Chapter 7
AJ
What was it about a man’s forearms that were so sexy?
Was it because the muscles and veins and mud spoke of strength and skill and the willingness to get dirty?
When Sam had hopped back in the truck with his coveralls off, I had still been mentally processing the events of the highway.
One look at what had been hiding under those coveralls gave my brain something new to focus on.
Faded and soft-looking jeans that were bunched around the muscles of his thighs.
A white T-shirt, streaked with God only knew what, clung to his chest in a way I was a little jealous of.
The muscle was clear from a mile away. Not the kind you show off in a bodybuilding show, but the kind that comes from long days of heavy lifting.
Steel wrenches, thick tow cables, tangled chains, and solid rubber tires were his bread and butter.
The ease with which he had moved my body when we were in danger was something I knew I’d be thinking about when I laid in bed, whenever that was.
Sam was breaking through my usual shell.
Maybe I was sleep deprived from the early arrival at the airport.
Maybe I needed coffee. Maybe it was the near miss on the highway, but I felt way more comfortable with him than I should after only a few hours.
With that in mind, I decided to ask him a question that I wasn’t sure he would answer.
“So do you know most of the emergency responders around here?”
He nodded. “A lot of them, yeah. Brock’s a good guy. I can only imagine what he told you about me. The way he tells it, I am basically a bear with a safety vest that learned to walk upright.”
I laughed. “He did refer to you as Safety Sam.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I overheard you two talking,” I continued. “He mentioned something about your sister-in-law. It sounded like something happened. Something bad, I assume.” I knew my voice was tentative, and the unasked question hung in the air.
The levity on his face melted, the lines seeming to deepen around his eyes, but it was too late to take the words back.
He paused long enough that I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. “He shouldn’t have said anything about Lauren.”
That was the end of the conversation, and I knew it.
I regretted asking something that was clearly painful, but I was curious to know everything that led to him being the man he is.
Still, I understood what it was like to have other people share your secrets.
“Some things are too hard to talk about. I get it.” I pulled the blanket to my chin and turned back to the windshield.
Kamloops got a lot of snow, but nothing like what we were driving through now.
Thick sheets of untouched snow, so bright that it hurt to look at, blanketed the hills and trees that bordered the road.
The road cut through and tunneled under huge mountains.
Aside from other cars, the only sign of civilization was the ribbon of highway itself—a highway that had half disappeared under the snow.
The radio squawked on the dash, and I jumped.
“Hope everyone’s comfortable. Highway is at a standstill southbound at the Coldwater River crossing. Over.”
Sam grabbed the hand piece. “Thanks for the info, good buddy. Is it looking closed or delayed? Over,” he said into the radio.
Sam rested the piece against his chin while he waited for a reply, one hand on the top of the wheel, bicep peeking out from that worn-out T-shirt. God, it wasn’t fair that men could be this effortlessly sexy when I had to spend half a paycheck at Sephora just to look halfway presentable.
“Two-hour delay or so, they are saying, clearing a small avalanche. Over.”
“Roger. Keep it shiny side up.” Sam hung the handset up and settled his hand back on the gear shift.
“Shiny side up?”
“It just means drive safe. You know, rubber on the road and shiny side up.”
I resisted the urge to laugh at the trucker lingo.
I didn’t realize people talked like that outside of Hollywood movies.
It took a minute for the ramifications of the conversation to sink in.
My brain had turned this into some kind of fun road trip, but I was on a mission.
A closed highway wasn’t an option. “Do you think we can still make it in time?” Despite my best intentions, my voice squeaked like a tire on wet pavement.
He glanced at me and then back at the road. “I’ll do everything that I safely can.” He went quiet for a moment before continuing. “I’ve got to ask, why is this trip so important? Can’t you just reschedule or something?”
I picked at the fleece pills on the blanket.
My chest was a little tight, but sharing this with him felt right in the cocoon of the truck.
“Remember what I was saying earlier? About how I love the creative side of my job, tolerate the sales, but spend most of my time on the office politics? Well, two things make it worse than your average office. One is that it is a total boys’ club, the other is that my ex-husband works there too.
” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. The emotion of the situation was sneaking up on me as it often did, even two years later.
“That…” He paused. “Sounds awkward as hell.”
“It is. Not just seeing him, but that everyone in the office knows our history. We met through work. I was a twenty-three-year-old intern when we got married. You can imagine what people had to say about that.”
Sam’s jaw clenched noticeably. “Why do I feel like punching this guy in the face?”
I snorted a laugh. “Stephen has that effect on a lot of people. Anyway, he was the older guy, the supervisor on the fast track to upper management. He could command a room, make you feel small or special depending on the situation. And he wanted me.”
Sam flexed his hands on the steering wheel but didn’t comment.
“I’ll save you the details, but ten years later, we’re divorced.
Now he’s engaged to his secretary, who is not only five years younger than me, but also pregnant.
Someone needs to pitch to a potential new client in LA.
The only reason I’m here and he isn’t is because it’s too close to her due date.
It’s now or never for me to get this win.
A new job will be opening up soon, and I want to be considered.
Bagging this client should go a long way to getting rid of my reputation as the girl who tried to sleep my way to the top and failed.
” I sniffled and looked out the side window, taking in the wide world that exists outside of my office walls.
Stephen and I had never talked about kids when we were together.
Work had been our baby. Networking and mingling and scheming were our priorities.
A child would never have fit into our world, and it hadn’t occurred to me to mourn the opportunity to become a mother until Stephen was gone.
I’d bought my own condo and found that the hard lines of granite and stiff leather were his style, not mine.
I filled the space with overstuffed furniture, soft blankets, and color.
A child could have fit into my world if I had been authentic to myself—if I had treated my job as a job and not my entire personality.
It was too late now. I was all in. I was in my mid-thirties, hopelessly single, and hadn’t even managed to commit to a cat let alone step away from my career enough to consider parenthood.
It was a subject that I stuffed firmly into a box in the back of my mind, yet it managed to spring free every time I saw the growing belly of Stephen’s fiancée.
“Have you thought about quitting? Working somewhere else?” Sam’s words interrupted my pity party, and back into the box went my thoughts of kids.
I nodded. “I have. Maybe not as seriously as I should. Something about it feels like failure. Like turning tail and running. I need a win over him, over all of them.”
“That’s a shitty situation, AJ. I’m sorry.” He patted my knee with his hand before returning it to the gear shift.
“Yeah, well, karma is finally on my side. If I can nail this, if I can use this one opportunity to prove myself, everything will change.” My stomach tensed. The stakes were high enough without adding my present travel arrangement to the mix. It would all be worth it; I just knew it.
******
The truck started to slow, and I pulled myself out of my mind, where I was going over my presentation, and looked around.
We bounced over ruts in a gravel driveway and into an oversized lot with a single standing industrial building.
Everything was covered in a thick blanket of white snow.
Trees surrounded the lot, and the far corner was filled with what I assumed were broken down cars.
Miscellaneous pieces of equipment were clustered at the back.
“Welcome to Safe and Sound Towing,” Sam said, pulling up in front of the building and throwing the truck into park.
“Go ahead and go inside. I’ve got to gas up this pig and grab a few things.
” He gracefully jumped down into the snow, forearms bare and roped with hard working muscles.
His jeans hugged his ass and skimmed over strong legs as he purposefully strode away.
I would have been happy to sit and watch Sam work, but I was cold and uncomfortable where the snow had melted into my clothes, and I really had to pee.
I tumbled out of the big truck and tiptoed through the snow and into the metal door of Sam’s building. Or his office? Garage? It was kind of both, but most importantly, it was warm and there was a bathroom.