Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,39

want. It was the way he was raised. It was men in general. I hadn’t realized that until I got married. That all those fucking clichés about men being from Mars and women being from Venus were completely true. You had to spell out every fucking thing to them. David would happily take out the garbage for me ... when I asked. But if I silently seethed about the ever-growing pile of it, he would be confounded as to the source of my fury. The same went for the bigger things. Even when I tried to spell it out for him, my feelings, he didn’t comprehend them, and it turned into a fight.

So I slowly hid parts of myself from him, because it was simply easier that way. On both of us. It wasn’t fair to expect my husband to be emotionally intelligent in that kind of way. I’d known exactly who he was when I married him. He didn’t hide it.

It hadn’t really bothered me in years.

Until that fucking comment about that song. Such a benign thing to turn into such a catastrophe. But that’s what it felt like. My husband didn’t know who the fuck I was. Who I really was, underneath the gloss of it all.

“Interesting song.”

“Holy fuck!” I screamed, hurling my wine glass in the direction of the voice, an intruder who was obviously in my backyard to murder me.

Zeke deftly dodged the glass that landed soundlessly on our lawn, but he did not dodge the red liquid that covered him like blood.

I stood, staring at him. I wasn’t going to apologize for throwing wine on him. It was his fault. He should apologize to me for making me waste my last glass of wine.

“What are you doing in my backyard?” I demanded.

He stepped forward, making no move to wipe the liquid from him. To be fair, it mostly splashed his mid-section, clad in black so it all melted together.

“I like it,” he said, nodding toward my speaker. “It sounds like you.”

I jolted like I’d been shocked with one thousand volts. The same anger birthed in me like it had that day with David. For a different reason.

How dare this man, this miscreant, know me better than my husband of sixteen years?

“Heard the music, saw the lights,” he said.

“You want me to turn it down?” I snapped. “Because I’m totally fucking not going to.”

I didn’t know where the fury came from. No, I knew where it came from. I was furious at myself for my reaction to his presence. For the way my body woke up. I hated it. I shouldn’t be feeling it.

Zeke didn’t answer, merely picked up the half empty—yes, I was a half-empty gal now, kind of what happened when you were widowed at thirty-eight—bottle of wine and inspected the label. I already knew this large biker with tattoos was informed about wine, but I also knew he’d surprised me thus far so I wouldn’t be shocked if he turned out to be some kind of midnight sommelier.

He put the bottle down and then moved to the French doors. I watched him, rather dumbfounded and somewhat enchanted by the lithe and graceful way he moved.

It wasn’t until the man I barely knew—apart from sticking my tongue down his throat that one time—opened the door to my home and entered did I jump into action.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, keeping my voice down as I chased him inside. I didn’t want to wake the boys, well, not unless Zeke was actually in here to rob and murder us. Even then, I would’ve preferred to take him down, drag his prone body out, and have my boys be none the wiser. Despite the fact that our size difference, Zeke’s muscles, and overall air of menace would make such a thing highly unlikely. Then again, mothers were capable of extraordinary feats when our kids were in danger.

But I didn’t think they were in danger right now. Zeke definitely was a man capable of dangerous things—even a privileged, relatively sheltered suburban mom could tell that—but I didn’t think he was quite stupid enough to commit murder or burglary in the house right next door to where his daughter slept.

“What are you doing?” I repeated, this time slightly louder because Zeke had ignored me the first time.

I still got no response; instead, he opened the glass-fronted cabinet that held wine glasses, and retrieved two. I watched the muscles in his arms move with the motion, his bicep