And my jaw nearly hit the floor.

Recognition lit the stranger’s green eyes. “You.”

“You,” I repeated.

The stranger from the bar. The one who picked me up off the floor and stopped the fight.

“Small world.” He smirked.

“Apparently.”

We stared at one another and I found myself completely arrested by him. Standing this close, he was overwhelming in his masculinity, towering over my five feet three by more than a foot.

The stranger cleared his throat. “Syrup?”

Flushing at my ridiculous staring, I nodded. “Sure. This way.” I passed by him, keeping my distance, but I got a whiff of his great-smelling cologne.

I heard him follow me, and my every nerve zinged with awareness. Why did he have to see me here? In this stupid uniform? I was suddenly very much aware of how unflattering it was on my petite frame.

“So, where in the US are you from?” he asked as he fell into step beside me with his longer strides.

“Indiana,” I replied.

“I like Indiana.”

“You’ve been?” I asked, surprised.

He nodded, giving me a small smile that was far, far, far too sexy. “It’s not in an alternate dimension.”

I laughed, hating how nervous it sounded. I didn’t want this man to think he intimidated me. Even though he did. “Clearly, you’ve never been to Donovan.”

His tone was amused. “I can’t say I have.”

If he ever visited Donovan, the women there would never let him escape. I bit my lip to stop from laughing at the thought.

“Syrup.” I stopped at a shelf and gestured to it. “All kinds.”

Instead of looking at the shelf, the stranger looked at me. His gaze dropped to my hand. “How’s the wrist?”

He’d noticed that, huh? A little thrill rushed through me again at the thought of having his attention. “It’s okay. Thanks for intervening yesterday.”

“I can only imagine those guys must have crossed the line with you for your husband to react that way.”

Yeah, sure, that was it. I couldn’t tell if he was being passive aggressive or really just assuming what anyone would. It drilled it home even further how badly I was changing my husband and I suddenly felt defensive. I didn’t want to talk about this with a stranger with the fancy watch and lilting, cultured Scottish accent that gave me tingles in my lady places. He probably thought Jim and I were like those melodramatic couples on the Jerry Springer show, so far outside his social sphere it wasn’t funny.

“Can I help you with anything else?”

If he was surprised by my sudden abruptness, he didn’t show it. “No, just the syrup.” He reached by me to grab a bottle off the shelf.

I gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned on my heel to leave him to it.

“You’re awfully young to be someone’s wife, no?”

I stilled at the curiosity in his voice.

It didn’t make sense to me that he would notice me in a bar, let alone be curious enough to quiz me in my workplace. Yet, I was curious about him too. If only for the fact that I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a stranger before. I spun slowly on my heel, and gave him a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

The stranger smirked, apparently enjoying my irritation. “What I meant to say was, you’re awfully smart to have married so young.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, flummoxed. “How do you know I’m smart?”

He gestured to his eyes. “I can see it.”

“You can just see I’m smart?” I was not convinced. I gestured around me. “Really?”

“Many a smart person has worked in a supermarket. And you look too weary for someone your age. I’ve been around, met a lot of people; weariness in youth usually means they’ve been around too and are older than their years.”

That stunned me because the truth was, I felt older than my years. On the defense again, I huffed, “No one can know that about anyone by just looking into their eyes.”

“You have very expressive eyes.”

Nervous of his proximity and the attraction I felt, I took a step back, watching him warily. “You don’t know me. You’re a perfect stranger.”

“I know.” He gave me a wicked smile that made my belly flip low, deep down in that sensual place inside of me. “And unfortunately, as long as that ring stays on your finger,” he pointed to my gold wedding band, “that’s the way I’ll stay.”

Flattered, intimidated, turned on, I covered up my many emotions with snark. “Aren’t I a little young for you?”

“Ouch.” He laughed, grabbing his chest. “Straight to the ego.”

I grinned. “Well?”

He studied me, almost in that same intense way Jim used to. Except back then, Jim’s intensity made a part of me wary. I didn’t feel wary with this stranger. I felt a bizarre, overwhelming need to launch myself at his mouth.

“Yesterday morning,” he mused, rubbing a thumb over the lips that had me so hypnotized, “I would have agreed that twenty…”

“Twenty-one,” I supplied.

“That twenty-one was definitely too young for me.”

My breath caught. “And today?”

“I’d bet everything I owned that this particular twenty-one-year-old isn’t like many her age. Pity,” his hot gaze swept over me, making me shiver with want, “that she’s a little too married.”

Pity, I wanted to reply.

I smirked at him. “You’re smooth, I’ll give you that. Arrogant, but good.”

He tilted his head, green eyes bright with amusement. “Arrogant? How so?”

“Because I get the feeling if I weren’t married, you’d expect me to be in your bed by the end of the day. Expect it like it was your due.”

The stranger seemed to consider that. “Maybe,” he finally murmured. “I guess we’ll never know.”

And just like that, his words caused an unexplainable, crushing sadness to crumble down on top of me.

Even more bizarre, the stranger seemed to sense it, his own regret darkening his expression. With a grim, tight-lipped smile, he took a few steps back. “Good luck with life, girl from the bar.”

Good luck with life, stranger from the bar.

But I couldn’t get the words out. They were stuck.

Finally, his tall figure disappeared around the corner of the aisle, his footsteps slowly fading away.

I exhaled on a gasp.

What the hell was that?

Feeling shaken by the strange encounter, I backed down the aisle, trying to remember what the hell I’d been in the middle of doing.

Then a thought hit me. A decision, really. And I stumbled to a stop in the middle of the international foods aisle. A man, a stranger, had elicited a reaction in me that Jim had never been close to producing. As I’d stared into that man’s eyes, I wanted to know who he was, what he did, what made him tick. Everything about him. I realized that I’d felt about the stranger how Jim must’ve felt about me when we met.

I didn’t know that’s what I was supposed to feel back then.

I hadn’t been able to see past the hope Jim represented.

However, I knew now. And I was an adult. I didn’t have ignorance or childish naïveté to fall back on as an excuse for my mistakes. Jim deserved to find someone who would love him the way he deserved to be loved. He didn’t deserve to be driven crazy by unrequited love, and I didn’t deserve to feel at fault for his possessiveness.

I had to let my husband go.

The decision made me want to throw up.

“Nora.”

Recognizing the voice, I spun around, confused to find Jim’s mother standing in front of me. “Angie?”

She stared at me instead of speaking, and as she did so, the kind of dread I’d experienced when Melanie told me she was dying rushed over me. Angie was pale, her blue eyes filled with devastation.

“Nora?” My name trembled on her lips.

No.

No.

NO!

“He’s gone,” she sobbed suddenly, the noise harsh, sharp, horrifying.

“No.” I shook my head, stumbling away from her.