Wait for It
: Chapter 2

“Diana,” my mom called out from the kitchen as my dad and I maneuvered my flat screen on to the entertainment system he had just finished building with my assistance. My job had mainly consisted of handing him screws, tools, and his bottle of beer. Before that, he’d installed Mac’s giant, human-sized doggy door in the kitchen while I’d sat next to him watching.

I wasn’t the handiest person in the world, and the fact I was exhausted after the last five days didn’t make me the best assistant for building and installing things. Looking back on it, I should have changed the date for when I closed on my house so that it wouldn’t have fallen at almost the same time my job was being relocated. It was a lot more work than I had expected. I was lucky it was summer and the boys were now gone with their other grandparents, the Larsens, for the rest of the week. They’d been picked up the day before, and that, at least, had worked out perfectly since I’d offered to help paint the new salon, which had taken a twelve-hour day with multiple people handling rollers and brushes.

“Si, Ma?” I called out in Spanish as my dad wiggled his eyebrows, raising his hand in a C-shape that he tipped toward his mouth, the universal gesture for wanting a beer. I nodded at the only steady man in my life, purposely ignoring all the lines around his mouth and eyes—all the signs of how much he, like my mom, had aged over the last few years. It wasn’t something I liked to focus too much on.

“Ven. I made some polvorones for you to take your neighbors,” she answered in Spanish in that tone she’d used since I was a little kid that left no room for argument.

I didn’t completely manage to muffle my groan. Why hadn’t I expected this shit? “Mom, I don’t need to take them anything,” I shot back, watching my dad choke back a laugh at what I’m sure was my are-you-kidding-me facial expression.

“Como que no?” What do you mean no?

My mom was old fashioned.

That was an understatement. She was really, really old fashioned and had been my entire life. When I first moved out of the house, you would have figured I’d gotten pregnant at sixteen in the 1930s in Mexico. More than ten years hadn’t dulled her reaction every time she was reminded I didn’t live under her roof anymore. Her values and ideals were no damn joke.

She would be the only person moving into a new neighborhood that would want to take her neighbors something instead of vice versa. She didn’t seem to understand that most people probably wouldn’t want to eat food from people they didn’t know because everyone assumed there was going to be Anthrax or crack in the ingredients. But even if I told her my reasoning for not wanting to take her treats around, she probably wouldn’t listen anyway. “Its fine, Mamá. I don’t need to take them anything. I already met the people on both sides of me. I told you, remember? They’re really nice.”

“You need to be friends with everyone. You never know when you’ll need something,” my mom kept going, telling me she wasn’t going to let this go until I agreed.

I dropped my head back to look at the television, suddenly getting reminded of being a little kid at her mercy all over again, of all the times she made me do something I really didn’t want to because it was the ‘polite thing.’ It drove me nuts back then, and it drove me nuts now, but nothing had changed. I still couldn’t tell her no.

Out of the corner of my eye, my dad was taking DVDs out of a box to set in the compartments underneath the entertainment center, purposely not getting into the middle of our discussion. Wuss.

“Come get them. They’re better when they’re warm,” she insisted, as if I didn’t know that firsthand.

I blew out a raspberry and swung my gaze up to the ceiling, asking for patience. Lots of it.

“Diana?” Mom called out in that tone I refused to believe I used on Josh and Lou.

For one brief moment, I felt like stomping my feet.

Resigned to the inevitable, I headed to the kitchen. The cupboards were a faded, stained oak, but they were real wood and still in excellent shape. The countertops were tiled and dingy, the grout a shade of color only found on things that had been around before the Vietnam War, but not much worse than the ones at the apartment the boys and I had been living in. Luckily, my dad had already told me he’d help me fix up the kitchen when I was ready, claiming we could do it ourselves with a little help from my uncle. On top of the kitchen remodel, the floors needed some tender loving care and the appliances the owners had left were from the nineties. I wanted to repair and replace those things before I even looked at the cabinets. The fence had seen some shit go down, too. But everything did what it needed to do for the most part, so I’d get to it all eventually. Someday.

“Diana?” my mom called out again, unaware that I was standing right behind her. At an even four foot ten inches tall and with a personality that was nearly saint-like 75 percent of the time—the other quarter of the time she tapped into her inner Napoleon—she didn’t outwardly seem like a force to be reckoned with. Her black hair, shot through with chunks of silver in the last couple of years, was brushed down her back. Her skin tone was darker than mine, almost bronze, her frame stouter, but there was no doubt about it, I might take after my dad more physically, but I knew my pushiness came from her. To give her credit, I also got my loving side from her, too.

