Not His Type Read online

  Books by Shanna Hatfield

  The Women of Tenacity Series

  The Women of Tenacity - A Prelude

  Heart of Clay

  Country Boy vs. City Girl

  Not His Type

  by

  SHANNA HATFIELD

  Not His Type

  Copyright 2011

  by Shanna Hatfield

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, please contact the author, with a subject line of "permission request” at the email address below or through her website.

  Shanna Hatfield

  [email protected]

  shannahatfield.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  To the wonderful boy I fell in love with and the amazing man he has become - you still hold the key to my heart.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “There’s one for you, Jake ol’ boy,” his coworker Dave Roberts commented, looking out the window of their office into the beautiful early spring afternoon.

  “One what Davey?” Jake Chandler asked, not bothering to look up from his computer, where he sat studying an irrigation map.

  “What do you think, you knucklehead?” Dave asked, tipping his head toward the window. “A girl, of course.”

  Jake glanced up from his work and looked out the window to see a tall girl leaning against the cool brick of the county library building across the street. She stood in the shadows, drawn in on herself, wearing outdated glasses, a baggy beige sweater and long skirt, with her hair pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head. She looked exactly like a stereotypical librarian and appeared to be immersed in reading a book, unaware she was the object of speculation from the county extension office’s soil and water department across the street.

  “She looks just like your type,” Dave said with a smirk, leaning back in his desk chair with his fingers laced behind his red head.

  “Right,” Jake said, thinking of the date he’d soon be meeting – a beautiful, vivacious blond who oozed confidence, along with a few other things. She was definitely his type. Too bad he couldn’t remember her name right at the moment. Vicki, Micki, Ricki. It would come to him before he picked her up.

  Jake knew the girls he dated were shallow, often fickle and not necessarily the type someone would take home to meet their mother – especially his mother. As long as the girls were attractive, fun and unattached, Jake didn’t require much else.

  Making it clear up front that his sole interest was in having a good time, Jake felt it was only fair for the girls to know he planned to stay free and unfettered. No serious relationships. No commitments. None of those unnecessary things that sucked the excitement right out of life. Except for a few girls who thought they could change his mind and failed, his dating game plan worked out well. He enjoyed himself, the girls had a good time and no one had any hurt feelings or failed expectations.

  Jake thought of his cousin Clay, eighteen years his senior. With no siblings, Jake often looked to Clay as a role model, mentor and older brother. When Jake was just a little guy, Clay married the most beautiful, wonderful, perfect girl in the world, at least in Jake’s opinion. He had loved Callan immediately and she treated him as she might have a little brother or son.

  When Jake finally fell for a girl, he knew he wouldn’t settle for a love any less passionate, with any less depth or devotion than what was shared between Clay and Callan. Even after all these years, it was blatantly obvious that they were more in love with each other than ever. Jake was smart enough to realize a love like that doesn’t come along every day. Until he found someone who completely captivated his heart, mind, body and soul he planned to just keep right on having fun.

  And fun was not to be found in timid librarians afraid of their own shadow.

  Jake looked out the window again, running a hand through his thick sable hair. Mousy. Timid and mousy were the words he’d use to describe the girl at the library. Her ugly, baggy clothing could be hiding some grotesque deformity. It was hard to tell from across the street, not that he really cared. There was no way in this world she would ever be his type. Turning to his coworker and friend, he flashed a white-toothed grin.

  “You better run over there, Davey, and ask her out. She seems much more like your type than mine,” Jake said as he turned off his computer, stuffed papers in his briefcase and put on his black Stetson.

  Dave gave a hearty laugh as he gathered up his own paper work and prepared to leave for the day. “Nah, man, she’s all yours.”

  Jake strolled out of the office and paused briefly before walking across the street. The county library, extension office and education service district office all shared an employee parking lot located behind the library. Jake enjoyed his work as a county soil and water specialist, a job he held for the past four years.

  After graduating from college, he did an internship at a biology lab in Portland, thinking he’d never move back to the small town where he grew up. Six months later, he’d had enough of the bright lights and big city to last him a lifetime and decided even if you took the boy off the farm, you couldn’t ever completely take the farm out of the boy.

  His dad heard the county extension office was hiring and Jake immediately applied. So at 25, he and his friend Dave were the two youngest employees at the office. They learned something new every day, but still managed to enjoy themselves more than they probably should. And the receptionist Millie, who had been there for 40 years, kept them all in line.

  Walking briskly down the sidewalk, whistling a tune and watching the traffic go by, Jake completely forgot about the girl at the library until he bumped into her and nearly knocked her off her feet.

