Fourth Attempt

2. Blake

Chapter 2

Blake

Prime building time was in early July, and my head threatened to explode from sinus pressure. I couldn’t breathe because of the elephant-like heaviness sitting on my chest. Didn’t sleep worth a s**t all weekend because my aching body couldn’t get comfortable.

Dragging my a*s out of bed on Monday morning, I grabbed the closest shirt off my bedroom floor, too f*****g out of it to care what it was or if the damn thing was even clean.

I attempted to sniff for BO, but what a crock of s**t that was too with how my nose was clogged up like a toilet stuffed full of paper. Soft cotton instead of starched draped over my torso, and I didn’t even look in the mirror before forcing myself to get in the truck.

Not long after sunrise, bleary-eyed, blinking, and yawning so hard my ears popped, I decided I’d had enough of toughing it out.

A pharmacy sat close by the jobsite, so I swung into the nearly empty parking lot.

I needed the daytime clear-up-your-f*****g-head-and-take-the-throbbing-away-so-you-can-get-s**t-done type of medicine before I showed up for work.

I stood in the cold and flu aisle, rubbing my palm over the scruff lining my jaw while staring, my brain half dead from the lack of sleep. Couldn’t even remember walking into the damn drugstore.

Muffled music reached through the fluff in my ears, but I couldn’t make out the words or tune. Didn’t even bother trying.

Dozens of cold medicine brands lined the shelves in purple, red, and green boxes. I picked up one of each color. They all listed drugs I couldn’t pronounce or begin to guess at how they would help me.

“Fuck.” My stuffy murmur echoed inside my pounding head. I grabbed two other boxes and headed to the pharmacy counter at the back of the store. “‘Scuse me?”

A tiny woman, head bent with honey-brown hair hiding her face, counted out pills on a tray.

“Be right with you,” she mumbled without glancing my way.

So tired I couldn’t even blink, I let the boxes tumble from my arms onto the counter so I could lean my palms against it to hold me up.

She poured the pills into an amber bottle, twisted on a childproof cap, and slapped a label around it.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, starting toward me. Her focus lifted, eyes widening behind the nerdy glasses perched on her petite nose.

She didn’t have that hot librarian thing going on with t**s spilling out of a low-cut blouse, but something about her in the unflattering, scrubs-like outfit she wore snagged my full focus and woke me up the slightest bit.

I actually smiled at the flutters in my stomach like I was some lovesick middle schooler seeing his crush in the school’s hallway.

The f**k?

No woman had done that to me. Ever. Not even the one person I had allowed—

Pushing aside the thoughts I refused to dwell on, I took in the beguiling woman in front of me.

Pink tinted her cheeks, a gorgeous flush that warmed my chest and made me wish I’d been the one to put it there.

She stood no taller than my pecs—pint-sized. And damn cute too.

Clearing her throat, she glanced down at the medicine I’d dumped on the counter. “I’m guessing you have a cold?”

I couldn’t help but stare down at her, my insides a riotous mess. “Yeah.”

“Fever?”

“Nah. Just stuffed up. Pretty sure my head is going to pop before I get a chance to down some much needed coffee.”

Leaving the boxes on the counter, she pushed through a waist-high swinging door and motioned me to follow her back the way I’d come. Not that I needed prodding. I gravitated toward her on instinct, my gaze dropping to her backside. Her shirt hung past her a*s, not nearly tight enough for me to get a hint at what lay beneath.

My hands would span her waist, I didn’t doubt, and all that long, wavy hair gathered in a low ponytail begged for my fist to tip her head so I could r****h her neck with teeth-grazing kisses.

Life twitched in my groin at the thought of loving all over her body until she lay spent beneath me.

I couldn’t smell a damn thing thanks to my cold, but I imagined she’d be sweet in my nose.

