Sadie walked with Caleb up the front walk of a Victorian building. He’d driven them here and parked in a spot in the alley that she could never have maneuvered into, but he’d managed like a pro.

They’d both changed out of their workout clothes. She was back in her dress and Caleb was—shockingly—in jeans and a white button-down, looking good enough to eat.

“You’re still staring,” he murmured on the porch of the large house.

“You’re in jeans.”

“You’ve said that like ten times on the ride here.”

“Yes,” she said, “but . . . you’re in jeans .”

He gave a slight head shake. “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

“No. Jeans , Caleb,” she teased. “Are we slumming?”

“Don’t judge me by my clothes,” he said mildly and entering a passcode, opened the front door and held it open for her to enter first.

She eyed the small discreet brass plaque that read Caramel Care Village. Stepping inside, she took in the warm cozy vibe of the place, and the fact that there were two older men and one woman, all in wheelchairs, scattered around the room. It was an assisted-living facility, she realized. A top-notch one by the looks of it.

Caleb smiled at the nurse behind the front desk. “Hey, Dee, how’s he doing today?”

“He’s been watching the Rocky DVDs you brought last week.” She smiled. “You always know just how to bring him back to us.”

Caleb signed in for both himself and Sadie. “There are two of us today.”

“No problem,” Dee said. “Head on back. He’s having his evening tea.”

Caleb took Sadie’s hand. “Fair warning,” he said quietly. “He’s either going to be happy to see me or pissed off. It can go either way on any given day.”

Before she could ask any of the million questions on the tip of her tongue, Caleb opened the door to one of the rooms off the hallway. An older Asian man sat at a table in front of a wide picture window, a throw over his lap and legs, staring pensively out the glass.

At their entry, he turned to them and narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

Caleb smiled. “I’m Caleb, and this is my friend Sadie.”

Naoki’s fierce expression didn’t change, nor did his black eyes soften. “I don’t know you.” He paused. “Do I?”

Caleb’s smile didn’t so much as slip, but to Sadie the smile seemed almost unbearably sad. “Yes, Naoki, you know me.” And then he reached up and began to unbutton his shirt.

Naoki stared as Caleb shrugged out of his shirt and did a slow circle in front of the old man, whose sharp gaze was taking in the tattoos.

Sadie’s gaze did the same and she felt her breath hitch at the sight of Caleb’s broad shoulders and sleek, sinewy back. Then as he finished turning, her eyes were drawn to his chest and the defined cut of his abs, and how his jeans sat dangerously low on his lean hips, lovingly cupping all his good parts. She bit her lower lip because she wanted to nibble her way from his Adam’s apple to his belt buckle and beyond.

Naoki finished scanning Caleb’s tattoos and met his gaze.

Caleb stood there, calm, quiet, definitely searching for something in the man’s eyes. She knew that sometimes tattoos could trigger memories and she hoped that whatever Caleb was looking for, he found it.

“Who are you?” Naoki asked again.

Caleb let out a breath and shook his head, clearly disappointed. “It’s not important.” He reached for his shirt and pulled it back on. “Do you need anything?”

“No. I’m comfortable here.” Naoki stared hard at Caleb. “Are you the one who pays for me to be here in all this incredible comfort?”

“Who told you someone pays for you to be here?”

Naoki just turned away, silent now. Caleb didn’t seem surprised at this, and once more he took Sadie’s hand. “Have a good night.”

They were at the door when Naoki spoke.

“Wait.”

Caleb turned back with a look of vulnerability on his face that Sadie had never seen before. It tightened her chest so that she could scarcely breath. She’d recognized Naoki as the man in the pictures with Caleb at the gym. He was clearly incredibly important to Caleb. And whatever their past, the fact that Naoki didn’t, couldn’t , remember Caleb felt unbearably tragic.

“What is it?” Caleb asked him. “You remember something?” His voice was low and even. Still calm. But somehow Sadie could hear the hope in it and she squeezed his hand, wanting badly for Naoki to say yes, he remembered Caleb.

But the old man nodded to his cup. “My tea’s cold.”

Caleb drew in a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll see to it that you get more hot water.” He opened the door and gestured for Sadie to go through first.

Heartsick for him, she took a step, but Naoki spoke again.

“That tat,” the old man said.

Again Caleb stilled and then turned back.

“The tree on your shoulder,” Naoki said. “It matches mine exactly. And my name. It means tree.”

Caleb nodded. “Yes.”

“You have that tat . . . because of me?”

“Yes.” Caleb moved back into the room and crouched at Naoki’s side. “A long time ago, you made me strong. Strong as a tree.”

Naoki studied him for a moment. “Okay. But we clearly do not share a mother. Why do you have the same mom tattoo?”

