by Jamie Knight
Delivering His Package
Big Apple Love Book 1
Copyright © 2021 Jamie Knight Romance.
Jamie Knight –
Your Dirty Little Secret Romance Author
All rights reserved.
Big Apple Love is a series of standalone secret baby, billionaire and virgin romance books connected by a New York City setting and friends who re-appear in each other’s stories. They can be read and understood as standalones but are best binge-read altogether!
Be sure to check out the rest of the Big Apple Love series:
Delivering His Package
Little Pumpkin
Bun in the Oven
Bundle of Joy
In with the New Baby
Look Who Hatched
Little Firecracker
Click here to see the entire series!
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Table of Contents
Chapter One - Aiden
Chapter Two - Eleanor
Chapter Three - Aiden
Chapter Four - Aiden
Chapter Five - Eleanor
Chapter Six - Aiden
Chapter Seven - Eleanor
Chapter Eight – Eleanor
Chapter Nine - Eleanor
Chapter Ten - Eleanor
Chapter Eleven - Aiden
Chapter Twelve - Aiden
Epilogue - Eleanor
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Sneak Peek of Little Pumpkin
Books in the Big Apple Love series:
Chapter One - Aiden
“Aiden, do you have a big package for me?” my customers leered at me when they said it. It was a friendly leer, but still a leer.
Every time I heard that line — a few times a day — I had to pretend it was original and hilarious. “Oh, that’s very clever, Mrs. Dankworth!”
I wasn’t allowed to show any displeasure. I especially wasn’t allowed to point out that my big package could be delivered only to one woman — not just any random woman. A woman who would see me as more than just a package to be tossed on the cock truck. I wanted love. I could live without the complimentary package inspection that was offered to me several times every workday.
I’d spent four years in college and another four years in graduate school. During those eight years, most of my socializing had been with nothing but dusty books and cranky old professors. Driving a UPS truck was a radical departure from that. It was going to be a time to socialize. Maybe it could even be a time to meet someone special, someone to love, someone to love me back, someone with whom I could even start a family.
But it never happened that way. It was just the “package” pickup lines that I got every day, sometimes accompanied by suggestive stares at my crotch. It was usually women who made those come-ons. My beefy physique made them assume I had a big package. They told me so. My masculine demeanor led them to assume I was a player available for anyone. They told me so too. Even in New York City, everybody assumed that their UPS driver was available for flings. What could possibly be sexier than a muscular guy wearing a tight brown uniform with short form-fitting shorts?
Usually, my female customers who asked about my package, asked to see my double loading dock or wanted the measurement of my longest side were just joking. Some did really try to put the moves on me and invite me inside their homes. But after five years on the job driving a UPS truck and standing in people’s front doors having their eyes roam my body, I could handle it. I could handle anything.
Maybe if a polite, shy, well-spoken, sweet girl had extended the offer of love to me, not just an offer of an impromptu package inspection, maybe I would’ve run into her arms. But that never happened. Those polite, shy, bookish girls would never put the moves on their UPS drivers. It was an evil paradox. The women I would’ve loved to get to know were precisely the girls who wouldn’t hit on a random UPS driver. And the women who were always “just fresh from the shower” and “accidentally” wearing only a small towel when they opened the door for me were always the kinds of sleazeballs I didn’t want in my life.
If a customer invited me inside for a personal package inspection, I had a pre-prepared line about being on a very tight schedule. That was true. There was one GPS tracker on my truck, and another one clipped to my belt. I was always being watched. My supervisor would be automatically alerted by the monitoring software if I did so much as spend too long fetching a package from the cargo area. And I wouldn’t risk my job, or even my afternoon, for just any random customer.
Would I risk my job for love if there was someone special? Sure. I’d risk everything, actually. But there wasn’t anybody special on the horizon — not anybody that made me feel anything.
My UPS delivery schedule was the tightest of tight, every movement electronically controlled. But I would’ve pried that schedule wide-open for a chance at real love.
My friends and grad school classmates had accused me of becoming a UPS driver just for meeting women. I certainly met many women. At their front doors. For delivering their boxes. It never went farther than that. Maybe girls weren’t into my rugged-outdoorsy-writer look. Maybe girls didn’t know that their daily front-door visitor in brown shorts was lonely and that I was very much single, perpetually single. It was mostly that the kinds of girls I was into wouldn’t be the kind to ask their UPS driver inside.
I had taken the job because the pay was decent. I thought it would be fun to be everybody’s everyday Santa, delivering all the stuff people were waiting for. A guy with an English literature Ph.D. driving a UPS truck? Sure, why not. I made more money driving the big brown parcel truck than I would’ve been making as an adjunct professor. It was better than being a guy with an English literature Ph.D. riding the unemployment bus. And even if I didn’t meet a girlfriend, I did see a lot of interesting parts of Manhattan. Every day my route was a little bit different. And that day, it took me to one of the New York Public Libraries.
