But then someone inside whooped and raucous laughter followed, and yep, I was just the right kind of mad. After all, this was keeping my daughter up. Her hiccupping cries validated my rage, and I stomped up the steps.
The front door had a welcome mat in front of it, but I didn’t want to be welcomed. I wanted some peace and quiet. I banged on the door hard with my fist, a constant rattle so that I knew someone would have to hear me. Someone did. The knob turned, and I dropped my hand just in time for the door to swing open and reveal a very petite, very tattooed woman.
She looked at me with this passive, don’t-give-a-shit expression that made my fingers curl into fists.
“It’s Tuesday night,” I said, voice pitched with accusation.
“Yep,” she replied, sounding bored. Her eyes dropped to the bulge of Giuliana against my chest. Her nails drummed against the doorframe.
It felt as if I might shake apart from fury, but the baby strapped to me helped tether me to some semblance of calm. “If you don’t turn down the music, I am going to call the cops.”
Not only that, but the cops include my brother. If you think Mason will offer a polite warning after I tell him you’re keeping up his niece, you’ve got another thing coming. The thought was followed by a vision of my brother, dressed in uniform and bringing a buddy down to shake up the partygoers, and it was very enticing. Even so, these people were my neighbors—I should at least try to resolve it on my own before bringing out the big guns.
The woman was pretty-ish, her tattoos so vivid the colors seemed to leap from her skin. My mind, trained to see art and take its measure, was impressed. But the exhausted rest of me wasn’t.
She arched a manicured eyebrow before shrugging. “Not my house.”
Oh, for the love of—
“May I speak to the owner, then?” I growled, teeth gritted to keep myself from screaming.
Before I could say anything else, the woman slammed the door in my face. It hit so hard I was forced to step back, a hand placed protectively on Giuliana’s back. That… that bitch.
My phone was out of my pocket, my thumb moving rapidly to pull up Mason’s contact, before I could even think to talk myself out of it. Because I wasn’t going to be nice twice. It was too bad, too. Some part of me had always hoped to have the kind of neighbors that I could wave to or talk sports with on the weekends. The kind of neighbor Giuliana would feel safe with growing up.
It was supposed to take a village to raise a kid, and the door slamming in my face reminded me all the more of how alone I was.
Before I could hit send and bring in the troops, though, the door opened again. I braced myself, prepared to tell the woman off, but it wasn’t her leaning in the doorframe.
Instead, dark eyes pierced me. The porchlight caught them, and I saw they were hazel, deep pools of luminescent color that stole my anger from me. The owner of the eyes was tall, close to my over-six-foot height, and he was lean and muscled in a way that made me think of a panther, all sleek body and sharp claws.
Because the man, with his sharp cheekbones and practiced frown, looked dangerous. It wasn’t just the tattoos that licked and curled around every exposed inch of his warm brown skin. It was the taut lips and thick eyebrows pressed together, making me wonder if I’d just made a very large mistake.
But whether the mistake was picking a fight with someone who looked that dangerous or that gorgeous, I wasn’t sure.
My mouth was dry. “Are you the owner?”
He didn’t reply. Instead, he stared me down harder, like he was trying to peel my skin away and get to the heart of me.
I motioned to Giuliana, who was restless in the wrap and getting crankier by the minute.
“I have a newborn. She’s only a few weeks old. We’re your neighbors and—” I stopped long enough to shut my eyes and take a bracing inhalation. “And she needs sleep. I need sleep. Could you please turn it down? Maybe for a few nights?”
My drop-dead gorgeous, mysterious, tattooed neighbor didn’t say a thing. Those eyes, so large and sharp, dropped to my daughter. He stared at her for a beat before meeting my gaze again. Then he nodded formally, like we’d just signed the Geneva Accord. The door was shut in my face again, the music still pounding.
I stood, body vibrating. I don’t care how attractive this guy is, I’m calling Mason now. Fists clenched, I felt frozen to the spot. The nerve of him!
Yet again I found myself missing Kyle. Not him him, per se, although sometimes I still did, but just having someone in my corner. Because I was standing with my daughter on a neighbor’s porch, trying to do the best that I could, and all it earned me was a door shut in my face. Twice.
Can’t I catch a break?
But as I broke from my pity party and started to reach for my phone, the music… stopped. Surprised, I waited. Were they simply switching playlists? It seemed impossible to believe that my hazel-eyed neighbor, silent and staring, had actually listened.
And yet.
When the music restarted, the volume was low enough that I could barely hear it from the front porch. The shouts and whoops and laughter were more contained, as well. Something in my stomach unclenched, and when I inhaled, it felt as if I were taking my first deep, full breath in a long time.
“Thank you!” I shouted through the door before I could stop myself.
Giuliana stirred at my booming gratitude, and I patted her bottom through the wrap. “Okay, let’s try getting you to bed again.”
The party remained turned down throughout my trek back home, the changing of yet another wet diaper, rocking my daughter, and putting her back in her crib. No music or bass buzzed through my home as I stripped to my boxers and slid under the covers of my bed, which suddenly felt too large.
Sleep should have come right away, but it didn’t. It danced and teased at the periphery of my mind, because I couldn’t stop thinking about my neighbor and the way those piercing eyes had a brooding, wounded quality to them.
And how much that quality intrigued me.
2
Javi
My hand was pressed to my chest as soon as the door was shut. Beneath my palm, I felt the rapid thump of my heart as it raced double time, hyped up from the one-sided conversation even as the party continued to rage around me.
The ‘for sale’ sign next door had disappeared months ago, but aside from a moving truck, I hadn’t seen my neighbor once. Now I had, and fuck me, I made a mess of it. To start off, I had not planned on having a man next door who looked like that.
Sure, he looked like any parent of a newborn would, sloppy and exhausted. Dark brown hair that stuck up in all directions. Dirty t-shirt clinging to broad shoulders. Angry brown eyes so rich in color it felt like I was being pulled into him by his gaze alone. It wasn’t fair that someone could look so desirable when they were at their messiest. I could only imagine how good he must look when he’d had some sleep and a shower.
The stereo was in the room attached to the foyer. I strode to it and turned the music down, ignoring the complaints coming from my guests. Who gave a shit what they thought? They hadn’t just been railed at by their new and stunning neighbor.
Peering out the window that overlooked our yards, I rubbed my hand along my jaw as I tracked my neighbor’s movements back to his home. His arms were wrapped around the tiny bundle that had been strapped to his chest.