The Welder Read online

  The Welder

  Working Men Series

  (Book Four)

  Ramona Gray

  Copyright © 2018 Ramona Gray

  Published by

  EK Publishing Inc.

  This book is the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, scanned or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Adult Reading Material

  Edited by

  L. Nunn Editing

  Cover Art by

  The Final Wrap

  The Welder

  Working Men Series Book Four

  By Ramona Gray

  He’s harder than steel and his torch makes me melt.

  Luna

  Lying to my sister about dating the only man who ever rejected her probably wasn’t my smartest idea. But in my defense, that man is Asher Stokes – the biggest, quietest and hottest man in town. I’ve been in love with Asher for years, and since my domineering sister swears she’s never coming back to our town, my little lie about dating the man of my dreams is harmless.

  Only, now my famous sister is coming home. I have three days to convince Asher, a man who’s never looked twice at me, to pretend to be my boyfriend for an entire weekend.

  To my surprise, Asher agrees. But he wants something from me in return. He’ll be my fake boyfriend for the weekend if I’ll be his real bed warmer.

  Asher

  Luna Davis is off limits. Always has been and always will be. She’s the kind of woman who wants a relationship and I don’t do relationships. Ever. Not even for her - the sweet and innocent velvet-voiced redhead who just happens to be the star of every one of my filthy X-rated fantasies.

  I’ve vowed to keep away from her, but that was before she asked me to help convince her family that we were dating. Tired of denying what I want most, I’ll play Luna’s game, but not without taking what I want from her.

  What’s happening between us isn’t real. Only now that Luna is finally in my bed, the urge to make her permanently mine is too difficult to ignore

  * * *

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  Table of Chapters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  Luna

  Now’s your chance, girl. You have to tell him.

  I wanted to ignore my inner voice as the big man approached the counter. It was strange to see him in the coffee shop at this time. He always stopped by in the morning, and when I hadn’t see him earlier, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t see him at all today.

  But now, just five minutes before my shift ended, he was walking through the doors. He was wearing his usual t-shirt and jeans and I admired the broadness of his chest before peeking at his crotch. Not sure why I looked, but damn if I didn’t every time. Apparently I was expecting, or maybe hoping, that he would just once have a noticeable woody.

  Yeah, because he just can’t control his reaction to you.

  I sighed. Pretending that Asher Stokes was attracted to me was the stupidest thing ever, but I had been pretending since high school. He’d never shown a single lick of interest in me though, which made what I was about to tell him a thousand times harder.

  You did it to yourself. This is what you get for lying.

  My inner voice wasn’t wrong but, man, did it have to sound so judgmental?

  Of course, I didn’t have to tell Asher anything. I could just admit the truth to my sister when she came to town in minus three days and counting.

  I could look her in the eye and say, “Lydia, I’ve been lying to you for the last eight months. I am not, in fact, dating Asher Stokes.”

  It sounded simple enough in my head, but my entire body cringed at the thought. The look she would give me, the smug smile, the “Oh, Luna, I knew it all along. If Asher didn’t want me, he’d never want you.”

  She probably wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it. I had spent my entire life living in my sister’s shadow, and it had felt so good to finally have something she’d always wanted, but never had.

  The fact that it was one giant whopper of a lie that was three days and four hours away from unravelling around me, was small details. Right?

  The giant was standing in front of me now and my body started shaking, just like it always did when he was close. Not from fear. Oh no. Even though he could have crushed me easily with one ham-sized hand, I’d never felt any fear around him.

  Bone-rattling, vein-throbbing, body-shaking lust?

  Yeah, that I was familiar with.

  “Hi, Asher. Your usual?” My voice was high-pitched. I sounded like Minnie Mouse. Great.

  “Hey. Yeah, the usual.”

  “Coming right up!”

  His brows drew down and he studied me thoughtfully as he pulled a few bills from his wallet.

  Oh fuck. I was screwing this up royally.

  Then don’t talk to him. Just admit to your sister what you did and be done with it.

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry?” Asher gave me a confused look as he held the bills out to me.

  Oh God, I’d said it out loud. I smoothed my shaking hands over my apron, wishing I hadn’t spilled that Frappuccino all over it after lunch.

  “Um, nothing.” I took his money and rang it through before handing him back his change. My fingers brushed against his rough palm and my shaking increased tenfold. God, I needed to get control of my own damn body.

  I turned away and poured his coffee, venti dark roast, and brought it to the other end of the counter where the man of my fucking dreams was waiting. I’d left more room in the cup than I normally did but I’d had no choice with the way my body was vibrating. As it was, I still spilled a bit of the hot liquid on his hand when I set the coffee down.

