Big (A Real Man, 20) Read online

  “Yeah, I’m thinking I need someone to help with my house.”

  Although the man sounded extremely masculine, he also sounded pretty nervous, as if he were asking something dirty and he didn’t want his mom to hear. But I was used to it. A lot of people felt uncomfortable asking someone for help, especially cleaning their house, even if they were paying for it.

  “Well, I can certainly help you with that. I’ll just need some details and then I can let you know what we have to offer and if anything suits your needs.”

  He cleared his throat again, and I knitted my brows. I had this tingling on the back of my neck, although I couldn’t quite place why I was having this funny feeling. “Or, you’re more than welcome to check out the website.” I rattled off the Internet address, but I had a feeling he wasn’t writing it down.

  The way he spoke in a rough timbre kind of led me to believe maybe he wasn’t a technology type of guy. I didn’t know anything about him, so I was generalizing, but I was pretty good at reading people, even over the phone, and he was screaming a man who probably did manual labor and was only indoors when it was time to eat or sleep.

  “Yeah, I don’t need to look at your website, ‘cause I’m all thumbs with that tech stuff.”

  I knew it.

  “I actually saw your flyer at the grocery store.”

  “Oh.” Paper flyers were pretty much a thing of the past, given technology, but the little town of Stone Creek wasn’t like the rest of the world. I’d come to find that out as soon as I moved here. People relied on the bulletin boards posted all over town and seemingly in every single business.

  I’d felt silly at first, tacking them up to the corkboards, feeling like I was back in the nineties, but when I did the survey after I was done cleaning a house, one of the questions asked how they heard about my business. And every single person said a flyer at a local business was how they found me.

  I probably didn’t even need to keep my website up and running, but it looked professional, was easy access, and was a point of reference if I ever wanted to have anybody check it out.

  “Okay, that’s not a problem. What type of services are you looking for?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “What am I looking for?”

  I got this funny feeling when he asked that question, repeating what I’d just said. I made my way over to my table and sat down, grabbing a piece of paper and a pencil to jot down the information he gave me so I could better assist him in letting me know what he wanted. I was a one-woman operation, which meant I wasn’t free at the drop of a hat and had to do everything myself. It also took me quite a bit longer to finish tasks than if I had a team, but again, this being such an intimate town, people actually preferred it that way. They didn’t want a houseful of random people and instead wanted someone they knew, trusted.

  And that was me.

  “I don’t know what I need exactly… just my place cleaned by someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. Half the time, I’m stumbling around, because I’m damn clueless.” He chuckled deeply, and I felt that tingle race through me, felt myself become hot, flushed.

  I laughed softly at his clear lack of housekeeping skills. “Well, I either have by-the-room cleaning rates or hourly rates if you’re looking for more of an entire house cleaning situation. I could come over and see what we’re dealing with, and we can go from there.”

  Most people who called me knew what they wanted. Their kitchen scrubbed down, appliances deep-cleaned. They wanted their bathroom squeaky clean or just their beds turned down and their rugs washed. It sounded like this guy wanted everything done but didn’t know where to start.

  I had a feeling he was a bachelor, probably hadn’t really cleaned his house in a long time, because he just didn’t have the time or didn’t know where to start.

  I could picture he was probably some aloof mountain man, had some acreage, maybe even a cattle farm or a horse ranch. I doubted he lived in town, but I could be wrong. Then again, my radar for these things was pretty spot on.

  “Yeah, that’ll work,” he finally said and cleared his throat again, and I wondered if it was a nervous habit.

  He gave me his address, and we arranged for me to come by tomorrow morning, but before I could ask for any other information, such as his name, he was off the phone.

  I pulled it away for my ear and stared at the screen, knitting my brows, wondering if I should even go there. He seemed kind of strange, even if no warning bells were going off in me.

  So, I typed in the address he gave me into the search engine on my phone, and when the results came up, my heart plummeted to my stomach.

  It was Big’s address.

  My mouth dried and my throat tightened. His address was linked to his cabinetry company, which was why his name even came up.

  My hands were shaking as I set my phone down and contemplated canceling. I would be nervous as hell if I went over there. Hell, I was already starting to sweat, and my heart was racing. But actually going to his house, being that close with him... speaking with him in person?

  No doubt, I’d make a fool of myself.

  Chapter Four

  Big

  I’d been up since four in the morning, not that that was unusual, given the fact that I was usually up at the ass-crack of dawn getting work done, but today I was up this early, because I knew Landry was coming over. Although she wouldn’t be here until eight, just a couple hours from now, I basically sat on the couch drinking coffee and staring at my fireplace. I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything, because all I could think about was her, how I was going to react having her in my home, being able to see if she smelled sweet or floral.

  I’d imagined this moment so many times, fantasized about it… jerked off to it. And my plan was to tell her how I felt, to be honest. I’d just been a chickenshit going about it, using the guise of needing my house cleaned to get her over here. Not that my house couldn’t use a deep scrub, but that wasn’t why I wanted her here, and she’d find that out today.