“Oh, delivery? Um, we’ll have to get Eleanor for that.” The library wasn’t one of my regular stops. For whatever reason, they didn’t get UPS packages. The desk clerk at the front of the library wasn’t accustomed to seeing the UPS truck, and I wasn’t accustomed to seeing her either. “We usually only get stuff by USPS. Government funding regulations stuff,” she explained. At the same time, she tapped her fingers on the desk and looked toward the back room, awaiting whoever Eleanor was.
Finally, a curvy, young, full-busted, green-eyed, eyeglass-wearing hipster emerged from the back room. That must’ve been Eleanor. “Sorry, we do all our hiring online, no in-person applications,” she said, then turned around on the tips of her black leather heels and started disappearing back to the librarian-cavern she’d come from.
“No,” I spoke in unison with the desk clerk.
“Donation and sponsorship requests, please fill out the form on our website. Thanks.” The hipster girl righted her glasses to add emphasis to her avoidance of me. She looked like a cat trying to escape a bath, wanting to run back into the back room.
“I’m —” I started to say while holding up the UPS logo embroidered on my uniform. Everybody knew the UPS logo.
“Sorry, I can’t see that far,” hipster-woman answered. I was still far behind the desk, just a step away from the exit door she’d been almost running toward. She seemed afraid of approaching any closer. And her glasses appeared to be an inch thick.
“I’m the UPS delivery driver.” I again p
ointed to the logo on my uniform. “I’ve got some boxes for you.”
“Oh! Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, hurrying forward.
“I did, but—”
It wasn’t worth rehashing the detail of past conversations to some librarian I’d never see again. Even if that librarian was gorgeous and adorably shy and I wouldn’t mind seeing her again and again.
“Anyway, I just need you to sign, and then I can bring in the boxes.” I lay the electronic signature pad on the library counter in front of Eleanor.
She looked down, took the plastic stylus in her hand, sniffed it for some reason, then put it to the signature pad and signed her name. Her signature ended with a flourish. Maybe she, like me, had once daydreamed of being a writer, signing my words with a flourish.
The desk clerk who’d earlier received me now winked to me. “Hey Mr. UPS Man, you already got Eleanor’s name, so can you maybe tell her your name?” She smiled and looked at Eleanor, then at me.
Eleanor shook her head and signaled for her to pipe down. I felt singularly uncomfortable with the clerk’s unsubtle attempts at matchmaking. Eleanor wiped a blonde lock of hair from her forehead and again righted her glasses while the clerk grinned mischievously at me. She knew what she was up to, and she loved it.
I tried to sound as businesslike as possible. “I’m Aiden. Aiden Green. UPS delivery driver Aiden Green.” As businesslike as a UPS driver who was checking out a cute librarian trying to run away from me could sound.
The clerk squeezed Librarian Eleanor’s arm as if Eleanor was expected to somehow act on that information bibliographically. Eleanor only shook her head again and waved her away.
Eleanor was cute, check. Nerdy, check. Brainy, probably; not many people worked in a library unless they liked books. Single, possibly. If her coworker, the front desk clerk, was to be believed.
Eleanor was the kind of girl I could imagine myself dating one day. Was it appropriate for me to pursue love with a delivery recipient? Nope. The company would disapprove. GPS tracking would disapprove. I should keep my eyes and mind on the delivery packages instead of imagining things with a cute librarian who might not even be single.
I forced myself to walk away from the front desk area. Eleanor left too. Then a display shelf caught my eye.
“Oh, you’ve got the new James Patterson novel?” I called out to nobody in particular. Eleanor emerged from the back room, through the entrance out to the main downstairs book area.
“Yeah, sure, we’ve got everything. We get it in at the same time as any bookstore,” she nodded.
“Yeah, I just — I don’t know why. I just never went to the library. I just always thought—”
“You always thought it was only full of dusty old reference books?” She fluttered her eyebrows. Maybe she was mocking me or inviting me for a flutter, or both.
My eyes wandered over Eleanor, then over the books in front of me. There was a display of new releases. There was also a beautiful woman. There were science books by Neil deGrasse Tyson. There were new bestsellers from John Grisham and Michael Connelly. There were sparkling green eyes, dirty blond hair, and eyeglasses so cute that they could’ve been fashion lenses, even if Eleanor seemed like the kind of girl who’d refer to fashion lenses as pure nonsense.
“And I never knew that librarians —” I began to say. Then I caught a glance of my own reflection in the mirror. I was in uniform. I was at work. I couldn’t stand around and chat. “Shit, I’ve got to get your package!” I ran out to my waiting truck.
“No swearing at the library.” Eleanor wagged a finger in my direction in the most librarian-like way possible. “And no running either.”
I slowed my run to a brisk walk. Eleanor had spoken her reprimands in such a librarian-like voice; firm but polite, the same way she might’ve spoken to wayward schoolchildren in the library.
I fetched the packages from my truck; two small but heavy boxes, still not too heavy to carry both in at once — obviously, books. I instinctively went to the back package room area, but the clerk came running out again, telling me to bring the packages to the front desk again. She must’ve also summed Eleanor to that same front desk. She was already at that front desk, waiting and looking slightly impatient, shaking her head at her coworker who’d sent her there.
