Reluctant Lumberjack (Ebook)

I washed the paint off my hands and bent a bit to check my face and beard for splatters in the small mirror above the mater bathroom’s sink. Blakely had hired me to paint her bedroom and install crown molding, and after two days of chatting with her, I was ready to take my shot.
Blakely reminded me of the girl with gorgeous tits and an ass to die for I’d left behind back in the sticks of New Hampshire almost twenty years earlier. Charlotte Mathis. The memory of her curves still haunted me to the point I still wasn’t looking for anything long term, nothing more than a place to park my dick until we both grew bored with one another.
I’d taken Char’s virginity at eighteen because it’s what she’d wanted—and I needed to show my best friend she was beautiful regardless of her size which she’d always complained about. Who she was, every part of her, made me hard as a rock.
Because, fuck did she ever.
Thinking about Char always brought back memories of him too. Liam Headley. My other best friend and the only man I dreamed about. Even after all those years, I could still recall how his strawberry-flavored lip gloss lingered on my tongue, how he’d felt under my hands. The noises he’d made when I’d given him what he’d wanted.
I’d been both their firsts without the other knowing—and they’d stolen my heart.
Eyeing my scruffy face in the mirror, I told myself a lovely single mom—Blakely—sat out in the living room and the past was best left in the past.
If only I could convince my inner self as easily as my brain.
Loving two people had split me in two. I hadn’t been able to choose between my two best friends—and I’d taken the cowardly way out, using my scholarship to play football at URI as an excuse to escape because my head and my heart refused to be swayed toward one or the other. But because of those two, I hadn’t been in the game for anything permanent since blowing out my knee my junior year and ruining my chances to play in the NFL.
Yeah, Blakely had a son, and she loved him the same way my mom had loved me before she left. I saw him as baggage, and that would usually turn me off when it came to women, but she had the curves a six-foot-five, two-eighty bear like me could enjoy without fear of hurting her.
I could handle the fact she had a son until we went our separate ways. Besides, he was old enough that he wouldn’t be hanging on her hip or getting in the way if she wanted a little adult time—which I hoped to get with her tonight.
Finally washed up, I turned off the faucet. Murmuring came from outside the bedroom while I dried my hands. Last I’d known, Blakely’s son wasn’t home, and I definitely heard more than one voice.
I picked up my bucket with the painting tools packed away and walked through her bedroom, eyeing the bed. My dick twitched at the thought of being buried balls deep inside her lush body.
A man could hope.
Ready to push for that date I’d been thinking about since meeting Blakely two days earlier, I sauntered into the kitchen—and pulled up short in the doorway my head barely fit beneath.
Some pretty boy douchebag had his arm around Blakely as they stood just inside the front door. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
I must have made some noise because he glanced my way. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing at me with his chin.
Blakely turned toward me, and same as when I’d first shown up and got an eyeful, her gorgeous smile sent a shot of lust straight to my dick even as my heart ached for the similar woman I’d left behind. “That’s Nathan, the handyman, the one Carissa recommended.”
The pretty prick holding her asked something about why I’d come from her bedroom, and the jealousy in his tone had me grinning, puffing out my chest a bit.
That’s right, fucker. You’ve got competition.
“I locked him up in my bedroom the past two days.” Blakely played him good too, snickering at her own explanation. The guy scowled, and she lightly touched his chest as though attempting to calm him down. “He’s doing some work for me.”
My grin stayed in place as his forehead remained furrowed.
“Nathan,” Blakely said, “this is Stewart. He’s…a friend from college.”
Stewart held onto her hip with a possessive hold that suggested he was more than a mere friend.
I switched my bucket to my free hand and extended the other, forcing him to let go of her.
Stewart released Blakely like I’d wanted and shook my hand with a decent grip, but nothing compared to my bear-like paw roughened from years working as a carpenter. “What exactly are you fixing in her bedroom?” he asked.
Blakely answered before I could, explaining the color change and decorative molding, and Stewart whined about her not asking him to do the work. She reminded him he’d been in Nevada, but of course, he’d moved back home and could take care of whatever wasn’t done. Or so he claimed.
From the memory of his soft palm, I doubted he could do the molding I planned to install tomorrow.
That mega-watt smile of Blakely’s turned my way, refreshing my memory of why I wanted the woman beneath me. “So, tomorrow morning then?”
Guess she thought the same about her pretty friend.
