No Gentle Giant by Nicole Snow
Gold Medal (Alaska)
Ihave no idea what’s happened to Felicity, but it’s obvious something’s catastrophically wrong.
I’m calling out before I know what I’m doing, shoving the door open.
“Felicity?” I bark out breathlessly. “Are you hurt?”
She flinches backward, tumbling onto her ass and jerking away, her arms coming up defensively—only to freeze.
She stares at me, her eyes wet streaks of mascara running down her face in sooty trails.
“...Alaska?”
“Yeah. Fuck. Sorry for startling you.” I take a step closer, then drop down on one knee in front of her.
Looking her over, I don’t see any injuries, but she looks so frazzled. So broken.
There could be anything from bruises to fractured bones under her jeans and that trim, fitted plaid blouse making her look so small now.
“What happened? Did they hurt you?”
“Nothing but my pride,” she manages. Her voice comes thick.
She’s normally got a kind of low burr to her sound, this pitch like melted chocolate. Now it’s like she’s been sucking on mud.
I want to reach out to her, to cradle her face, to bring her comfort before she whispers again.
“I’m fine.” She looks around, dazed, then shrugs.
“This isn’t fine,” I throw back, casting a heavy look.
“It’s nothing.” She bites her lip, then sniffs and rubs her nose. “Sorry, I don’t mean to snap. I just...”
“It’s a lot. I get it,” I say. “You’re upset. It’s okay. Did they break in?”
“More like...walked in. We know each other,” she says faintly. I realize she’s not just surveying the damage. She’s avoiding looking at me. “It’s not your problem, dude. Just an argument with a contractor. It got a little out of hand and, well, here we are.”
My shoulders tense, squaring at my sides.
Contractor dispute? Sounds like bull.
I don’t want to call a pretty lady a liar, but hell.
I’d bet a month’s pay she’s not telling me the truth.
My mouth opens to question her—then snaps shut again.
I have no right to demand answers from her.
Up till yesterday, I wasn’t even on a first-name basis with this gal.
Even so, I’ll be damned if I want to let it go. I just can’t scare her off either, not when she’s in this state.
Under these circumstances, playing it cool might be the only option.
My phone’s in my hand in a flash, thumb hovering over the emergency icon. “You say the word, and I’ll call Langley. They couldn’t have gotten too far if you want ’em hauled in for questions.”
She lets out a bitter snort.
“You’re definitely new around here. You think Mayberry’s going to do anything?” Her lips look more like a wrinkle than a true smile.
“...fair enough.” I sigh heavily. “Should still file a police report. Maybe something with Blake and the fire department, too.”
“Oof. That’s the last thing I want to do.”
Finally she looks at me. Her eyes are this smoky blue-violet shade, like a cloudy pale twilight.
They’re so bitter.
So hurt.
Whatever the fuck happened tonight, it tore the scar tissue off some old wounds.
Every spidey-sense I own for danger twitches. Something’s telling me this girl’s a walking heap of trouble.
So why do I want to fix whatever’s making her lashes bead with tears so bad?
“Why are you here, Alaska?” she asks softly.
Feels like she’s asking me more than a simple question, and I have no answers.
I just shrug. “I came by to bring you what I owe. Cash is in the Jeep, but if you don’t have anywhere safe to keep it...”
I’m looking past her, doing a double take at the completely wrecked safe lying in a twisted heap of metal on the floorboards.
Contractor dispute, my ass.
“I can take it home with me,” she murmurs. “They won’t follow me there. I think. Maybe. I don’t know.”
That gets my guard up in a heartbeat.
There’s something darker going on here, if these people know where she lives.
But she’s too wrapped up in herself, arms hugged close to her chest, tense and defensive. I’m not getting anything out of her by prying right now.
Push at her too hard, and she’ll just lock up more.
“Hey. Eli’s in the car. Let us work off a little more of our debt by helping you clean up. I need to wear that pile of preteen energy out so he’ll sleep tonight, anyway.”
“Oh, God,” Felicity moans. “He didn’t see...?”
“We didn’t see anything except an SUV ripping out of here over the speed limit.” I smile reassuringly. “He really wanted to take photos of this place, if you’re okay with it. So he’ll be happy to help get it back into picture-perfect condition.”
That gets a little snort of amusement out of her, her shoulders coming down a bit. “Sounds like an easy way to excuse child labor.”
“You’re helping me teach him responsibility. I’m paying for his mistake with cash, but he still needs to understand that if he’s careless, it has consequences. Helping sweep up some napkins is a pretty small punishment, and in the end, you’rethe one doing me a favor.”
