AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A pair of very large, square hands slid into my periphery.
“Here, let me help you with—”
“I’ve got it,” I huffed, shifting to put my back to him.
With another heave, I pulled, leaning back in the hopes that my weight would help me, but gravity had other plans. The suitcase thumped back onto the belt, drawing everyone’s attention in the vicinity. People shifted out of the way as I walked alongside it, shackled by way of the handle in my fist.
Mr. Square Hands chuckled and stepped around me, reaching for the bag again. “Seriously, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Let me—”
“I said, I’ve got it,” I shot, ready to stomp his foot or kick him in the shin if he didn’t back off.
But then I lifted my gaze.
When Kit, the farm’s cook, told me someone would be here to pick me up, I’d expected her, not the hulking expanse of Jake Milovic.
His hands weren’t the only square—or large—thing about him. My thirsty eyes drank in the sight of him, cataloging every detail, noting what had and hadn’t changed in the years since I’d seen my grandfather’s right-hand man. He was a beast of a man, so tall, I only came to the divot in his broad chest. Square pecs, wide and solid as granite under his heather-gray T-shirt, which was almost too small. Small enough that it bordered on pornographic.
It was obscene, really.
His shoulders were square too, sturdy and straight and proud, and between them stood the column of his neck, corded with more muscles. Muscles on top of muscles, a display of brawn few humans were equipped with, though not enough to feel unnatural or gratuitous. My gaze hung on his jaw, which I instantly decided was my most favorite square—sculpted and strong, masculine and shadowed with dark stubble. That jaw framed a ghost of a smile on wide lips.
I’d kissed those lips once upon a time. But the boy who’d owned those lips was gone, replaced by a man who looked like he belonged on an ancient battlefield, wielding a mace and dressed in furs. Even the word man seemed too bland, too thin to describe him. He was a bear, grizzly and wild, loping through a forest alone.
His eyes sparked with amusement, crisp and flecked with greens and golds and honey browns, like the first turn of the leaves in autumn on the last moments of green grass.
“Jake?” I said stupidly, not realizing I’d stopped until my suitcase dragged me off-balance.
He moved more gracefully than a man of his size should have been capable, somehow catching me with one arm and lifting my suitcase with the other. I found myself tucked into his chest and inhaled greedily, my lids fluttering and senses full. He smelled of pine and hay, of old wood and loamy earth. He smelled like he was made of the woods and the soil and the salty sea air.
He smelled like home.
His hand was so big, it spanned the small of my back, which held me to him while he turned us like we were dancing. For a moment when he released me, I stood mutely, blinking at him.
One of his brows rose with the corner of his lips, just a flicker, just a glimpse. “You okay?”
“Oh, I’m tougher than I look,” I blustered, smiling. “Are you okay? You didn’t pull anything, did you?”
“I think I’m all right,” he said, hefting my suitcase with one hand. His bicep turned into a mountain range, with veins snaking like rivers down his forearms and hands. “That one yours too?” He nodded to the suitcase’s twin.
“How’d you guess?”
Jake gave me a sidelong glance, that corner of his mouth still just a little higher than the other. “I figured you’d outgrown the whole pink thing.”
I shrugged to cover my wounded ego. “It’s my signature color.”
“I can see that,” he said, snagging the other suitcase by the handle without breaking stride.
“That has wheels, you know.”
He held one out for inspection. “Sure does,” he noted and kept walking toward the exit.
We walked through the sliding doors toward the parking garage of the Humboldt airport, which was smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, California. The crisp spring air drifted over us, carrying his scent in the draft.
God, he’d grown. He’d been big for his age at sixteen when we met, but by my measure, he’d grown nearly a foot taller in ten years—two in shoulder width. One of those shoulders just in the last two years since I’d seen him.
When he’d shown up at the farmhouse looking for work, Pop didn’t think twice. It was clear to all of us that Jake had nowhere to go, so Pop took him in, cared for him just like he’d cared for me when my parents died. In turn, Jake had worked his ass off for Pop, earning every bit of his room and board and then some.