For the first time since they’d been with Naoki, good humor came into Caleb’s gaze. “Because you never told me what the character meant, only that it was very important to you.”

Naoki took this in. “And because it was very important to me, you immortalized it on your body?”

“Yes.” In fact, Naoki had taken Caleb to get the tattoo, which of course he didn’t remember.

The man’s eyes had gone from dull and quiet to bright with humor. “That was dumb.”

Caleb had to sigh.

“I’m not sure how much I taught you if I didn’t make sure you follow your own path and not the path of another.”

“If you say wax on, wax off, you can forget getting hot tea,” Caleb warned.

At this, Naoki actually grinned. “You can come back.”

Caleb’s smile faded, but his eyes revealed the pleasure of Naoki’s words. “I will.”

“But you go now. You make me tired.” He looked at Sadie. “Don’t let him get any more dumbass tattoos. Only good tattoos.”

“I’m not in charge of him,” she said. “He’s in charge of himself, dumbass moves or otherwise.”

Naoki’s smile widened and he pointed at her. “You, I like. Sassy. Salty. Smartass. You’ve got his back, right?”

“So you do remember,” Caleb breathed. “You remember saving me, having my back.”

Naoki nodded. “You’re the boy.”

“Yes.”

“Small and helpless as a baby bird,” Naoki said. “A weakling.”

Something flashed over Caleb’s face, so quickly it was gone in a blink. A haunting sadness. “Yes,” he said. “I’m the weakling.”

“But no longer.” Naoki gestured around him. “Now it appears we’ve changed positions.”

“You’ll never be a weakling,” Caleb said. “What else do you remember?”

“Your right hook is strong. Your weakness is your guard, you forget to keep it up.”

Caleb’s lips twitched and he took a quick glance at Sadie. “True story.”

A nurse poked her head in. “Time for meds.”

Caleb turned back to Naoki, but the man had fallen asleep in his chair. Head back against his headrest, chest rising and falling gently, and the most ungentle snores coming from his mouth.

This got another lip twitch from Caleb, though his eyes remained somber. “Take good care of him,” he told the nurse.

“Don’t you worry on that score, Mr. Parker.”

Five minutes later they were back in Caleb’s car.

“Naoki was your hero,” she said.

“Not was. Is.”

This caused another tug on her heart. “He seems like a very sweet man.”

He laughed. “No. Not sweet. He’s tough as nails and thinks he knows everything—which is made all the more annoying by the fact that he usually does know everything—the man never had a single weakness.”

“You’re wrong,” she said softly, reaching for his hand. “You’re clearly his weakness.”

Caleb slid her a glance and then turned back to the road. “You hungry?”

“Nice subject change,” she said. “And yeah, I’m starving. But in spite of my dress, I don’t want fancy schmancy.”

That got her a small smile. “What do you want?”

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She bit her lower lip. “In-N-Out.”

He executed a U-turn—impressive in San Francisco downtown traffic—and took her down to North Beach near Fisherman’s Wharf. In the drive-thru lane, he gave her a brows up. She unbuckled her seatbelt and put her hands on his thigh to lean in and get a look at the menu—which she had memorized and didn’t need to look at.

What she did feel the need to do was touch him. Soothe him. Take away the hollow shadows still in his eyes.

Their faces were only an inch apart, and incredibly aware of the weight of his gaze, her eyes swiveled from the menu to his and stayed there while she gave her order.

Not breaking eye contact, Caleb ordered a couple of burgers for himself and added a large drink and large fries.

“It’s cheaper if you make it a meal,” she said.

He playfully tugged on a strand of her hair. “I know.”

“So why did you—?”

“Triple the last part of that order,” he told their unseen order taker.

“Will do, Mr. Parker,” came a very young-sounding male voice over the speaker. “Uh, and before you ask, yes, my sisters and I did all the chores you texted.”

“And your homework?” Caleb asked.

“Did you say a large drink?”

Caleb rolled his eyes and drove up to the first window.

The kid behind the register was a dark-haired, dark-skinned teenager, his eyes wary. “Okay,” he said. “So I didn’t do all my homework, but to be fair, it’s stupid.”

“Stupid or not, we’ve got a deal,” Caleb said, handing over cash for the food.

The kid swallowed hard and handed over two large bags with their order. Caleb went through them and made a few adjustments before handing Sadie one of the bags and the other back to the kid. “Are your sisters in the back booth doing their homework like I asked?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“See that they get this. There’s plenty for you too on your break.”

The kid’s sullenness lifted at the scent of the fries. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Text me pics of all your homework when it’s done. And Trenton?”

“Yeah?”

“It’d better be done, and you and your sisters home safe and sound by ten o’clock.”

The kid opened his mouth and Caleb merely went brows up.

The kid closed his mouth and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Text me.”

“I will.”

