saw the stranger’s face in my mind, his chiseled, serious face, with just the right touch of softness. His demeanor was so relaxed and calm for such a late hour. It struck me as odd that he was so readily awakened in the middle of the night, but I was happy he did wake up. Getting to meet him was just what I needed to give me hope that someday I could move on with my grief and loss of my fiancé, Michael.