All eyes snapped to Mac, and she swallowed down the nerves that suddenly swarmed her stomach. Shit, why had she put that stupid thought out into the universe in the first place? This was absolutely above her pay grade—so far above it, it wasn’t even a speck in the sky to her.
Failing at her own shit was one thing, but screwing up the entire town? She’d never, in all her years, live that down.
“That’s perfect,” her momma said, a smile lighting up her face. “Of course Mac’s the best choice.”
Mac jerked back, shocked that her momma had agreed so easily. “But—”
“It’s settled, then!” Momma clasped her hands and relaxed back into the chair. It was only the look of relief that swept over her mom’s face that had Mac keeping her mouth shut.
A buzz of conversation started up around the table, but Mac couldn’t concentrate on anything anyone said. Not when she’d suddenly been put in charge of their entire town. At least until this business with Daddy got figured out.
She only hoped it happened sooner rather than later, because there was no telling how quickly she would fail at this.
Making that bet with Kenna was the best thing Hudson had done since he’d been home. Actually, scratch that. Kissing her had been the best thing he’d done since he’d been home, but making sure they got to do a hell of a lot more of it while he was there was close behind.
Now he just had to figure out how to get her in the same room as him again.
So far, his efforts had been futile, but he didn’t let that get him down. He might’ve been gone for years, but there was no way Kenna had changed the root of her being so drastically during that time. And Kenna, above all else, was a woman of her word. If she agreed on a bet, she intended to uphold her end. She wouldn’t even enter it in the first place if she wasn’t all in.
He’d called her yesterday and gotten her voice mail, before sending her a text to check in. Her response hadn’t come until nearly midnight, saying she was sorry for missing him, but she’d had a hell of a day. And then she’d gone radio silent—probably passed out from exhaustion if he read the tone of her texts correctly.
He wanted to know what had her so damn exhausted, and he couldn’t wait any longer to find out. Memory took him from the cabin—where he and Caleb had been staying while they worked on some of the necessary repairs—to the Haven estate. Thanks to his momma, he knew Kenna had moved out several years ago and was now living in a small guesthouse Richard had had built after Will came home from college.
Following his momma’s directions, he turned down the long, winding driveway to the main house, then bypassed it, continuing on toward the back of the property. The path was lined with trees, their burnished leaves falling from the branches and spinning through the air to land on his windshield. He loved Havenbrook in the fall, with all the bright colors and the smell of rain and the crispness to the air.
A short drive later, a clearing opened, and there sat a small bungalow-style house with a front porch, complete with a couple rocking chairs. It wasn’t at all what he’d imagined—for one thing, it was a lot more private than he’d been anticipating. Knowing the kind of father Richard was, Hudson wouldn’t have put it past the man to build the guesthouse ten feet from his own just so he could keep a close eye on his daughters.
For another thing, it was…beautiful. Extravagant, even. Small and quaint, yes, but it was fancier than Kenna preferred. Or at least, what she used to prefer. When they’d been younger, she’d talked about how much she’d love to live in a cabin, secluded in the woods, year-round and not just during the summers. She loved being surrounded by nature, loved the simplicity of living in the wilderness. This little slice of Haven heaven was a far cry from that.
A golf cart was parked next to an old Jeep, and Hudson smiled, remembering the tale he’d heard on his first day back. How Gary Anders had put the cart on the line during a bet with Kenna, and she’d won. Hudson had no doubt she hadn’t batted an eye at taking the damn thing either. In her mind, if someone bet on something, they sure as hell meant it, just like she did.
He climbed out of his truck and shut the door, not attempting stealth at this point because his beast of a vehicle ran louder than a pack of screaming kids at an amusement park. As he strode up the path to the front door, the curtains in the window were swept back, but he barely got a glimpse of Kenna before the drapes swished closed again.
Taking the two steps up onto the porch, he raised his fist to knock at the same time the door flew open and out stepped Kenna. He rocked back on his heels, letting his hand drop at the same time as he drank in the sight of her. She wore hiking boots, jeans, a dark, oversized hoodie, and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. She was flushed and fucking beautiful, her long hair down for the first time since he’d been home. He ached to wind his fingers into that mass, tug her head back, and kiss the hell out of her.
“Mornin’, Kenna,” he said, his voice a little gruff. He settled his hand on her hip and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her temple. Not missing her sharp intake of breath as he did so.
“Hey,” she breathed, meeting his eyes when he pulled back. “What’re you doin’ here?”
“Came to get my Kenna fix since I missed out yesterday.”
Her mouth quirked up on the side before she blew out a long breath, her shoulder slumping. “Sorry ’bout that. Yesterday was a shitshow.”
Hudson cracked a grin and leaned back against the railing. “Everything all right?”
Biting into her bottom lip, she furrowed her brow. He was still getting used to her new-to-him expressions. Uncertainty and unease were something he hadn’t seen from her much, if at all, when they’d been younger, but he’d seen more than he would’ve liked since he’d been back.
“I’m—” she started, then shook her head and glanced down at her feet. “I’m actually not sure.”
Something in her tone had him taking the single stride to her, and he grabbed her hand, squeezing once. “You wanna talk about it?”
