AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I froze, embarrassment making me feel nauseated. I had to work to keep the few sips of the latte I’d drank in my digestive tract, but then I turned slowly until I was almost backward in my chair, looking up at the hard man in question.
Dressed in his brown uniform and jacket, Frank held his tan felt cowboy hat in one hand and a large to-go cup in the other, with a pastry bag dangling between two fingers. His pants were stretched tight over his strong thighs, and I’d never really noticed before, but his leather work boots were huge, at least twice the size of mine. That fact took my mind to all kinds of dirty places, and I was having a hard time looking at his face.
He was like a magnificent deputy statue, standing before me with a sexy scowl on his lips. Had he heard me? What had I said? I could barely remember.
He took in the guilty look on my face and seemed to focus on my glasses for a few seconds, but inevitably, his eyes found mine.
My mouth fell open, and Juni squeaked, “Whoops.”
In a terse voice, Frank said only, “Samantha,” and he flipped his hat in one deft move, fixed it on his head, and walked away! Again!
Jumping out of my chair, I yelled after him as every person in Coffee Shot turned their head in my direction. “Frank! Wait! I d-didn’t mean it that way!”
When he was gone and conversation had fallen back to a soft din, I shrank back down into my chair, trying to hide my face with my hair. Grabbing my beanie from my coat pocket, I pulled it over my head, dragging it down until it covered my eyes.
“Well,” Juni quipped, trying not to laugh at me, “that took a turn.”
CHAPTER NINE
FRANK
Hard? She ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Leaving her stuttering behind me was more fun than I’d had in a long time. It took all my concentration not to laugh as I glided proudly out of the café with Abey’s coffee order in my hand.
I knew what Samantha had been referring to. I couldn’t imagine how she hadn’t seen me enter the shop. I’d overheard their chatter about my body and something about chopping wood, but letting her think I was insulted that I’d caught her discussing my dick with her friends was too good, and the rosy flush that had bloomed on her cheeks was a bonus. Her eyes sparkled with something like embarrassment, but there was also a curiosity there—a question I realized I might want to answer.
But we had a long way to go before all that.
There was still our age difference. She was still hung up on it.
Maybe I was, too, but I was trying to see it more as good thing. I was past the irresponsible partying stage. Actually, I’d never really gone through one. My job was stable. I made a living wage. Owned my own home. And I had a feeling a home was what Samantha was looking for.
Not a house, but a home, and I could give her that.
If she wanted them, I could give her babies and support them. Just ’cause my ex-wife ripped the rearview down when she ditched town, it hadn’t killed my dream of having a family. I didn’t have one growing up, until I was adopted, and then it was too late. I was too jaded.
But now, maybe I was ready. I wasn’t proud that it’d taken me a lot longer than most, but at least I’d gotten here. That had to count for something.
I’d thought when I married Angela that we were on the same page, even though she was five years younger than me. But she’d convinced me that when I came back from my last tour with the Army, we’d get started on a family. But everything changed when I went away.
When I met and married her at the tail end of an extended furlough thirteen years ago, two years before I retired from the service, I saw her with stars in my eyes and spent night after night while I was away envisioning our life together. But then I came back. The stars disappeared and had been replaced with a clear lens. What I saw when I looked at my ex-wife then was… disappointing.
I should’ve noticed it when we spoke on the phone every week, her refusal to talk about having kids. In the beginning, she was all for it, said it was her dream too, but that slowly changed to “Let’s talk about something else. I don’t even wanna think about stretch marks.”
And when I was home, she stomped up a fuss when I was offered the job under Carey’s leadership here in Wisper, even though it was a great opportunity for me, an honor since it was my performance in the military that had caught Carey’s attention, and something she should have been proud of me for.
But all she cared about was that Wisper was a small town. It didn’t have a Starbucks or name-brand shops, and her parents and friends wouldn’t be here to fawn over her. It was never about us; it was about her, day in and day out. I fit in her picture while I was away ’cause I was the strong, “heroic” military man, but once that was over, I couldn’t really offer her anything she wanted.
All of her eye rolls should have clued me in every time I talked about coaching peewee football, which I never ended up doing since she didn’t like the idea, didn’t want to spend her weekends “playing with other people’s kids” until it was time for us to have our own.
Eventually, she gave in, and we moved to Wisper, but within two months, she was gone. Took the dog and an unnecessarily extensive wardrobe for a medical coding and billing secretary, and she fled town while I was out on patrol. She left her job in Jackson without a word, we settled the divorce through lawyers, sold the house, and I hadn’t seen her since.
It was for the best. I hadn’t really known her. Not her soul. Sex was the only way we’d known how to communicate, but there was only so much it could say without words.
It hadn’t taken long for me to see that, but when she disappeared, I’d thought that was it for me. Thought I’d never see my kids running around, wearing matching pajamas on Christmas morning. Would never get to experience road trips with six arguing teenagers and two harried parents, stopping at the world’s largest ball of string, ’cause why not? When you had the family you’d always wanted, you were rich in the best way, and no matter how ridiculous the activity, the point was that you were all together, loving each other and making good memories—
“Frank!”