  I finished off my third cup of coffee and stood, walking over to the sink to rinse the cup out and put it in the drying rack. I braced my hands on the edge of the counter and stared out the window, seeing the thick forest that was my backyard, a couple squirrels racing up a tree.

  In the past five years, I’d envisioned a lot of stuff, like what it would be like to have a woman—Landry—in my home… in the home we created together. She’d put her little touches on the place, extinguishing the bachelor pad feel to it. I was a minimalistic man by nature; hell, I didn’t even have a TV. Not that I got decent reception where I lived anyway. And I hadn’t been lying when I said technology really wasn’t my forte.

  I worked with my hands, building things, creating objects. I left all the money and technology aspects of my company to the people who worked for me, worked with me. If not for them, I’d have to rely on word of mouth, which spread just as quickly as if people had found me through an Internet search. In fact, it was word of mouth that brought me the majority of my business, people who trusted my craftsmanship, who knew my cabinets would hold up, weren’t cheap and shitty.

  And it was because I put a little piece of myself in every project I did. That’s how I was with life, with the woman I wanted to give my heart and soul to. And that was Landry.

  For the next hour, I made myself busy tinkering with random shit, like fixing a hinge on a cabinet, checking the plumbing in the guest bathroom, and wondering if I should tear up the floorboard in the hallway, because it squeaked when I stepped on it at just the right angle.

  I was nervous, and that’s why I was finding all this handyman shit to do, but before I could tear anything else up, I heard someone pulling up the driveway, tires crunching along the gravel. My heart was beating hard and fast in my chest, and I walked over to the picture window in the living room, stared out, and saw Landry’s little sedan pulling to a stop in front of my place.

  I felt my body react, my palms
starting to sweat, muscles tense. Shit, I hadn’t felt this way since I was dared to streak across that football field all those years ago. I wasn’t a man who was moved by much, wasn’t swayed by letting my emotions dictate how I reacted. But when it came to Landry, I was finding I had no control over really anything.

  And then she got out of the car, and I curled my hands into tight fists, my nails digging into my palms. She was curvy in all the right places, thick like a woman should be. Instantly, those thoughts had my dick starting to get hard and I cursed, reaching down to adjust myself, because the last thing I wanted was for her to see my raging hard-on as soon as I opened the front door.

  She was looking at my place for a few seconds, and I wondered what she was thinking, if she was as nervous as I was. For all I knew, when I told her how I felt, she’d tell me I didn’t have a damn chance in hell of being with her.

  But I wouldn’t give up. I’d keep trying to convince her for the rest of my damn life if that’s what it took.

  I’d make her see she was meant to be mine.

  Chapter Five

  Landry

  I brought my hand up and rapped on the front door three times before taking a step back. Big’s house was what I’d envisioned. A cabin-like structure but with this gorgeous stone front-face. There was a raised porch that led to the front door, with ornate light fixtures on either side of the stained-glass windows on either side of the door.

  My heart was thundering, and I held the binder I’d brought with me so that I could input some notes and any suggestions he might have. Sure, I was “just a cleaning service,” but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be professional as hell when it came down to it.

  It felt like a lifetime for him to open the door, for me to pretend like I had my shit together, like I wasn’t affected by the very thought of his presence, the very thought of him. In reality, it was probably just a few seconds before I saw the handle turn, held my breath as the door opened.

  And then there he stood on the other side, his body so big, so immense it blocked out everything behind him. I felt so small in perspective, although I wasn’t a tiny thing. I considered myself voluptuous, thick in all the right places, curvy. I loved the way I looked, and my body was all woman. Some of society might not think that, but I didn’t give a shit.

  And standing in front of Big made me feel like I was this little, microscopic being, as if he could throw me over his shoulder and just take me up against the wall. God, I wanted him to do that.

  I shivered, desire moving over me, goose bumps popping out along my skin. I tried to hide my reaction as best as I could, tried to keep my expression stoic, my arousal in check, but it was pointless, useless. There was nothing I could do to seem remotely calm in this situation.

  I swore we stood there just staring at each other for a solid minute, that sixty seconds moving painfully slow as I awkwardly adjusted my binder from hand to hand. And finally, I cleared my throat and got my focus together, got my head in the game, and told myself I was here for a job, not to daydream about a future client.

  “Mornin’,” he said in this husky drawl, one that sent these little chills racing up my arms and legs.

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard a voice as deep as his, as purely male as Big’s was. He held out his hand, and for a second, I just stared at it, but then I snapped to attention and took it in mine. God, his fingers, his palm, were so much bigger than mine, engulfing my hand, swallowing it whole.

  I looked at his forearm, thick and muscular, a little bit veiny. I don’t know why that turned me on so much. But it did.