“Alright, so this is it?” she asked.
“Yes. Thanks very much.”
I speed-walked back to my truck before anyone could summon me back or before my own desire could bring me back to revisit the cute librarian.
Chapter Two - Eleanor
“Eleanor! Paaackaaaage for you!” Claire called out in her usual tone. It must definitely have been UPS, and she really must have confused the New York Public Library with a matchmaking service. She never called for me to come out from the back room when it was just the USPS delivery woman or the elderly FedEx man making a delivery.
Claire meant well. She’d seen me ravaged by the breakup with Richard a year back. Richard went from being mister perfect to suddenly married when his rich ex-girlfriend came back to town. He quit his library job soon after quitting me.
Yes, I had moped, especially for the few weeks after the breakup, when the reality of it was sinking in, that Richard was a jerk, maybe Richard still loved me, but Richard would never speak to me again. He was gone from the library and gone from my life.
That was also when I withdrew money from my 401K and went to the sperm bank. I had always wanted to be a mother and didn’t intend to wait any longer. After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting pregnant, I saw a doctor. Loads of tests later, I pulled out more money and tried in vitro fertilization. The hormones were awful, the shots were horrid, but I’d go through any physical pain to have a baby — still a no-go.
I didn’t even have a boyfriend, but I had a sliver of hope of one day being a wife to a special man and a parent to a child. Now that hope was gone. I was infertile. Adoption was still an option, but I had to save up again for that to happen. It was a hard pill to swallow, and my despair about never carrying a child wounded me deeply.
Meanwhile, Claire couldn’t let an opportunity pass her by to introduce me to almost any man who passed through the library. Her criteria seemed to only be that he was not obviously dangerous, not obviously taken, and not obviously over seventy years old. Maybe she was flexible on the over-seventy part, judging from some of the patrons whom Claire had wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggested to me. Anyway, she meant well.
In part, she just wanted to get me to come out of my hiding spot in the back reading room. I knew that. I holed up there because I was most comfortable in its predictable ambiance of well-lit silence. I got a lot of work done sitting in that room with my laptop. I ran the whole library from there. Still, I knew it was slightly unbecoming of a chief librarian to be so hidden away from the patrons and the library’s public areas.
I took the last gulp of my six-hour-old, no-longer-very-cold iced latte and stepped out to the main front desk area. There was Aiden again. He was at least as handsome as last time, but even more handsome this time, because I had been thinking about him for the week since his previous appearance in my library: absence and heart fonder and all that.
I gulped. Unlike most guys, being blurred and far away wasn’t Aiden’s best side. He only got better when I was looking at him up close. This UPS driver was more gorgeous when I could see him and make out his features; attractive masculine features. Pipe dream, of course. No way was this dreamboat interested in me. With his brown uniform and muscled triathlon-qualified legs, he was entirely focused on deliveries. Other than the time last time when his eyes and attention wandered through the bookshelves — but only through the bookshelves.
“Hi. Thanks for the delivery. Um, I don’t think we ordered anything from Amazon.”
I shook the box. I knew the feeling of a boxed book, and this was definitely a boxed book. We definitely hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon. Maybe it was a donation or a fre
e copy.
“I just thought you might — hey, you wanna open it?” The UPS guy was inquisitive. “I mean, just to, maybe, check for damage.”
In all my eight years working as a librarian, I had never heard of a book being damaged in transit. But maybe it was possible. And it wouldn’t hurt to open the package in front of the cute UPS guy.
I needed the box opener. “Hold on a second.” I looked around the front desk, but it wasn’t there. Maybe I could try to go without. “Do you mind — do you mind if I just open it with my hands?”
“Fine with me.” The UPS guy laughed.
I stuck my fingers down into the box and pried apart the lid. Inside was a layer of Amazon bubble wrap. I peeled it away, and inside was a book. “Wow, Khalil Gibran. The Prophet. I actually don’t think we have anything—” We did have it, but it was always stolen. It was one of those books that keep walking out of the library. Maybe people didn’t want to part with it when they were leaving the building.
“You don’t. I checked your online catalog. It was weird that you didn’t. That’s why I bought this.” The UPS man nodded.
“You… you bought this? You sent this package?”
“I hope you don’t mind the donation.” Aiden smiled.
I didn’t mind the donation. The library received donations all the time, usually when people were moving and would’ve felt bad about throwing away books. We usually received collections of useless, outdated junior-high history textbooks and pulp novels that had long gone out of fashion. Those well-intentioned dusty tomes went right to the monthly library book sale. Library volunteers at small plastic tables in the parking lot hawked them for a dollar or so each, not a bad way for the library to add some money to its sparse budget. But a brand-new donation of a brand-new book shipped directly from Amazon; that was unusual.
“I made sure it was shipped UPS, so I could deliver it to you in person.” Aiden’s eyes shimmered.