Smirking, I glanced between them, silently telling Stewart he’d have to do more than act like a little bitch to get between Blakely’s thighs. He might have his hand on her waist again, but I’d be back.
“Looking forward to it,” I promised her.
Five minutes later, I sat in a bit of traffic, my smirk long faded while I replayed our conversation since leaving. Who the fuck was he, and where would he be living now that he’d returned from Nevada? Needing fucking answers, I called my friend Carissa who had referred me to Blakely for the job.
“So what’s the deal with Blakely and that Stewart guy who went to college with her?” I asked the second the call went through.
“Well, hello to you too. Why are you asking?”
I inched my old truck along, following the Mercedes in front of me. “Because she’s hot as hell, and I’m itching for something new.”
“Bored?” she asked with a light laugh, knowing me too damn well.
“Just saw her for the first time two days ago and felt sure she’s what I need in my life right now.” I tugged on my beard as we came to a standstill again, pushing aside thoughts that I might only want Blakely because of who she reminded me of.
“I’ll be honest with you.” Carissa’s tone furrowed my brow. “I spoke with Stewart earlier—”
“Wait. You know the prick?”
“I’ve known him for years. We grew up together.”
“Of course you did,” I muttered, cursing the pretty boy again in my head.
“Anyway,” she continued, “while I hate to say you don’t have a chance, you really don’t have a chance, Nathan. Stewart’s a doctor. Blakely’s a nurse. They’re a good match, never mind that they’re both hot for each other.”
“Well, fuck.”
“There’s plenty of fish in the sea.” Carissa’s voice suggested pity more than encouragement.
I let out an exasperated heavy exhale, remembering how she hadn’t shied away from the pretty boy’s grasp on her hip telling me the truth.
I didn’t stand a chance.
But at least I still had the job and would see her in the morning. Stewart might end up having her, but that wouldn’t stop me from enjoying the sight of Blakely’s curves and the thoughts of what if the prick had stayed in Nevada.
* * *
He answered Blakely’s door the next morning. “John—how’s it hanging?”
I wanted to smash the pearly-white grin off his damn face, and after I glanced down to find him all but naked with a towel around his hips, my hand not clutching my bucket of tools fisted.
“The name is Nathan,” I reminded him even though I knew the fucker got my name wrong on purpose. “Where’s Blakely?”
Still grinning, he reached up to hang from the doorframe. Just slightly shorter than me, he didn’t have far to stretch. He flexed, and I barely held in my snort. Fucker didn’t have anything on me—except for a lot less chest hair.
“She’s…indisposed.”
I lifted an eyebrow and waited.
With that fucking smirk still on his face, he let me know he was moving in with her and that they wouldn’t be needing my services anymore since he could finish up the job. After he mentioned they would have called earlier but ended up sleeping in because they’d been up half the night, I got the hint.
“You know how it is when the love of your life takes you back,” Stewart said.
I wished I could say that I did, considering the happy glow on his fucking face.
“Mail the bill, and we’ll take care of it.” Stewart shut the door on me before I could argue.
Scowling, I climbed in my truck and called Blakely’s cell before driving off. It went straight to voicemail, so I left a message telling her what Stewart had said about not needing my services anymore and asked her to call me if I’d been misinformed.
What sucked was I didn’t have another job lined up until the following week. It also sucked I’d be out of some cash, but I had enough in my meager savings to pay that month’s bills.
I went back home to my tiny, one-room apartment and used my old weight bench to beat my body down.
Blakely never called.
But two days later while I tried to rustle up some work to finish out the week, a lawyer from New Hampshire rang me.
“Your brother passed,” he said when I asked what he wanted.
My older brother. Dead.
First Mom abandoned me in death when I’d been five. Then Dad because he couldn’t keep his drunk ass from getting behind a wheel.
I waited for regret or grief to hit while settling back in my lone kitchen chair, but neither emotion arrived, leaving me numb as usual. “What happened?” I asked, even though I couldn’t give two fucks over the asshole who had abandoned me to foster care rather than take me in when our dad passed.
“OD’d.”
Stupid fuck.
“He has a four-year-old daughter,” the lawyer continued when I didn’t respond.
Fuck. I pinched the bridge of my nose, my eyes closing. I remembered all too well the hurt of losing first one parent then the other. “And I’m his only other living relative,” I muttered what I knew to be true. Why else would a fucking lawyer call me about a dead brother?