  “I’m so sorry, miss,” he said, grabbing her elbow to keep her from falling. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “Oh,” she gasped, pushing her glasses back up her nose. A very cute freckled nose, Jake noticed, standing this close to her. He looked into her eyes and nearly lost himself in their violet depths. He’d never seen eyes that color before. Or that seemed to look beyond the surface right into his very heart.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, releasing her elbow and taking a step back. “I really am sorry.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” she said, bending down to pick up the book he’d knocked from her hands.

  “Here, let me get that,” Jake said, quickly picking up the book and glancing at the cover. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a romance novel as he had suspected, but a book about turf management he had read for one of his college courses. “Interesting reading,” Jake said with a smile, handing her back the book. “I liked chapter six the best.”

  She meekly accepted it and nodded her head in agreement, not quite making eye contact with him.

  “Again, my apologies,” Jake said, tipping his hat and continuing down the sidewalk. Before he step
ped around the corner into the parking lot, he stopped and looked back at the girl. She was leaning against the wall, looking like she’d lost her last friend. At least he knew now she wasn’t deformed under that get-up. She was taller than he expected, different than what he expected.

  For reasons he could not explain, Jake started to walk back toward her, not sure why or what he would say. He stopped when a pickup pulled up to the curb and she rushed out and climbed in. As timid as she was, he was surprised she could move so agilely.

  Turning back toward the parking lot, Jake unlocked his pickup and climbed in. Polished and shined, the dark navy pickup was a reflection of Jake. He liked things to look finished and detailed. His rich wavy hair was always combed to perfection, his jeans freshly pressed, his shirts precisely ironed. Standing well over six feet tall in his sock feet, Jake knew he stood out in a crowd, so he made sure he was always well dressed. Just because he was a cowboy didn’t mean he couldn’t look nice. He knew the girls paid attention to a man who put a little effort into his appearance. Most days, Jake put a considerable amount into his. His meticulous attention to his personal grooming had been a topic of Clay’s jokes on more occasions than Jake wanted to remember.

  Jake wasn’t opposed to getting dirty. Anytime his job required field work, he could guarantee he’d come home filthy. He also raised registered quarter horses, helped his parents with their small farm and worked at his aunt and uncle’s ranch whenever he had time. He had yet to find a way to keep neat and clean doing any of the tasks required by farm or ranch work. That was fine by him. As long as he had plenty of time to clean up before he met a date, life was good. Like the date he was meeting tonight. She was a knock-out.

  Jake smiled to himself as a pulled out of the parking lot and headed to pick up Nicki. Ha! He did remember her name. Unfortunately, instead of seeing her beautiful face framed by wispy blond hair, he kept picturing a pair of soulful violet eyes.

  <><><>

  Anna Zimmerman wanted to die. Right now could not be too soon. When she saw her dad pull up to the curb, she jumped into his truck as quickly as possible.

  “Hey, Sugar, how’d your day go?” her dad asked with his customary cheerfulness.

  “Peachy, Dad. Just peachy,” Anna said staring out the window.

  She couldn’t believe it when Jake Chandler bumped into her today, knocking the book from her hands and all sense from her head.

  She knew exactly who Jake was, even if he had no clue she even existed. And today, of all days, when she was pretty sure she could not have looked any worse if she’d tried, was the day he had to bump into her. She’d broken her glasses and was wearing an old pair until the new ones were ready. Her unruly hair had been so unmanageable today she’d simply pulled it back into a tight bun. Between weight loss and a career change, her wardrobe was limited to castoffs from her high school days or baggy suits that did nothing to accentuate her figure. Neither did the plain neutral tones she preferred to wear, making it easy to go unnoticed as she blended into the background.

  Normally, she would have been parked out back and gone directly from the back door of the library to her car without a chance encounter. But her car was once again in the shop and she was waiting out front for her dad to pick her up.

  Anna had recently declared herself an old maid. A spinster. Washed up and doomed to a life living alone in a tiny apartment full of cats. And she really wasn’t all that fond of cats.

  It wasn’t that Anna was unattractive. She was quite tall with an hour glass figure, had an abundance of wavy brown hair streaked with gold, and the most unusual violet eyes. She was just bone-deep, to-the-core shy. Four years of college and two years of employment in the city hadn’t knocked it out of her and she wasn’t sure at this point in her life that anything would.

  Her dating experience was limited to a few boys she’d been fixed up with by well meaning relatives and friends. The one boy who showed decided interest in her bored her to tears. She spent part of her senior year of college hiding out from him before he finally got the message. She knew she wasn’t all that exciting to those who didn’t know her, but there was a current of restlessness, a sense of adventure, a streak of pure wild passion that ran deep in Anna that she didn’t quite know how to harness. So she kept it trapped so far beneath the surface, she didn’t have to deal with it.

  Her mother had given up years ago trying to get Anna to “let her light shine.” Anna preferred her lamp to be hid in a corner with a heavy shade over the top of it.

