Big Man’s Happily Ever After Read online

  Big Man’s Happily Ever After

  Penny Wylder

  Contents

  Big Man’s Contract

  Quickie

  Hold Her Close

  Baseball Bride

  Big Man for Christmas

  Copyright © 2020 Penny Wylder

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or locales, is completely coincidental.

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  1

  Lina

  Welcome to my childhood home, Pepperhill Kentucky, population: more cows than people. I drive my hometown, in middle of nowhere. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone and their secrets. They all pray together in church on Sunday mornings and drink together at the bar on Saturday nights—at least that’s how it used to be before the bar closed. Not a damn thing has changed since I was seventeen-years-old and moved away with my mom to California. She decided she needed a new start and ripped me away from my school and friends and far away from my dad. The idea of sunny Southern California with the beautiful ocean, Hollywood stars, and endless opportunities was appealing, but it was also overwhelming. In Pepperhill I was the queen bee. Literally the homecoming queen. In this tiny little town my star shown the brightest. Here I was the sun and everything revolved around me. At least I thought it did. I might have been a little full of myself back then. I’d let my popularity get to my head. In reality, I was a lost teenager just like everyone else with insecurity issues and regrettable decisions.

  I pull my Honda into the parking lot of the run-down building. I remember when this side of town was bustling—as bustling as a one-horse town can be. It wasn’t any sort of metropolis, but there was a gas station, a small movie theater, car wash, fire department, and this place, the Osprey of Green Road. My dad’s bar. Now all of those businesses are closed.

  I’m looking around at all the vacant shops when a car comes out of nowhere, pulling out in front of me. I slam on my breaks to keep from hitting it and lay on my horn. A group of teenagers in the car sneer at me and the driver sticks his hand out the open window and gives me the middle finger before speeding off. And to think, I used to be just like them. Little shits. I shudder at the thought of it.

  I’m only twenty-five, so it wasn’t long ago since I was a teenager. Some days it feels like just yesterday, and other days it feels like a lifetime ago. Like now.

  I find a spot in front of the building, the same spot my dad always parked his old Ford blue and white two-toned farm truck. I can still remember the smell of gasoline as I rode in the passenger side on our way to the bar.

  Getting out of the car, I try to catch my breath. Between my close call with those teens and my anxiety of being back in Pepperhill, I’m finding it hard to keep my bearings.

  Even though I wasn’t technically allowed to be in the bar, my dad took me to work with him anyway. There were only two deputies in town and they were regulars at the Osprey and they didn’t seem to mind me being there. I would sit behind the bar, my feet dangling off a barstool above the sticky floor, and draw, or watch whatever sporting event was on TV, or just look up at my dad—who seemed like a giant, but was really only average height—make drinks and slide them across the bar. I loved this place, the smell of beer, the happy chatter of customers or the occasional sad story that my dad would listen to with the same rapt attention as a therapist. Oldies played on the jukebox and my dad would give me a handful of quarters to choose the songs I liked. My favorites were always his favorites, the same ones he would listen to in his truck on the ride to work. Anything by the Rolling Stones, Rush, or Styx.

  I take a deep breath and shake away the memories. My father is gone now. Grief washes over me in waves, but only for a moment before I push it away again.

  Walking up to the building, the paint peeling, the windows boarded up, I try to pull the door open. I peer through the narrow spaces of the boards, but it’s too dark to see anything inside. I know there’s a spare key somewhere in there because my dad was a creature of habit and he liked to keep things in their place. The building hasn’t been rented out or touched since his passing. It’s practically frozen in time. I don’t want to break the window, but I desperately want inside. I try to shove the door open. My ankle wobbles in my high heels and I fall to the ground, wincing when my butt hits the concrete. This is not working. Hoisting myself off the ground and brushing the pebbles off the back of my jeans, I grab my phone and look up the number for the only locksmith in town.

  He’s very friendly on the phone until I tell him my name and why I’m in town. Suddenly his tone changes and he tells me he can’t help me. I start to ask why, but he hangs up on me before I can get the words out. I hold my phone in front of my face, looking at it, confused, and wonder what the hell? I try to call back several times, but it just keeps ringing. What an asshole! That’s not the kind of hospitality one expects from a small town. What do I do now?

  I try calling around to other stores and ask who in the world might be able to help me, but they have no answers and seem just as rude. This town is so different than I remember. Everything has changed, and yet it seems exactly the same. I start to wonder if people are just rude or if it’s me. Replaying old memories, I try to figure out if there’s a reason people might be mad at me. Unfortunately, I can think of a few things. I wasn’t exactly an angel and I ran with the meanest crew in town: a bunch of girls with a superiority complex.

  I wander around the building, looking for a way in. Finally, I contemplate, once again, about breaking the window. It’s been a half hour since my call to the locksmith when a large black truck with a lumber rack on the back of it finally pulls into the parking lot.

