The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

“I have an office?” He winked at her and then shifted his gaze back to Tyler Jacobson.

Hudson cocked his head and grinned as his favorite kind of plan started to form in his head—one that helped the people he cared about and allowed him to get what he really wanted, all while keeping his secret life…well, secret. Oh yeah, this was going to work like a charm.

…

Felicia Hartigan’s life would be so much better if she could just get back to her honeypot ants. Of course, as her boss had pointed out rather specifically to her earlier today, that wasn’t going to happen if Harbor City’s rich and bored didn’t donate money to the natural history museum’s ant lab. So here she was. Lucky her.

“It could be worse,” said fellow researcher Stan Gabrys. Tall and thin, with red hair that had started to go wispy, he was currently trying to pull off a Van Dyke beard that always made her think “magician” when she saw him. “One year, we had to put on a show-and-tell demonstration.”

“I love talking about my ants.” Sure, she was a researcher, but as an academic, she couldn’t overlook an opportunity to educate.

Stan grimaced as a rosy flush creeped up from the silver hook of his clip-on tie. “We had to dress up like the ants we researched.”

Felicia imagined herself dressed in a giant bubble to represent how the honeypot ant gorged itself on food until it looked like Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so it could feed the other ants in the colony when there wasn’t enough food to be found. The picture was even worse than having to go out like she was now, in her cute new classic little black dress rather than her regular T-shirt and jeans (with the cuffs tucked into her socks if she was out in the field). Why am I still single? She mentally shook her head.

“So, who’s the guy over there talking to your rich friend?” Stan asked.

An excited buzz started in her stomach. “Tyler Jacobson?”

She only had one rich friend, and he was the reason she was here, despite her boss’s insistence notwithstanding. Everyone else here was either Harbor City elite—and therefore out of her social strata—or someone she worked with, making them a big, giant no-no. She didn’t mix her ant species, and she didn’t mix her work and personal lives. Felicia believed in boundaries, the importance of evidence-based science, and that success came with never deviating from the plan. In this case, that meant not giving up on getting Tyler Jacobson to really see her. And if he was looking at her, then spending the b

irthday check her mom had sent her early—“Thirty days before thirty! Go have some fun,” she’d written—on this flattering black dress had totally been the right move.

Stan shook his head. “No, I’ve met him before. You introduced him at another one of these things. It’s the guy he’s talking with, who keeps staring.”

Felicia glanced in the direction Stan motioned with his head. Since animal classification was kind of her thing, she assessed and categorized the man talking with Tyler in an instant. He was tall, with longish light brown hair, and lean muscles that he used to his advantage as he exuded the easy confidence of the obnoxiously rich. His lazy smile proved just how often he got his way. Just as she was thinking it, he turned and zeroed in on her and that smile of his went from nice enough to dangerous, as if he not only knew what kind of panties she was wearing, but how to get her out of them, too. He was too tall, too handsome, and too full of himself. To put it bluntly, she would classify him scientifically as Family: Man, Genus: Not for Her.

Now, Tyler Jacobson? He was all dark hair, blue eyes, and brains. Smart wasn’t the new sexy. It was the only sexy as far as Felicia was concerned. Super-stud over there with his I-have-sex-for-breakfast-every-day grin didn’t stand a chance in her world.

She turned around and shrugged. “No clue.”

“Well, he’s coming this way with that Travis dude,” Stan said.

“Tyler,” she corrected as heat pricked her cheeks. Out of habit, she smoothed her hair back and straightened her spine to add as much as she could to her five-foot-nothing height.

This was it. This was why she allowed herself to be pushed into doing exactly the opposite of her usual Thursday night plan of a hot bath, a single glass of red wine, and the latest issue of the Journal of Myrmecology. With her birthday only a month away, she still had time to check off Make Tyler Fall for Me on the list of career and personal goals to hit before thirty that she’d made when she was fifteen. There were already black check marks by every other item on the list (graduate first in her class, land a premium research position, move across the harbor from Waterbury to the big city), and she wasn’t a woman to leave things undone.

…

Hudson had never been more thoroughly ignored by a woman in his entire life. Women loved him. He was funny, charming, and knew exactly what to do to with his tongue to make a woman’s toes curl and her eyes roll back in her head as she screamed her thanks to God, the fates, and anyone in between that he’d been born with a mouth like that. Plus, he had more money than some island nations. That in itself usually got him a slow, appreciative look.

However, Felicia—she of the black burlap-sack of a dress, messy hair, perfect bone structure, and mysterious something in her eyes that only a paintbrush could figure out—had attention for Tyler alone. For his part, Captain Clueless was too busy scoping out everyone else at the fundraiser to notice. It chapped Hudson’s ass and made him even more curious—and if that wasn’t karma telling him to go fuck himself, then he didn’t know what was.

Really, he should excuse himself, make a quick stop at the bar, and then find one of the many society darlings to run off with and work out the crazy taking up space in his head. Instead, he couldn’t move.

The way the light bounced off her features. The way she hid behind those big glasses. The certain something that could only be discovered by getting her on canvas. They all made the center of his palms itch. He had to paint her. It wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity. Good thing for him, she had an obvious, if totally baffling, thing for Tyler, and the man had no fucking clue. That meant his plan to kill two birds with one ant researcher was going to work out just fine.

As she continued to rattle on about honeypot ants—seriously who knew scientists could have such dirty minds? What other excuse could there be for that name—she flashed a wasted smile at Tyler, one that emphasized the fullness of her bottom lip. Hudson would have to mix just the right acrylics to get the shade right, but it could be done. It would be done. When the other guy in their little foursome (Steve? Stan?) walked a few feet away with Tyler, and they started talking about the disaster that was the latest Harbor City Warriors game, Hudson leaned down—way down—to whisper in Felicia’s ear.

“You want Tyler.” He hadn’t meant to blurt it out or make her uncomfortable, but he sensed this woman wouldn’t tolerate beating around the bush. It was refreshing, honestly, to be able to say exactly what he was thinking with a woman. Of course, she’d probably fight admitting it to a stranger. He needed to tread carefully if he wanted to get her to agree to help him. Or let him help her, more precisely.

A pink blush stained her cheeks as her hands fluttered around in front of her like she was about to go all Jackson Pollock on him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said, her soft voice hard to hear with the crowd around them.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re in the tree of trust.” He gave her the smile that always got him extra cookies from Mrs. Esposito. “You like him, but he hasn’t noticed.”

“Of course I like him,” she huffed. “We’ve been friends almost our entire lives. Well, he’s been friends with my older brother Frankie for that long.”

Sounded to him like the buttoned-up ant researcher was protesting too much. “And at any point during the very long and supposedly storied history of your friendship, has he kissed you?” There went that blush of hers again. He tried to clear the teasing, subtle, spicy amber scent of her out of his head before it took his thoughts in a different direction. “Pressed up against you?” She tugged the juicy flesh of her lip with her teeth. “Slid his fingers—”