“Because you have school?” I grinned, eyeing him.
He pouted, his upper body deflating.
“We can all try to go visit her another time.”
A knock on the door had me raising my eyebrows at Lou and had Mac barking. I grabbed him by the collar and led him toward the back door, so he could hang out in the yard while Miss Pearl was over here. He was great with strangers, but I didn’t trust his crazy tail around a ninety-something-year-old. “Make sure it’s the neighbors and then let them in, please. Leave the forks so I can set them really quick.” I could already picture him running through the house with those tines aimed at his face.
“Okay,” he answered, dropping the silverware damn near instantly and running toward the front of the house.
A moment later, the sounds of familiar voices came from the doorway in the living room, and I peeked around to see Dallas, Miss Pearl, and the man whose ass I’d saved, in the living room. The woman was nowhere in sight. Louie was standing right by Miss Pearl, shaking her hand. It almost made me cry.
Setting the rest of the silverware as quickly as I could, I headed toward them, suddenly a little nervous. What if they hated my cooking?
“Hi, Miss Pearl,” I greeted the older woman first, taking her cool hands as she extended them in my direction.
“Thank you for inviting us over, Diana.”
I nodded and pulled back, my gaze going immediately to Dallas. The first thing that caught my eye was that he was wearing a button-down plaid shirt. It was the most clothes I’d seen on him. The brown and black pattern made his eyes pop. Hell, they might have made my heart pop if that was a possibility. But it wasn’t. It absolutely wasn’t.
“Hi again,” I said to him.
It was right then that I noticed how tight the skin around his eyes was despite the muscles of his cheeks shaping his mouth into a smile. “Thanks for having us….” He trailed off and glanced at the man standing next to him, forcing me to do the same.
Without the screen door between us and now that I’d spent more time with Dallas, the brothers’ resemblance was kind of amazing.
Except… despite knowing Dallas was the older one, he didn’t look like he was. Not at all. Jackson had more gray in his hair, his forehead more lined… but it was his eyes that aged him the most. There was something fundamentally different about the man who stood an inch shorter than my neighbor. There was just something radiating from him that seemed off. The way his presence made me feel reminded me of when Josh wanted something and I told him he couldn’t have it and he pouted over it.
“Jack, you’ve met Diana.”
Oh, we’d definitely met.
To give him credit, he extended his hand toward me even though he looked like he wanted to do everything other than that. I took his hand in mine and shook it, ignoring the way Jackson damn near rolled his eyes. I trusted Dallas, enough at least to let this man into my house.
“Nice to see you again,” I lied, taking my hand back.
“You too,” the man kind of grumbled, lying too, his eyes going to his hand briefly before he tucked it into his pocket.
At least we both felt the same way about each other.
I glanced at Dallas’s face as he stared hard at his brother. Huh. “Ready to eat?”
Silently, we headed over to the dining room, nestled in between the living room and kitchen. I wasn’t going to deny it. It was awkward. From Miss Pearl taking a seat as she scowled at something on the table—maybe I should have put names in front of the plates, I didn’t know—to the expression the two brothers shared, the weirdness was there. It was definitely alive and well.
“Need help?” Dallas asked as he stood behind Miss Pearl’s seat after pushing her chair in.
“I’ve got it. There’re only two more things I need to grab,” I explained, watching as Lou slipped out of his chair and darted into the kitchen ahead of me. “I have help already. Thanks.”
I’d barely taken a step into the kitchen when Louie said, “I can help,Tia.” Grabbing the bread I’d left warming in the oven, I slipped the sticks onto a plate and handed them over to him with a wink before nabbing the meatballs from the oven too.
The head of the table had been left empty and somehow Louie ended up sitting next to Miss Pearl while Dallas took the seat closest to mine with his brother on his right. I had to fight the urge to rub my hands over my pants. Fuck it. “We don’t usually pray, but if you want to…”
Miss Pearl guffawed. “Us neither. Amen.”
And with that, I started scooping pasta onto her plate first, following it up with sauce and meatballs. Dallas asked Louie for his plate and added pasta, and then taking the ladle from me, he put meatballs with a little marinara drizzled. “Is that good, Louie?” he asked my boy first, and then, “How many breadsticks do you want?”
“Parmesan?” I asked my neighbor, still watching the other two out of my peripheral vision.
“Load me up, if you will,” the older woman confirmed.
