The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

Hudson nodded and took a deep breath, as though debating whether to share more. “That was me the first time I picked up a brush. It was all I wanted to do. In college, I took every art class I could fit in between business courses. It drove my dad nuts. He called painting a distraction from what I should really be doing—learning the family business. He was so driven, he made Sawyer look lazy.”

What an ass. “Didn’t he see how talented you were?”

His lips compressed as something dark flashed across his face, only to be replaced a half second later with that laissez-faire smile and a cool shrug of his broad shoulders. “He never saw any of my paintings.”

Correction. What an epic ass of legendary proportions. “How’s that possible?”

“When you’re running a business the size of Carlyle Enterprises, it’s easy not to be able to even think about anything else.” The words came out practiced—hollow—as if he’d said them to himself too many times.

“Even his family?”

“He wasn’t that bad, just focused. We did plenty as a family—baseball games, vacations, family movie nights—and I never doubted he wanted the best for me. But I wasn’t like Sawyer, and I know it drove him a little nuts. He never got the art part.”

Old hurt etched lines around his eyes and she reached out, taking his hand in hers. The spark was there, sizzling along her skin, but there was something else, too. An understanding that hadn’t been there before.

“My dad wanted to understand; I just don’t think he could. Then, my grandfather passed away and my mom had a health scare. They thought it was cancer. I think the one-two punch of that made him worry that he wasn’t doing a great job of raising the next generation of Carlyles—at least when it came to me. Finally, my senior year in college he gave me an ultimatum: give up painting and start learning the family business or he’d cut me off. I didn’t give a shit about the money, but losing my family? It wasn’t something I was willing to do.”

She tried to imagine Hudson at twenty-one, forced to choose between family and his passion. That he picked his family both made her proud and broke her heart. “So how did you do it?”

“I gave my dad what he wanted, or at least the illusion of it. I kept painting, it’s just I did it without telling anyone. At first, I figured it was just for me, but then my friend Everly saw them and she helped me come up with a plan. That’s when I became Hughston. Everyone got what they wanted.”

No wonder he slipped between the public version of charming Hudson and the real him so easily. He’d been doing it for years. It must have been exhausting. “Why not tell them now?”

“I was going to a few years ago, but my father had a sudden heart attack. His last words to me were about the family and finding my place in the world of Carlyle Enterprises. I promised him I’d try.” He paused, pushing his half-eaten bowl of cereal to the middle of the island, and shoved his fingers through his hair. “Then, after he died, my mom was more than a little lost. Sawyer and I did everything we could to make her life as smooth as possible. I couldn’t imagine telling her I was doing the one thing I’d sworn not to do. So instead I planted the idea that it was past time Sawyer got married. That gave Mom a mission with some unfortunate results so I had to figure out a way to find the perfect woman for Sawyer, and luckily Clover answered the ad for a buffer.”

“But you’re not being you.” And it was hurting him, she could tell.

“I am,” he said, slipping his hand free from hers. “I’m just giving them the me they want to see.”

She should let it drop. It was his life. It’s not like how Hudson chose to live it had anything to do with her. She shouldn’t even care. But she did. And it wasn’t fair—not to him or his family—and it was wearing him down. There was no missing it in the soft light of the lantern. How she’d failed to see it before, she had no idea.

“Don’t they deserve the real you instead of the charming facade?” she asked.

He looked at her as if the question had never occurred to him before and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything the lights snapped back on in the rest of the house, taking away the intimacy of the moment. The kitchen lights must have been off before the outage, but the change was palpable and accompanied by the switch in Hudson as the mask she was beginning to hate slid into place.

Leaning in close enough to her ear that she felt the heat of him against her neck, he whispered, “So you never told me, what color are your panties tonight?”

There it was. That thing he did to put her off balance. But it wasn’t going to work this time. She’d seen too much of the real Hudson. “You don’t have to distract me.”

“Maybe,” he said, tracing his finger down the column of her neck, leaving a trail of desire in his wake, “I’m trying to distract myself.”

Her breath came in fast as she squeezed her thighs together, trying to maintain some sense of the closeness they had before even as her body b

etrayed her because it wanted Hudson now. “With my panties?”

He nipped at her collarbone. “You could just show me.”

The words sparked a realization. He needed Hughston to escape not just his family’s expectations but of the world’s, too. The name Carlyle really did come at a cost, and this place—this cabin in the middle of the woods—was the only place he could actually be himself. And he’d brought her here. Her.

Without another thought, she pushed him away and took a step backward, her hands going to the hem of her soft gray sweater, and she pulled it off. Her nipples were already hard, pushing against the lace of her bra. Desire, hot and demanding, heated her skin against the fall chill as she dropped her hands to the button of her jeans.

Hudson watched as she stripped off everything except her cherry red lacy bra and panty set, his eyes darkening with lust. “What are you doing?”

Powered by some kind of confidence that usually only came out in the field, she strutted over to him. “It’s time for another lesson, except this time I’m teaching you.”

“Oh yeah, what lesson is that, Matches?” he asked, the gravel in his voice making her core clench.

“To just let yourself be you in your own skin.” She slipped her hands under his sweater, the sparse spattering of coarse hair on his chest tickling her palms. “It wasn’t easy growing up as a quiet nerd in a big, loud Irish-Catholic family. I had to figure out how to let all of the joking about my height and my nose being always in a book wash over me.”