It was the hot dad she was waiting for.
Jackson Reid.
He was nothing like what she’d expected. She felt silly, suddenly, that she’d had an expectation at all. But a single dad with a tiny baby made her think of someone soft, and the man she’d corresponded with online had seemed...maybe even sweet.
Checking out her boss in the first ten seconds of meeting him was kind of a bad start. But then, she supposed she could forgive herself that. She’d been with Darren for five years, and during that time, it had never even occurred to her to check another man out. Finding herself unattached again was presenting some interesting side effects.
That was all this was. That part of herself naturally inclined toward seeking attachment reminding her that she currently didn’t have one. And all she had to do was remind that part that she didn’t want one. She squared her shoulders and crossed the space, standing closer to the baggage carousel, but also a little bit nearer to Jackson.
Who was apparently a hard-bodied cowboy.
She waited for him to see her. Waited for him to close that remaining distance. But he didn’t. Instead, he continued to scan the crowd, such as it was, his eyes skipping over her easily. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Particularly since her eyes had gone immediately to him, and had had a nearly impossible time leaving.
She cleared her throat and looked back at the baggage carousel. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe she was still waiting for Jackson Reid. Maybe it was some other man all by himself with a little baby. Maybe this man was waiting for his wife.
A wife who would no doubt be pretty and petite, and as striking as he was.
A wife who was probably sexually confident and not frigid and buried under years and years of issues.
She took a deep breath, and the conveyor belt on the carousel began to turn. People crowded in, collecting their bags. She wasn’t expecting hers to show up anytime soon. It was her own little Murphy’s Law that her bag was always last off the plane. She wasn’t quite sure how.
Not that she had traveled very much. She’d gone on a few little trips before her marriage. A post-graduation excursion to Disney World with some friends, a couple of spring breaks where she had been fully out of her element and had spent most of the time in the hotel room sober and trying to pretend she didn’t know her friends were hooking up with strangers a floor above her.
Then she had met Darren and they’d taken that first trip to Colorado to meet his parents, and then had moved to his hometown to be surrounded by his family. A family that had, at first, seemed like a dream to her, given her own parents. She’d settled into a life that had slowly grown more and more confining in ways that Savannah hadn’t totally realized until she had been free of it.
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized the baggage carousel had emptied out, and her flowery, purple bag was going by. She grabbed hold of it, happy that the cheerful color and pattern made it easy to spot. Always being the last bag helped, too.
She hefted it off the carousel and turned around, and her eyes collided with his.
Oh, it was definitely him.
“Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.
“I think I’m waiting for you,” she said, looking down meaningfully at the little pink bundle.
“Savannah Sturm?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
His eyes landed on her suitcase. “I suppose your description of the bag was true enough.”
She blinked, looking up at him, and wondered if he had been thrown off because she had characterized herself as tall. Well, at nearly six feet, she was. But then, Jackson had to be nearing six-five, so it was entirely possible he didn’t see tall the same way that she did.
“Sorry. I guess tall is subjective.”
His scorching brown gaze moved over her, and for an instant she thought she was going to be singed alive. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply turned. She moved to follow him, and he stopped to take the bag from her hand without asking if she wanted him to.
“You’re holding the baby,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, well, Lily doesn’t weigh fifty pounds, and I assume the suitcase does. Either way, I can handle both just fine.”
She had no trouble believing that. Still shamefully taking a visual tour of his muscles, she watched the way he maneuvered both baby and bag easily outside, to where his truck was parked against the curb. There was an old security guard standing right next to it, looking officious, like he was about to make a proclamation. Jackson zeroed that gaze onto the guard. “I’m leaving.”
“It’s for loading and unloading only,” the guard pointed out, tapping the sign with his forefinger to illustrate the point.
“And I’m loading,” Jackson returned, his voice and glare as hard as steel.
Well. He was a whole thing.
Savannah gave an apologetic wave and got into the passenger side of the truck. Jackson hefted her suitcase into the bed, and then opened up his door, gently installing Lily’s car seat in the small bench seat behind the driver side. Then, he got in and started the engine, pulling them both away from the airport.
“How was the flight?” he asked.
“Quick,” she responded. “It’s only a couple hours from Colorado.”
“It’s going to take half that time to Gold Valley,” he said. “Near enough.”
“So there’s no airport in Gold Valley.”
“Nothing beyond a tiny municipal airfield. Not for commercial flights.”
“I figured as much when you told me to fly into Tolowa.”
“Our ranch is a bit out of town. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”
“Who’s... I thought you were... I didn’t think Lily’s mother was in the picture.”
“She isn’t,” Jackson said. “But I live on a family spread with my brothers and my stepsister. Lily and I live in our own cabin, and you’ll stay there with us.”
The idea of living in a cabin, which sounded cozy to the point of being tiny, seemed almost impossible now that she had actually laid eyes on the man. He was so large. He would fill up so much...space. It was impossible that he wouldn’t.
She didn’t say that out loud, though, and hid any discomfort. She’d been looking for a change. Looking for a new job in child care, because that was what she did, and when she had run across the ad from Jackson it had seemed like a godsend. Because wherever she ultimately landed, this job would provide her with the means to get away. And she desperately needed to get away.
Living in a small community where her ex-husband was a hometown legend, where his family owned half of everything, was impossible. She’d been choking on the mile-high air in her old life. A clawing desperation to be anywhere else taking over her every thought, as her options in her little town had been eliminated little by little. But moving was expensive, and it required a hell of a lot more credit than she had at this point in her life. Everything being linked to Darren had been fine when she had assumed that it would be forever. But when her marriage collapsed, she’d been left with nothing.
Jackson’s ad seeking a live-in nanny had seemed perfect, and their back-and-forth conversation online had been effortless, making the decision to take the job even easier. But she hadn’t considered the stark reality of being in such close quarters with a stranger.
“What do you do on the ranch?” she asked. She was desperate to fill the silence. If she didn’t, she would be left with her thoughts,