Contest entries

COFFEE & FAIR ISLE SWEATERS {entry} bad boys & ugly sweaters

Author's note: 
Chitsa means "fair" in an unknown Native American language. Not to mention I'm obsessed with fair isle sweaters. This is my first time writing romance in a decade so please. Be kind, and enjoy! :) 

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COFFEE & FAIR ISLE SWEATERS

Late days and longer nights. That's all Christmas was for Chitsa, especially since her mother had taken ill and she was left running a business she didn't even like. Dreams of getting away, just one holiday back home, with their family. She missed her grandmother and her uncles. She missed the warmth of the earth and the land her family had called home since long before it was taken over and given a name now synonymous with obesity and consumption. And there she was; playing right into the hands of said consumer chain. Bored, face smushed against one of her hands, she glanced up from her magazine out the door. The noise from behind as clothes were being washed and dried and hung and starched and... She honestly didn't know what else. It was enough to bring a ringing to her ears. 

Or maybe it was the ridiculously gorgeous man that stood on the other side of the door, looking down at a business card and his phone with a look of utter confusion.

Most people in New York had that look the first time they saw her. She wasn't the right kind of "Indian", having people stumble and bumble and beg her forgiveness for not calling her a "Native American". Well, in all honesty she hadn't been alive when her people's lands were stolen from her, to call herself a native felt like a stretch somehow. Especially since her mother had removed them so far from the culture she had grown up on. Had loved so dearly. 

"Hi," he said, and she didn't know if she was daydreaming or... Maybe he actually did have the most delicious voice she'd ever heard in her life. It was a very real possibility. 

"Oh, hi," she smiled nervously, standing up from where she'd been sitting. 

"I, uhm... I need a favor." 

She frowned at the word favor and then nodded despite herself, "How can I help you?" 

"Well." He looked down at the front of his pants as he moved his folded jacket away from his crotch. Chitsa did her very best not to look directly at the obvious bulge (somewhere inside she was looking very hard) and to look at the stain that covered part of his lap and the knitted shirt he was wearing. 

"That's not good," she mumbled, moving around the short end of the counter to pick at the material of his knitted shirt. "Coffee?"

"A lot of it. And it burnt," he said with a little chuckle. She smiled up at him, heart pounding in her chest. "Can you help me?"

Looking into the back, Chitsa worried her bottom lip before looking up at him again. "I can't, though I know who can. One problem," she mused, looking him up and down. He didn't seem to have a change of clothes.

Oh good lord who art in heaven.

"You'll need me to take them off," he guessed, and she flushed a light pink, nodding with hearing cheeks. Never before had she asked a man to take his clothes off in public. Or anywhere else, really. As he dragged his shirt up over his chest he revealed inches of flawless abs, curved inked lines, and skin the shade of roasted coffee beans. The fact that he smelled like coffee too? Okay, so it was making her mouth water. "I got it from my mother. She's been feeling a little bad lately and asked me to come see her, but if I show up with the shirt she made me ruined... I'll break her heart," he said softly, handing her the shirt.

Smiling, she held the bundle in her arms with the oddest feeling fluttering through her. Looking up, she could see women outside the glass windows and doors stopping to stare. "Maybe we should go in the back? I'll find you something to wear in the meanwhile. It'll take a while to get these cleaned and you can't, uh, walk around here in your undies," she smiled nervous. There was something in his eyes and then he lowered his voice.