“I’m here,” I said to Mexican Napoleon, who I’d barely realized had a Rubbermaid tower stacked up behind her. Where she’d gotten the plastic containers from, I had no idea. Half my set didn’t have lids anymore. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked, glancing at me from over her shoulder.

I took my mom in one more time, shaking my head, remembering when I used to go door-to-door selling cookies for my Girl Scout troop and she’d tag along, half the block behind me; it had been her way of showing me she was there if I needed her, but at the same time letting me know what it was like to stand on my own two feet. I hadn’t appreciated that kind of stuff when I was a kid, thinking she was hovering, but now… well, now I understood her all too well. Most of the time at least. In this case, I didn’t want to. “Esta bien. I’ll be right back,” I replied more than a little whiney. I didn’t want to go.

She narrowed her nearly black eyes at me. “Stop making that face. You want them to like you, no?”

And then I wondered where I got my need to be liked from, damn it.

While I got my dad another beer, my mom split the containers into two plastic grocery bags, and I headed toward the front door, yanking on a chunk of my dad’s short hair on the way out as he finished tightening something on the entertainment center. He let out a hoarse “Oye!” Like he was surprised I’d done it.

Not dragging my feet at all, I went ahead and dropped by the neighbors on either side of me first. The younger couple wasn’t home, but the older one thanked me even though I was positive they had no idea what polvorones were. Somehow I managed not to laugh when I first noticed my mom had taped my business card to each of the red-lidded containers along with a Post-it that read in her slanted handwriting FROM YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR AT 1223. She’d also thrown one of Louie’s old markers into the bag. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red car pulling over in front of the house of the guy who had gotten beat up, but I didn’t pay much attention to it while I talked to my neighbors. His business wasn’t my business.

Once I was done with them, I crossed the street, heading to the house not directly in front of mine but just to the left. When no one answered the door, I left the cookie-type dessert on the doorstep.

Next was what I thought was the most beautiful house in the neighborhood. I’d been admiring the buttery yellow bungalow from the moment I first drove down the street. I hadn’t seen who lived there yet; the old Buick hadn’t moved once from the driveway, and if it had, I hadn’t noticed. The flowerbeds and yard were so perfect, with so many varieties I couldn’t even begin to name them. Everything about the landscaping was well-maintained and thought out, from the stone birdbath to the gnomes hidden within the flower bushes—it was like something out of a magazine. I walked up the concrete steps, looking around, getting ideas for what I’d love to do to the front yard when I had the time and money, so maybe around the time Josh was off to college. There wasn’t a doorbell, so I knocked on the slab of wood next to the small glass window built into the center of the door.

“Who is it?” an elderly female voice, higher pitched and nearly squeaky, asked from the other side.

“Diana. I just moved in across the street, ma’am,” I called out, taking a step back.

“Dia-who?” the woman asked just before the lock on the door turned and a head of perfect, nearly transparent white hair peeked out from the cracked door.

I smiled at the lined, pale face that appeared. “Diana Casillas. I’m your new neighbor,” I offered like that would help.

Two glaucoma-ridden eyes blinked at me before the door swung open wider and a woman smaller than my mom—and thinner too—appeared in a pink house robe. “My new neighbor?” she asked, blinking those milky eyes at me. “With the two boys and the big dog?”

At first glance, her eyes said she couldn’t see well, but her knowing I had the two boys and being aware of Big Mac, told me I couldn’t let this woman fool me. She knew what was up. I could appreciate that. “Yes, ma’am. I brought you some cookies over.”

“Cookies? I love cookies,” the elderly woman commented as she slipped glasses over her fragile nose with one hand. The other rose toward me, thin and heavily veined.

“Mexican cookies,” I explained, picking one of the containers out of the bag.

And the smile melted right off the woman’s face. “Mexican cookies.” Her voice had changed, too. “You Mexican?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me as if she was barely noticing I had some yellow and tan in my skin tone.

Unease tickled my neck, making me hesitate. “Yes?” Why the hell was I answering like it was a question? I was and it wasn’t some secret. I couldn’t exactly hide it.

