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