by Jill Shalvis
weather so he turned on the radio now, which was predicting the storm of the season, maybe the decade.
Perfect.
Carrie sighed from the backseat. “You going to talk any sense into him, Aidan?”
Aidan laughed a little and met Carrie’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “You ever had luck talking any sense into him?” he asked.
“No. He’s pretty hardheaded.”
Aidan chuckled.
Hud rolled his eyes.
“This is important,” Carrie said to Aidan. “This is his life he’s messing up. We can’t let him do that. Can you try harder?”
Aidan shifted his weight in the seat, looking uncomfortable. The Kincaids didn’t do well discussing feelings. “I’m not really authorized to talk on this issue,” Aidan finally said. “It’s above my pay grade.”
“You think Lily would agree to that?” Carrie asked.
“Lily’s smarter than I am,” Aidan said. He looked at Hud. “And I’m pretty sure Bailey’s smarter than your son. No insult intended.”
“None taken,” Carrie said, and sighed as they pulled into her home. The guys got her inside and settled.
Hud leaned over her to kiss her good-bye. “Missed you, Mom,” he said quickly, wondering how long she’d stay lucid, if it would stick this time. “It was good to see you.”
Carrie cupped his face and looked him in the eyes. “You’ve always said there were things you wished you could take back,” she said, voice earnest. “When you crashed your bike and sent Jacob flying over the handlebars and straight to the hospital. Or when you cheated and took Jacob’s multiplication test for him and got both of you suspended from third grade for a week.”
“Mom, it’s going to be okay.”
“How?” she asked. “Your dad’s gone, Jacob’s gone, and now Bailey too? How much loss can you take, Hud? Don’t let her go, baby. Please, don’t.” She started to cry. “The principal and school counselor once told me they were worried about you because you didn’t let yourself get attached. And it’s all my fault. Please don’t let this be all my fault, Hudson.”
“It’s not,” he said, destroyed. He sat on her bed and pulled her into his arms. “This isn’t your fault. None of it is your fault.”
“It is! If I’d loved you better, if I wasn’t bats-in-the-belfry crazy like everyone says, if I’d been less of a coward to let love back into my life and given you the right example, if I’d been a better mom—”
“No,” Hud said firmly. “This is on me. Not you. I know how to love, and I know it because you taught me.”
Carrie’s eyes filled. “You’re trying to make me feel better and that’s sweet, but—”
“No buts,” he said firmly, suddenly everything clicking into place for him. It wasn’t his mom who was the coward—it was him. Love terrified him and that was bullshit, complete bullshit. He hugged her hard and kissed her on top of her head.
She clung to him tight. “You’ve always been a good son to me, Hud. Always. You and Jacob—”
“Took care of what we could, I know, Mom.”
“No. Well, yes, you did. Always. And the promise in you as a young boy… Well, you’ve kept it as you grew up. You’re a wonderful man, Hud, and I’m so very proud of you.”
He met her gaze and was gratified to see that she was still one hundred percent lucid. She knew exactly who she was talking to. She was talking to Hud the man, not the boy.
“You’ve shouldered so much responsibility,” she said, “staying here and doing what was right for the family. I don’t know a better man. Well, except for you, Aidan. You’re a good man too.”
Aidan winked at her.
Carrie smiled and turned back to Hud. “And because you are such a good man, you know that you deserve love. But I still want to hear you say it.”
“Mom—”
“Hudson Edward Kincaid,” she said, her voice wavering but her tone utter steel. “Say it. Say you deserve love.”
He sighed. “I deserve love.”
“Well then what the hell are you still doing here? Go get her!”
Back outside, Hud looked at the sky. Shit. Their “storm of the season, maybe the decade” was moving in faster than he’d thought. He tried to take the driver’s seat.
“No way,” Aidan said. “No one drives this baby but me.”
“You let Lily drive it.”
“Yeah, and sometimes I let her drive in my bed too,” Aidan said. “But not you.” Using his big body to edge Hud out of the way, he grabbed the driver’s seat. “Get in or stay here,” he said out the window. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
Hud swore and got in the passenger side a split second before Aidan hit the gas. “I don’t know what crawled up your ass but I’m in a hurry.”
“Why do you think I’m driving?” Aidan asked. “You drive like a grandma.”