Those small eyes got even smaller, and I didn’t really like it. “You look a little Mexican, but you sure don’t sound Mexican.”

I could feel my cheeks start to get hot. That familiar burn of indignity scorched my throat for a brief second. I’d lived in multicultural cities my entire life. I wasn’t used to someone saying the word “Mexican” like the greatest food on the planet wasn’t from there. “I was born and raised in El Paso.” My tonsils tickled, my face getting hotter by the second.

The old lady hummed like she didn’t believe me. Nearly hairless eyebrows went up. “No husband?”

What was this? A CIA interrogation? I didn’t like the tone of her voice before, now the husband thing… I knew where this was going. I knew what she was going to assume considering she was already aware of Josh and Louie’s existence. “No, ma’am,” I answered in a surprisingly calm voice, holding on to my pride with both hands.

The thin slivers of her white eyebrows went up half an inch on her forehead.

That was my cue to get the hell out of there before she could ask something else that was going to make me mad. I smiled at the woman despite being pretty sure she couldn’t see it and said, “It was nice meeting you, Miss—”

“Pearl.”

“Miss Pearl. Let me know if you need anything,” I forced myself to offer, knowing it was the right thing to do. “I work a lot, but I’m usually home Sundays. My phone number is on the container,” I said, holding the Rubbermaid right up against her hands, which were clasped in front of her.

She took the container from me, her expression still a little off.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” I said, taking a step back.

Were her eyes still narrowed or was I just imagining it? “Nice meeting you, Miss Cruz. I hope these Mexican cookies are good,” she finally replied in a tone that said I shouldn’t hold my breath.

I blinked at the “Miss Cruz.”

With a sigh punching at my throat to get out, I jogged down the steps and headed toward the next house. Unsurprisingly, no one answered. It was the middle of the day on Tuesday. Most people would be at work. I didn’t need to look at the bag to know there was one more container of polvorones to deliver. One more set of cookies for the home where I’d helped break up a fight and seen a man in his undies. I’d be damned if I went back home with them, or worse, tried to hide them because I didn’t want to have to listen to my mom rail me for not doing what she requested.

I blew out another breath as I climbed down the steps of the second to last house, distractedly noticing that the red car that had pulled over while I’d been talking to my next-door neighbors was still there. Huh. In the day since the beat down, I hadn’t seen any cars in the driveway. But a red sedan didn’t exactly seem like the kind of car either man that had been in the house would drive.

For a moment, I hesitated. Then all I had to do was think of my mom waiting for me in the house, and I knew I didn’t have a choice unless I wanted to hear about it all night, or worse, have her threaten to go meet the neighbors herself because I hadn’t. Was I ever not going to be scared of her?

Down and around the sidewalk leading up to the house I had been in once, I jiggled the cookies in my hand. I eyed the Chevy for a second as I walked by it and headed up the neat walkway toward the front door. It was a better-looking cousin to my place… only this one was hiding the horrors within.

At the door, I knocked but there wasn’t a single noise from inside. I rang the doorbell, and when still nothing stirred, I set the container of cookies on the deck on top of the doormat, ripped my business card off the lid, leaving only the Post-it, praising Jesus that I’d gotten out of talking to this neighbor—or his friend or roommate or whoever that man had been—at least for a little while longer. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed. I wasn’t. I hadn’t done anything other than save the man’s ass, but I didn’t want to seem like some stalker showing up to their house just two days afterward.

“Hey!” a feminine voice called out.

Turning around, I frowned at the black-haired woman standing on the side of the sedan furthest away from me.

“Yeah?” I called out, squinting against the sun.

“You know if Dallas lives here?” the woman asked.

“Dallas?” I made a face. What the hell was she talking about? We were in Austin.

“Dal-las,” the woman said slowly like I was an idiot or something.

I was still making a face at her, thinking she was the idiot. “You mean Austin?”

“No, Dallas. D-a-l-l—”

“I know how to spell Dallas,” I told her slowly. “Is that supposed to be a person?” Either that or she really was an idiot.

Pinching her lips that matched the color of her car together, she nodded.

Oh. “I don’t know anyone named Dallas,” I answered back in a tone nearly as snappy as hers as I walked down the steps. What kind of a name or nickname was Dallas anyway?

