AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She scowled at me, her bottom lip trembling, then stormed inside and slammed the door.
I exhaled a long breath, overheated from being forced to play the bad guy. But I’d done what I needed to do.
Slowly, I headed back to the street and the long, cold walk home. When I got to my car, I’d retrieve my phone. Maybe one of my brothers would be free to come pick me up to save me the forty minutes’ stomp around the icy water of the loch to the castle.
Overhead, a helicopter tore up the air, the beat of the rotor blades bouncing off the mountains all around. I couldn’t see the craft itself through the low cloud cover, but I instinctively searched for it. Both Gabe and Raphael, my brothers, flew.
It could also be the mountain rescue service or even the bodyguard team who used helis on occasion.
Unwittingly, my thoughts slid to a particular member of the bodyguard team who seemed to have a permanent camping spot in my mind.
Jackson was my brother’s best friend. They’d met at university, and though Jackson was older than Raph, they’d become close. So much that, prior to them both finishing their degrees, my brother had invited him to stay on several occasions, sometimes for weeks on end over the holidays. Raphael and I shared a tower apartment at Castle McRae. It was a good size for the two of us, but three was a crowd, particularly when the third was ridiculously attractive and sleeping on our sofa.
Jackson was the stuff of red-cheeked daydreams and midnight twisted bedsheets.
Dark hair, dark eyes, easy-going, but also kind of serious. He had some kind of family tragedy in his past, the details of which I knew nothing about and hadn’t pried, not willing to indulge my fascinated mind more than it already was.
I couldn’t ignore the little details that made up the man.
Strong hands and forearms that moved past my vision when he’d accepted a beer from Raph. Forearm porn had been a new one on me. The way he listened intently when anyone else was speaking. More than once, I’d got caught up in a vision of him bringing me in close with those arms, his steady gaze flicking down from my eyes to my mouth, lips taking mine…
Despite the weather, I shivered in hopeless lust.
The guy was catnip in a six-two bottle.
Not for a second would I admit my crush, though. Even after he’d given up our sofa for a bed in the hangar’s bunkhouse. I’d be humiliated. Only two people knew: Daisy and her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the head of the bodyguard service and Jackson’s boss, but also a long-term family friend, and I knew he had my back.
I blew out a breath of frosted air. The problem was that tomorrow, I turned twenty, and I had almost zero experience with the opposite sex.
The only person to have ever touched me was a creep in high school. The same asshole who’d tried to kidnap Daisy.
Even Bridgette had a boyfriend.
My exasperation turned into a snort of a laugh. When I was Bridgette’s age, my father had attempted to marry me off to a business associate. Only six years separated me from that incident, but I’d grown up fast because of it.
I approached the end of the dark street, the main road that skirted the village beyond.
Tonight was a wake-up call. Maybe the fact that I hadn’t dated anyone was the reason for my intense crushes.
The next time I liked someone who liked me back, I’d take the initiative.
My unrequited little heart craved for that to be Jackson though he’d only ever been polite to me. If he showed any sign, if I caught any ripple of emotion in him, if he called my name…
I rounded the corner.
A tall figure sprinted down the middle of the road.
“Ariel!” he shouted.
It was Jackson, his expression troubled. Compelling.
And he was coming straight for me.
Chapter 3
Jackson
“Ariel,” I yelled again, relief filling and fuelling me.