“I wish it was just napkins,” she says glumly, palming her face.
Looks like I was right about Miss Felicity.
She’s as proud as a prized filly, and the best way to get through to her when she’s upset is to get past that defensive pride that makes her lock up at the idea of accepting anyone’s help.
Can’t say I blame her, if people jump to rumors anytime someone’s so much as a little kind to her.
Everything has a price, I guess.
I don’t know how to make her believe that my concern right now comes with no strings attached.
“Well,” she says a bit more lightly, though a choked sob lingers in her voice. “If it’s really going to help you and Eli’s photo habit out...okay.”
I straighten, rising up from my kneel. It’s taking everything in me not to reach for her just to grip her chin, maybe guide her face toward me so I can get a closer look and make sure she’s really not hurt.
“Grab the broom,” I say. “I’ll grab the kid.”
I offer Felicity my hand.
For a second, I think she won’t take it.
Then she slides her slim fingers into my palm, and for a moment something electric shoots through me.
There’s a spark where she touches. I know damned well you hear all that stuff about a charge when two people touch and think it’s all wild exaggeration.
Hopeless romantics and dreamers making something out of nothing.
Still, I’m not sure what to make of this.
I just know when her soft skin touches mine, when her delicate fingertips curl against my palm, my heart jumps like it’s been hit with a defibrillator.
Fuck, I barely remember to lift her up to her feet before I forget how to move, how to breathe, how to be.
She’s just as petrified. Did she feel it too?
There’s a widening of her eyes, and her eyelashes fan out like delicate black wisps. She looks up at me quickly, questions swirling in that gaze, in the parting of her lips, as if she wants to ask me the same question.
Did you...?
Then she jerks back, curling her hand against her chest.
She turns and nearly races away, picking over the debris scattered around us before disappearing in the back.
I stand there for a few more seconds, surrounded by the ruins of everything she’s worked for, staring after her.
I’m only watching her for a limp, I tell myself, just in case she’s hurt and trying to hide it.
Right.
What the fresh hell is going on?
I never felt like this with Katelyn.
That was a whole different story, a tale of bad decisions, two young people going down the wrong path and convinced it was right because we were walking it together. Before we knew it, there was a kid in the mix and that expanded the list of crap I put up with tenfold for Eli’s sake.
Goddamn.
I swear, I can still feel Felicity’s touch branded on my palm, ticklish and sweet.
Turning away with a snort, I head back outside into the warm spring night. The smell of the evening air comes on so different from the warm roasting scents inside the café. It almost slaps me in the face, the breeze sharp in the back of my throat.
Eli’s nowhere to be seen.
Until I rap on the passenger side window, and a shaggy head pops up.
“Is it okay?” he asks, his voice muffled through the glass.
“Come on out,” I say. “If you want your photos, you’ve gotta help clean up first.”
Eli groans. “I didn’t make any messes this time!”
“Nope, but we’re helping Miss Felicity.”
Eli’s face falls. He unlocks the door and slinks out of the SUV, glancing at the soft-lit windows of The Nest.
“Is she okay, Dad? They didn’t hurt her, did they?”
I keep my smile to myself.
Sounds like my son likes Miss Felicity as much as I do.
“Nope,” I say. “Not even a little bruise. C’mon. Let’s get to work.”
We head inside and join her.
She starts cleaning out the display case and throwing out the ruined pastries and cakes and candy, while Eli starts sweeping, and I work at righting all the furniture. Mostly just chairs, though a few heavy tables got knocked over, too—thank God these weren’t glass, but wood slabs that survived with maybe a dinged corner here and there.
It’s easy enough, working together like this.
Feels comfortable. Familiar in a weird way, despite the ugly scene I keep wondering about.
Satisfying, even, to be putting Felicity’s store back in one piece.
It takes about an hour to make it decent again, including throwing all the destroyed stuff in a big trash bag and dragging it to the dumpster out back. On my way back inside from the narrow alley, I stop by the vehicle and fetch the cash from the glove compartment.
When I walk back in through the front door, Eli’s perched on a barstool next to Felicity, showing her his camera. It’s an old Canon he picked up at a secondhand shop with a thick telescoping lens, and he’s telling her how to open and close the aperture ring.
“I’ve got a digital,” he says proudly, “but I like this one best. It takes better photos, but I can’t show them as easily. I need a darkroom to develop them right. Dad says if I’m good with my chores, once we get a place of our own, he’ll let me convert a spare room so I can work on my film instead of doing it at school.”
“That’s a great idea,” Felicity says with some amusement. “Especially since I don’t think the school has anything like a darkroom. We’re pretty rustic out here.”