  “What’s wrong, Sugar?” her dad questioned. “Things not go well at work?”

  “Work was fine, Daddy,” Anna said absently. “It’s just me. That’s all.”

  Ken Zimmerman looked at his daughter with concern. He loved Anna and wanted to see her happy. He knew she struggled with so many things, especially confidence. If he could buy it for her, she’d have more than she would ever need. Unfortunately, what Anna needed was something only she could give herself. Anna was a lovely girl, inside and out, but she tended to shy away from people, avoid conversations and not get involved. He supposed he and his wife, Sue, were partially to blame.

  Anna was born deaf in her right ear with limited hearing in her left. Over the years, they shielded her as much as they could and, along with Anna’s shy nature, it seemed to have compounded the problem. Around strangers, Anna was very quiet, withdrawn and unsure. Once someone took the time to get to know Anna, they would have a friend for life who was fun, animated, exciting. Not many people took the time to get past the protective shell she tended to show the world.

  Anna sighed, but turned to give her dad a sincere smile. “Thanks for picking me up, Daddy. I know you were busy today. Did you make any sales?”

  “You bet I did!” Ken said with a grin. “I love spring when everyone gets excited for something new.” Ken Zimmerman sold farm equipment for the local John Deere dealer and was one of the top salesmen in the region.

  “That’s great, Daddy,” Anna said with enthusiasm. The further they drove out of town, the more Anna dropped her defenses and relaxed.

  She would be the first to admit she put up walls around herself. It was a habit she developed early on when the kids at preschool taunted her not only about her inability to hear, but also the way she talked. Phonics were a nightmare that Anna didn’t think she’d ever completely overcome, another reason she tended to be quiet around strangers. To compensate, she studied everything she could get her hands on. As a result, she was bright, intelligent, well-read and knew nearly as many words as most dictionaries. That she pronounced some words a bit differently was the price paid when you taught a deaf girl to talk.

  She had done a fantastic job of not only being quiet today but looking like a complete bumbling idiot in front of Jake Chandler. It would have been bad enough if it had been anyone else. But Jake?

  Anna had developed a crush on him the first week she’d started working at the library a couple months ago. She was fairly certain there wasn’t a female that worked in a four-block radius of the extension office who hadn’t noticed the tall, handsome cowboy with the sky blue eyes, chiseled jaw and model-perfect physique. You’d have to be blind or comatose to miss someone like him.

  As her Dad turned down the lane that led to their farm, Anna took a deep cleansing breath. It was good to be home.

  Walking in the back door together, Anna smiled as her dad gave her mom a kiss on the cheek.

  “How was your day, Susie-Q?” Ken asked using the nickname he’d bestowed on his wife nearly thirty years ago.

  “Just fine. It feels good to be back to work full-time,” Sue said as she started getting out the makings for tacos.

  Last fall, Sue had been riding with their son Sam in his car when an impatient driver decided to pass another car in an unusual deep fog and hit them head-on. Fortunately, they both survived. Sue spent months recovering from a broken arm, shattered collar bone and cracked pelvis. She just recently returned to working full-time in her position as offic
e manager at an investment firm in town. Sam, however, was wheelchair bound, with partial paralysis from the waist down and still recovering from the collision both physically and emotionally.

  Before the accident, Sam was a fun-loving cocky 25-year-old with the world on his string. He was engaged to a lovely girl, had his own apartment out over the barn and ran the farm while Ken worked at his equipment sales job. Now he was quiet, withdrawn and struggling to find a way to get past his bitterness and overcome his physical challenges.

  “Let me change and I’ll help you finish up dinner, Mom,” Anna said as she hurried to her bedroom. That she was 24-years-old and living at home was not lost on her. But after the accident, she quit her job in Portland and moved back to the farm. Her parents and Sam needed her more than she needed her independence at this point in time.

  As she came back into the kitchen, she finished braiding her hair and secured the end with a hair band. Anna felt confident and strong at home, where she knew no one would make fun of the way she spoke or become offended if she didn’t hear what they said. Home was her comfort zone.

  “Hey, Sam,” Anna said, bending to kiss her brother’s cheek. “How’s it going?”

  “Just dandy, for a cripple,” Sam responded, but added a small grin as he turned his wheelchair around to face the dining table.

  Anna looked at her mom and rolled her eyes. One of these days the Sam they used to know would resurface. She was sure of it. Little bits had started to emerge in the last month and Anna knew the warmer weather had to help his attitude and outlook.

  Immediately after the accident, Sam was so angry. He struck out at everyone and everything. His fiancée, Lisa, was beside herself when he called off their engagement and told her he never wanted to see her again. It was a good thing Lisa completely ignored him and continued to be a solid support during his months of recovery. Although their wedding date had been postponed, Anna knew they would find a way to make a life together. They loved each other too much not to try.