“Looking for me?” a voice said from behind me.
Startled, I turned around and saw what might as well have been the goddamn Marlboro Man. All-American cowboy sex on a stick. I know my jaw dropped.
“Uh,” I said. “I’m from the health department. I have some flyers to post about a new group.”
He stood there, just staring at me in that unnerving way. I looked at him long and hard, looked my fill, you might say. I adjusted to the sight of his handsomeness, his big, muscled size. Finally, his features coalesced into what was niggling my brain. If my libido hadn’t engaged immediately, I would’ve seen it sooner. He looked just like Maggie’s husband, Jeremiah, but more rugged, rougher around the edges. Bigger and stronger, where Jeremiah was lean.
“I’m Layla Mayberry. I’m a friend of Maggie’s and Sarah Jo’s.” I said, introducing myself. If he was going to stand around being the strong silent type, thinking it would intimidate me, he had another thing coming.
Coming, yeah, not a word I needed to be thinking around him.
“I’m Tyler Leeds. Jeremiah’s brother.”
“I see that,” I said. “You don’t run in to two faces like that very often.”
He raised one eyebrow at me, probably trying to be ironic but coming across as wicked and hot as hell.
“You’re very good looking,” I said with half an eye roll. “To state the obvious.”
He just stood there with five massive boards over his shoulder, held by one gloved hand, his muscular forearms balancing them effortlessly. I had to consciously force myself to stop swearing.
“Don’t you want to put down your boards?” I said. “Or are you just Thor and it doesn’t bother you to lift heavy things?”
“I guess I’m Thor,” he said, without a single spark of laughter. His somber, intense gaze and deep voice were doing things to my lady parts that made me clear my throat. So much for not caring if men found me attractive.
I handed him the flyer. He barely glanced at it and looked at me.
“You can put it up wherever,” he said with a shrug.
“What if I need help?” I said, flirting a little.
“If you got a Ph.D. I don’t think you need help figuring out how to use thumbtacks,” he said.
“Oh just give me the damn thing,” I said.
“Feisty,” he said with a half smile.
I wanted to kick dirt on his boots, but when I looked down, those work boots were already plenty dusty.
He flustered me. Most people didn’t. Aggravated, I tried to walk away with dignity, but I’m pretty sure I flounced away indignant as a hen with her feathers ruffled. He didn’t seem interested, so I’d wasted my attempt at flirting. Exactly what I deserved after extolling the virtues of the single life with a vibrator to Caroline earlier. I practically panted after the first hot guy who crossed my path. I needed to get ahold of myself.
3
Tyler
Sixteen hours of backbreaking work in the summer heat should’ve been enough to tire me out. I should have stumbled to bed, exhausted, collapsing without even taking a shower. No. Instead I was blasting the iciest water I could, not to wash off the sweat of a long, filthy day at work, but to try to cool the raging hard-on I’d been sporting since I’d met Layla Mayberry hours ago. It was the way she made fire run through me, everything sparking to vibrant color. She made me pay attention, be present in the moment. I was better off retreating. Go outside, keep moving, lift and climb and haul, work until I was half dead. That might stop the nightmares and give me one night of peace.
She had a great ass and red lipstick and looked nothing like a shrink. She had a lot of nerve walking around like that with her smart mouth and her lush body. She was tall, taller than most women, with curves in the right places. I was bigger than her, and I towered over her. I’d even tried to loom over her when she was flirting with me, ready to suggest I give her a boost to reach the bulletin boards. She was plenty tall enough, and it was all I could do not to tell her what I was thinking. That she didn’t need a boost. She needed me to bend her over a table and jerk those overalls down around her ankles and show her what a man can do.
She’d think I was a caveman if she knew the things I wanted to do to her. I shook the cold water off my hair. Nothing helped, not even the sharp, frigid spray pounding on me.
If anyone could convince me to see a shrink again, it would be that woman. Those overalls just showed off how feminine she was, that a woman’s body filled them out, curvy and sweet. I wanted to get my hands on her. Since that couldn’t happen, I’d have to take matters in hand myself. I turned off the water and toweled off. I stretched out on my narrow bed, the ceiling fan trying and failing to cool my blazing flesh. My breath sawed hard in and out of my chest. I squinted my eyes shut. It had been a long time since I spun a fantasy that wasn’t a flashback to pure hell. I wondered if I remembered how.