Christ, he hoped she’d talk about it. Used to be, they could talk about anything and everything. Nothing was off-limits between them—with the exception of their feelings for each other. But he’d fucked that up when he’d kept the biggest secret of all from her—the fact that he wasn’t going back to college with her as planned and was enlisting instead.
He had a lot of ground to make up for that stupid mistake, and if he had to bare his soul to her every day for the rest of his life without any reciprocation from her to do so, so be it.
She shook her head, glancing down at where her hand rested in his. “I…can’t. Not now. My day’s crazy packed.”
Trying not to let his disappointment show, he nodded. “Okay. How about lunch?”
Regret passed over her face. “Can’t do that either. I’ll be workin’ at town hall.”
He furrowed his brow as he racked his brain, trying to remember his momma mentioning anything about Kenna working with her daddy. “Since when do you work at town hall?”
“Since yesterday, apparently,” she said dryly.
His eyebrows flew up toward his baseball cap. “Oh yeah? What happened yesterday? Other than a hell of a rainstorm.”
“Too damn much. And the storm is why I’m out here, actually.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and checked the time. “I need to get my ass in gear if I have any hope of bein’ done before I need to be at town hall to figure out what the hell I got myself into.”
The mention of her ass had his eyes sliding down, shamelessly drinking in the sight of her luscious curves. His hands itched with a desperate need to cup them and squeeze. Tug her right up against him and feel all her soft places along every inch of his hardness.
He cleared his throat and met her eyes again, not bothering to hide the lust he was certain showed all over his face. “So what is it your ass needs to do?”
Her lifted brow and the slight curve at the corner of her mouth said she’d caught his ogling. And that, just maybe
, she didn’t mind it. “I need to check and make sure the creek didn’t get too high.”
“Are you Havenbrook’s creek keeper now?”
She blew out a laugh and shook her head. “I’m Ella’s keeper. She’s always runnin’ out there to play, like you and I used to. It’s grown in a lot more since then, though. I wanna make sure she’s as safe as she can be.”
And that was just another item on the long list of ways Kenna gave back, niece or not. In the short time he’d been in Havenbrook, he’d seen her giving selflessly multiple times. Did she even realize how generous she was without asking for anything in return?
He hooked a finger through her belt loop and tugged her close, until their lower bodies were pressed together. And, shit, he hadn’t thought that through because his cock woke up at the contact like a gunshot had sounded.
Leaning down, he brought his mouth close to her ear, breathing in the scent of her he’d missed so damn much. “What do I have to do to get an invitation to go on this adventure with you?”
She froze, every part of her going still with the exception of the shiver that ran through her body. Was she even aware she was tilting her head toward him, as if aching for his touch as much as he craved hers?
“I don’t know…” she said, her voice quiet and breathless, and damn, he liked that a hell of a lot. His cock loved it. “You think you can hack it in those woods?” She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “It’s kind of a mess out there. A lot of shit to wade through.”
There was something in the seriousness of her tone that made him think she might be talking about a lot more than just the wooded area of the Haven estate.
Unable to help himself, he reached up, swept her hair behind her shoulder, and cupped her neck, his thumb pressing lightly against her pulse point. He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, even the slight contact sending a jolt of electricity humming through his veins. “I think I can keep up.”
She stared at him for a beat, her gaze flicking down to his mouth before meeting his eyes again. She licked her lips and then pressed them together, nodding once. “Well, come on, then.”
Kenna tugged him behind her, down the steps and to the east, her stride focused and purposeful as she led them toward the brush.
He couldn’t count how many times he and Kenna had explored these woods when they’d been younger. At one time, they’d had a dozen paths running through that part of the Havens’ property. How they always found their way out, he had no idea.
“You ever think what a miracle it is that we never got lost out here as kids?”
She squatted next to what appeared to be a Canada goldenrod, carefully studying it, before pulling out a blue flag and affixing it to one of the stems. “All the time, actually. That’s why I do this.” She stood, swiped her hands on her pants, then continued deeper into the woods.
“Why you do what? These flags?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about them,” he said, tugging on the variety of colors poking out of the top of her backpack. “Y’all do scavenger hunts out here or something?”
She glanced back at him with a small smile, the sun shining through the trees setting her dark hair aflame. “Hardly. Ella and I are pretty much the only two who come back here. In this part, anyway.”
“She’s a lot like you, isn’t she?”
Her smile grew. “Yeah.”
“So, you put these out for her? Why?”
“Your momma ever tell you about the scare we had with her a few years ago?”
Hudson thought back to all the information his mom had been feeding him—at his request—for years, but he couldn’t remember anything about Kenna’s nieces coming up at all. “Not that I can recall. What happened?”
She blew out a long breath and stopped to pick up a fallen flag, reaffixing it to the correct bush. “The little shit took off on us. She was maybe five? Definitely not old enough to be in here by herself. She and I had been going into the woods for a couple months, explorin’, and Ms. Independent that she is thought it’d be okay if she dipped inside without lettin’ anyone know.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. She was missin’ for a couple hours.” Kenna’s head dipped and she swallowed, her voice shaky when she said, “Scariest hours of my life.”