She drew up in front of the shelf I’d been staring at, and f**k, how I wanted to crowd in tight against her and see what her a*s felt like pressed all over my front. She was so short—

Squatting rather than bending for my viewing pleasure, she pulled a box off the bottom shelf. “That'll clear you up for the day.”

She turned and smiled up at me with a guarded expression I wasn’t used to seeing on the opposite s*x. Not a stitch of makeup highlighted her face. Full but pale lips and porcelain skin most women would kill for created natural beauty—the kind I wouldn’t mind marking with my teeth.

The desire to slip off her glasses, bite those lips, and wrap my hands around her throat slid through my sluggish brain and blood, and my c**k stirred a little more despite my feeling like s**t.

Usually, I would drop a line or two, make my dimple pop, and not bother beating around the bush about my intentions, but I was too woolly-headed and addled from the feelings inside me to think straight let alone flirt or ask her out.

I took the box from her hand without a word. Our fingertips brushed, shooting a zing up my arm and straight down to my d**k. Those were some serious sparks, and I swallowed a groan.

Her large hazel eyes widened, mouth parted on a fast exhale as though she’d felt the same impending explosion.

I narrowed my gaze in concentration, wracking my foggy brain as I realized she looked familiar. There was no way I’d f****d her. I would never forget the woman who was unlike my usual hookups. She was shrimp-sized, the type a guy my size could carry around all day without growing tired.

The thought of her tiny body wrapped around me, heels clinging to my a*s and mouth sucking on my neck, sent a shot of adrenaline and rush of l**t to my groin, waking me up to the point my pants grew uncomfortable.

“I’ve seen you before,” I murmured, my voice far from flirtatious and sexy with its stuffy tone.

She nodded, her cheeks still pink, but she held my gaze like a damn champ for how shy she seemed. “You own Harper’s Construction.”

My head tipped to the side as I studied her hazel orbs half-hidden by those sexy glasses, wondering why she didn’t get that calculating glint in her eye most women did when they figured out who I was. The money I had. What I could give them.

“Yeah,” I answered, baffled and intrigued as f**k.

The f**k has she done to me?

Maybe it was the cold. Stuffed head. I wasn’t thinking straight.

Her chin with the cutest dimple lifted, shoulders pulling back as though offended rather than impressed by whose attention she’d completely ensnared. “I live across from what will be Werner’s Point.”

Memory hit me.

The young woman who’d snagged my eyes the Friday before. I’d only caught a glimpse of her before she’d turned and strode away without the usual backward glance I got more often than not from men and women alike.

“Blake Harper.” I held out my hand even though she seemed less than thrilled to officially meet the man who would block her apartment’s view of the river.

She peered at my outstretched offering long enough I shifted on my feet in a rare outward display of…something I felt clear through my bones. Tilted off my axis, I peered at the small woman who shouldn’t have been able to unsettle me.

But definitely had.

Unease had my feet moving slightly again. Couldn’t f*****g help it. The woman, in the brief span of minutes, had somehow burrowed into me like a damn tick.

I had to get her under me so I could pluck her from beneath my skin and move on.

With a huffed exhale, she finally clasped my hand.

Talk about a lightning strike straight to the d**k. I flinched hard, my abs going tight as f**k as I swallowed a groan. Such a small hand. Soft. Slender. I wanted those fingers stroking through my hair, worshiping every muscle lining my upper body and attempting to grasp around my d**k.

Fuck.

I swallowed hard as the earth quaked beneath my feet. I was so damn off my game—

“Wren Shipman,” she stated, that firm lift of her chin still in place as though she looked down her nose at me.

Laughable with her size, really, but her backbone only enticed me all the more.

“Wren? As in the bird?” I managed the smirk that revealed the dimple women loved.

The pink in her cheeks deepened, returning some of my confidence when faced with something I wanted. Lusted for. Had to have.

“Yes.”

Fuck, did I love hearing that word on her lips.

Pretty, pretty bird…I’m going to enjoy every second of ruffling your feathers.