That's my life now. Sure, it has its lonely spots, even though I have friends and Moose to help with that, but it’s also got its own routine. There's no woman in my arms most nights, and no one who wants to stick around when there is.
I’m actually okay with that, though. Not because I don’t want a good woman beside me—God knows I do after everything I’ve been through—but because my heart’s already picked one. One I can’t ever possibly have, but who I think about every night when I close my eyes.
As I shower in the tiny pod, I get my morning wood back just thinking about her: Julia, the preacher’s daughter, and the brightest light in my life.
The church I volunteer at is one of three in town, and the only one liberal enough for me to tolerate, and traditional enough that they take feeding the hungry and tending the needy pretty damn seriously. Reverend Alderson, the stiff, but kind pastor in charge of the place, doesn’t trust me too much. But he’s still given me a chance to prove myself, and so I work hard on his food drives and repair program.
However, he would definitely draw the line at me trying to date his daughter. Pretty, sweet, and sexy young Julia Alderson is an angel, but she’s barely old enough to drink—not that she ever would, I suspect. The girl has my heart—damn, she’s had it for the past two years. But her father thinks I’m dangerous, and she’s too young and too pure for me anyway.
She’s little—barely comes up to my shoulder. She’s got nearly a yard of soft auburn hair that she wears in a coiled braid when she’s working, or in ringlets when she’s feeling fancy. Modest, somber clothes barely do anything to conceal that robust young body of hers. And where her widower father’s soft gray eyes are sad and tired, hers gleam brightly, full of life.
I know she likes me, too. We’re buddies, working side-by-side at every church drive, chatting and laughing together. She likes my jokes. She loves my dog. And for some reason I can’t fathom, she thinks I’m a great guy who just got a shitty break in life.
I’ve fallen so hard for her that I can’t find my way back out to save my life. For two years now I’ve been her friend, worked with her to make Phoenicia better under her father’s watchful and slightly suspicious eye, and closed my eyes every night wishing she was beside me. No matter who I’m with, she pops into my head when I get turned on, and I can’t bust without thinking about her.
I open the trailer’s tiny closet and look in on a mass of leather and denim. I grab a clean work shirt in black plaid from the drawers below then hunt up a clean pair of jeans and my vest. I pull it all on over my thermal long johns; it’s maybe twenty degrees out.
Even Moose gets a vest before we go out: black leather lined in sheepskin, like mine. He whines when I put his paw covers on, putting up a little struggle that would flatten a smaller man.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a damn baby about it, there’s road salt everywhere,” I grumble at him pointlessly as I finish dressing him and give him a belly scratch to calm him down.
Moose is a good dog. He even looks it, once you get past his size. He’s as floppily enthusiastic as a puppy with his affection. He has a practically ear-to-ear doggie grin, and he’s incredibly gentle around small people and other dogs. But of course he’s going to cry a little about the weird doggie shoes that keep the salt and frost from his pads.
As soon as we step out of the trailer onto the thin crust of snow, the icy wind hits me like a slap in the face. “Damn!” I put my collar up and pull down my watch-cap with a sigh. The beauty of Upstate has a brutal side, but you either adapt or you get out.
Moose takes off like a shot across the field, chasing after one of the brave squirrels that’s being blown around by the wind. The fat little guy runs up one of my maple trees and stops barely out of reach, barking and chattering. They all know Moose by now, and they know that the one unfortunate squirrel he actually caught only received a slobbery bath—and that Moose dropped it and ran after getting a bite on the nose.
It’s hard to command fear and respect when even the squirrels know you melt in the face of cuteness.
I put my gloved hands on my hips and look around, the leather of my coat creaking slightly as I move. It still smells of the factory—like leather polish and lanolin from the sheepskin lining. The air has that particular dry-cold smell: sharp and almost dusty, tinged with woodsmoke.
