Stupid, really. God. I’d been so fucking stupid back then. I couldn’t be that stupid ever again. Maybe he didn’t have black holes as a reflection of his soul in his eyes, but I moved the door in closer behind me just an inch, more of a reflex than anything. I’d misjudged others before. I could never forget that, especially when I had other people I needed to watch out for.
I said “yes” before I could think twice. They were my boys. Maybe they hadn’t come straight from my body, but they were as mine as they could get. Plus, what did it matter if he thought I was a single mom? I was a single aunt. A single guardian. That was basically the same thing.
His answering nod was slow, a definite dip of his chin that had me glancing at his pink mouth. “This is usually a quiet neighborhood. You don’t gotta worry about your kids. What happened won’t be happening again.” That hard face, with crow’s feet at his eyes and the brackets at his mouth, told anyone who looked at this man that he wasn’t unused to smiling. But I couldn’t picture it. He hadn’t looked happy the first time I’d seen him and he didn’t look particularly happy to be here in front of me right then either.
Was he nice or not? Here he was taking responsibility for someone else’s actions. He couldn’t be that bad.
Could he?
I just kind of shrugged. “Well, thank you for… caring.” Caring? Really, Diana?
It was impossible to miss one of his large hands forming a fist all over before going loose. “Well, just wanted to thank you,” he started, sounding uncomfortable all over again. He gave the container a shake, holding it slightly away from his body. “Here’s this before it got lost in my things.”
“You’re welcome.” Jesus Christ. He’d eaten all the polvorones already? I’d just dropped them off. I took the container from him, still wondering how he’d downed that much sugar before something about his words tickled my thoughts.
His mess?
“He lives with you?”
The man’s eyebrows twitched. “Yeah. I’m your neighbor. He’s only staying with me.”
This was my neighbor.
All this was my neighbor?
What the hell?
This tall, muscular, tanned-skin man with tattoos to his elbows and a body that made me want to pray he did the lawn with his shirt off was my neighbor. Not the other guy.
I wasn’t sure why I was so relieved, but I was. Maybe he wasn’t exactly giving me a hug, but he wasn’t being a rude prick either like his brother. And he’d brought my mom’s plastic container back. Even I didn’t do that. People who knew me didn’t let me borrow stuff because they never got it back.
There was no way this guy could be so bad if he was here apologizing for something he hadn’t done. Could he?
I looked into his hazel eyes again and decided probably not.
Blowing out a breath of air, my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk before I gave him the second awkward smile of the day. “I thought—never mind. In that case, I’m your neighbor Diana. Nice to meet you.”
He blinked and the hesitation, or caution or whatever it was floating around in his brain, flashed across his eyes briefly before his hand extended toward me, and I saw it.
He had a wedding ring on.
“Dallas,” the man introduced himself.
He watched me with that straight face of his, a crease back between his eyebrows, his grip firm. Dallas. Dallas.
Oh shit. This was the man the lady earlier had been asking about. He was a real person, so she wasn’t an idiot.
He was a married real person, and some lady who didn’t know where he lived was asking about him. Hmm. I wondered what she wanted for one second before telling myself it wasn’t any of my business.
Once my hand was my own again, I put it on my hip and went for the third weird smile in the last ten minutes. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Dallas. Officially. You’re welcome for everything. Let me know if you ever need anything.”
He blinked and I suddenly felt like I’d done something wrong. But all he said was, “Sure. See you around.”
I didn’t look at his butt as I closed the door behind him. He was married, after all. I’d seen enough. There wasn’t a whole lot in this world I took seriously, but a relationship, especially a marriage, was one of those things, even if he had women coming over to his house looking for him. Staring at a man’s butt was a lot different than checking out the front half of him when he’d been the one to come out half naked.
I wasn’t going to be sitting on my deck with a glass of lemonade on days he did the yard after all, damn it.
I flipped the lock just as my cell phone started ringing from where I’d left it in my bedroom. I ran down the hall and picked it up, not surprised when ALICE LARSEN showed up on the screen. “Hello?” I answered, knowing exactly who was really calling.
“Tia,” Louie’s voice came through the line. “I’m going to bed.”
Plopping my butt down on the edge of the bed, I couldn’t help but smile. “Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Positive?”
“Yes!”
I snickered. “Did Josh?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Playing video games in the living room.”
“Do you love me?” I asked him like I did every night just to hear him say it.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“A lot!” his little boy voice giggled in amusement, reminding me why I still asked.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes.”
“You’re ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” the five-year-old answered quickly. I could already picture him in my head, lying back against his pillows with his covers up to his neck. He liked sleeping like a mummy, wrapped up completely. “Can you tell me the one about daddy saving the old lady’s cat again?” he asked with a tired, nearly dreamy sigh.
God, I really needed to quit saying “old lady” around them. I couldn’t count the number of times I had told Josh and Louie the same story, but I always let him choose what he wanted to hear. So, for what was more than likely the twentieth time, I told him about the time Rodrigo climbed up a tree to save our elderly neighbor’s cat back when we had lived together along with my best friend. “The tree was so big, Goo, I thought he was going to fall and break his leg…,” I started.
Chapter Three
I was this fucking close to banging my head on the steering wheel. Oh my God. It was too early for this. And if I was going to be totally honest with myself, noon would have been too early for this. Six in the evening would have been too early for this.
“I don’t have any friends.” Josh continued the same rant he’d been going on for the last small eternity about how unfair starting fifth grade at a new school was.
He’d been going at it for twenty minutes exactly. I’d been eyeing the clock.
They were twenty minutes I would never, ever get back.
Twenty minutes that seemed like they were going to span the next six months between this moment and my thirtieth birthday.