Angel Falling (Falling #1) By Audrey Carlan
Chapter 1
New York City sucked. If the work hadn’t been good and the pay decent, I’d have hightailed it outta here and headed back home to my ranch.
People here were just drones, lifeless husks that scampered through the concrete jungle. Always afraid to be late or miss something. They ran around with hopeful looks plastered across their plastic faces as if the next big break were right around the corner. It wasn’t.
God, I hated the f*cking city.
The only thing that made it bearable was the women. New York was full of beautiful women who ached to be taken by a guy like me. They saw me as a simpleton. A hunk of meat. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t looking for happily ever after. We were all in it for one thing … to get off.
As beautiful women went, the woman that arrived here every morning at seven sharp had my attention. She was a classy one. She usually wore button-up suits, her tight skirts slit up to mid-thigh with legs that went on for days. Her heels were so tall they were like stilts. It must have taken practice to walk on spikes every damn day. She’d be smokin’ hot in a pair of cowboy boots and nothin’ else.
I could tell she was smart, or liked to put off that she was. She had money, too, lots of it. Every day a town car or shiny black limo dropped her off. Never with a man though. Sometimes, I caught her peeking over her sunglasses, taking in the view of my crew. Hell, maybe she even sized me up a time or two. I would like that. I’d even consider making a move if I didn’t think she was out of my league. Women as fancy as she was didn’t date men like me. They dated billionaires with flashy cars — men who drove Ferraris, not Ford pickups.
My company, Jensen Construction, was hired to expand a section of the skyscraper where she worked, add a new lobby with another ten stories above it. When all was said and done, the completed project would add a couple hundred new offices to the building. Even though leaving Texas was rough, the money here was too good to pass up.
My crew and I were making five times as much as we would back home. That was the new direction I’d decided to take my company. I bid on jobs outside the state if they were worth it. Somehow, I kept underbidding the locals here in New York and secured the work.
For me it was a win-win. I had family back home, but no wife or kids. I also had my ranch, a couple of horses, and Butch, my yellow lab. I brought Butch with me because a man doesn’t leave his best friend sitting at home for three months. The horses were being taken care of by my brother in exchange for being able to ride ‘em whenever he wanted. It was a fair deal. His boys loved it and I got “Best Uncle” status in the process.
After checking that my men were hard at work and that everything was moving along as planned, I headed for my portable office. The sleek black limo appeared at the curb, sun glinting off the chrome bumper, blinding me with its sharp light. I leaned against the metal railing on the steps, ready to watch the show.
She was a damn vision today. Her usual black suit left behind, replaced with a tailored white number that hugged every curve. She looked like a naughty angel. She turned around and pulled her briefcase out of the car. Her ass was tight; the white fabric accentuated the perfect heart shape.
What I wouldn’t give to smack that ass, make her scream out, and beg me to f*ck her.
Those long legs of hers took her past me quickly. She wasn’t wearing the big ol’ round glasses that hid her gorgeous eyes today. The sun broke across the building, and her blue eyes sparkled in the light. Long golden hair flapped in the wind behind her. A red scarf tied around her neck cut across her form, a slash of crimson splitting a perfect blank canvas.
She dug through the oversized brown bag hanging over her delicate shoulder, her cell phone glued to her ear. A noise screeched from up above. I jerked my head up. A stack of large metal pipes held together by chains swung precariously from the crane. My lady in white stopped right under it, and the scene played out in sickening slow-motion in my mind’s eye. Her phone fell to the concrete; she cursed and bent to retrieve it, unaware of the danger that lurked above her.
“Watch out!” I yelled as I barreled toward her, pointing upward. Her gaze drifted up as I heard metal scraping across metal, then a loud clink, signaling that the pipes had separated from their chassis.
One side of the chains held, sending one-inch metal pipes flying downward like daggers falling from the sky. My inner Superman reacted and I shot forward, knocking her to the ground, my much larger body covering hers. Without warning, a gut-wrenching, piercing pain ripped through my left shoulder. She was screaming under me, trying to push me off her. Moving wasn’t an option. Searing pain blazed through my shoulder as if I were being stabbed with a large butcher knife. Every movement stole my breath.
I only saw red. This time it wasn’t her scarf. It was blood, lots and lots of blood, pouring over her white suit, painting it with color.
“Help him!” she screamed. “It’s going to be okay.” Cool hands and fingers slid along my temples and cupped my face. “Please, please, look at me.”
Pain gripped my upper body as if two plates of metal were pressing me flat as a pancake. I lay on my side, unable to move. Briefly casting a glance over the heart of the excruciating ache over my left shoulder, I could see the glint of metal protruding a good couple of feet out of my back.
The swells of nausea churned in my gut and my mouth watered with that sour taste that comes just when you’re about to blow chunks. Closing my eyes I tried to take a deep breath, but the pain that followed tore through bone, muscle, and skin. The only things that kept me firmly planted to this earth were those gray-blue eyes. They were like crystal pools, refreshing and inviting.