  It’s not the locksmith as I hoped it would be. Instead I watch an incredibly tall, incredibly beautiful man step out of the vehicle. He has a head of thick dark hair, mussed up from driving with the windows down, but it looks good on him. He walks toward me with a sexy swagger. There’s a grim look in his eyes, but at the same time there’s something almost amused in the way he looks at me. I start to fidget under his dark gaze. The features of his face aren’t technically perfect; his nose is slightly crooked, possibly bent from an old fight; he looks like the type who wouldn’t shy away from a fight, and he certainly seems like he could hold his own. When he opens his mouth, his white teeth are slightly overlapped in the front, but those tiny imperfections do nothing to change the fact that he is fucking hot. If anything, they make him that much more fun to look like. They give him character. There’s nothing typical or generic about him.

  His toned arms are covered in sleeves of intricate tattoos. When he stands right in front of me, I can see that the tattoos are a scene from Greek mythology. Zeus is in the clouds, holding his lightning bolt amidst a roiling storm, while Poseidon is in the sea below with his trident and merman tail. The man looks just as chiseled as the gods depicted on his tattoo. I realize I’ve been holding my breath and let it out slowly with a quiver.

  “Welcome back, Linny,” he says in a honey-thick voice.

  I look at him, shocked. He didn’t call me Lina, my name, but Linny, the nickname I had growing up in this town. In fact, as soon as I left town I made sure no one ever called me that again except my mom. It was a nickname my dad gave me when I was young and everyone in town picked it up because of him. No one has called me that in a long t
ime. It’s strange to hear. Especially coming from this handsome stranger. It’s also unnerving.

  “Do I know you?” I ask him, hating the quiver in my voice. It gives away just how nervous I feel right now. It makes me feel exposed, vulnerable.

  He gets close enough for me to smell the delicious scent of his cologne. It’s a masculine scent that sends my head spinning.

  He chuckles. “How easily you forgot the boy you tormented.”

  I snap out of the reverie the scent of him has me in and focus on his perfect face yet again. I stare at him until my eyes cross, but nothing about him looks familiar. I could never forget a face like that. The fact that he says I tormented him doesn’t come as a surprise. That doesn’t narrow things down. I tormented plenty of people during my reign.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He laughs and rolls his eyes. “So that means you also don’t remember the promise you never fulfilled.”

  I shake my head, utterly confused … and then it comes to me in a flash of memories. Madden Trek. He was the skinny boy next door that my friends and I used to torment. He’d moved into the house next door when we were both in the third grade. He developed a crush on me after our parents introduced us and we got stuck in a class together at school. Every day there was some sort of little gift or sweet note waiting on the front porch for me when I would go out to play after finishing my homework.

  He wasn’t hideous then. A little awkward, maybe. His ears stuck out just a little and there was a cute little gap between his teeth that he used to spit water through. His crush on me never wavered over the years. So finally, when we were both sixteen and he asked me out for the thousandth time, I agreed. Not to go out with him, but to sleep with him. Dating a guy like Madden would have destroyed my reputation. But what people didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. Then one night, as I was writing in my diary about what I had agreed to do with Madden, my world came crashing down. I’d been sitting in my room, wearing headphones, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Haley, my best friend.

  “Who do you plan to sleep with?” she asked, her eyes wide with the excitement of potential gossip.

  My heart sank into my stomach and I felt queasy. How was I going to get myself out of this? News like this would devastate my popularity. I couldn’t let it get out. So I told her I was planning on playing an elaborate prank on Madden Trek.

  The gleam in her eye was pure wicked. And I felt terrible. If I didn’t go through with it, and my friends found out I had actually planned to sleep with Madden, my reputation would be ruined. I’d lose my status as queen bee, and at the time, that meant more to me than anything. I wouldn’t let anything stand in my way. And so we devised a plan.

  On a Saturday night, I wore my most form fitting, beautiful dress with sexy heels and waited for Madden to pick me up in the little truck his parents got him for his sixteenth birthday. He was nervous, his hands lightly drumming on the steering wheel as he drove through town.

  “I hope you like sushi,” he said and seemed almost panicked that he didn’t think to ask me my preferences before asking me on the date. I liked that he’d decided. Even back then, I liked a guy who took matters into his own hands and planned a great date.

  “I love it,” I said.

  And I did. The food was fantastic. I’d never really had sushi before because my mom was allergic to shell fish and didn’t want it near the food we ate at home. To this day, it’s still my favorite.

  Madden and I talked for hours. He was so charming and witty and intelligent. I’d never seen that side of him before. I actually really enjoyed the time we had together. It made me dread the rest of the night and what was to come. But what choice did I have? The plan was already set in motion. There was no going back.

  Madden wanted to take me to a movie, but I knew if we went to a movie first, I would have to go home right after because I would be pushing my curfew. I told him I would rather spend time with him alone and talk some more instead of going to the movies. He seemed excited by the prospect of spending more time alone with me. I gave him the directions to the bluffs, a place where my friends and I liked to go drink beer and listen to music on the weekends where no one would bother us.