My land is four acres and just across the creek from town. It’s lightly sloped, and is ringed and dotted here and there with maples, black walnuts, apple trees, and an assortment of evergreens. The land is stony and overworked, and I’ve spent time digging out the rocks, planting clover, and plowing it under with borrowed gear, slowly building on it as I can afford to buy materials.
It isn’t much to look at yet. The heavy duty fence is built from pallet wood and salvaged timber, bare now of its climbing vines, with a gate I built myself. The land is mostly bare, though I’ve started terracing the back half with bluestone I dug up. A salvaged stone path leads up to the trailer door.
Julia helped me lay the stones and gather moss to plant in between the cracks to keep out the cheatgrass. I told her she didn’t have to, that she’d mess up her pretty little hands, but she just laughed and pulled on gloves. She’s always trying to make me happy.
I wish she’d stop. It makes me love her more, and I can’t touch her. In fact, if I ever so much as kiss her, I know I’d end up doing whatever she asks after that. And then we would both be in trouble.
She’s twenty-one, hot and healthy. The way she looks at me sometimes makes me think I should get my eyes checked—those, or my head. It’s gotta be wishful thinking on my part, believing that I see an expression on her face that suggests that she not only likes me, but...wants me.
Stop torturing yourself. I go to check my bikes. That damned drunk of a building inspector gave me hell about permits, so I had to buy a prefab shed for my vehicles and workshop. It’s an ugly chunk of corrugated steel and plastic, and it sits on the windward side of the trailer. Most days it cuts the breeze and snow pile-up, but not today.
Today the winter wind is swirling, hitting from weird directions as it angles off the mountains. Sometimes it comes from the northeast, and it bites deep into my bones. There’s definitely a storm coming. I’d better get the spare propane tanks from the shed, in case I’m stuck inside for a while.
I’m headed for the shed, just stepping onto the gravel driveway in front, when my phone buzzes in my pocket. “Huh.” I check the time. It’s seven in the morning, two days before Christmas. Who is even up this early?
Then I see the number and smile before I can stop myself and take the call. “Hey Jules, aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”
The voice on the other end is musical and full of excitement. “I can’t! The food delivery’s here early, and thank God, because they just upgraded the storm enough to give it a name. We have a damn blizzard headed this way just in time for Christmas!”
I stop dead. Oh shit. “Wait, wait, so we’re doing deliveries today?”
“We are doing everything today. Sorting, bagging, delivery. They sent too much stuff, and if we don’t get it distributed, it will go bad sitting inside.”
The church had been approved for food distribution the same year that I fell in love with Julia. Three months later, the local eccentric, Dr. Whitman, donated enough scratch for us to expand the church basement and turn it into a food storage facility. It’s pretty roomy, and stocked with enough stuff to cover the whole town for weeks if there was a disaster.
But the Reverend sees ongoing hunger as just as much of a disaster as a hurricane, and he’s right. People—fucking children—go to bed hungry right here in my hometown and all around it, every day. I might be a bad guy, but even back in the big house a lot of guys wouldn’t have liked that idea one bit. A lot of them went hungry as kids themselves.
My heart starts beating faster again, but this time it feels great. I’ll have to shuffle some things around to spend my afternoon there as well, but I don’t care. �
�Okay. What do you need from me?”
“You. The motorcycle with the sidecar. As many hours and as much gas as it takes.” Her voice is so warm. I really can’t stop smiling.
“Okay. I’ll be over as soon as I can.” I don’t care if I go straight from there to work and fall into bed exhausted tomorrow morning. Spending the whole day with Julia makes the whole thing worth it.
I hang up and look over at Moose. “C’mon, boy, we got families to feed.”
Chapter 2
Julia
* * *
“There’s no way that I can get a rental truck four days early, not this close to Christmas.” Dad sits back from his laptop with a sigh, rubbing his lean face. He looks so crestfallen that I go over and hug him.
“Don’t worry, Dad, I called ten volunteers while you were looking for one, and have them on standby. We’ve got one van, one pickup, seven cars, and Aaron’s sidecar at our disposal.” I deliberately use Aaron’s first name, just to see that little twitch it puts in the corner of Dad’s eye.
