I took the paper, shoved it into my purse with my phone and held out my hand, “Nice to meet you, Jake. I’m Amelia Hathaway.”
He took my hand, and much like when Mickey did it (with obvious differences, seeing as he wasn’t quite as attractive, not to mention the significant fact he was married), the strength and warmth of his fingers around mine communicated something I liked.
Deeply.
“Good to meet you, Amelia,” he replied, squeezing my fingers lightly and briefly before letting me go. “Real good to meet you, you raise some cake for my kids.”
I had a feeling, considering my plan, how much stuff I was selling and how nice it was, I’d definitely raise some cake for his kids.
I smiled at him then looked to his desk before moving my gaze back to him. “Shall I write down my number for your wife so we can introduce ourselves and make plans?”
“Absolutely,” he said while walking back to the desk.
I followed and did what he did, bending and writing my name and number on a sheet of paper.
I straightened and looked up to him. “I’ll give her a call today or tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“You don’t, she’ll call you,” he told me. “A lot of the equipment is shot and enrollment is up. We need cash to cover the expansion. The last gig she did she wasn’t pleased with the results. Put her all into it and we made dick. She’s a dog with a bone now. So you might get a call before you even have time to drive home.”
I wouldn’t mind that. I hadn’t been there a week but I needed to settle in. Get the lay of the land. Sort out my home. Win back my family.
But I also needed to start a life.
That was what I’d failed to do when Conrad left. My life had been him. I should have licked my wounds, found a way to let them heal and moved on.
I didn’t do that.
Now, I had to do that. My thought: a healthy mom means a healthy home, which ends in a healthy relationship with my children.
My goal. What I was living for.
And although this Jake Spear didn’t hesitate to curse in front of a stranger who was also a female (my mother and father would lose their minds at that, genteelly, of course), he ran a junior boxing league. At least that said good things about him and a good man (sometimes) meant a good woman as his wife.
I needed to know good people.
And I needed friends.
This Josie might not be one but at least she was someone calling me that was not thousands of miles away and better, not my mother.
“Babe.”
At the word, a trill raced down my spine, exploding along my lower back and cascading over my bottom. I experienced this swift, surprising and alarmingly pleasant sensation and slowly turned to the door.
One syllable. He’d said one syllable and I’d met him once and I knew who would be there. I knew who made me feel that feeling.
I was right.
In the office doorway stood Mickey Donovan in loose fitting, navy track pants and a short-sleeved, skintight white workout shirt.
And he was smiling, doing it warmly, looking pleasantly startled (likely at my being in a boxing gym) and very welcoming.
I was startled he was there at that precise moment, but I wasn’t surprised he was at a boxing gym.
“Not where I expected to run into you,” Mickey remarked.
“Well…no,” I replied. “How are you, Mickey?”
“Doin’ good,” he told me, leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb, a casual stance I found oddly devastating to my peace of mind. “You?”
“Just fine,” I lied.
“You know Amelia?” Jake asked and Mickey’s eyes went to him.
“She’s my new neighbor,” Mickey shared then added, “The Cameron place.”
I felt Jake’s gaze and tore mine off Mickey to look up at him.
“The Cameron place?” he asked when he got my gaze, then noted, “That’s a fuckuva score.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t entirely certain how he meant that. I took a guess and remarked, “It’s an amazing property.”
He nodded. “It is. No way me, Josie and the kids’d ever leave Lavender House, but the realtor had an open house for Cliff Blue so we went and we all loved it. The place is phenomenal.”
I liked that he agreed with me but I was confused.
“Cliff Blue?” I asked.
“Your house, darlin’,” Mickey stated, and I had to control a jump since his voice was a lot closer than before.
I managed that and looked up at him to see he was close. Not as close as I would have liked but could never have, but a lot closer than before.
“My house?” I asked.
“Cameron called it Cliff Blue. It stuck. And it works,” he explained. “Folks who had the lot before had an old house on it. Two generations of women who liked the feel of their hands in the dirt tended that property for nearly seventy years. Place was covered in bluebells. Planted some, they took off, went everywhere. Even jumped the street and now they’re all over my lot, and that’s not a complaint. Cameron liked ’em too, used them in the design, the color, the stained glass, the walk, and was careful not to disturb them if he didn’t have to. Went so far as to plant a bunch more to replace any they killed during construction. ’Cause of that, March and April, your house looks like it’s floating by a cliff on a cloud of blue.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, his words filling my head with a wondrous image, making me wish for another reason that I’d been able to move in several months earlier. “The realtor should have put a picture of that on the Internet. If I saw it, I would have probably paid full price.”
I couldn’t contain my jump when Mickey’s laughter filled the room, not only because it was an exceedingly handsome sound, but because it came as a surprise.
Before I could ask what was funny, he told me.
“Glad you didn’t, babe. The couple who built that place were pieces of work. She was a raging bitch and that was only capped by how huge of a dick he was. Place was on the market forever because neither would agree on an offer and actually got into it with the buyers so bad they’d pull out. They kept screwing around, the price on your place dropped three times, which is a shame ’cause that house is that house. Not a shame ’cause those two assholes got screwed in the end. But it’s a pain in the ass because that house is in my neighborhood and that kinda shit affects the values of all the properties around it. Figure the only way they could sell was to someone like you who the realtor could keep those two piranhas away from.”