by Jill Shalvis
Not Bailey apparently. She rose out of the chair he’d put her in and came up behind him. He could feel her, her worry, her anxiety.
He was such an asshole. Hud knew it but he couldn’t turn to her. He couldn’t do anything right then but obsess about Max’s email and Jacob. For all their growing-up years, they’d been connected. It seemed at times oddly so. They could always tell what the other had been thinking or when one of them got hurt.
For a while after Jacob had left that ability had lingered, but over the years it’d faded away, leaving Hud nothing of Jacob. Staring out into the night, he should’ve been able to feel his twin.
He couldn’t.
And that scared him to the bone.
“You took a night off. That’s rare,” she said. “The world still spinning?”
He let out a low laugh. Shockingly, the world was still spinning, going on without him. Something to think about.
“Are you okay?” Bailey asked quietly.
This had him closing his eyes. He’d put a gun in her face. He should be comforting her and yet she stood behind him, hovering, wanting to comfort him. He forced out a low laugh. “You hate that question, remember?”
“I do,” she said. “Let me reword. What’s wrong, Hud?”
He felt her hand on his back and instead of pulling away like he would have if it’d been anyone else, he wanted to turn and yank her in tight. To make sure he didn’t, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Just a long night. Go to bed, Bailey.”
Go to bed? Oh no, thank you very much. Bailey knew he was probably well used to dismissing people with that authoritative tone, but she wasn’t one of his employees and couldn’t be dismissed so easily.
Growing up, her teachers had always commented about her stubbornness in her report cards. Fact was, she had it in spades, which she believed had helped save her life. She was too obstinate to die.
The office was silent except for her breathing. If Hud was breathing, she couldn’t tell. When he finally turned to face her, he arched a brow—and not in an amused way either. More in a frustrated, you’re-being-a-PITA kind of way.
“I don’t know about the other people in your life,” she said, “but I don’t usually do as I’m told. It’s a known problem.”
He gave a small smile but it faded quickly enough as he focused in on her. “You’re shaking.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.” He pulled her in.
She happily snuggled in, wrapping her arms around him. “It’s not me, Hud,” she whispered, trying to wrap her entire body around him. “It’s you. You’re shaking.”
“Shit.” He dropped his forehead to her shoulder, running his hands up and down her arms as if soothing her would soothe him. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he whispered against her jaw.
“No,” she said. “I should’ve knocked when I first got to your doorway, but you were staring at your phone so intently I didn’t want to interrupt you, and then—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “My fault, not yours.” He kept his mouth against her so every word ghosted over her skin.
She shivered but didn’t want to let him distract her. “Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Knowing it was the last thing he wanted to do, she put her hand on his chest. “I can tell you’ve had a rough night—”
He snorted.
“Okay, a rough week maybe,” she said. “I’ve had a few of those myself and I know that sometimes it helps to say what’s bothering you.”
He was quiet for so long she thought, Okay, I guess he’s not going to say a word. But then he quietly said, “I got an email about Jacob’s unit.”
She pulled free to search his face for a hint, but he was damn good at giving away nothing when he wanted. “What happened?” she asked.
“They took enemy fire. No word on if there were injuries.” He paused. “Or fatalities.”
Her heart broke at all he didn’t say. “And you’ve had no contact from him?” she asked.
“No.”
“I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you as soon as he can.”
Hud slowly shook his head and scrubbed a hand down his face, which she knew now to be one of his rare tells. He had to be exhausted to let it slip. “No,” he said. “Jacob won’t be in contact.”
“But he’s got to know how you and the others will be worrying about him.”
“Trust me,” he said grimly. “You couldn’t understand.”
She stared up at him. “You think because I don’t have any siblings I can’t understand an obviously difficult relationship?”
“We’re dropping this,” he said. “It’s not up for discussion. Or for public consumption in the mural.”
She absorbed the unexpected hurt of that and turned away, getting as far as the door before she stopped and stared at her hand on the doorknob, remembering what Carrie told her.
Hud pushes away the people he cares about most. He’s good at it.
Bailey let out a breath and turned, walking back to him until she was toe-to-toe with him. “I almost let you do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Push me away. It’s apparently your MO when it comes to the people you care most about. Like Jacob.”
