Crazy Heifer (The Valentine Boys 2)

I wasn’t sure that I cared at this point. Even though the workout didn’t focus on legs, they were incredibly sore regardless.

So sore, in fact, that I dreaded sitting down on the toilet.

But he was right. I’d feel better once I got started. I knew that.

Sitting up with a loud sigh, I threw the covers off the bed and stood up with a loud groan.

“Fuccckkk,” I grumbled.

Everything, and I do mean everything, hurt.

Even the muscles in my fingers hurt.

How was that?

Turning the shower on in my bathroom—the bathroom that I’d picked out as ‘mine’ the moment that I moved out of my marriage bedroom—I waited for it to get hot and started stripping my clothes off.

I looked at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror next to the bathroom and tried to picture what I’d look like if I lost weight.

Not if.

When.

I would lose weight, no matter what.

I’d also build muscle.

I would. I would. I would.

Confident now that I was in the right frame of mind, I stepped into the shower without taking my hair down.

Once I was fully awake and ready to start my day, I got out, got dressed, and headed down the stairs to the kitchen with my tennis shoes and my socks in my hand, only to come to a jarring stop the moment I breached the threshold.

I’d expected to go out to my kitchen and start the coffee. Not to go out to the kitchen and find my ex-husband sitting at the bar drinking my coffee and looking like he was there to stay.

“What are you doing here?” I asked stiffly.

Mal looked up, dismissed me as usual, and then went back to the paper—my paper—that he was reading.

“Mal!” I barked. “What are you doing in my house?”

Mal sighed and dropped the paper to the counter, and that was when I saw that he folded it in that annoying way that he did.

Most people just read the paper in sections. Mal would read it, then dog-ear the sections that he read, then move to the next section in his hand. I hated it and always had. It always put a crease right through the middle of an article, smudging the words.

“Yes, Desidara?” he teased.

I gritted my teeth.

“Get out of my house.”

“Our house,” he corrected me. “And it’ll be our house until next month when I marry Margie. She’s decided it’s probably best for us to live apart until then.”

“Actually,” I corrected him right back. “This isn’t your house anymore. It’s mine. It says so on the title, and we had it settled in court. Mine.”

“My father helps pay for it,” he countered. “And my father is mine, not yours. So, therefore, the house is mine by default.”

“It’s not,” I disagreed. “Now leave.”

He leaned back in his chair, making himself more comfortable.

I knew he wasn’t going to leave, either.

My alarm beeped, signaling that I would have to go or risk being late, and I made a decision.

Walking to the counter where I’d set all my stuff out the night before, I snatched up my stuff.

I did, however, grit my teeth instead of tearing him a new one when I saw that he’d half eaten my protein trail mix that I’d made.

Goddammit.

“You better be gone by the time I get home from the gym,” I said to him.

“Or what?” he questioned.

“Or else,” I snapped.

With that, I stomped out the door that led to the garage and got even more pissed when I found his stupid car parked right next to mine inside the garage.

Therefore, item one on my agenda would be to get new locks. Item two would be to figure out how to unprogram his garage door opener.

After making a call to his dad, I hung up and drove as sedately as my mood would allow to the gym, arriving only five minutes late instead of ten.

By the time I got into the gym, I was in a very bad mood.

I was also in the mood to start smashing the weights around and picturing Mal’s face as I slammed them.

When I walked through the door, everyone was already started on their workout.

I walked straight over to Codie and glared.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she slammed the sandbell down on the ground.

Thankful that she’d set up my station for me, I started slamming the sandbell down onto the ground, wishing Mal’s head was on the ground where I was slamming it.

“I walked out of my bedroom today and found Mal sitting at my counter, drinking my coffee,” I snarled.

Codie stopped and stared at me. “What?” she shrieked, garnering the attention of those around us.

“Yeah,” I continued to snarl. “He was there because he and ‘Margie’ decided to live apart until they get married next month. And he decided that since I’m living in our house alone, he’s going to live there!”