The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

There were things she no longer wanted him to know, but that didn’t matter right now. “Just ask.”

He grimaced and closed his eyes. “Undies. What color?”

“None of your business.” She wasn’t even tempted to tell him that they were green.

He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

Now for a question that was only slightly less embarrassing. “Call me Matches.”

“I think it’s time to call Fallon.” He reached for his phone.

She slapped her hand down over his, holding him down. “Do. It.”

His eyes went wide. “Matches.”

Nothing. Not even a blip in her heart rate. She grabbed her phone and scrolled through her texts. All she had to do was see Hudson’s name for her pulse to pick up, her palms to sweat, and her lungs to tighten. It had never been visceral reactions like that with Tyler. With him, it had all been about the thrill of checking something off her to-do-before-thirty list. Evidence. This was all observable fact and it meant only one possible conclusion. She hadn’t just wanted Hudson. She hadn’t just fallen for him. She was irrevocably in love with him.

“Oh God,” she said, taking another sip. “This is worse than I thought.”

“The tea?” he asked. “Of course it is. It’s crap. You should switch to coffee.”

Well, at least she wasn’t the only one who was totally clueless. “I’m in love with Hudson.”

“And this is a newsflash?” Tyler relaxed back against his chair and laughed.

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Okay, maybe she was the only one. The words bubbled out of her, “I tried to use you to make him jealous. Like an immature asshole. I teased him, tried to seduce him, the whole time telling him it was because I wanted another lesson so I could catch you.”

Tyler leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table and holding up a single finger. “One. TMI.” A second finger joined the first. “Two. You’re not the first person in the world to do something idiotic because they were in love.”

“You don’t understand.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “We fought. I said horrible things to him, and he did to me.”

“So write him off.” Tyler shrugged. “You’ll find someone else. Lots of fish in the sea. Look at how fast you got over me.”

“I was never in love with you, not really.” The truth her body had known faster than her thick head.

Tyler smacked his hand over his heart in a teasing gesture. “Looks like I’ll need to find the first available hot chick to help me build up my fragile male ego to recover from that blow.” Then he dropped his hand and got a serious look that usually meant he was in mid-scheme planning. “So you know what you need to do now.”

Her brain when blank. “What?”

“What happened the first time you presented your dissertation?” he asked.

Okay, that was a total left turn—although an equally humiliating one. “They sent me home. They thought it lacked in creativity.”

Tyler nodded and took a drink of his coffee. “So you just gave up?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I revised and reworked it and re-presented it.”

“You fought for it,” he said like a lawyer leading a witness.

“Well, yeah…” The rest of the words died on her lips because the Eureka lightbulb went off again, this time with enough power to blind her to everything except what needed to happen next. “Just like I’m going to fight for Hudson, but this time I’m going to need a solid from you.”

“Anything.”

“We have to go see your upstairs neighbor.”

His face fell. “Anything but that.”