The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

omise hook, line, and sinker, the poor optimist. Unless her IQ and powers of observation, which had been honed out in the deserts of Arizona while watching honeypot ants for days on end, had failed her, Hudson had probably never been to one of his family’s foundation meetings in his life. The air of the lazy and bored rich clung too heavily to his designer clothes for that. Too bad there wasn’t any avoiding this uncomfortable tour.

“Well then,” she said, pasting on her snooty scientist smile that probably made her look a bit deranged, but it was her go-to defense mechanism when she was nervous. “Let’s not delay in enlightening you further.”

“Looking forward to it,” he said, stepping to the side and allowing enough room for her to pass him, but not so much that she missed inhaling the woodsy musk of his cologne.

Team Anticipation flat passed out in her belly, and she tripped over her feet. Hudson’s arm shot out, and he caught her, his fingers curling around her elbow. A tingling awareness zipped through her before settling with a quiet buzz between her legs.

“Careful there,” he said, his voice grittier than the playful tone he’d had just a moment ago.

Oh no. This isn’t allowed. Deviating from the plan only meant disaster, and the plan began and ended with Tyler Jacobson.

“Thank you.” She slid her arm free. “Let’s get on with it.”

“You’re the boss,” Hudson replied, the teasing timbre back. “Show me the way.”

Ignoring the wink he gave her, and the prick of disappointment that came out of nowhere, Felicia strode toward the glass-encased honeypot ant colony that formed the heart of her life’s research.

…

Turns out, the honeypot ant was disgusting.

Hudson took a step back from the eight-by-ten glossy close-up photo of an ant with its middle so engorged it looked like someone had glued an ant head and legs onto a yellow marble. If he never saw that in real life, he’d die a happy man.

“So,” he said, turning back to Felicia, who wore a twisted sort of glee on her face, obviously enjoying playing up this part about her ants as they toured the public portion of the ant lab. “It drains itself whenever someone else in the colony is hungry, and then that ant eats it?”

“When necessary, yes.”

And she looked like a regular human being. Sure, her jeans were rolled up at least three times at the ankles and her T-shirt was so loose he—again—had almost no clue what was underneath, but there was no hint that underneath her french braid lay the brain of a gross-out queen. What else were people missing when they saw her? There had to be more. No one knew the art of the con quite like him. She was good, but not good enough to fool him. Matches was hiding something, and he needed to know what.

“And you study these things voluntarily?” he asked, moving on to look at the glassed-in colony, thankfully with no engorged ants visible to the naked eye.

“I’ve even gone out to Arizona and done field research, counting the colony’s foragers, nest maintenance, and protector ants before excavating the nest and taking the ants back to a research facility.”

He took a long look at the colony; it took up a good chunk of the wall. “How do you excavate an entire colony?”

Her blue eyes gleamed. “With a backhoe.”

Turning back to her, he tried to imagine her in the hot desert sun, sweaty in an almost see-through tank top and short shorts (what could he say, he was a dude) digging up an entire colony of unsuspecting ants. Part of him zoomed in on the picture of her in those shorts, but the rest of him couldn’t help but picture the unmitigated joy of being in her element that would show on her face. It would be hell to get it just right on a canvas, but if he could, it would stop a gallery walker in their tracks—a real only-a-Hughston-painting moment.

“So, you’re like an alien who lands on a foreign planet, studies the creatures, and then destroys their home before taking them back onto your spaceship for further study?”

Her narrow shoulders tensed, and the pointed chin of her heart-shaped face went up a notch. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“How do you look at it?” he asked, loving how easy it was—despite her quiet voice and deep blushes—to get her all sparked up for a fight.

“As though I am obtaining evidence about ant colonies so we can better understand them and their place in the world. So perhaps one day we don’t take them for granted and lose another species important to our planet’s ecosystem.”

Okay, it made sense even to him. “We’re all in it together.”

“Yeah, we are.” She gave him a considering look, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses. “I didn’t expect that coming from someone like you.”

The words were no more out of her mouth when she shoved up her glasses with a shaky finger, and a mottled red creeped up from the crew neck of her T-shirt. Obviously, she hadn’t meant for those words to exit out her sweet mouth. He wanted to give himself a little pat on the back for guessing correctly that she was a tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman, but her words stung a little.

How many times had he heard it before? It had to be at least a billion. “Like me?” It wasn’t that he didn’t encourage everyone to think there was nothing going on behind his pretty mug, but coming from her, it settled uncomfortably across his shoulders. “Oh, I see,” he said, closing the distance between them in two long strides. “Is it the deep pockets or the hot bod that throws you off?”

The red went all the way up to her chin with one giant splotch on each cheek. “I…I…”

“Let me let you in on a secret,” he said, stopping just out of arm’s reach because all he wanted to do was touch her. “I never had a choice about the money or the looks. I’ve had them both since I was born. You know what I also have? A fully functioning brain.” Fuck it. Another step, and he was close enough to brush the silk of an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. “I would have thought that someone who believes in evidence-based science would have waited to make some more observations before developing a hypothesis, but what do I know?” He pulled back from the edge before he cupped the back of her head, threaded his fingers through her braid, and held her where he wanted her. “I’m just the handsome, rich dilettante.”