Page 8 of Single Mom's Mountain Men
He'll probably ask questions anyway. And just like the clerk, he probably won't buy my story about a family vacation.
But Charlie hasn’t said anything for the longest time. He simply stares down at me, scanning me so hard that I feel my embarrassment forming into a different kind of heat. He has such an intense gaze, one that feels like it’s stripping me of every secret and every covering, leaving me emotionally and physically naked in front of him.
It’s the kind of gaze I sometimes imagine when reading romance novels, during the part where the main hero claims the heroine, promising to protect and love her always. I've long since given up the idea that those types of men exist in the real world, but I have to hand it to him. Charlie Norris certainly has the look down pat.
I wonder if he looks like that during sex, if his gaze is that low-lidded while I’m sucking his cock or while he’s on top of me, driving me.
I rip the thought away as he closes the door behind him.And now that makes it twice I’ve started fantasizing about this stranger.I must be truly delirious.
“No worries,” he says, and it takes me a second to realize that he’s responding to my apologies. “It's good to be suspicious. You can’t be too careful these days. Anyway, Jamie told me y’all were looking for a place to stay?”
Jamie…? I realize then that he’s talking about the gas station assistant. Damn, she was so helpful to me, but I never even asked her name. The one thing I usually do, and especially with people from the service industry is ask for their name. As someone who has worked in that industry for years, I know how dehumanizing it can feel for people to simply address you with questions or with a snap of the finger, without so much as knowing your name and acknowledging that you're an individual with an identity that has nothing to do with your job.
So, my one big rule is to learn the names of all those who serve me.
But I had been too exhausted to think of anything back then.
“Is that not accurate?" Charlie asks in that deep voice of his and then I realize that I’ve been silent for too long, probably making him worried she got it wrong.
“Yeah, it’s accurate,” I say. “I’m looking for a place to stay for the night and maybe a few days more. Mind you I don’t have a lot of money.”
“That's fine. We can accommodate a range of budgets, although the Presidential Suite is closed for refurbishment right now, and we don’t really operate a five-star concierge service out of season, oh and I’ll warn you now that the swimming pool closes at night.” He leans against his truck, looping his finger through his belt buckle, smiling at his joke. The subtle movement drags his jeans low enough to reveal a strip of skin, the muscles underneath rippling in tension.
I stare at it, nearly licking my lips in hunger.
It may not be much, but it's enough to tell me that he must work hard to achieve those firm, sculpted abs, and he's probably powerful enough to show a woman more than an averagely good time.
I jump to alertness when a high-pitched scream interrupts us.
Instantly, I run back to my car and see my daughter, Maddie with tears.
"I don't want to be here!" she wails. "I wanna go home. I'm tired!"
“What happened?” I ask Kate as I undo the seatbelt and try to wrangle a struggling Maddie into my arms.
“She kept kicking the back of the car seat and I told her to stop,” Katie says, looking close to tears herself. “But she wouldn't stop and then I told her I wouldn't give her any more of my candy and she started crying.”
I sigh. I know Maddie is only acting out because she’s exhausted and Katie seems at the edge too.
“Okay, Okay, stop that hollering,” I say as gently as I can, and try to pull my daughter up out of her seat, but she continues screaming.
"I wanna go home!"
“Oh baby.” Her cries are driving me closer and closer to the edge too. I’m drained and I don’t know how to comfort her. Rocking her doesn't work and neither does whispering desperate promises into her ear.
I feel like a failure of a mother. Her cries echo so deeply that I start getting emotional. I'm getting close to tears when someone comes up and plucks her right out of my arms.
I immediately spin around to snatch her back, but he turns away from me, gently bobbing the screaming Maddie up and down. Indignation and fear flush through me. He took my daughter. He can’t just do that…
Why did he do that?
He doesn't seem bothered by her wailing. His face has that same stable expression, and shock suppresses my indignation for a few seconds.
What’s he doing with her?
He seems to be… humming?
He’s bouncing her up and down in his arms and humming a tune that I’ve never heard before. It sounds restful though,and strangely soothing. After finding herself unable to extract herself from his arms, Maddie finally gives up and rests her head on his shoulders, hiccupping, while tears flow from her eyes.