Hud narrowed his eyes at him.
“Oh, excuse me,” Aidan corrected. “You’re a cop, not a grandma, and you’re required to drive within the limits of the law.” He flashed a grin. “I’m not.”
“Fine,” Hud said. “But haul ass, you hear me? Lights do not exist.”
Aidan’s look to Hud said his intelligence had been insulted as he tore out of the parking lot. “You got your head on straight then?”
“Yeah,” Hud said.
“You sure? Cuz I could knock you around a little to make sure.”
“Thanks,” Hud said dryly. “You’re a giver but I’m good now.”
“You got a plan?”
“No,” Hud admitted.
“Groveling usually works. You hit your knees and you grovel like there’s no tomorrow. I’m talking until you have rug burns, man.”
“I’ve got time to figure it out. I’ve got until she finishes the mural to convince her that I’m worth a real shot.”
“How long is that?” Aidan asked.
“She’s close… At least today, hopefully one more weekend, I don’t know.”
They drove up to the resort. It was six thirty. The lot was still mostly empty except for staff vehicles, the groomers, ski patrol, cafeteria workers…
Bailey’s car was nowhere in sight.
Aidan caught that too. “I don’t see her, man—”
Hud slid out of the truck and went running to the mural site. Halfway there, Marcus tried to stop him to talk.
“I’m late,” Hud said.
Marcus looked surprised, as well he should. There were no lifts running, no staff still waiting on him for anything, and no meeting for another half hour. “But—”
“Sorry, I’ll get back to you,” Hud promised.
Four minutes later he stood at the base of the mural as the first snow fell. The complete mural, which meant she’d stayed up all night to finish it.
It was gorgeous. He and his siblings in larger-than-life form, taking on the world together.
Their world.
It took his breath away. But everything was gone. The scaffolding remained, nothing else. No brushes, no paint, no rags.
No Bailey.
Chapter 30
That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Marcus said as he came to a stop next to Hud. “She was packing up and fretting about taking down the scaffolding. I offered to do it for her so she wouldn’t have to.”
Hud scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Is that a problem?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah, but only because he’s a dipshit dumbass,” Aidan said, coming up behind them both.
Gray and Penny as well.
“You missed her?” Penny asked with some incrimination in her tone.
“Yeah,” Hud said. “I missed her. Between that all-night call and making sure my mom got back home and medicated, and dealing with the latest news on Jacob—”
Everyone gasped.
“He’s okay,” Hud said quickly. “I got the email just before you all showed up at the conference room last night and then everything went to hell and I forgot to tell you. He made it back, his en
tire unit did. All is okay.” He shoved his hands through his hair. All was okay, except for himself…
“Man, this is not what any of us want for you,” Gray said. “Get the hell out of here and go after her. We’ll hold the fort down.”
“I can’t let you take it all on,” he started.
Gray was already shaking his head. “Listen, we’re not being martyrs here. You’ll be back with her. Bailey loves it here and she belongs here every bit as much as you do.”
“And even if that’s not true,” Penny said, chiming in, “even if she doesn’t want to live here with all the crazy, so what?”
Gray looked at her. “So what?”
“Yeah,” Penny said. “So what?”
“So this is Hud’s home,” Gray said. “You don’t just leave your home.”
Penny shook her head at him. “You’re missing my point, babe.”
“You’re telling him it’s okay to leave.”
“It is,” Penny said, more gently this time. She looked at Hud. “She’s worth it. Love is worth it.” She turned back to her husband and looked at him until he sighed and nodded. Penny gave him a warm smile and met Hud’s gaze again. “Go wherever the love takes you,” she said.
“Yeah,” Aidan deadpanned. “Because Hud’s the go-where-love-takes-him, hippy-dippy one of the family.”
Penny glared at him and Aidan lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, so maybe he can learn…”
Hud ignored all of them. “I thought I had more time to get her to stay,” he muttered to himself.
“Just how much time did you need?” Gray asked. “You knew this day was coming.”
Yeah, he had. But he’d kept thinking that falling in love was the last thing he needed to be doing, that it was ridiculous, and that he didn’t have time for it.
But watching Bailey attempt to carve out a life for herself from nothing, continually picking herself up by the bootstraps and doing her best in order to give life everything she had, made him realize something. Something big.
