“Okay,” I answer back, too off-kilter to think of anything else to say. There’s a click in my ear, and the call is disconnected without any sort of by-your-leave.
Slowly I pull the phone away from my ear, staring in bewilderment at the screen as if it’s the Beast’s magic mirror and I can see the man I’d been speaking to through it.
Beggars can’t be choosers, and customer service is the least of my concerns at the moment. I couldn’t care less if he isn’t talkative and charming as long as he can fix Cletus and give me a ride into town so I can figure out what my next move is.
I tap open my contacts. I need to let Evangeline and Martha know what’s going on so they don’t worry when I don’t show up later today. Just as my finger is about to touch the library’s phone number, my single bar of reception disappears, replaced with four dots and the wordsNo Service. I guess the magic of having any sort of reception vanished like the fairy godmother’s did at the stroke of midnight. Now all there is to do is wait.
I pull out the book that Martha had shoved into my hands and flip it over to read the description on the back cover. I’m well into the third chapter when I finally hear the rumble of an engine and the pop of small pebbles being crunched under tires. I grab one of the library’s bookmarks and slide it between the pages, closing the book.
A big blue tow truck rolls toward me, dust kicked up in a trailing cloud behind it. The driver’s door protests when I open it and slide my feet to the ground to wait and watch. I’m one hundred percent blaming the weightless feeling of relief for the full-blown grin curving the lower half of my face and the small wave I give the approaching tow truck.
Who, from this day forward, I have dubbed Sir Galahad, because he has rescued a damsel in distress like any good knight would and because I’d bet money no one else has named him yet.
Sir Galahad slows to a stop about twenty feet from Cletus. His diesel engine drowns out the soft chirps of birdsong and the occasional rustle of a breeze moving through the leaves. The driver kills the engine, and a moment of loud silence stretches before an intrepid tufted titmouse lets out a high-pitched trill.
The tow truck’s door opens, and I begin moving forward with a greeting at the ready on my upturned lips. A pair of steel-toed work boots plant themselves on the ground, visible beneath the bottom edge of the door. My gaze travels up, past the white-lettered decal with LEVI in blocky font, over the handle protruding from the side of the door. Said door swings closed, and I freeze. Gaze—frozen. Ready greeting—frozen. Heart? Yep, that’s frozen in my chest too.
The man standing before me is...
Oh, for hootenannies’ sake. I manage to blink, though that doesn’t do much good. The man is still there. Still massively looming, towering like an oak masquerading as a mere mortal male specimen.
I’ve never really thought about the differences of tall when associating the description with a person. I’m an average height for a woman, a modest 5’5”. Most men are taller than me by at least a few inches, but then there are those athletes in sports such as basketball, swimming, and volleyball who are known for their impressive height and dwarf anyone standing next to them.
Nuh-uh. Even they would feel miniature in this man’s presence.
And it’s not just his height. It’s his breadth too, with shoulders that would make a lineman from a professional football team jealous. All at once, adjectives flood my mind. Huge. Immense. Enormous. Substantial.
I swallow past a lump in my throat and push my gaze up.
Yeah, no. His face is not an opposite from the rest of his body.Not a soft or reassuring place to land. The hard lines that form him continue, although they are hidden beneath a scruffy layer of thick facial hair. A slash of his lips peek through between the coarse hairs, a straight nose rises above, followed by a pair of amber eyes so light they almost look like liquid gold, though in a piercing and sharp way. The melting this pair of eyes could cause is not in the romantic swoon connotation. It’s more a don’t-touch-if-you-don’t-want-to-get-burned warning sign.
More adjectives march their way to the forefront of my brain. Danger. Peril. Threat.
Because, hello, I am a woman alone in a secluded area with a man who could easily overpower me with his pinkie finger if he wanted to. The fact that he’s standing there, unsmiling, gruff, and foreboding is doing nothing at all to put me at ease. I’m sure every woman has grown up on cautionary tales such as this, and the sage advice passed down through the ages of placing your keys in between your fisted fingers to use as a weapon will do me absolutely no good. Especially since I left the keys in the ignition.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough that a metallic taste fills my mouth. The downside of having an active imagination is that it can run away with me pretty quickly. I take mine by the metaphorical reins and yank hard until it comes to a screeching halt.
The man before me is as big and imposing as a bear, but why does he have to be a scary, ferocious, predatory grizzly bear? Why can’t he be a soft, fluffy, cuddly teddy bear?
That’s it. He’s nothing but a big, squishy marshmallow that looks like he could snap someone’s arm in half like a twig but would really never hurt a fly.
I smile brighter and hold out my hand. “Thank you so much for rescuing me. I have no idea what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been able to come help me out like this. I’m Hayley, by the way.”
His golden gaze barely flicks to mine before returning to over my shoulder, effectively dismissing me in a fraction of a second. He does shake my hand, but like with the eye contact, his grasp is there for only a moment before it’s gone again.
“Levi Redding.” It’s the same underused voice that I’d heard on the phone. Like the sound was pulled across a gravel road before reaching my ears.
I clear my throat and wave in Cletus’s general direction. “Well, there’s the culprit. I left the keys in the ignition, although I doubt they’ll do you any good. Do you need help with anything, or should I just get out of your hair and let you do your thing?”
He looks down at me with an inscrutable expression, the longer strands of his dark-brown hair slowly falling across his forehead with the languidness of maple syrup. “You’d better wait in the cab.”
I’m not sure what surprises me more—hearing a complete sentence in that deep and throaty voice of his or the fact that he follows the words up by walking around the hood of the tow truck and opening the passenger’s door for me.
My feet slowly tread the same path as if my sandals are all of a sudden weighed down with red clay mud. I step around him and—okay, no contest,thisis the most surprising part—he holds out one of his massive paws to help me climb up into the cab.
Definitely a big ol’ teddy bear. A true southern gentleman in manners if not charm.
The last dregs of worry that had pooled in my stomach seep from my muscles. Generations of vigilance that has been ingrained into female DNA is obviously not needed around Levi Redding. While still more-than-slightly intimidating, this giant of a man isn’t displaying any warning signs that he intends to physically overpower me and, as Mrs. Cline at the nursing home would say, steal my virtue.