I love my Dad, and I’ve helped him run the church since Mom died. I look up to him in a lot of ways, but he has his flaws, just like everyone—the biggest one is that he prejudges people sometimes.
He’s not racist, and he doesn’t look down on the poor, but he makes certain judgments about bikers, stoners, hippies...guys with records. And the guy he’s judged the most harshly is the one I want to spend my life with.
One day I hope to prove to him that he’s got Aaron all wrong. It hurts a little that he sticks to his prejudices toward the guy who has done so much heavy lifting around the church for years. Especially because Aaron is so important to me.
But all of that is secondary now compared to reassuring Dad that we’re ready to get through this day. Twenty degrees? Icy? Hundreds of pounds of food to sort and distribute with a damn blizzard breathing down our necks?
No problem. We’re on the case.
My dad blinks in surprise, and then smiles tentatively. “Good work,” he says simply, and I hand him a fresh cup of coffee to fortify him for the day ahead.
After a quick breakfast of eggs, apple pancakes, and sausage, we’re outside helping a small crowd of volunteers unload the delivery company’s huge truck. I’m at one of the folding tables we have set up beside it, cutting open boxes of food and sorting the contents into smaller boxes to distribute.
The tables are wedged into the space between the delivery truck and the weathered side of the church, so that the heaving wind can’t blow the lighter things away. We’re hoping to eventually add a covered bay along the side to make unloading in extreme weather easier, but we can’t quite get to that project yet. There are too many more important ones in the way.
The church is creaky and old, formerly a Dutch Reformed church that was sold after Hurricane Irene flooded so much of the area. A lot of people moved out of town after that. We moved in, and fixing and updating the big wooden building is as much a part of our lives as ministry or charity.
That’s actually how I met Aaron Gates, former biker, current bouncer, handyman, dog daddy, and the man of my dreams. He is a guy who has spent a third of his life in jail or on parole for a crime he didn’t commit, all so his brother wouldn’t have to be put away for even longer. Now, he keeps drunks from acting up in town by night, and helps us with our church projects by day.
I remember the day I met him, over two years ago. He was new in town, and my father, who believes in second chances, as long as they don’t involve dating his daughter, apparently, offered him a place in the congregation. Soon after that he started volunteering, and that was how I first crossed paths with him—him carrying lumber up to the steeple to reinforce it from within.
He’s a mountain of a man. Big, burly, solid—he towers over everyone I know, even my dad, who is a beanpole. He’s actually the exact opposite of my dad, appearance-wise—a little scruffy, with keen dark eyes, and short hair that almost looks black and is constantly swept back. When I saw him stomp past, whistling with what looked like an entire tree’s worth of lumber on one muscled shoulder, everything stopped inside me, and all I could do was stare.
I don’t really date. There isn’t much opportunity—I don’t have much time between church, volunteering, and commuting to and from seminary in Rochester, where I live for half the week during the semester. But every time I’m home and even remotely near Aaron, he’s always in my thoughts.
Who would be better to spend the rest of my life with than my best buddy, the guy who gets things done, the guy to whom I can tell any secret and know that he will keep it? Yes, he’s a lot older than I am, and there are some people in town who will never trust him—but I do. And I wish Dad did.
I get working as soon as I leave my dad, distributing frozen chickens into boxes—three to a box, along with a package of frozen ground beef. The vegetarians get beans, tofu, nuts, wild rice mixes, squash, and a couple of those horrible fake turkey loaves that apparently taste a lot better than they look. As I empty each box, I set it aside, and the man himself lumbers out of the truck with another.
“So, how’s it going?” Aaron asks with that tender-eyed smile as he sets the big box on the table with a soft thud.
I beam at him. “We have enough food to give everyone half again as much as last year, take care of a lot of drop-ins, and then fill up our larders, too. I don’t know how Whitman did it all, but I’ll take the early delivery if it means we can get it all out before the storm comes.” I tend to chatter when I’m excited.