“Lady, you don’t know backwoods till you’ve camped in the Yukon for a month,” I say, and they both look up at me.
Eli snorts, playfully rolling his eyes. “Don’t get him started. He’s so...Dad,” he says, like that explains everything.
Felicity gives me a quick smile, softer now in the clean, restored café, as if setting everything to rights brought her spirits back.
“He is indeed very Dad,” she teases lightly.
I can’t help how my heart skips at that smile.
Shit, this is bad.
Laughing, I settle on the stool on Eli’s other side and plunk the stack of bills on the bar between us. “Look, I’m used to roughing it. It’s how I learned to appreciate a good cup of coffee. It’s about all that kept me sane on long missions. Not to mention it’s a mighty good way to keep you from freezing your fingers off during those damned winters.”
“Missions?” Felicity cocks her head at me curiously.
“Dad used to be hardcore—a Navy SEAL,” Eli rushes out quickly.
If I was a blushing man, I’d be red as a beet.
Felicity stares at me with a sort of sly, fox-like amusement. Like she knows exactly what’s going on in my head.
“So you refined your palate on MRE kit coffee, huh? Not sure if I trust your taste, then.”
“Gotta suffer the bad to know the good.” I shrug, clearing my throat. “But yeah. I did my tour of duty, but I’ve been all over. Working oil rigs, mining, construction. In Alaska, you take the jobs that are there, and you work hard or you don’t work at all.”
Eli leans toward Felicity with a pointedly loud, conspiratorial stage whisper. “Seriously, don’t get him started. Alaska this, Alaska that. That’s the real reason everyone calls him that. ‘Cause he won’t ever stop talking about it.”
“Hey. Enough with that mouth, brat.” I cuff the back of his neck lightly, giving him a gentle mock-shake. “Not my fault I love my homeland.”
Felicity’s still watching me with those eyes that seem less guarded and more like they’re just waiting for me to find the mysteries hiding in their shadows.
“You miss home, Alaska?” she murmurs.
Damn, I can’t look away from her.
She’s always caught my eye in passing, but not with this new magnetism that’s got me by the throat.
She’s a stunning woman, tall and coltishly leggy with just enough curve in all the right places, a lushness to her thighs that makes her jeans cling to them like a second skin.
Her face is slim with a vixen’s appeal, this come-hither hotness in the angle of her eyes that she seems clueless about. Trouble haunts every line of her, but it makes her look pensive and sweet, her soft violet-blue eyes glimmering and the peak of her brows so thoughtful.
Then there’s that hair—a wicked temptation I’m throbbing to have in my fist.
It falls around her in a cinnamon cascade, shaping against slender shoulders and framing her face till her skin glows like roses and cream against that dark-brown backdrop.
Yeah. I know.
I’m looking at her like I’m smitten.
With the way she glows under the lights overhead, soft-edged and glimmering, painting her in layered gold, hell.
Maybe I am.
“Lately, I’m missing Alaska less every day,” I say softly. “It’s not quite home without my boy, and I think we’re both liking giving this Montana life a try.”
There’s a heart-pounding stillness between us, the air charged.
I feel like there’s a force drawing me closer to her, but there’s a kid between us, and Eli looks at her, then at me, before piping up, “I don’t miss Alaska much. Not without Dad there. My grandparents have way too many rules. They wouldn’t even let me go hiking there like I do here.”
I blink, shaking myself from Felicity’s spell, and look down at my son.
I’m almost grateful to him for slapping me back to my senses, and I groan, chuckling.
“That’s enough of that. C’mon. It’s past your bedtime, and I’ll bet Miss Felicity’s pretty tired, too.” I nod at the stack of cash on the bar. “That should cover you, but let me know if you change your mind about the rest. You sure you don’t want us to shadow you home?”
“No. I’ve got it, everything. Promise.” Felicity glances at the money like she’d rather eat wax fruit than take it, but her smile seems genuine when she looks up. “Thank you both for coming to the rescue, guys. Seriously. Anybody else who stumbled into this would’ve made it a big deal, but you...you get it. I won’t have to worry about half the town hearing the news and fussing over something so dumb, and I’m grateful.”
“Happy to help anytime.” I hold her gaze for a long second. “I mean it.”
She just stares at me, her lips parted, and fuck, what am I even saying?
This town is full of messes.
I know that by now, and it seems like everyone’s got their problems, or gotten over them.
As we walk out with Eli calling back “Good night, Miss Felicity!” I wonder.
After catching wind of what’s crushing down on Felicity’s shoulders, how the hell can I not want to watch out for her?
Someone needs to.
If no one else is volunteering for the job, it might as well be me.
