Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)(14)

Profoundly thoughtful hazel eyes that always seemed to question, but never probe. A slow, easy smile that didn’t make an appearance often, but was generous and touchingly jubilant whenever it did. And the most expressive eyebrows she’d ever seen on living creature. The man could convey a hundred different thoughts and messages with his candid brow quirks, almost as easily as he could shutter his feelings completely.

The latter was a rare event when it happened, but it was a blow to the solar plexus every time.

Just as the opposite occurrence would always leave her heart devastatingly affected.

As she’d come to find over the past year and a half, Isaac was a man who would stand and fight the evils in the world for those he cared about, while never giving up on his belief in all the good in the world that he couldn’t see.

He was one of the kindest men she’d ever met. Genuine to the core. When he’d heard that one of the guys who worked out at his gym had a nephew that was getting bullied, Isaac had immediately started free self-defense classes for kids of all ages. And the defense he armed them with wasn’t just martial arts, but on ways to avoid fighting, to see the bigger picture when a situation seemed to blur everything out of focus.

Once, she recalled a time when they’d been leaving a restaurant, and they’d run across a woman crying in the parking lot, holding her bruised cheek. After first determining the * who’d hit her wasn’t anywhere near enough for him to hunt down and beat senseless, he’d picked her up, dusted her off and told her she was strong, and that she possessed inside herself the power to no longer be a victim. He’d told her that he wasn’t there to lecture her or judge her, or even ask any questions. He simply gave her his card and told her his gym would give her free lessons on fighting back aggressors that used their size and brute force to intimidate and hurt her. All she had to do was find the strength to come, and they’d help her find the strength to do the rest.

She never showed.

Xoey had watched that quiet intensity of his turn to sadness when weeks later, he finally accepted that she wasn’t going to come.

But instead of chalking it up to his having tried and failed, he’d taken inventory of the tools at his disposal and said simply, “I’ll bring the classes to them. If coming here takes more strength than they have, I’ll bring the classes to them.”

That was when he’d gathered a bunch of fighters and neighborhood women to put together a series of streaming online self-defense videos. Everything he taught in his classes, he put online, and made sure that the links were disseminated as widely as possible.

“I hope she sees the videos,” he’d said when the view hits started climbing at viral rates.

Those were the moments Xoey fell even more head over heels for him, and it would inevitably be followed by the return of that laidback wrap-you-in-a-blanket ease about him that would catch her unguarded. Have her reaching for him before she could stop herself.

But stop she would. Every time.

…About two seconds after he’d catch her, however, with those sharp, attentive eyes of his.

Instead of calling her on it, or ignoring it, he’d always just meet her gaze with a banked, but still visibly smoldering intensity.

But it never went further than that.

It had always been this way with him. Something about him had always tempted her while simultaneously making her feel at home.

Even so, it hadn’t been enough.

That had been a crushing revelation for her to discover.

Not even incredible, perfect Isaac had been able to keep the memories of her past from coming back to haunt her. Not even incredible, perfect Isaac had been able to jostle free the pieces of her heart inextricably tied to those memories.

Which was why she’d had to break up with incredible, perfect Isaac.

And why she needed to pick up and dial Dani’s number.

This had to stop.

Because there just had to be a Mr. Right out there that could eclipse those unyielding memories of her biggest Mr. Wrong.

She just…had to find him.





CHAPTER SIX


ISAAC HAD BEEN abusing the hell out of the punching bag in his apartment when he got the text he’d been waiting for—hell, praying for—all night.

>> S&M. BIG TIME.

He sagged in relief. Dani’s handpicked Mr. Right for Xoey had been a swing and miss.

Another chirp came in as he quickly threw on a shirt and grabbed his keys.

>> THREE WORDS: YODELING LIGHTWEIGHT VENTRILOQUIST

Huh. He was fairly certain those three words had never been uttered together in the human language before. He was intrigued. The still early hour also held the promise of an entertaining story.

>> THIS IS A NEW RECORD.

Her reply came quickly.

>> IT WAS THE PREMATURE EJACULATION OF EPIC FAIL

He grinned, not even feeling bad for the guy at this point.

>> SO IS HE JUST A FAN OF YODELING OR A PRACTIONER?

If thumbs could laugh, his would be cracking up right now.

His cell phone rang then, which was good because he wasn’t one for texting and driving.

“I asked him the exact same question,” replied Xoey. “Which my date interpreted as me requesting that he bust out his travel-sized harmonica to demonstrate.”

Isaac made a mental note to go clean out Dani’s rain gutters or something equally worshipful for this gift.