“Did y’all call in the search and rescue team?”
“If by search and rescue team you mean me, then yeah.”
“Wait…Havenbrook is surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, and y’all don’t have an SAR team in place yet?”
“Nope. Even after that. Even though Daddy’s the one who’d approve the budget for that and it was his freakin’ granddaughter who went missin’.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s just me.”
“That’s…” He shook his head, lifting his hat off his head and scrubbing a hand over his scalp. “Fucking ridiculous.”
She huffed out a laugh and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. But what’re you gonna do?” She gestured to the red flag she’d tied around a deep root in the ground, protruding enough to pose a hazard if someone wasn’t paying attention. “That’s why I do this. After Ella got lost in here, I taught her everything I could. She knows these woods as well as we did—better. Plus, she thinks she’s playin’ while I’m crammin’ her little brain full of even more knowledge with some of these flags.”
“And how’d your brain get stuffed full of all this knowledge?”
Kenna had always been smart as hell and resourceful, especially outdoors, but watching her comb the forest, eyes assessing as she categorized vegetation for her niece, was something else entirely.
She shrugged and shifted her gaze from his, suddenly finding the leaves on a red buckeye shrub incredibly intriguing. “Here and there.”
He narrowed his eyes, studying her, sorting through the memories he had of every detail his momma had told him about Kenna since he’d been gone. Then something clicked. “Your knowledge in this have anything to do with those weeks you disappear from Havenbrook a couple times a year?”
She jerked up her head to meet his gaze, staring silently at him for long moments before shaking her head. “Dunno why I thought you wouldn’t know about that…”
“You gonna tell me what you do during that time?”
“What, your checkin’ up on me didn’t provide you with that information?”
Hudson smiled, completely unrepentant. Yeah, he’d checked up on her—what the hell else was he supposed to do while he was a world away, still loving her with everything he had but not having any place to put it? She’d gone radio silent. She’d been the one who pulled away. Yes, the catalyst lay directly at his feet—when his first failed mission had resulted in them taking on enemy fire. Thankfully, he’d gotten his team out of there with nothing more than a bullet wound scar that still graced his shoulder.
When he’d told Kenna, she’d freaked out, reiterating how that was exactly what she’d been worried about. In that moment, when he’d been in a hospital bed, recovering before he could return to the mission, he could admit her fear had some plausibility. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not when it wasn’t just his life on the line, but also the lives of his entire platoon. So, reluctantly, he’d agreed to back off like she wanted.
But it wasn’t as if his love for her had suddenly vanished. As if it came with an on-off switch that he could flip whenever it was convenient. So, yeah, he’d checked up on her. Often and without shame.
He lifted one shoulder. “Apparently sometimes secrets stay secrets, even in Havenbrook.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“This one has, hasn’t it?”
“That’s only ’cause no one but Will knows the details.” She waved a hand through the air as if to bat away his questions. “It’s nothing. Not a big deal.”
Uh-huh. Just like her coming out here and making the woods safe for her niece wasn’t a big deal.
“I don’t buy that. If it takes you out of Havenbrook for weeks at
a time, it seems like it’d probably be a pretty big deal.” He reached out and gripped her wrist, halting her forward movement. And then he stepped into her space and backed her right up to a huge tree trunk the size of a small house. Didn’t stop until he was pressed up against her, her breaths bathing his chest, making him absolutely ache with need. For her.
He tilted his head down toward her, resting his jaw against her temple. “You afraid to tell me?”
“No,” she said, her voice nothing more than a croak. Jesus, he loved that she was just as affected by him as he was by her. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. “I’m not afraid. I just…like my privacy.”
He hummed, pulling back enough to look down at her and remembering a time when she didn’t keep a damn thing from him. “Never used to. At least, not with me.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the note of sadness that had seeped into his tone or something else entirely, but she gave in with a sigh.
“Fine, you big baby.” She poked him in the stomach, but he didn’t care—not one bit. Because then she left her hand on him, tucked into the front waistband of his jeans, and how the fuck was he supposed to concentrate on anything but her fingers so close to his cock? “A few years back, I got certified in an outreach program for at-risk kids. Wilderness preparedness, outdoor survival education, that kind of thing. They have sessions throughout the year, and I usually try to make it to at least two of them.”
Goddamn, he didn’t think he could be any more awed by this woman, but she kept proving him wrong. Showing him new and different ways she’d changed. Grown. Evolved into this beautiful, giving, generous woman that he was falling in love with all over again.
Besides that, he was relieved to know that even though she’d stayed in Havenbrook, she hadn’t abandoned her adventurous soul—the one that had goaded him to rappel or zip-line or cliff dive with her. He loved that she’d found a way to stay close to her family but still feed that part of her that thrived on the rush of adrenaline.
He envied her that. She made it look so easy—doing what she loved without immersing her entire being in it and forgetting about everything else. Without losing herself to a career she might truly enjoy, but which took her from what—or whom—she loved. Hudson had lived that. Was currently living that. And some days, he’d give anything to be back in Havenbrook, surrounded by family and lifelong friends, without the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Captain Heartbreaker (Havenbrook Book 4) Page 9
