Love Finds You

The cold breeze from the night air moved through the tall stalks of wheat. The golden stems bent towards one another whispering a secret tune. The heavy denim jacket that Gabe had placed on my shoulders locked in my body heat like a steal trap, making face flush with heat or at least that was what I told myself.

I glanced up at the farm hand from underneath the protectiveness of my thick lashes. His sleeveless stained white shirt hugged his body while exposing the bare deeply toned muscles on his shoulders. I nibbled on the corner of my lip as I looked over each dip and curve that they made. His arms swayed casually from side to side as he walked making the long tendons stretch and bulk with each move.

Although I had never been with a man before I was not so innocent as to not know what a naked man looked like. Posters and billboards lines the streets in New York of half or nearly naked men but compared to the hard defined lines on his back they all seemed like cheap imitations now. I wasn’t sure if he was slowing down or if my steps were quicken but either way he seemed to be getting closer. With each inch that vanished between us the more heated the inside of the jacket became.

When his thick southern voice called out to me I was snapped out of my embarrassing thoughts and I quickly averted my eyes back to the ground. With my face now flushed with even more heat I quickly mumbled, “What was that?”

“Did ya’ settle into your new room alright?” He asked again with a light chuckle.

A small smile turned the corner of my lips. “Yeah,” I said already thinking about the room that Grandma had set me up in.

When you live in a city you get used to small places and thick crowds so when she had told me that the large single bedroom was mine I just about lost my jaw. The room was equivalent to two of the larger sized ones that had been in my old apartment, and the bathroom connecting to my new bedroom was bigger than my last bedroom had been. The walls and trimming were covered with chipped ivory paint and all of the furniture in the room was made from a dark wood. While my old room had been more colorful this one was definitely grander.

“Ah, like your new room that much huh?”

My eyes felt wide as they snapped up from the ground. Gabe was staring at me from over his shoulder with a knowing smile on his face. I blinked up at him for a long moment and when I finally got my head back I quickly sputtered out,

“No I don’t like it at all, but I’m assuming that it’s the best that my grandmother could come up with on such short notice so I’ll put up with it.”

Gabe came to a halt so abruptly that I nearly ran into him. The golden flecks around the pupils in his eyes glimmered as he focused in on me with a skeptical look. The intensity of his stare made my body tremble with something foreign. That breathtaking stare lured me in and although my brain was telling me to avert my eyes I couldn’t. For a split second my stomach ached with something hot and before I could even question what it was it soared up into my chest. The warm feeling made my skin tingle and my heart pound against my chest.

The side of Gabe’s lip quirked up and I felt my heart do a flip. “You’ve got to be the worst liar that I’ve ever seen.”

My cheeks felt as if they were on fire. “I’m not lying.”

He let out a quick laugh as he turned around to face me. “Ya’ are too Dollface,”

I felt my frown deepen as I rested my palms onto my hips and leaned a little bit forward. “Prove it.”

His smile quirked up a little higher giving him a very dark yet sexy kind of look. I felt my frown slowly slip from my lips while he ate up the distance between us. He stopped a decent distance away from me but the intensity of his eyes made it seem so much closer. His white teeth sparkled as he brushed the backs of his fingertips against his cheek. “Your face lit when I asked ya’ about it. Now why would that happen if ya’ hated the room?” He then tapped a dirty long finger to the tip of his nose and crinkled it a little. “And that button nose of yours gets all scuffed up whenever ya’ lie.”

I gasped and quickly covered my face with my hands. “It does not!” I denied.

“Oh ya’ it most certainly does Dollface.” He tossed his head back and let out a deep throaty laugh. “Ya’ made the same face earlier when ya’ tried to convince me that your boyfriend was coming to pick ya’ up at the bus stop.”

My chin was practically pressed against my collar bone in an attempt to hide my feverous complexion. “Well you can’t really blame me for that. I thought that you were some creep that was going to kidnap me or something.”

“Mmm,” His dazzlingly smile was compressed into a thin line and he looked up at the night sky as if he was in a deep thought. “Ya’ know now that ya’ put it that way it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.”

My chest grew tight and my head shoot up high to meet his smoldering gaze. His wicked smile flashed, showing me his pearly white teeth and giving me the impression of a wolf grinning right when it had captured its prey.

“Tell me Dollface what ya’ would do if I took ya’ away?” His southern drawl was husky and rough as he stared down at me.

I felt my throat and mouth become dry as I stared back at him with mixed feelings of curiosity and fear. The first time I had laid eyes on him I had known that he was a darkly seductive man with somewhat of an edge but after he had informed me that he worked for my grandmother I had chalked it all up to him just being a harmless flirt. Now I was wishing that I had stuck to my originally thought of him because at least that would have made me keep my guard up around him but now…I was defenseless.

Something dark crawled into my mind once I realized how open I had left myself to his charm. My body grew cold and hard and my hands trembled as they held onto the denim jacket as tightly as possible. “The thought of you touching me makes me sick.” I seethed out through clenched teeth. I don’t know if it was a defense mechanisms or if it was just the snoody nasty half of me speaking but whatever it was smoldered the heat behind his eyes. As soon as I saw the change in him I was able to grab ahold of reality again and instantly I wished that I could have taken the words back.

It was too late however. Gabe’s shocked and pained stare held mine for the longest of seconds. His smooth seductive smile was turned into a thin frown and his shoulders sagged slightly forward. He ran a hand awkwardly through his thick hair and averted his gaze to the house, as if he wished for it to be much closer. “That’s a little harsh there Dollface but I got your message loud and clear.”

My chest constricted painfully and I quickly took a step closer to him. “I didn-

“We best be getting back to the house before supper goes cold.” He gave me his back and made his way back towards the house.