Big Man's Bride (Big Men Small Towns 1)

This man—whoever he is—didn’t actually steal the house from me. It was for sale. It’s been for sale for years. But I’ve worked so hard. I’ve sacrificed everything for so many years. Lived as bare bones as I could. Ramen noodle dinners seven nights a week. I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in a year. Cut the cable. Used the Wi-Fi at the library. I put every extra penny I had into making this dream possible. It has been my sole focus for so long, my north star. Without it, I just don’t know what I’ll do. It can’t happen like this.

Is the universe just so completely fucked up that it would do this to me?

I blink back the tears in my eyes as I start to drive. When my mom died, and Grandpa sold the house to take care of me, I understood why he did it. But imagining getting the house back was what got me through that grief. I became an accountant—a field that I don’t love but that makes decent money—just to buy this house. There were weeks I took on so much work that I’d fall asleep at night with columns of numbers floating behind my eyes.

I’ll be damned if someone is going to take this dream from me.

The ride out to the house passes in a blur. The route is so familiar to me that I honestly think that I could make the drive blindfolded, stop lights and all. I just have to get there. If I get there, it will be all right, I tell myself. It will be fine. The buyer will understand. He’ll sell me the house, even if I have to sell him my soul. This can be fixed.

When the façade of the house comes into view, I have to stifle a sob. Every time I see it there’s a flood of memories and emotion. This is where I belong. It’s my dream house. Where so much should have happened, if only Mom hadn’t died. This is my home. My apartment is peppered with family photos taken in every corner of the house and gardens. My favorite picture of me and my mom was taken on the back porch, the two of us looking out over the river.

It had been an amazing day. The perfect Fourth of July with sparklers and fireflies. The house had been restored enough by then that we could actually host a party. Mom and I baked cherry pies and chased Grandpa out of the kitchen. He played cards with some of his friends out back and Mom brought them heaping plates of ribs and macaroni salad. Shortly after the sun set, a barge in the river set off the most magnificent fireworks display, and Mom and I watched from the bank of the river. I can still remember her face lit up by the red and white bursts in the sky.

It was only the next week that we found out she was sick. A routine blood exam led to some other tests which led to even more tests and finally a diagnosis. Little did we know, it was already too late to save her. I’ll always remember that Fourth of July as the last really good day with her.

I shake my head to clear the fog of reverie and too many memories, and I pause to take in the front of the house one more time before I brace myself for this battle.

Oh my God, what did he do?

The front of the house has a massive wrap-around porch with a gorgeous, ornate railing, original to the house. Or rather, it had. The railing is completely gone, and the wood steps and floor sit in a heap in the front yard. I’m just … staring at the house in utter shock. Who would remove such a beautiful feature?

I get out of the car, and I realize as the sound hits my ears that it hasn’t been torn down, past tense. It’s being removed currently. Just around the corner of the house, I can see a man swinging a sledgehammer against the wood, splintering it and making the next piece fall down. What the hell is wrong with him? How fucked up in the head do you have to be to tear down something as warm and lovely as this? Is he planning to tear down the whole house?

There’s a lot that I will do to keep that from happening. This man doesn’t know what’s coming. He’s never met Allison Hollis, and he doesn’t know that once I set my mind to something, I get it done.

I’m running across the large gravel drive toward him before I even register the fact that I’m doing it. “Hey, stop!”

He doesn’t react or even acknowledge that I’ve spoken. As he lifts the sledgehammer to swing it again, part of me notes the fact that he’s attractive. Not just attractive, but mind-blowingly, lust-inducingly hot. The way his muscles move under his shirt as he wields the hammer would be enough to send me into a fog of drooling need on any other day.