Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

I would just curl up on my side, looking out the window, not sleeping. Then I would catch a few hours, and be woken up by my alarm to check the front porch.

As much as I loved winter - and I did - I was maybe looking forward to spring when I could catnap outside on the hammock. I slept better outside.

My mother used to scream at me as a kid when I wandered out of bed at night and went to sleep on the balcony of our apartment.

Look at all these mosquito bites. You are always testing my patience, Mireya. I have a meeting in the morning.

She had a meeting every morning.

She was a busy woman.

And I was her annoyance.

To be fair, I probably was a pain.

You have too much of your grandmother and not enough of me in you.

Again, true.

Though, again, to be fair, I spent a lot more time with Babcia than my mother. Sure, I lived with my mom most of the year. But I was in school for six hours. After that, I was forced into various after-school programs. Brownies, piano, karate.

Brownies was too groupy for me. I didn't have the hands for piano. And hitting anyone, even just for show, made my stomach feel wobbly.

I saw my mother at a late dinner, and when she went over my homework before bed. On weekends, I had a neighbor who took me in to play with her son because we were 'such good friends.' He used to pull my hair and make comments about showing him my nether regions.

I got through the year.

I lived for the summers.

It was when I got undivided attention from an adult from dawn to dusk. Later. Babcia didn't believe in bedtimes.

You'll drop when you're tired enough.

That was where my outdoor sleeping came from. I would work with her all day taking care of the animals, learning at her side how to build and fix things around the house. And then I would drop on the hammock in the midday for a long nap.

I guess it just stuck with me as an adult. Though I did have enough of my mother in me that, now that I was grown, I tried to make myself hit the sack at what was considered a reasonable hour.

Maybe it wasn't exactly helping either that my mind wasn't racing with plans on what to plant in spring, or how to get the people who owned the big box store in town to stop putting anti-bird spikes on their roofs.

Oh, no.

I was thinking about a certain beautiful face with the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

It was doing things to me.

No, not those things.

Okay, yeah, those things too.

There was no denying the swelling feeling in my breasts, the tightness in my chest, the way I felt flushed, and, well, the way my belly did a little flip-flop when I thought of him.

What can I say, I was finally, finally interested again. There was just something about this Reeve with his strong, work-hardened hands, his laid-back ease that could only come from someone who had been through some stuff, and, yeah, the eyes. Gorgeous on their own, but holding too much pain.

I knew better than to think I could fix anyone. But I wanted to know if I could make him smile. Really, genuinely smile. Enough to crinkle those eyes. And maybe, maybe even lighten them up a bit.

I mean, clearly, this was very one-sided. He couldn't get out of my house fast enough.

I got that. I wasn't everyone's cup of tea. My lifestyle wasn't average. I had a string of odd jobs instead of a steady nine-to-five that would allow us to spend predictable time together. I was weird about cars and recycling and trying to grow my own food as much as possible.

Then there were the animals.

It wasn't like I had a dog or two or a cat or three.

I had a house full of a revolving door of various critters who needed a lot of my time to stay healthy and happy.

On top of that, I always preferred my flats or bare feet to heels. I never really learned how to do makeup beyond some mascara to lighten my pale lashes. And, well, I liked digging around in the dirt and napping outdoors. I wasn't a going out on the town kinda girl.

I wasn't the ideal.

I got that.

And that was more than okay with me.

I didn't want someone who wanted me to be someone I wasn't.

Though, yeah, it would be lovely if he wanted me.

Why?

I wasn't sure.

To be fair, he wasn't exactly my type either. Aside from the working with his hands thing. My type usually ran toward darker features and passive lifestyles.

Thought I had a type too until I met your dziadek. He changed everything.

Babcia told me that she always had, like many high school-aged girls, had a thing for the boys with letterman jackets. But then Dziadek tutored her for history, and the rest was, well, history. Even though he was a bespectacled, skinny, nervous teenager that was as far from a jock as possible.