“Me too.” Again, I see that brief flash of a grin—a pretty rare occurrence. Aaron does smile a lot, especially when he’s with me—or with his dog, who is keeping some of the other volunteers’ kids busy playing. But he lights up when he’s around me. People have commented on it before.
My father has also commented on it, and not in a good way.
However, in my dad’s head, I’ll probably always be twelve years old, even after he’s retired, and I’ve taken over ministry. Maybe he would keep any guy who looks at me like Aaron does under a microscope. I wouldn’t know, because I don’t notice other guys.
Not like this.
I’ve already decided to do something about this whole ridiculous “unresolved sexual tension” thing. Ridiculous because I’m an adult, we’re both single, and we should really do something about this.
Once the boxes are loaded up and closed, they go on a hand truck out to the volunteers’ vehicles. The first cars are already coming back from their first set of deliveries, but Aaron has been stuck here, transferring cases of food and helping the less capable volunteers push their assigned hand trucks.
I love watching him work. The man is tireless. I can only imagine what he would be like in bed—not that I know much about that sort of thing, but hey, a girl can dream.
I’m catching myself staring at his ass for the third time when Marion, one of my volunteers, comes up to me, brushing snow off her rust-colored parka. She’s a tall older woman with a long, strong-jawed face, and she smiles awkwardly at me. “Hey.”
“Hi, Marion, what’s going on?” I rearrange the contents of one of the boxes, making sure the loaves of bread don’t get squashed, then fold it shut as I look up at her.
“A bit of odd news, actually. I’m just trying to find out who knows what. Did you hear about the mistletoe? Someone put it up all over town.” Her lips twitch with a mix of amusement and baffled curiosity.
I blink at her slowly. “I’ve been here sorting chickens and canned goods since about eight. I haven’t heard anything about this.” What exactly did I miss?
“Mistletoe?” Aaron frowns as he brings coffee over in two plain white mugs. He hands me one, looks at Marion, who has clearly been out in the weather, and hands his over to her without missing a beat.
“Thank you.” She warms her long fingers around the mug—not even the thickest gloves will keep out the biting cold if you’re out there long enough. “Yes, the town’s thick with it. Looks like some kind
of prank. I guess the church didn’t get hit?”
“Not as far as I know,” I venture.
“That’s because I took all those ridiculous sprigs down,” my father sighs as he comes out, entering distribution figures into a spreadsheet on his laptop. “This morning, seven sharp, on my morning walk. I’m all for a good prank, but this is still God’s house.”
“I guess so, Reverend.” Marion takes a deep swallow of her coffee while Aaron patiently turns to get himself and my Dad some more from inside. “Seems pretty strange, though. I wonder who would do something like that?”
My dad folds his arms, a faint, disinterested smile on his face. “I have no idea.”
“You’re no fun, Dad,” I tease him once Marion goes back with her arms full, ready to start loading up her car again.
He eyes me. “Don’t tell me you were in on this mistletoe prank. Apparently they’re hanging everywhere in town.”
I need to invite Aaron into town. “Uh, no, this is actually the first that I have heard of it. I’m kind of wondering who did it.”
There are some really fun weirdos in Phoenicia. Most of them were either priced out of Woodstock, got sick of New York City, or seem to have just sprouted up here, like Dr. Whitman’s son, Jack. Now that guy is definitely my number one suspect for a Christmas-themed prank like this.
After all, every year starting mid-December, his Dad’s lawn looks like the Macy’s Christmas Parade, and his family throws a Christmas feast for the whole town and makes huge food donations. Jack was raised in a family that loves Christmas.
Jack—who is sexy but can’t hold a candle to Aaron—is the fun kind of idle rich. He’s a skier with a rack of trophies, known for following the snow season across the equator to Australia, just so he can enjoy it longer. The half of the year that he’s here, he parties and flirts his way through the mountains. Then, as soon as the snow melts, he’s gone again.
Billionaire Romance Series: Dreams Fulfilled (1-3) Page 9
