“I can’t wait until you have kids so I can dish all of this shit right back at you,” I called as he headed up the path.

“Never going to happen!” he retorted and disappeared toward the party. A steady beat dropped as Imagine Dragons came on the speakers. At least Garrett got those working.

I took a steadying breath for the battle that was no doubt about to ensue with Morgan and crossed the yard to her stairs. Pausing on the landing, I bounced a little, testing it. Good, the screws had held.

No doubt she’d give me shit for sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong, and she’d be absolutely correct. I had zero right interfering with her contractor, her staircase, or her life in general.

That hadn’t seemed to stop me, though.

It wasn’t her looks that had me climbing her stairs. It was that smile that didn’t reach her eyes. It was the way the other girls had moved closer, flanking her as if they knew she was one step away from crumbling. The way she’d gone white as a ghost when Steve had asked her about selling the truck. The way she stood on her deck in the mornings and stared out at the ocean with sad eyes and her arms wrapped around her waist while I drank my coffee unnoticed on my own.

That girl had some damage, and it ran deep.

Like calls to like.

But when I riled her up, a spark lit in her eyes, which told me she wasn’t completely broken.

I knocked on her door and waited. About two minutes later, I did it again. Another minute went by, and I knocked harder. My overactive imagination pictured her lying injured somewhere.

Before I could knock again, the door swung open, and Morgan openly glared at me. Her hair was piled on her head in a casually sexy knot, her face free of any makeup that would cover her flawless skin, and she was dressed in plaid pajama pants and a loose T-shirt that proclaimed that good grammar was sexy.

“What could you possibly want, Jackson?”

Jackson. I liked the way she said it, refusing to drop the formality and call me Jax—like it was an actual barrier to keep me from her.

Too bad she didn’t realize her voice had the opposite effect. That drawl was more addictive than the sugar they laced the tea with around here.

Well. Shit. It had been years since I’d been floored by a woman, and that’s exactly what this was, wasn’t it?

Fucking inconvenient.

“When’s the last time you left the house?”

She folded her arms under her breasts. “Why does it matter?”

“You might only be a beard short of a full-blown recluse.”