He narrowed his right back.
My mom had always said you could tell a lot about a person by their eyes. A mouth could be formed into a million different shapes, but eyes were the windows to a person’s soul and shit. I could remember in the month after my last ex and I had split, how I had sat there and wondered where the hell I’d gone wrong. The sad reality was, when I thought about the upper half of his face… I accepted that I had been blind at that point in my life. Blind and dumb.
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?”