  He made a soft hiss and I dabbed at his hand with my fingertips, trying to, I dunno, soak up the hot liquid with my own flesh because that made perfect sense.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  I grabbed his hand and studied the top of it. “Do you need a bandage? We have a first-aid kit in the back and it has stuff for burns.”

  He yanked his hand away. “It’s fine. I get burned all the time.”

  I blinked at him. “Oh, uh, right. Sorry.”

  Fuck, I was an idiot. The man was a welder and his hands showed it. They were marked with small scars from burns that would have hurt a lot worse than some hot coffee.

  “Bye.” He picked up his coffee and turned away.

  Shit, he was leaving. I had to do something, say something. “Asher?”

  He turned around and studied me silently.

  “Um, do you have a few minutes to talk? I’m off, uh, now actually, and there’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”

  I waited for him to say no, waited for him to make the decision for me about whether I was humiliated in front of my sister or humiliated in front of the man I’d wanted for most of my life.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry?” I b
linked up at him, certain I had misheard him. Okay sounded like no in some languages, right?

  “I said okay.” He repeated himself like I was slow and, honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

  “Oh, great. Okay, I just need ten minutes. Do you mind waiting while I cash out?”

  He shook his head and I stumbled back from the counter. “Okay. Great. Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere!” I laughed like a drunk donkey having a stroke, and then tripped over the box of coffee that someone – me, it was me – had left by the counter. I landed hard on my ass and popped back up immediately as my coworker Jeff rolled his eyes and kept on walking.

  I resisted the urge to rub my butt as Asher stared at me. “Sorry. I’ll, uh, be right back.”

  * * *

  “Nice weather we’ve been having, huh?” I followed Asher into the park that was just across the street from Mugs Coffee Shop. “I mean, for autumn, the weather is pretty warm. I mean, not at night, man, it gets cold at night now, but the sunshine is, uh….”

  I trailed off. I was babbling. No big surprise there. I wasn’t naïve enough to know that one of the reasons I talked so much was in an effort to be noticed. I’d spent my entire life unseen in the shadow of my sister’s greatness. At my sweet sixteen party, my own parents forgot me at the bowling alley. Of course, Lydia had been having a personal crisis and they’d been in a hurry to get home to her.

  I’d toned down the talking as I matured, but my nerves always made me babble. They made my balance worse too. If people weren’t noticing me because of my talking, they couldn’t miss me when I tripped or fell or knocked something over. Unlike the talking, I didn’t fall on purpose. I hated being awkward, hated my body’s inability to do something that most people had no problems with. I couldn’t help it though. I was naturally clumsy and despite my mother’s pleas to walk like a lady, to watch where I was going, to ‘Good God, Luna, just walk a straight line!’, I still walked around with all the grace of a newborn colt.

  Once, after watching me trip and fall into the curio cabinet, smashing all of my mother’s Precious Moments collectible figurines, my great aunt Julia said that she couldn’t believe an itty-bitty thing like me could be such a wrecking ball. I’d wanted to argue, but the fact that I was covered in the broken shards of innocent, cherub-faced figurines while blood gushed from both arms, had effectively proven her point.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” Asher ignored my pathetic weather talk.

  “Oh, well, see, I don’t know if you know this but – oh, shit!”

  My foot hit a root on the pathway, or maybe it was a leaf or a blade of grass. Whatever it was, it sent me flying forward and I automatically raised my arms to protect my face. A girl could only do so many faceplants into the ground before she got really good at protecting herself from a third broken nose.

  To my surprise, I never hit the ground. My stomach hit a solid band of pure muscle instead. I balanced almost precariously on Asher’s arm before clutching at it and staring wide-eyed up at him. He had caught me. He had simply stuck his arm out and caught me before I could eat dirt.

  I waited for him to tell me to be more careful, to watch where I was going, but instead, he sort of shook me off his arm like I was a bothersome fly and didn’t say anything.

  “Uh, thank you,” I said. “You’re um, really fast.”

  He just shrugged, and I made a sound of dismay when I saw his coffee cup on the ground. He must have tossed it when he stopped me from falling. The lid of the coffee had popped off and the hot liquid was seeping into the ground.

  “I’m so sorry. I’ll buy your next coffee.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Did I hurt you?”

  “What?” I blinked up at him. “Hurt me?”

  “When I caught you,” he said a bit impatiently. “Did I hurt your stomach?”

  “No, I’m tougher than I look.” It was true. When you fell as much as I did, you toughened up real quick.

  He looked me up and down and a shiver of pleasure went down my spine.

  “You don’t look very tough.”

  “I am.” I flexed my arm, but you couldn’t really see my bicep through my jacket and I just looked like an idiot. “It doesn’t look like it, but trust me, if I wasn’t wearing my jacket you could buy a ticket to the gun show.”