“About this height, green eyes, brown hair….” She trailed off when I didn’t say anything. That sounded suspiciously like a description of half the men in the world, including both of the men I’d seen at the house. The one who had gotten beaten up had dark blond hair but some people might think it was brown.

More than anything though, how was I supposed to know who she was talking about even if it was one of them? I didn’t know their names. Even if it was the beat-up guy, I didn’t want to get sucked in to some stranger’s life more than I already had. That guy just seemed like a bunch of drama I didn’t need or want in my life. The other one… well, I didn’t want or need that in my life either, even if he did have an incredible body. “Don’t you live around here?” she asked, still using that snarky voice that called to my inner attitude like a siren.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I walked down the path, telling myself I couldn’t pick a fight less than two weeks after moving in. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was going to live here for a long time, I hoped. I couldn’t be starting some kind of beef so soon. But my voice backstabbed me, coming out exactly how I was feeling. “Yeah, I do, but I haven’t lived here long, sorry.”

I think the woman might have stared at me for a moment from the silence between us, but I really couldn’t tell. I heard her sigh. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been calling this asshole all day, and he won’t answer. I heard he was living here.”

I shrugged, my temper starting to ease at her apology. Technically, even if my neighbor was named Dallas, or Wichita or San Francisco, I didn’t know that and therefore didn’t know a Dallas, so I wasn’t lying. Plus, I could barely keep track of my own schedule, much less someone else’s. I tried to think of Beat-up Dumbass’s face, but could only get a clear image of all that horrible bruising while he’d been lying on the recliner. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone.”

With a long and aggravated sigh, the woman dipped her head just as I got within a foot of her car, close enough to really see her face. She might have been older than me, but she was really pretty. Her face was oval, her makeup perfectly done, and she was wearing skintight clothing on a curvy body, even I could appreciate. Once upon a time, I’d put on makeup and curled my hair just to go to the grocery store. Now, unless I had to work or was going someplace where pictures were going to be taken, it wasn’t happening.

“All right, thanks, honey,” the strange woman finally said. With that, she ducked back into her car.

Honey? She couldn’t be that much older than me.

For one brief second, I wondered if the man who had gotten beat up was this Dallas person, then pictured the other man—the bigger one—clearly in my head, and then I shoved the curiosity aside. I had other things to worry about than the neighbor and his might-be friend. Back inside my house, I found my mom in the living room alongside my dad, hanging up picture frames.

Sure enough, the second I closed the door behind me, my mom’s eyes swept over the empty bags I held in my hands. “You gave them all away?”

I gave the plastic in my hands a squeeze so they crinkled. “Yes.”

My mom bobbled her head, mocking me. “Que te dije? No me hagas esa cara.”

I let my smirk fall off my face a little slower than she would have liked.

We worked alongside each other in peace for the next few hours, hanging frames and some of my best friend’s artwork I’d collected over the years. Neither of my parents said anything when we pulled out the framed photographs of Drigo and Mandy. I didn’t want the boys to forget their parents. I didn’t want to stuff their memories into a box so that I wouldn’t feel that pull of sadness every time I remembered what we had all lost. What I did notice was my dad looking at a picture of the entire family at my high school graduation with this intense expression on his face, but he didn’t say a word about it.

Neither one of my parents ever wanted to talk about my brother.

Every once in a while, when I was at the really low point where every cell in my body missed Rodrigo and got mad that I would never see my brother again, I’d wish that I could bring him up, that I could talk to them about it. But if there was one thing I’d learned over the course of the last few years, it was that everyone dealt with grief differently. Hell, we all dealt with life differently.

My mom eventually made dinner with the pitiful ingredients I had in the fridge and pantry, we ate, and they took off. They lived almost an hour away in San Antonio, in the same subdivision as one of my aunts and uncles. After twenty-something years in El Paso, they had sold my childhood home and moved to be closer to my dad’s family. I had been living in Fort Worth at that time; for eight years that had been my home. Their moving and my ex were the reasons why I’d left Fort Worth and moved to San Antonio before I got the boys. It had been my decision to move to Austin with Josh and Louie to have another fresh start.

Once I was alone, I finally finished hanging all my clothes from the boxes where I’d packed them.

In my room, I had barely taken my jeans off when the doorbell rang. “One second!” I yelled, tugging my stretchy shorts up my legs before waddling over to the door, inspecting the living room to see what my parents might have left. It was probably my dad’s cell; he was always leaving that thing lying around. “Papá,” I started to say as I undid the lock and opened the door, my attention still on the living room behind me.

