“It would be my pleasure.” She was still smiling at him, and it was doing all kinds of uncomfortable things to his body, reminding him exactly how long it had been since a woman smiled at him with anything other than pity, or even touched his damn arm, for that matter. Let alone how long it had been since a woman had touched any other part of him. Maybe that was the reason he was about to lose his damn mind every time Megan so much as blinked in his direction.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to get settled in, but I’ll call once I’ve talked to Priya,” she told him. “And thanks again. We really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.” He watched as she walked toward the castle, trying not to stare at the sway of her ass inside her jeans. Megan was tall and lean, curved in all the right places. Her mahogany hair shone in the sunlight. Gorgeous. Every inch of her. Megan’s tanned complexion and dark hair and eyes were the opposite of Alana’s pale features. He’d thought blonde hair and blue eyes were his “type,” but lately, it was Megan’s face inspiring his fantasies.
And he had a serious problem on his hands. He and Alana had started dating at fifteen. She’d been his first date, first kiss, first girlfriend, and he had been hers. But her strictly religious family had insisted she wait for her wedding night. After watching his mother’s life disintegrate from too many men and drugs, Jake had been happy to wait if it meant being a part of the wonderful thing he’d shared with Alana, the glimpses of stability and happiness he experienced when he visited her parents’ house.
And so, at just eighteen years old, he had walked down the aisle, ready to start his new life with the woman he loved. When he first heard the screams, when he saw Alana on the ground in her white dress, he’d thought she would jump up at any moment, laughing at her own clumsiness. It would be a funny story to tell. “Remember how you fell down the steps behind the VFW hall during our wedding reception?”
But Alana hadn’t gotten up, laughing or otherwise. She’d gone into a coma, where she lingered for almost nine years. He’d been forced to watch her wither away in that hospital bed, becoming a fragile shell of the vibrant woman he’d loved since he was fifteen, until finally, she’d left him forever.
Now, Jake found himself in the most uncomfortable and unwanted position of being a twenty-eight-year-old virgin widower, and he had no idea what to do about it. Part of him wanted to get drunk at the local bar, take a woman home, and be done with it. But he couldn’t do that in a small town like Towering Pines, not unless he wanted the whole town to know about it, anyway.
His attraction to Megan was quickly becoming a problem, though. There was no way he was going to lose his virginity with the woman who managed the property he’d just leased. That was asking for disaster. Megan was off-limits. If only he could as easily convince his body as his mind.