  Holy.Fuck.Balls. I’d like to die now. Please?

  Asher raised his eyebrows and I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about -”

  “Wait. Sit down. It feels less dangerous if you sit while we talk.”

  I wanted to argue but again, he wasn’t wrong. Walking and talking simultaneously wasn’t exactly a strength of mine.

  I followed him to one of the benches that lined the pathway and sat down. He took up most of the space and I resisted the urge to lean against him. Talk about inappropriate.

  A woman, her considerable breasts bouncing in her sports bra, jogged toward us. She slowed to a stop when she saw us and smiled at Asher.

  “Hey, Ash. How’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain, Jody. How about you?”

  “I’m good. You should pop by sometime, I’ve got a new workout machine. I think you’d really like it.”

  Jody was co-owner of the gym in town. She had the body of an athlete and the boobs of a porn star. I studied the woman’s impressive rack before glancing at my own small breasts. They barely made a dent against my jacket and I resisted my urge to unzip my jacket and thrust my chest out. What good would it do against Jody and her bazooka joe’s over there? I could never compete with that.

  “Real busy at work right now, but thanks for the offer,” Asher said.

  Jody arched her back a little. Despite the warm air, her nipples were erect against her thin sports bra. Holy shit. Her nips were the size of the erasers on those giant novelty pencils. Was that normal? Mine were definitely not that big. The two men who’d seen my boobs hadn’t complained, but they were nice guys. It wasn’t like they’d be all, “Hey, Luna, sure wish your nips were big enough to erase half of this writing with one swipe.”

  Oh God, I was losing it. The impending implosion of my life in three days and three and a half hours was sending me over the bend.

  I peeked a glance at Asher. To my surprise he was not staring at Jody and her nipples of incredible size. Instead, he was studying me. I turned red and gave him a nervous smile as he said, “This is a private conversation, Jody.”

  Now it was Jody’s turn to redden. “Oh, right, of course. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Sure.”

  She jogged away, and I cleared my throat. “Uh, thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Getting Jody to leave. I was afraid her nipples were gonna poke my eyes out.”

  Sweet.Merciful.Lord.

  I looked around for a moving vehicle to throw myself in front of, or maybe a murderous squirrel with a hankering for human flesh. There was a chipmunk sitting on a branch not ten feet away, but I was pretty sure I’d die of humiliation before it did any real damage to my jugular.

  “Sorry.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. Nope, I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t do this at all. It was a very bad mistake and I just needed to realize that my sister had won. That she always won, and I would forever be in her shadow. It wasn’t so bad, when I really thought about it.

  I stood and stumbled forward. “I have to go. I’m sorry, I’m wasting your time and -”

  “Wait.” If his low voice hadn’t stopped me, his hand around my forearm would have. Another little shiver of lust, in fact this time I was pretty sure my pussy had gone wet, and I stared at his big hand as he tugged me back to the bench. “Sit down, take a deep breath, and just tell me.”

  I sat, took a deep breath, and told him.

  “My sister is coming to town in three days and roughly three hours to accept the key to the town and participate in the parade in her honour.”

  “Why are they giving her a key to the town?”

  I bli
nked at him. “Uh, because she won an Emmy. She’s an actress on a really popular TV show. It’s the one about the paramedics who -”

  “I don’t watch TV.”

  “At all?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh. Okay, well anyway, she won an Emmy and the whole town is freaking out over it and the mayor is giving her the key to the town and dedicating the day as “Lydia Davis” day and throwing a parade.”

  “What does this have to do with me?” His tone wasn’t impatient, but I tried to hurry along the story anyway.

  “When we were in high school, my sister had a crush on you. You probably figured that out, right?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway, you were like the only guy she wanted that she didn’t get. She was kind of obsessed with you. The fact that you not only turned down her offer to date, but also completely ignored her, drove her crazy.”

  I took another deep breath and let it all spill out. “Eight months ago, I was talking to my sister on the phone and I told her that you and I were dating. She had sworn up and down for years that she would never set foot in our town again, so I figured it was a safe, tiny little fib, you know? Only, now she thinks we’re a couple and she’ll be here in three days and three hours, and I want you to pretend to be my boyfriend, so she doesn’t find out that I’ve been lying to her for eight months.”

  I ran out of air and slumped back on the bench. I wanted to check the expression on Asher’s face, but I was too embarrassed, so I just stared at my hands instead.

  “Why did you tell her we were dating?”

  I’m not proud of it, but I lied to Asher. I hated doing it. I wasn’t great at lying to begin with and lying to Asher in particular made me feel sick, but I couldn’t tell him the truth. I was already humiliated enough. If the man who literally had no interaction with me other than a daily coffee order found out that the main reason I told her I was dating him was because I was frackin’ in love with him, I’d die.