Page 2 of Breaking the Rules of Love

She tried showing sympathy after what happened with my ex-husband for a little while, but there’s just something about my mom where the only way she seems to know how to mother is by giving advice or trying to teach me a lesson.

So pretty soon she was telling me what I could have done better in our marriage or what she thought was my fault and how I should learn from things to make sure something like that never happens again.

I had to cut off contact with her for a while I got so angry.

And that’s when I learned that I can only do that for so long before she just comes over to the house. Yeah, my mother does not understand boundaries.

“And what about you, Mom?” I ask. “I haven’t seen you dating anybody after Dad.”

I regret the words the moment they’ve left my mouth. The look on my mom’s face just reinforces what I already know;I shouldn’t have said that.

“I—I’m sorry, Mom.”

“It’s fine,” she replies. But it’s clearly not. “I should go. I’m baking some cookies, and I should check on them.”

“Mom–”

“I’ll talk to you later, Sadie-bear.” Before I can say another word, the screen goes blank.

“Fuck,” I grumble. “You idiot, Sadie.”

My relationship with my mom is always stormy, but that was really dumb of me. I guess I just wasn’t aware of how painful these last two years have been for me. Mom touched a soft spot that I didn’t even know was there.

There’s the loud sound of an engine outside, and I glance out the window to see a black pickup pulling into the driveway of the house next door. The engine shuts off, the driver’s side door opens, and one of the most dazzlingly attractive men I’ve ever seen in my life steps out.

He’s tall, very muscled, and is wearing clothes that have a slightly military vibe to them. His dirty blond hair is short on the back and sides and medium length on the top. He stretches, causing the veins in his biceps to pop up and surveys the neighborhood like a conquering king gazing out over his new domain.

This man is hot as hell.

Did a male model just move in next to me? He must be a male model. He’s definitely not here to cut the grass. A pair of aviator sunglasses conceals his eyes from me, which is only driving my curiosity as he lazily sets a booted foot up on the long metal bar thingy by the door of his truck and brushes something off his jeans. He looks like he’s got a few days of stubble too, which is totally sexy.

Wow.Just wow.

It’s a good thing my mom isn’t here to see this. She would already be telling me to marry this man.

A red Mercedes convertible pulls up that I recognize immediately. It belongs to Kayla Macpherson, one of the local real estate brokers who manages to sell a lot of houses, most of them to men. As she steps out of her car, an immediate wave of jealousy comes over me.

Even through the glass of my double-pane windows, I can hear her fake little giggle as she skips over to my new mystery neighbor and throws her arms around his thick neck. She’s wearing a black dress that hugs every one of her surgically enhanced curves and holds on to him formuchlonger than is appropriate.

Unless of course there’s something going on between them…

I taste something salty and realize that I’ve been biting my lower lip as I watch this whole exchange.

Blood. Wow, am I really this jealous already?

After what seems like longer than the runtime ofThe Irishman, Kayla finally lets him go, and the two break their embrace. They say a few words to each other as I run through the possible scenarios for what could happen next in my head.

She could be here to use her feminine charms to get him to buy this house…

Or they could already be involved, and she could be using this house that’s on the market as a meetup spot for them to get together and fuck….

Or this mystery man could have already bought the house, and she could just be here to drop off the key.

“Why am I even thinking about this?” I say out loud, turning away from the window. “What is wrong with me?”

I know it’s been alongtime since I got any—my ex-husband left me two years ago, and I haven’t had a man since—but I’m acting like a starving animal right now. It’s not like I haven’t seen good-looking men since then, either. But none of them have had an effect on me like this. Whatever this man has done to me…well, I simply can’t explain it.

I turn back to the window just in time to see Kayla dropping the house key into his hand. I breathe a sigh of relief.

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