“Not your daddy,” a low, unfamiliar masculine voice replied.

What?

It definitely wasn’t my daddy on the other side of the front door with his hands buried deep in the pockets of stained denim jeans under the porch light.

It was the man. The man I’d seen inside of my neighbor’s house; the man with the big biceps and short, dark brown hair. The guy who’d been in his boxers.

This was a surprise. Up close, without the weight of exhaustion from being woken up in the middle of the night and nerves from dealing with a moody asshole who didn’t want my help after I’d freely given it, I finally got to take in that the man was in his mid-thirties, maybe close to forty. I blinked once and gave him an awkward smile. “You’re right. My dad’s half a foot shorter than you are.” He probably weighed sixty pounds less too.

I’d figured that day in the house he had to be taller than Beat-up Dumbass, but now I got to confirm that. He was easily six foot two. I’d had a boyfriend once who had been about that height. Fucking jackass. But this man in front of me was built a lot more muscular. A lot. There was no doubt about it. If I could get up close and personal with the seams of his black T-shirt, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the stitching had been holding on for dear life. He was all super straight spine, broad chest, and veiny biceps and forearms. And that plain face with its high, sloping cheekbones, proud, straight nose, and square jaw was not hot or handsome, but there was something about the structure of his face that I didn’t mind looking at.

Nope. I sure didn’t mind looking. I could still see that big tattoo across the upper half of his chest if I closed my eyes.

The corner of the man’s mouth—this stranger’s mouth—went flat instantly.

Had he figured out I was checking him out? Movement around his waist had me eyeing the familiar-looking plastic container he was holding in one hand.

Shit. If he’d caught me eyeballing him, it was done; I might as well not be shy about it. Rubbing at my hip, I looked him directly in the eyes and smiled wider. Their color reminded me so much of a forest; somehow brown and gold and green at the same time. Hazel. After Louie’s, it was one of the prettiest shades of color I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t help but stare at another body part of his, even as I wondered what the hell he was doing here. “Can I help you with something?” I asked, not breaking our eye contact.

“I came by to say thanks,” he answered in that voice that was still as deep and raspy as it had been in the middle of the night, somehow perfectly fitting for that angular, henchman-like face of his. A crease formed between his thick, dark eyebrows as his gaze strayed from my eyes to my chest and back, for a moment so quick, I might have imagined it.

One of those big hands I’d seen clenched in aggravation days ago went up to tug at the collar of the plain, black T-shirt he had on. He flicked those greenish brown eyes back in my direction, tugging again at his clothes, showing off a hint of the tattoo at the base of his neck. “I appreciate what you did.”

I had to tell myself twice to keep my gaze on his face. “You don’t have to thank me for your friend—”

“My brother,” the man cut me off.

His brother? The idiot who got beat up was his brother? I guess they were both big…. Huh. His brother. That explained the wanting to “fucking kill” him part perfectly, I guessed. I raised a shoulder. “If he wants to say ‘thank you,’ he can do it himself, but he doesn’t have to. Thank you anyway.” I kept smiling at him, hoping it wasn’t as forced as it had originally been.

“That’ll never happen.” The man’s hazel eyes slid over my face, and I was suddenly extremely aware I hadn’t put on makeup that day and had two nice scabs on my forehead from picking at my face the last time I’d gone to the bathroom to pee. “I appreciate it though.”

His nostrils slightly flared when I didn’t glance away from his eye contact; he stood up taller, his lips pursing. Maybe the staring was too much.

Too bad for him, because checking out his biceps to guess how much he curled would have been even more inappropriate. The man shrugged too roughly to be casual. “He doesn’t need to be bringing his shit over here, is all. I’m sorry about that.”

I blinked. “It would be nice for that not to happen again.”

“You live here with your boys?” the man suddenly asked, those pretty irises still locked on mine. No one ever really stared at me right in the eye for this long before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Plus, there was something more important for me to deal with: how the hell was I going to answer his question? Should I lie? His question seemed casual, but there was something a little off about it. I didn’t know how he knew about Josh and Lou, but obviously he’d seen us at some point. That was nothing to freak out about. He could have seen us from a distance.

Couldn’t he?

I narrowed my eyes at him.

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?”

“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.

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