Caleb nodded and pulled forward and off to the side to open the bag of food.

“What was that?” Sadie asked, stopping him. “You being a hero?”

“More like me being a dick.”

She gave a slow shake of her head, leaned over the console, and kissed him. He froze for a beat, but no slouch, he then pulled her tightly into him. The kiss went wild. When they finally broke apart, both breathless, he stared at her. “What was that about?”

“You help people.” She shrugged. “It’s a sexy side of you.”

“I have sexier sides I can show you.”

She rolled her eyes and started in on her fries. “Seems to me that you take care of a lot of people.”

He gave a rough laugh but didn’t say a word. Not until he drove them into the Pacific Heights neighborhood where the streets were lined with big, expensive, amazingly gorgeous homes. He pulled into the short driveway of one of them, hit a button and a garage door came up. He drove inside and hit the button again and the garage door came down behind them. In the dark of the garage, he turned to her, his hand on her headrest, his fingers playing with her hair.

“You seem to have a thing for my hair,” she said.

“Actually, I have a thing for you. You feel comfortable coming inside?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Just making sure.”

She got out of the car and looked around, beyond curious about him. The garage was huge. One wall was lined with tools, all looking well used. There was a truck in the next bay and on that wall were a couple of paddleboards, a surfboard, and skis.

There was an inside door, which opened without warning and a guy stood there, tall and big as a tree. His skin was as dark as his eyes, though he flashed a bright smile. “Just making sure you weren’t a bad guy,” he said. He craned his neck, looking behind him. “It’s your brother and he’s got the sort of company that means we’re leaving.”

“Is it a woman?” a woman wanted to know.

The tall, built guy grinned at Sadie and she realized she recognized him from the pub over a week ago. He was married to one of Caleb’s sisters. “Yep.”

“Well hurry up and let’s go out the front before they see us.”

“Too late.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Sadie, this is my brother-in-law, Niles. Niles, this is Sadie. And I’ll owe you big if you get the girls out of here in the next sixty seconds.”

Niles grinned and the two men did one of those guy backslapping hugs and then some complicated handshake.

“Heard from my nephew,” Niles said. “Thanks for scaring him straight. I’m pretty sure he’s not done being a dumbass though, so don’t go soft on ’em. My aunt says to keep giving him hell and make sure he’s good and terrified about stealing from you. She wants him to think he could go to juvie any second.”

Caleb nodded. “What are you guys doing here anyway?”

“Sienne and Kayla are stocking your freezer.”

“Kayla nesting again?”

“Yeah, but she needed an assist. That girl’s big as a house.”

“I am not nesting!” presumably Kayla yelled from inside the house. “I just don’t want the people I love who have penises to starve to death or eat junk food because they don’t take the time to take care of themselves!”

Caleb looked down at the bag of food in his hands and put it behind his back.

Niles grimaced and rubbed a huge hand over his bald head. “Apparently she’s having trouble regulating her hormones.”

“I am not!”

Niles grimaced again, fist-bumped Caleb, nodded at Sadie, and vanished inside the house.

A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut.

“My sisters Sienne and Kayla,” Caleb said. “And Sienne’s husband, Niles. Kayla literally goes insane when she’s in the last trimester of her pregnancies.”

“You guys really are close.”

“We are,” he said. “For better or for worse. And let me tell you, some days there’s lots of worse.”

Sadie followed him through the door and into one of the biggest kitchens she’d ever seen. “Wow,” she said, but in truth her mind was very busy processing the things she’d learned about Caleb tonight. First, he had tattoos, which he’d not once mentioned in all the time that she’d known him. And she’d known him for a damn year.

Worse, she’d judged him for being . . . What? Normal?

He was the furthest thing from any of the “normal” people she’d ever known. He was smart as hell and also private as hell. Not in a negative way, but as if he’d had to guard himself all the time.

Something she knew a little something about.

But what she’d learned about him tonight was more than the fact that he had tattoos and was close to his family. She’d learned he’d had a troubled life too, and that made her a terrible person for assuming he’d had a fairy-tale life growing up either.

She blew out a sigh, and that’s when she saw them, on his shiny, very clean tile floor: Lollipop’s food and water bowls, which caused a ridiculous tug on her heart. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

He looked over at her.

“I’m an ass,” she clarified.

“You have the best ass on the planet,” he said. “If that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not.” She stalled with a few French fries. “I’ve got a confession.”

“Is this going to be a dirty confession?” he asked hopefully.

“No! And never mind.”

He took the last bite of his burger, crumpled up the wrapping, and tossed it over his shoulder, landing it into his trash can without looking. “Come on. Tell me.”

“No, forget it. You ruined it.”

“Okay,” he said easily. “Then I’ll tell you. You want to confess to being a Miss Judgy Judgerson.”