Page 92 of Obsession

“Done, I think we can start. God, in this heat it would be better to put it off for another day.”

YES! I wanted to scream. I would have done anything to escape this place at that moment, because an afternoon with Harris was already shaping up to be pure torture.

But contrary to my expectations, he became very serious when Iolanda returned. He climbed into the container with a leap, and my knees buckled when I saw how full it was.

“Fuck! Iolanda, are you planning on selling honey to the whole state?”

Harris voiced my thoughts. There were crates upon crates of jars of honey.

She giggled proudly.

“It’s been a productive year, and, not to brag about it, but my honey is the star of this fair.”

I’d tasted it, so I couldn’t disagree with her.

We got straight to work. She sent me inside, to the area reserved for her family – ours – where she wanted me to take the jars out of the crates and put them on the shelves. I wanted to ask her why the hell she didn’t just leave them in the crates, but it was none of my business. She probably wanted to display them all like trophies.

The downside of the plan was that these shelves were about twenty feet high. There was a mobile platform with steps attached to it, and even though it looked stable, I was wearing adamn short skirt. Whatever involved me climbing on something that was more than three feet off the ground was a problem.

And Harris wasn’t the problem. Shockingly, it wasn’t him, but the rest of the retailers and workers who were constantly walking around the warehouse.

I didn’t have time to back out, and Harris showed up with the first box.

I mentally admonished myself not to stare like an idiot at how his muscles tensed from the weight he was carrying. He placed them at my feet without comment. After my comment about Iolanda’s friendship with his mother, he changed his behavior completely. My tongue itched to ask him if I had said something inappropriate, but it was better to work in silence.

I grabbed the handles of the wooden box and tried to pull it closer to the shelf. I gasped and almost collapsed on top of it.

“Jesus,” a shocked gasp escaped me, and Harris immediately returned next to me.

I’d expected it to be heavy, but not this heavy.

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted it in a different place?”

I looked at him in frustration.

“I wanted to pull it closer to the shelf.”

He picked it up completely off the floor and carried it to where I was pointing, then glared at me with a cocky face that annoyed me even more. Fucking pretentious ass! Not all of us had two hundred pounds of muscle, some of us had to make do with skin and bones.

He returned to his work and Iolanda came to help me put the jars on the shelves. I tore open the tape and was shocked to see that there were at least twenty jars inside - glass ones - so I had to be careful too, it wasn’t enough that I had to climb up on a platform with them.

It was easy at first because we started at the bottom of the shelves. Iolanda happily talked about bees, beehives, and other passions of hers while I tried to keep up with Harris, who carried those crates as if they were filled with feathers. It amused and annoyed me that each time he waited for me to tell him exactly where to put the box down. He only put it down when I pointed to the spot. It was a kind gesture, but he somehow managed to turn it irritating.

It was clear that he wanted to finish faster, and I was swallowed up by an avalanche of contradictory feelings. For about an hour, none of his specific remarks slipped out his lips. Here and there he spoke to Iolanda, but he was calmer than I had ever seen him before. I was grateful that he didn’t make an already difficult situation any worse. At the same time, though, I was an idiot who was starting to feel ignored.

Who the fuck could understand anything in my head anymore?!

Iolanda had to leave when we were about to finish, and I promised to take care of the rest, even though the fun was just beginning. I’d been on the platform quite a bit, but not dangerously high yet. Now we were at the last shelf and a knot tightened in my throat, especially when I noticed a group of boys nearby. All this time they were also carrying crates of peanut butter jars.

“I’ll get these up,” I winced when I heard his voice next to my ear.

I turned to him just as he set the box down on the ground and looked at my skirt, then at the top shelf.

“Don’t you dare climb up there.”

He didn’t even wait for my answer and returned to the truck.

Excuse me?

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