“That’s correct, Mr. Oakland. Which also means all his assets—house, land, and tree business are also yours.”
A hell of a lot more than I’d accomplished in my life, but that didn’t make the choice easier. Knowing I didn’t really have one tightened my chest and clenched my gut.
Foster care sucked ass. I’d only spent three years at the farm where the state had placed me, and even though they’d been decent people, I wouldn’t wish that shit on any kid.
Especially a four-year-old little girl sick fucks would love to get their hands on.
“Where at?” I asked, dread twisting my insides.
Of course, the lawyer named the town Rawlings, the exact place where my brother and I had grown up, his house on the opposite end from where the foster farm had been.
“Give me the details,” I muttered and stared unseeing at my kitchenette as my brother’s lawyer explained shit to me. The legal jargon, I didn’t understand, but one thing I knew for certain: My brother, while far from rich, had attained more than I had through my adult years. At least I’d been smart enough to keep off the sauce unlike our dad and steered clear from the pain pills that had caused our mom’s death.
My brother had already been buried while little Trina waited in the state’s care.
Glancing around my shit apartment, the truth I didn’t know how to raise a kid and didn’t have a role model sat like goddamn concrete in my bowels.
Baggage.
The type I couldn’t bring to Rhode Island where all I did was work and survive, the kind that would take me back to a town I had no wish to visit again.
I wanted to say no to the responsibility—my brother had been a piece of shit—but Trina deserved more than I’d gotten. She deserved family to nurture her, not well-meaning strangers who didn’t share blood, who could never really care, and being in the place she knew, her home, would be best.
“I’ll be there in a week,” I forced out, my throat thickening as we set up an appointment for me to sign some shit and meet my niece.
I wouldn’t have to worry about running into Blakely and her doctor prick again—but I wondered over the two I’d left behind. Did they still live in that shithole town up in the sticks? Had Charlotte ever married and gotten those dozen kids she’d always wanted? Had Liam escaped the bullies in Rawlings, the assholes who felt men preferring dick over pussy didn’t deserve to live?
Every cell in my goddamn body dragged its feet over the inevitable, but within a few days, I packed up my tiny apartment, all my belongings easily stashed in the back of my old Ford. After one last phone call to my only friends, Carissa and her husband, I set off north, my goodbyes made and a promise given to call her if I ever needed anything.
She’d been excited for my chance to start over. Something fresh and new. Maybe it would land me near a woman I wouldn’t grow bored with. But I knew no one would ever compare to Charlotte or Liam. No doubt rested in my mind I’d be lonely for life.
For once, I didn’t speed, my usually heavy foot keeping me at a mere sixty-five while heading north. Reluctant didn’t even begin to describe my damn attitude toward the whole upheaval of my existence. And it wasn’t just the idea of having a ward, being burdened with the care of a little kid. For the first time in my life, I understood what my brother had faced when our dad died—and why he’d left me to foster care.
Unwilling and yet a better man at thirty-eight, I couldn’t imagine my nineteen-year-old brother’s need for freedom. At least I’d gotten to live before taking on the responsibility of his kid.
I’d loved and lost by choice, a decision I continued to struggle with on a daily basis.
Hands in a tight grip on my steering wheel, I told myself that Charlotte and Liam must have moved on. Surely, I wouldn’t see them in the tiny town we’d all hoped and dreamed of escaping.
Liam had always been smart as a whip and wanted to be a doctor. He’d be gone for sure, since he’d never get that kind of training up in no-man’s land. And while Charlotte had planned to teach first grade, I expected she’d be married with a large brood already, her dreams of white picket fences and walk-in closets fulfilled. Regardless of what she thought about her size and crooked teeth, Char had always been sweet and beautiful enough to get any man she pursued.
I hoped for all our sakes, they’d started new lives someplace else. I didn’t have the balls or emotional capacity to deal with seeing either of them living a happily ever after that didn’t include me.
Because I sure as hell hadn’t moved on—and I only had myself to blame.
The mile markers counted too damn quickly toward a new life I wasn’t prepared for while I considered what had kept me single since leaving.
I was still in love with a woman and a man, my two best friends, the only ones who’d ever truly known me, the only ones I’d ever shared all my secrets with—except for the fact I’d slept with them both.
Piece of shit.
My scowl deepening, I let off the gas and took the exit that led to my new home, a place I didn’t belong, to be caretaker to a kid I’d never met—and had zero fucking clue how to raise.

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