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.