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Hold the phone. This was practically oceanfront.
“Nice. I like it,” I commented after pulling up along the front of the house and parking near the mailbox. “E, can you grab the sodas, buddy?”
“Yep!” Eli was almost as excited as I was to be delivering this surprise. He really liked Sean.
Dominic had the donuts, so I grabbed the two pizza boxes off the back seat and shut the door with my hip.
“It’s cool, Eli. Wait ’til you see out back. He’s got a tire swing up,” Dominic said, he and Eli walking ahead of me.
Huh. Why would a single guy need a tire swing? Maybe it had been left by the previous owner.
Both Sean’s bike and his truck were in the driveway—a good sign he was home. As I got a close look at his truck for the first time, I saw a half-peeled-away smiley face sticker on the rusty bumper and realized I had seen his truck before.
“Holeey shit,” I breathed, stopping in the grass. He’d paid for my tacos that day. Sean was the guy. The good deed, doing something for nothing, guy.
And he hadn’t said a word to me about it.
I felt my mouth curl up in the corner. He just couldn’t stop surprising me, could he?
I was beginning to suspect Sean was the most unexpected man in the history of unexpected men. He never wanted anything in return for his actions. He never assumed or anticipated acknowledgment.
He was simply…good.
He was a good man.
“Shay, you coming?” Dominic called out.
I turned away from the truck and saw the boys waiting for me on the porch.
“Yep! Just admiring,” I explained, which wasn’t a lie. I was admiring, I just wasn’t admiring a vehicle. I was admiring the man who owned it.
Stepping up onto the porch, I balanced the pizza boxes on my forearm so I could knock on the door. I could hear drilling, which stopped the second time I knocked after my first went unnoticed. Then a few seconds later, the door swung open.
Sean stood there wearing his faded jeans and nothing else.
I’m going to repeat that for emphasis—Sean stood there wearing his faded jeans and nothing else.
His hair was tied back. He was barefoot. His chest was on display. His hip bones were jutting out nicely. He had fuzz running from his navel to below, and his skin had a light sheen of sweat to it, which was basically the equivalent to icing on a cupcake—the finishing touch that really set off the whole package.
These factors, plus others, considering how low his jeans were hanging, had me scrambling to hold those pizza boxes with both hands, for fear I might drop them.
I had never seen Sean without a shirt on before. I figured he had ink on other parts of his body, not just his arms, and he did. His chest was covered in tattoos, as were his shoulders and his ribs, colorful designs that looked to be random, but I was betting they weren’t. His abdominals were bare, which, even though I had a major thing for body ink, I was grateful for, considering what his abdominals looked like.
Hell, what all of him looked like.
Sean had a body like an Olympian. Like one of those track runners who still had the sculpted upper torso. He wasn’t bulky, but the muscles he did have were so finely cut with perfection, you’d think it was God himself who touched Sean after uttering the phrase Let there be light, plus gorgeous male physiques.
He was solid. Nothing but taut skin and power underneath.
My eyes lingered on his upper arms, the muscles there, and the ink decorating him. I squinted to study it.
Were those stick figure people?
“S-Surprise!” Eli yelled from behind me.
Startled, I snapped my gaze off Sean’s body and looked up. “Hey! Uh, yeah, surprise! Hope you didn’t eat yet.”
Sean looked at the boxes in my hand. “Frank’s,” he muttered, smiling a little. “They got good crust.”
I sighed. God, he was just perfect.
“And Duck Donuts,” I pointed out. “Nobody beats Duck.”
“I got the s-soda!” Eli said, hoisting the twelve-pack of Coke up to his shoulder.
“Did you eat yet?”
Sean looked from Eli to me after I spoke, a solemn look on his face, and shook his head.
“Great.” I smiled, then I stared at him when he didn’t move or show hospitality, and giggled. “Uh, are you going to let us in?”
As if he needed the prompt, Sean stepped back then, no hesitation, and held the door open as he rubbed at the back of his neck.
“I like your house,” I told him, stepping in. “It’s…you have no furniture.”
I glanced around the empty living room.
There were rags on the floor and a lamp in the corner, plus a few empty soda cans, but other than that, nothing.
“You don’t have any furniture?” I asked instead of assuming, turning to look up at Sean.