Still as the night behind him, only his eyes tracked to her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I think I do. So if that’s what you’re doing now, Hud? Pushing me away because you care too much? You should know that I won’t go. I can’t be pushed.” To prove it, she moved back to the door and hit the lock.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
She dropped her sweater on the floor on her way over to him. “If you don’t know, I’m not doing it very well.”
“Bailey—”
“No,” she said, and pointed at him. “You don’t feel like talking, remember?”
“You said last week that this thing was one night,” he said.
Was he worried that she’d try and cling to him? “I said one night?” she asked innocently, purposefully misunderstanding him. “My mistake. I meant two.” She gave him a little push until his desk hit the backs of his thighs.
“Bailey—”
“Shh.” She unzipped his sweatshirt and shoved it off his shoulders.
His hands went to her hips. “Bay.” His voice came out a low, barely there rasp. “This is a bad idea.”
“Well of course it is,” she said. “All week I’m thinking about you while pretending I’m not. And you’re here doing your best to keep me at arm’s length, which I know damn well means that you think about me too.” She smiled. “Really, we’re quite the pair.”
“Fucking pathetic.” But he returned her smile with a small one of his own and then he was tugging at her clothes and then his, exposing the necessary parts—and God, she loved his necessary parts—so that they could make good use of his desk.
And after that, the loveseat against the wall.
“I sit on this thing and work sometimes,” Hud murmured much later when Bailey was sweaty and still panting in his arms. “I’m never going to look at it the same way again.” She felt him smile against her damp skin. “In fact, I think I’ll have it bronzed.”
Chapter 15
Hud worked his ass off on Saturday afternoon, but that night he did something he couldn’t remember ever doing—he took himself off the roster at both the resort and the station. He also turned off his phone.
And then he knocked at Bailey’s employee apartment.
She opened the door and stared at him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She wore his favorite outfit—her skimpy PJs.
“Did you say two nights?” he asked, holding up a bottle of wine and a bag of Chinese takeout. “Or three?
Holding his gaze, she took the bag, dropping eye contact to peer in at the food. She smiled. “Oh, most definitely three.”
The following week was as crazy as all the others in ski season. On Thursday night Hud took
his mom out for her “birthday.” On Friday he, Aidan, and Gray went out to dinner. They shared a pitcher of beer and recapped their week. This was usually a weekly thing. Sometimes Penny and Lily joined them, but tonight it was just the boys plus Kenna. She had blessed them with her presence even though she did spend most of the time on her phone.
Aidan gave Hud a worried look, but Hud knew she was simply playing Words With Friends and probably at this very moment kicking his ass.
“Our insurance company called to let us know we had three serious injuries this week,” Gray announced.
“Actually it was four,” Kenna said with head down and still concentrating on her phone. “Don’t forget that stupid snow bunny who sat too close to the fire pit in the lodge. She was striking poses on the bench in front of it, trying to get a good selfie, and fell on her ass. And since she was wearing ridiculously high-heeled boots, she couldn’t get up quickly and singed her hair extensions. Our mountain had nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah, well,” Gray said, annoyed. “However it happened, they’re sending a rep out next week to discuss better safety precautions. I don’t care if we have to put a sign by the fire pit that says women with hair extensions have to sit twenty feet back, we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Gray took any affront on the resort personally.
Kenna rolled her eyes. “You can’t put out a sign like that. You’ll have feminists the world over hating on you.”
“Fine, make the sign say that anyone wearing hair extensions needs to stay twenty feet from the fire.”
“We’ve upped our training from every other day to every day,” Hud chimed in, hoping to avoid a fight. “We’re fully staffed. Unlike most of the other resorts, we didn’t make big cuts on either staffing or safety. They’re not going to find any reason to mess with you.”
“Yeah, well, see that they don’t.” Gray thumbed his way down a list on his iPad. “We were asked to sponsor the high school’s ski team again this year.” He lifted his head and looked at Hud. “They’re down a coach and asked for you. You got any time available?”
Shit. No he didn’t. And yet he could remember when all he’d wanted was to be on that ski team. There’d never been enough money for it. No way did he want a single kid to miss out on a dream because of money. “I’d find time if they let us give out scholarships for kids who have the skills but not the money. If I’m the coach, no one misses getting on the team for lack of funds.”
Gray eyed him over the iPad, amused. “And you’re going to pull the money for the scholarships from where exactly, your ass?”