  When we got there, we made out for a little bit. And I wanted to keep making out—he was a great kisser—but time was running out and I knew we were being watched. If I showed too much interest, I would’ve been accused of really liking him, and Haley would never let me live it down. After a while I told him to take off his clothes and wait for me while I went to smoke a cigarette. He looked a little taken aback, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t smoke, but he didn’t know that. He took his clothes off like I asked, while I went out into the woods to retrieve my friends who were lying in wait, laughing at how humiliating this would be for him. I wanted to call off the whole thing but it was already too late. I had let things go way too far and there was no stopping them now.

  Needless to say, things did not go well for Madden that night. By the next day, practically the entire school knew what happened. My friends, and everyone else for that matter, mocked him endlessly. He walked through the hallways with his head down. He refused to look at me when we were in class, and he no longer gave me little gifts or left sweet notes.

  My mom moved us away before I had the chance to apologize and make it right. I remember it all so vividly, yet the girl I was then feels like a stranger now. My dad died soon after that. There was a time when I thought my father’s death might’ve been karma because of what I did to Madden.

  The memory fades and I stare at the man in front of me, trying to see the boy he once was. Holy shit, has he changed. I hardly recognize him. The longer I stare, the more I see that boy hiding behind those deep set, mesmerizing eyes and angular jawline. He has the same great smile, though the gap between his teeth are gone. Those green eyes. How could I have not remembered those pale green eyes? I’d stared into them while we ate sushi. Now it seems so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him.

  “How have you been?” I ask casually, trying to play it cool.

  He ignores the question and asks, “Why are you back in Pepperhill?” His words are cold and a little cocky. He hates me right now, but he’s trying to show indifference. I can’t blame him. I would hate me too after what I did to him. I should just let him have his moment, but I have pride of my own and match his cold and cocky demeanor.

  I put my own indifference into my tone when I say, “I plan to restore my dad’s old bar to its former glory.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  I cut him off with a withering glare. If someone tells me I can’t do something, I most definitely will show them that I can, and I will. And I’ll show him. I know what I did to him when we were teenagers was wrong, and I even understand his coldness toward me, but I will not let negativity from other people drag me down.

  He stares at me calmly. “You can’t fix it up.”

  “Why the hell not?” I ask with my hands on my hips and a look of determination that refuses to waver.

  “Because you can’t even get the door open.”

  I roll my eyes. “So the locksmith gossips, I take it.”

  “Word gets around in a small town. Also, the locksmith is my brother’s best friend so I tend to hear news quicker than most.”

  “I hate this town,” I grumble and go back to the locked front door. There has to be a way to get in without busting the window. Last thing I want to do is pay for any unnecessary repairs. But if the locksmith won’t help me, I’m not sure what else to do.

  I decide to give it one more shot. First I take off my heels because I don’t want to fall flat on my butt yet again, and especially not in front of Madden. I imagine he would love to see me humiliated after the torture I put him through in high school. He deserves his retribution, but I’m not going to just hand it over to him on a silver platter.

  Tossing my heels to the side, I grab the door handle yet again.


  “You can’t muscle that thing open,” he says.

  His lack of confidence in me only makes me want to try harder even though I’m almost certain he’s right. I’m angry and not exactly thinking clearly, so I’m not completely using all of my brain power when I decide to throw my shoulder into it like you see people do in movies. One hard thrust and I slam into the door. I let out an agonized yelp, and I’m afraid I’ve broken my collarbone from the impact. Once the pain wears off and the fire in my shoulder settles into to a dull ache, I try again because I think maybe if I use a different position or stance it will work this time. No amount of logic will make me believe otherwise at this point. I’m far too stubborn for that.

  Just as I’m about to throw myself at the door again, Madden grabs me and pulls me to the side. I’m shocked by the sudden touch, but not in a bad way. Not at all, which also surprises me. He looks a little taken aback himself, but shakes it off quickly.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” he says. I might’ve taken offense by the words, but they were said lighthearted.

  He grabs the handle the same way I did. “It’s not going to—” I start to say but I’m interrupted by the loud crack as the frame fractures and the door swings open.

  I look at Madden, surprised yet again. He’s insanely strong. How did that skinny boy from high school change so much in such a short amount of time?

  “What the hell have you been eating?” I ask him.

  He gives me a look, something like pride, but also like disgust. He really doesn’t like me, and I don’t like that look he’s giving me, so I turn back to the door. There’s a bit of damage but nothing too expensive and nothing I can’t fix on my own. It’s a far better alternative than breaking a window.

  Walking into the bar, I go straight to the cupboard where my dad kept the spare key. It’s still there. Everything is just as I remember it. No surprise there. The only thing that surprises me is how good of shape it’s in. By now I figured raccoons or teenagers or squatters would have wrecked the place. Looking around it doesn’t seem like anything has been touched. I guess that’s one good thing about a small town in the middle of nowhere. People tend to have just a little more respect for others’ things than they do in the city.