He really had shut himself off.
And Aidan was right. He was a dipshit dumbass.
“Hud,” Penny said gently. “We’re all here. We’ll cover for as long as it takes. Go after her. We’ve got your back.” She paused. “Do you need me to say it again?”
“Probably should,” Aidan piped in. “I mean, you had to tell me about a million times and he’s even slower than me, so…”
Penny rolled her eyes at the love of her life’s other brother and then met Hud’s gaze again.
He shook his head. “I can’t just leave. I’ve got a staff debriefing in twenty minutes. We’ve got a massive storm moving in, two patrollers on leave, and—”
“You leave because love is all that matters and you love her, you sorry ass,” Penny said.
So much for her being the nice one.
“Haven’t you done enough for all of us?” she demanded. “The answer’s yes, by the way. So do not use us as an excuse to stay. Your mom wouldn’t want that, and Jacob, well he’d just beat the shit out of you for even thinking it.”
Hud nodded and whipped out his phone. He hit Bailey’s number.
He went straight to voice mail. “Bailey,” he said. “Call me.” He paused. “I’m coming to you, okay? So call me. Please.”
Bailey drove away from Cedar Ridge, the storm on her tail the entire way. Halfway, she thought she would have to stop and wait the weather out, but luck was on her side, leaving her just ahead of the road closures. It took her a nerve-wrecking four hours to get home though, and by the time she pulled up to her apartment complex, she was a shaky mess. She looked at her phone, which beeped a voice mail from Hud.
She’s not a keeper to me.
The words were still reverberating inside her head. When she’d first processed them, her heart had leapt into her throat, and there hadn’t been enough air for her to breathe ever since.
When she heard Hud’s voice saying, “Call me,” she sucked in a breath. Nope, she couldn’t do it. So she deleted the rest of the message without listening to it. She got that he was probably worried about her. But she didn’t want his worry.
She wanted what she couldn’t have. His love. She sent him a brief text that said: I got home safe. And then she turned off her phone.
On top of her nursing job, her mother was the building super and had the first apartment. Bailey let herself in and found her mom in the kitchen pulling frozen cookie dough out of the freezer. She took one look at her daughter and turned on the oven. “We’re going to need the cookies cooked, not just raw dough,” she guessed.
Bailey nodded wordlessly.
Her mother’s welcoming smile faded. “Oh, baby. He hurt you. Dammit, I knew this would happen.”
“No.” Bailey shook her head. “I hurt myself.”
Her mother turned to the phone on the wall. “I’m going to call Aaron.”
“No! I don’t need Aaron.”
“What do you need?”
“Cookies.” She gulped some air. “And you.”
And then she burst into tears.
The snowstorm that blew in was indeed massive, closing most of the highways and causing havoc from one end of Colorado to the other.
Thirty-six hours went by and for each of those hours Hud grew more impossible to live with, or so each of his family members told him.
“You want to change your tone, or I’ll shove it down your throat,” Gray suggested mildly when Hud told him where to shove it after Gray had dumped a bunch of paperwork on his desk.
“You kiss your mama with that mouth?” Aidan asked when Hud had to pull one of their snowcats out of a ditch, which took all night.
“Just because I’m a chick doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass,” Kenna said when he snarled at her for drinking the last soda in his place. “And I could totally do it too,” she told him, “since you’re still pouting over letting the love of your life get away—which, by the way, is your own damn fault, so you might want to stop taking your dumbass moves out on the people who actually still like you.”
That night Hud stood in his kitchen staring out at the storm that wouldn’t end. Every year for as long as he could remember, a storm like this had been a dream come true. It meant feet of fresh powder that, at first light, he and his brothers could plow through, racing each other through the trees, hip deep in snow the consistency of sifted flour.
In more recent years it also meant good business. People flocked to Cedar Ridge from far and wide for snow like that, snow that only came along like this once or twice a season.
But right now he’d give anything for it to be summer.
“Want to talk?” Gray asked, coming into the room.
“Hell no.” Hud let out a breath. “I waited too long to tell her how I felt. You warned me and I still waited too long.”
Gray waited until he turned to look at him. “It’s never too late.”
Hud hoped like hell that was true.
The next day finally dawned clear and bright, and Hud did something he’d never done before. He took himself off the schedule on a workday.