“We’ll find the money.”
Aidan refilled Gray’s beer. “I’m with Hud. We’ll find the money.”
“Christ,” Gray grumbled, and made some notes. “‘Find the money,’” he muttered. “Sure, we’ll just find the goddamn money.”
“I have the money,” Kenna said, actually looking up from her phone.
When Gray started to open his mouth, she set down the phone—something rarely seen out in the wild—and stood up. And then, making a face at how short she still was, she let out a pissy noise and stood on her chair, snatching the pitcher of beer to her chest as she did. “You won’t let me help the resort,” she said to the table. “You won’t let me do shit because you think I’m fragile. Well fragile this, I’m not giving the beer back until someone says I can sponsor the goddamn high school ski team with my own goddamn money!”
“You have my vote,” Aidan said.
Kenna eyed him. “You just want more beer.”
“Yes,” he said seriously. “But I also want to see you smile.”
“I vote for you too,” Hud told her. “On one condition. I’m going to need a co-coach for the ski team.”
Kenna turned to him. “Me?”
“Well, I didn’t mean the Easter Bunny.”
Kenna stared down at him very solemnly. Heartbreakingly earnest. “You want me to co-coach with you.”
“God yes,” he said. “Have you met any high school girls?” He shuddered. “They’re terrifying.”
She blinked and then gave him a smile that seemed more than a little rusty.
“Cool?” he asked.
“Cool,” she whispered. She carefully climbed down off her chair and filled up his beer to the tippy top.
“Hey,” Aidan said. “What about me? I voted for you first, chica.”
She filled up Aidan’s glass too.
Gray raised a brow.
“First you have to say you would’ve voted for me if I’d asked,” she said.
“Whatever you want,” Gray said.
She laughed in delight. “Whatever I want?”
“Yes,” Gray said. “Because you are to me what high school girls are to Hud. Terrifying.”
She laughed again. “Really?”
“Always,” Gray said fervently. “And another always? Me backing you. In anything and everything, Kenna. All of us,” he said. “You have our vote no matter what. You hear me?”
She stared at him for a long beat, her eyes suspiciously shiny. She hated crying, rarely if ever did it. The last time Hud saw her cry was ten years ago when her cat had gotten out and been stolen.
Except it hadn’t really been stolen. The truth was, a coyote had killed it. He and Jacob had stayed up all night burying the thing so Kenna would never know.
Kenna let out a long breath, nodded at Gray, and dipped her head so that they couldn’t see her face. She then tipped up the pitcher and drank the last of the beer right out of it.
“Seriously?” Gray asked.
She swiped her mouth and smiled. “That’s ‘seriously, coach’ to you.” She flashed a grin none of them had seen in far too long. “Next round’s on me,” she said, and headed to the bar.
Aidan gave Gray a punch to the shoulder.
“Ow,” Gray said. “And what the fuck?”
“I’ve been telling you all she needs is something to do, to feel self-worth again. Stop babying her. You should know by now she hates it.”
Gray snatched Aidan’s beer and flipped him off while downing it.
Aidan turned to Hud, tossing him a brown bag he pulled from his backpack.
“What’s this?” Hud asked distrustfully. He had good reason not to trust a damn thing Aidan handed him in a bag.
Aidan smirked. “Worried?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Jeez, give a guy a snake one time…”
Gray grinned. “That was a lot of fun.”
Asshole brothers. Hud took the bag with two fingers. “If this is a snake, you’d better say your last prayers.”
Aidan laughed. “That was ten years ago and it was a fucking garter snake, man. Harmless.”
“Harmless my ass. It bit me!”
“It did not,” Aidan said. “You just told everyone that because you screamed like a banshee.”
“I repeat,” Hud said stiffly, “you tossed a snake into my lap.”
“You nearly shit your pants.”
That he hadn’t was solely due to the fact that he’d been sitting next to Trina Anderson, at the time the hottest thing he’d ever seen. He’d been working his way up to getting in her pants when Aidan had ever so helpfully screwed him over. “So I have one fear,” he said now. “So what? Everyone’s afraid of something.”
“You’re afraid of two things,” Aidan said. “Open the bag.”
Hud shook it. Nothing hissed or even moved. Considering it safe, he peered into the bag. “Shit.”
