The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

Felicia didn’t know where she was. She could be floating in space for all she knew. That’s what it felt like. It was like that first bite of chocolate after a really shitty day, when her entire body relaxed and she settled into as close to a Zen state of mind as she ever got. Her eyelids were heavy, but she forced herself to open them.

The first thing she saw was the curve of Hudson’s jaw. The first shadow of a beard was starting to show. She wanted to trace her fingers over the coarse spikes to remind herself he was real. That they’d just had crazy hot monkey sex in her living room. That maybe…

“Felicia.” Hudson lowered her feet to the floor and took a step back, taking his warmth and that fuzzy, happy feeling with him.

She took a deep breath. That did not sound like the beginning of a conversation she wanted to have wearing only a T-shirt that was half hanging off her—her yoga pants had been tossed somewhere else during the frenzy of touching, licking, sucking, and fucking.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Yep. Definitely a fully-dressed type of conversation. “Let me just put my pants back on.”

She crossed over to where her yoga pants had landed on the table lamp and yanked them off the shade. Of course, her cell phone started buzzing like crazy. It was too late to be anyone but family, and she knew better than to try to ignore the Hartigans—even at a time like this. If she didn’t answer, she could set the timer for the moment they’d be at her door.

“Do you mind grabbing that?” she asked. “It’s probably my sister, Fallon, and she’s an emergency room nurse across the harbor in Waterbury who expects me to be murdered at any moment since I live in the city.”

Ramble? Her? Never.

Hudson, still soft around the edges and almost fully dressed—although the buttons on his shirt would probably never be found—walked over to the kitchen island and picked it up right as it stopped buzzing.

“It’s not your sister,” he said, his voice hard.

In the middle of pulling on her pants, she looked up. Hudson’s face had lost the satisfied look of a minute before. Instead, it was all sharp angles and hard planes. They ended up meeting halfway, and he handed her the phone then went to work buttoning his pants. Lungs tight, she glanced down at her cell’s screen.

Tyler: Thanks for tonight. Sleep well. You’re going to need that energy for tomorrow.

“You made the right move not inviting him in,” Hudson said as he slipped his belt through the buckle with jerky movements.

What was his problem? She and Tyler were going jogging tomorrow morning. It wasn’t like…oooohhhhh. He thought something totally different. In any other circumstance, that could be a good thing if it bothered him. But with Hudson? He’d already declared she wasn’t his type. The memory of hearing those words coming out of his mouth put her on guard.

“Oh really,” she asked, bracing for a blow

. “Why’s that?”

He smoothed his belt through the loop, then turned his attention to her, giving her an assessing up and down. “After you’ve worked so hard for so long to get him to notice you, you don’t want to just bang him right away. Gotta make him work for it.”

It took a minute for her brain to make sense of his words. Was he slut shaming her? After what they’d done? After what they’d done on multiple occasions? Oh. Hell. No. “How dare you!”

“You dared with me on the first date.” He pointed over her shoulder. “Right there on that ottoman when you came around my fingers.”

“Date?” It came out shrill, and she didn’t care. He wasn’t getting away with that kind of bullshit. “What date? It was all just a project, remember? Operation: Bromance. Because God forbid you ever go after something or someone just because you want it.”

He started. “What the hell are you talking about?”

What was she talking about? Of course he would ask that. Of. Course. Heat slammed through her as all the pieces came together and exploded inside her like an atom bomb. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t his type. It was that none of what had happened between them—none of it—had ever meant anything to him. Not even the cabin. The realizations came in short bursts like gunfire aimed right at her chest. She’d thought she’d hurt before. She was wrong. So very wrong. About so much of it. If he hadn’t been standing only a foot in front of her, she would have collapsed to the floor, but he was here, so that wasn’t an option. Instead, she grabbed ahold of every bit of spit-in-your-eye, pissed-off Irish the Hartigan family had handed down to her and turned it on Hudson.

“You like to think that you’re so fucking superior, the man who sees all and knows what people really want. That’s why you have that stupid secret cabin where you get to pretend to be the man behind the curtain who controls it all. And why?” She marched up to him and jabbed a finger in his unrelenting chest. “Because it makes you feel good to have that secret. That’s the real reason you haven’t told your family that you’re Hughston, not some bullshit about your dad.”

He brushed her hand aside and glared down at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snarled.

“I’m a trained scientist who observes for a living.” That’s right, buddy. Undergrad. Grad. Doctoral thesis. This is what I do. “You wanna know what I see when I step back and look at the contained and compartmentalized habitat you’ve created for yourself?”

His mask slid into place, and he lifted an eyebrow as if he could barely contain his boredom but had decided to indulge her. “Enlighten me, Ant Lady.”

“I see a man who likes to think that he’s all about sacrificing for the people he loves, but it’s a lie. You’re a lie.” Just like the supposed friendship between them that had turned to something more for her. Tears burned in her eyes but she blinked them away. So much for her keen observational skills if she’d missed all of that until it was too late. It was too little, too late, but she saw it all now. “You keep your whole life, the important parts of it, secret. You wear that fake as shit Mr. Charming mask and you let people think they know you when they don’t have a clue. You think you’re being gallant letting people have their illusions. But you’re not. You’re being a total chickenshit who’s too scared to show the world who he really is and what he really values.”

…

If Hudson looked down, there’d be a giant gaping hole in his chest. He was sure of it. He’d ached before. That had been nothing. This was like a baseball bat to the head but without the sweet relief of unconsciousness. So this was how it would end—with a bang of the non-orgasmic kind. Fine. He could do that.