  “Good morning,” I said in this breathy, a little bit desire-filled, and embarrassing the hell out of me voice. I hated I couldn’t seem to control my body’s reaction when I was around him. And given the fact that this was the first time I’d actually ever spoken to him in person when it was just the two of us, and we were in this kind of intimate situation, it had me even more anxious.

  He stepped aside but still had my hand engulfed within his. I swallowed and once again tried to act unaffected.

  It was a losing battle though.

  He finally let go of my palm, and I swore it was as if he was a little reluctant. I knew I didn’t want him to let go.

  “Come in.”

  I gave him what I was sure was an awkward smile, and I curled my hand tighter around my binder as I stepped over the threshold and into his home. The first thing I noticed was the scent of pine. Not that artificial smell, but the kind that was natural, from the wood he used to build his home.

  At first glance, I noticed his house was pretty clean, aside from a few sections he was clearly using as storage. For a bachelor, I’d expected far worse. His home was rustic, but not in that mountain man, hermit crab way. There were accents of color here and there—rich reds, deep greens—but no pictures, no decor.

  The cabin was two levels, with the lower half being comprised of the kitchen, living room, and a hallway, which I assumed led to the bathroom and maybe a bedroom or two. The living room had one couch, no TV, but the centerpiece in the room was an ornate fireplace. My gaze was trained on it, on the gorgeous stone mantle, the wood carvings around it.

  I looked back at Big, lowered my gaze to his hands, and a part of me knew he’d built this place from the ground up. He was just that masculine.

  “So, pretty bad, yeah?” He cleared his throat, and I lifted my gaze from his hands up to his face.

  I felt my cheeks heat at being caught staring at him. I looked around. “I’ll be totally honest just from looking at the lower level.” I looked back at him. “Although I’d love to take your money, the houses I tend to clean for first-time clients really need more than just a ‘light dusting,’ so to speak.” I gave him another awkward smile. “And that’s really all your place needs.”

  “A light dusting?” He lifted a brow, clearly confused by my choice of words.

  “I just mean your place really doesn’t need the type of service you thought you may need, because it’s not bad at all.” I looked at the stack of boxes he had placed in a few corners. “I mean, you could probably do with getting rid of some of your....” I didn’t know what to call it. Supplies? Hoarded stuff?

  “That’s stuff that has to be donated.” He’d clearly seen where I’d been looking. “I actually just cleaned out the cellar and attic. Once the weather warms up, I’ll be doing the same with the shed and donating it.” He shrugged and then gave me a crooked smile.

  I thought it was pretty endearing he’d cleaned before I came over, given the fact that I was a cleaning service.

  He looked around the living room and kitchen and lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Let me show you the rest of my place, and then we can talk shop.” There was this tone in his voice I couldn’t quite place when he mentioned showing me the rest of his house, as if he wanted to, as if he hoped I liked it.

  Or maybe that was just me projecting once again.

  I smiled and nodded and let him take me around to the rest of the first level. He showed me the bathroom, the two small bedrooms. Then he led me upstairs. There were two other rooms, one of them the master bedroom, the other an office. There was a master bath attached to the master bedroom.

  I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking about how clean his house was, and how I wanted to take him on as a client for the simple fact that I had these intense feelings for him, even though I also didn’t want to be the asshole business who took advantage of someone.

  But it was clear he wanted someone to help him, which was why he’d contacted me in the first place, so I wasn’t going to argue the point.

  Once he was done giving me the tour, we sat down at the dining room table and I opened up the binder. I pulled out a pen from my purse, writing down some notes.

  Cleaning out the cluttered mess in the lower level.

  Deep cleaning all the bathrooms.

  Scrubbing of tiles.

  Organization.

  I read what I’d written out lo
ud, glancing up when I was finished. “Does that sound like something you’re interested in?”

  His body went visibly stiff. “Yeah, it does.” His blue eyes seemed to darken, and I felt my heart hiccup a little at the look he gave me. I was a little taken aback by the way he stared at me. It was this intense, penetrating look that had my pussy becoming even wetter and my nipples aching.

  I needed to get my mind on a more professional level for myself, because I was feeling a little bit too intimate in this moment. I shifted on the seat, straightened, and any words that would’ve left me froze in the center of my throat.

  “I’d like the full gamut of what you offer. Everything and anything.”

  I felt one of my eyebrows lift up curiously, my mind instantly going into the gutter at his words. I slowly closed my binder. “You’re sure? You want the entire thing?”

  He nodded once, his expression unreadable once again.

  I swallowed and nodded too. “Well, I have to let you know that will probably take quite a while, since it’s only me, and the price can get kind of expensive, since you want the whole house cleaned.” I worried my bottom lip, because the truth was money and cleaning his house was the last thing on my mind.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he was so large just sitting there, his shoulders so broad, the muscles underneath his shirt so pronounced. I crossed my legs, but that just added pressure to my clit. I bit my bottom lip again. I knew I was perpetually flushed. I felt it.

  “I want it all, Landry.”

  God, the way he said that made me think he meant a hell of a lot more than just using my cleaning service.