“Yeah,” the man who’d bumped into her said. He lifted a lazy pointer finger in her direction. “Princess here thinks she gets to lecture me for walkin’ on a public sidewalk.”
The other guy arched a brow, but Amaia’s built-up frustration overruled her rationality. She balled up her fists at her sides and barely refrained from stepping closer to them. “What I think is that I have a right to stand up for myself when someone rudely walks into me, when I was standing perfectly still,” she said. “Your friend was clearly capable of walkingaroundme. I’m not that big, and there’s not a crowd. You could have done the same!”
Something like amusement lifted the rude one’s lips. She liked this expression even less. “Actually,” he said, blatantly looking her up and down, “you are kinda chunky. But I could work with it.”
Her entire body recoiled.Chunky? She knew she was considered overweight from a clinical perspective, but she frankly thought the standards were skewed unreasonably toward skeletal proportions. She wasnotfat, or anything thatqualified aschunky. And the idea of this creep doing anything that required him looking at her like he was made her want to be ill.
The other guy smiled around his licorice. “Not a bad idea,” he said. He was looking in her direction too, but he wasn’t making an effort to meet her stare.
Amaia shook her head. “No. Get away from me, both of you.”
“You’re the one who wanted to make a scene—”
“You have five seconds.” By the time the words registered in her ears, a warm, sturdy presence had settled at Amaia’s side. It was accompanied by a large, strong hand suddenly pressing against the small of her back, as if helping to hold her upright. Holding her steady. Making a point.
She blinked up, speechless at the sight of her sexy stranger glaring fiercely at the two creeps. From her angle, thanks to the shadow of the building beside them, it almost looked like his eyes even glowed.
“What?” one of the assholes said.
“Four.”
Amaia looked forward in time to see their eyes widen with dawning realization. She wasn’t entirely sure about her sexy stranger’s intent, but she wasn’t about to interrupt.
“Three.”
The pair took shuffling steps backward and twisted around, blindly running away. It was pure luck that no traffic impeded their way as they darted across the street. The last bite of licorice landed on the asphalt when the second guy stumbled over the curb.
Amaia released a breath, her tension fleeing in the wake of her would-be attackers. “Thank—”
“What the hell were you thinking?” He turned toward her, his fingers gliding around to rest over her hip, his sharpquestion cutting off her statement of gratitude. His eyes were still narrowed, but the glare seemed less somehow. Not that it mattered.
Amaia reared back. “Excuse me?” She was keenly aware of his hand on her hip, and her reignited agitation made her want to smack his arm away. But the traitorous part of her that wanted to remember the feel of his touch and heat of his presence wouldn’t let her.
He motioned in the direction the assholes had run off in. “Picking a fight with bastards like that,” he said. “What were you thinking? What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”
Her mouth opened. She blinked at him. She snapped her jaw shut. She wanted to yell at him for being some kind of sexist jerk, but she couldn’t find the words. She swallowed, having to fight to maintain eye contact for some reason she couldn’t describe, and steeled herself. “I wasn’t waiting for you in the first place,” she said. “Nor was I picking a fight. I was just speaking my mind.” A trait her mother had often warned her to be careful about, but this didn’t seem the time to admit that. “Why should I assume every man who behaves rudely to me will also do terrible violence to me if I give him the slightest opening?”
Her sexy stranger’s lips dipped into a frown and his tone rumbled low to match when he spoke. “You should assume any man you don’t know is dangerous.”
Chills broke out along her skin. Amaia told herself not to squirm or shift her weight awkwardly. She reached out and deliberately removed his hand from her hip, using the fleeting excuse to brush her fingertips over his forearm, but never broke eye contact. “Then please excuse me. I have to go lock myself into my apartment and research nunneries.” Sexy as sin, but not very friendly. What a shame.
She got all of two feet before his voice carried to her again, a fraction of the aggression gone this time. “I’m not going to hurtyou, Amaia.”
She rolled her eyes even as she stopped and angled her head over her shoulder to be heard. “You’re the one who said—” She cut herself short and her heart leaped in her chest.Wait. How did he…?She nearly tripped over her own feet as she spun around, finding him watching her from his previous position, an expression like calm on his face. It did little to ease her suddenly racing heart. “How do you know my name?”
His golden-amber eyes softened at the corners as his lips kicked up ever so slightly. “I suspected you didn’t recognize me.”
Recognize?She scoured her memory, trying to recall all the faces of boys she’d gone to school with or perhaps worked teenage jobs with. Even brothers of classmates she might have met vicariously. But she came up empty. She couldn’t think of anyone who could have grown up to look like him.
The sexy man who might not have been a stranger took a step forward, then another, and reached out to scoop her hand into his. Not a handshake. It was as if he were holding her in place. “Rhys Adler,” he said. “We knew each other when we were little.”
Like a magnetic puzzle, the meaning of his words clicked into place. Her fingers curled around his, and the answer slipped from her lips. “Idaho.”
Chapter Three
Rhys filled his lungs with the scent of Amaia’s living space as he looked around. She had warned him the apartment was small, but she’d undersold it. The best thing he could say about the living and kitchen space that opened before him as soon as he stepped into the unit was that it smelled like Amaia. Amaia, and no one else.
Amaia faced him, her cheeks reddening in reflection of her obvious self-consciousness, and motioned vaguely toward the sitting room. There were two options for seating, and some furniture piece being used as a coffee table that clearly doubled as storage, atop a worn area rug that visually separated the space from the kitchen. One large window on the short wall was covered by cheap blinds that did little to block the midday sun. He took it all in with a flick of his gaze, then returned his focus to the woman standing just out of reach. Her face was still a bit too red and her heart still beat too fast, but he pretended not to realize either detail as she managed a smile for him. “I’m sorry it’s … like this. I never have company. But make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything to drink? I have bottled water, lemonade mix, and iced tea—oh, and coffee, of course.”