Page 11 of Wrapped in Winter
“Drake!” Lily yells out, and I look at her. They both dance around me and Blossom gives me a wink. She’s always been the fun sister. Where Meadow is wild, Blossom is bubbly and outgoing.
“Now we know why Lily was anxious to get here,” she muses.
As Blossom skips off to the back room, I follow slowly and catch a glimpse of a man walking backward into the warehouse. He’s loaded down with heavy winter clothes, more so than usual, and it makes me frown at his appearance. He’s clearly not from around here if he's dressed in overkill for the weather.
His hair is dark and his shoulders broad. And when he turns to the side, his profile makes me gasp.
No fucking way.
Blossom gives me a look over her shoulder with a clear smirk at what I must have spoken out loud, and she calls out, “We’ve been waiting for you!”
Just then I see my daughter go racing by me and skidding to a halt. The man stops and drops down to his haunches and says,“Hey there, Pretty Lily. How are you today?” He puts his hand out and she gives him a slap, then he pulls a small bag from his coat pocket and Lily grabs it before stepping back and grabbing onto Blossom‘s leg.
He rises again and pulls a paper out of his back pocket, a pen out of his top shirt, and hands them to Blossom. “It gets colder here every day. I don't understand how you people live…”
His sentence falters as his eyes find mine. There’s some kind of weird electricity that flows between us, as if we’re both replaying that night together. Thattrashy, sex in a bathroom, I don’t know who I am, best I ever hadnight.
“January.” He breathes out my name, and it catches me off guard. The sound of it falling from his lips is sweeter than anything I’ve heard yet. The tone of it alone is turning me on. Our quickie was filled with moans and pants of breath, low-spoken words but never a full name.
Blossom looks back and forth between us. “Do you two know each other?”
I’m still frozen in my spot, every possible scenario for how to handle this running through my head. Do I turn and run again? He knows my name now; he knows where I work. There’s no getting away from him. Do I acknowledge that I remember that night? He knows I wasn’t drinking, so there’s no way I could play off the drunk girl act.
My only option is to walk up to him and shake his hand. The hand that was all over me, making me feel more in thirty seconds than I have in my thirty years.
I swallow hard and walk toward him, putting my hand out and ignoring the way my sister takes in our interaction. “January Nilsson.” He takes my hand in his, and it’s warm, big, and feels safe as it holds mine tightly.
“I’m Drake Ford.”
I drop my hand from his and smooth it on my jeans. “So you’re the new delivery guy my sister has been talking about?”
He gets a cute smirk as his lips twist, and I swear I see a blush form. “I guess so. What have you been saying about me, Blossom?”
He calls her by name too, and suddenly I’m jealous of my sister.
Stop it, January.
“I might’ve mentioned you a time or two. Lily is the one who has been talking about you.” His eyes soften as they drop to my daughter and he pulls on her little pigtail.
“Well, Pretty Lily is a sweetheart.” They chuckle together, and I’m left bewildered watching this exchange. My daughter is almost four and very shy, so the fact she ran right up to this guy is astonishing.
“So anyway, back to my question. How do you two know each other?” my sister butts in.
He stands back up to his full height, and I’m caught remembering how tall he was standing over me, holding me, controlling me. “I think it was a few weeks back, right, January? I ran into you at the bar and grill.”
I’m watching his face as he gets a smug grin, and Blossom snaps her head to me with wide eyes.
“You met at the Range? Why didn’t you tell me you already knew our delivery guy?”
I shrug at my sister's question. “What’s there to tell? I didn't know he was delivering here, and besides, we didn’t say much.”
He raises a brow and places his hand on his hip while leaning on the dolly that still has a bunch of our boxes on it. Boxes full of lingerie that I imagine wearing and putting on a show just for him.
ForDrake.
Damn, his name is hot.
Everything about him is hot.