The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

Chapter Five

Hudson hated mornings. Oh sure, there were people who weren’t morning people. But he was barely a noon person. The fact that he’d stayed up until almost four sketching ideas when he really wanted to be at the cabin painting hadn’t done a damn thing to improve his mood. So why was he ass to elbows on the subway with tourists on their way to see the sights before the weather turned frosty? Because of the woman who had stared back at him from ten new sketches when he’d finally strode out of his penthouse at the ass-crack of nine in the morning.

After getting off the subway, he made a quick dip into the coffee shop with a grand-opening sign hanging in the window a block from Felicia’s apartment and then walked the rest of the way to her place, balancing a tray of drinks and a box of pastries. His foot was barely on the top step before Honeypot’s yowling began. It went in his ear and straight to the middle of his brain like an extra-long ice pick. And he’d been worried about someone breaking into her apartment. That beast was better than any alarm. Luckily, since both of his hands were full, Felicia had opened the door, stepped out, and closed it behind her by the time he’d hit the last step.

Her hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, damp tendrils clinging to her neck, and her glasses were on, but the rest was a whole new vision. Sweat gleamed on her skin above the scoop neck of the blue sports bra covering her perfect just-a-handful-sized tits and below the band that wrapped tight around her rib cage. A pair of black and blue running pants clung to her shapely legs and stretched over her heart-shaped ass that had him considering all the possibilities. Sure, she thought she was hooked on someone else, but Hudson wasn’t dead, a monk, or legally insane.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, swiping a small hand towel across her forehead as her gaze landed everywhere but on him.

He forced his attention back up to her face, which didn’t make his blood rush straight to his cock any slower. “Bringing you breakfast.”

“Is that from Grounded Coffee? They just opened up a new location down the block.” She clutched the small towel to her chest and leaned forward and sniffed the box, a look of total bliss on her face, and tugged her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Obviously, the temptation of sugar beat out Felicia’s shyness. “I’ve been dying to get some. I can’t wait to get that in my mouth.”

He wouldn’t pop a boner at the dirty image that appeared in his head at her statement. He wouldn’t get a hard-on. He would just get a halfsie. That was totally acceptable. Yeah, if you’re fourteen, asshole. Get it together.

“Is this your way of making up for last night?” she asked, taking a peek from the box to his face.

Too much of his attention was taken up by the way a bead of sweat was doing a slow slide down her collarbone before disappearing beneath her sports bra for him to make any sort of mental connections. “Last night?”

“Don’t pretend.” She slapped the towel over her shoulder and planted her hands on her hips to give him the stare down—or stare up since he had a foot on her. It would have been more effective if her cheeks weren’t bright red already. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. That can’t happen again.” The words came out in a rush as if she had to get them out quickly or risk losing her courage. “If we’re gonna do this, it has to be like prison visiting hours. No touching.”

“You’ve visited someone in prison?” He had a hard time picturing doe-eyed Felicia Hartigan and her ant obsession anywhere near hardened, convicted felons.

A nervous giggle escaped. “I binged Arrested Development.”

Okay, that made more sense. “So, you also know there’s always money in the banana stand.”

Her mouth twitched, but she stomped out the smile before it could fully form, and stubborn Felicia rose to the surface. “Last night needs to be a one-time thing.”

“You didn’t like the kiss?” The one that had gotten him hard and made her soft and pliant against him. Oh, that was definitely happening again. He’d tried to convince himself otherwise all the way home last night, but by four a.m. in the middle of the worst insomnia ever, he’d rationalized it was for everyone’s benefit if he and Felicia explored this attraction. Made perfect sense. “It felt like you liked it. It sounded like you liked it.” That little moan had found its way into his very naked dreams last night.

“Liking it doesn’t matter.” Light pink splotches dotted her cheeks. “It can’t happen again. Deal?”

Since agreeing to things he had no intention of doing had pretty much been his MO since birth, and definitely since he’d become vice president of client relations (or as he liked to think of it: Flirt in Chief), putting a charming little white lie out there didn’t even make him twitch. “Deal.”

“Good.” Her smile took up the entire bottom half of her face and only looked fake because he was a man who knew all the tricks. “Come on inside. You can bond with Honeypot while I take a quick rinse off.”

He shifted his stance, his zipper taking the brunt of the movie playing in his head at the idea. “Sounds like a plan.”

And it would give him the opportunity to remember the entire point of this little excursion. This was Operation: Hey Tyler, You Dumbass, She’s Hot. Any action between him and Felicia, and there would be some, would be of the educational variety—not the fuck-I-forgot-my-brains-at-home variety. Keep it surface. Keep it fun. Keep it focused on making all the people happy so he could go secretly paint in his cabin in peace. Basically, it was his life as he’d been living it for as long as he could remember. And if his dick took notice of Felicia’s pert ass as he followed her inside her apartment? What could he say, he was an artist—he had an eye for beautiful details.

…

The cold water from the shower couldn’t hit Felicia’s face and pour over her sweaty body fast enough. That kiss had been the bane of her existence last night, and now Hudson was here in another pair of ass-hugging jeans and carrying pastry. That should be illegal. It sure as hell wasn’t fair.

The kiss was an anomaly, a statistically insignificant event. It didn’t change anything. The goal was Tyler. It had always been Tyler. And less than thirty days from now, she will have achieved that goal. Deviation led to chaos, and she wasn’t into chaos. She’d had more than enough of that growing up to last a lifetime. The Hartigan household had been loving, but a totally, gleefully, no-holds-barred free-for-all. And for a quiet girl who liked books and bugs—not necessarily in that order—it had been more than a little overwhelming at times.

It wasn’t until Tyler’s family moved into the neighborhood that she finally stopped feeling like quite so much of a freak in her own skin. He was her ideal man. They were perfect for each other. Now all she had to do to successfully complete this experiment was factor in the new variable—better known as Hudson Carlyle—to get Tyler to finally notice her as more than just Frankie Hartigan’s little sister and the adorkable girl next door.

Refocused, she scrubbed the five-mile run off her skin, rinsed the shampoo-conditioner all-in-one out of her hair, and got out of the shower. A fast buff-dry and comb-through later, she grabbed an ancient Ant Life T-shirt and yoga pants, grateful that for her, bras were almost always optional. Dressed, damp hair hanging down her back, she hurried out into the living room before Honeypot got a chance to snag all of the pastries or take another swipe at Hudson—both were totally possible.

Of course, none of the above turned out to be the answer. Hudson lounged—his shoes abandoned on the floor—on her powder-blue tufted chaise beneath a print of her favorite Hughston painting. Honeypot lay curled up on his stomach, purring loud enough to make the walls vibrate. Shocked didn’t begin to cover it. That cat barely tolerated her, and yet here she

was fawning over a total interloper in their lives.

“Don’t tell me your ability to charm the females of the world extends to cats,” she said.

“What can I say, ladies love me.” He scooped up Honeypot and placed her on the floor—a move that would have gotten Felicia slashed—before getting up and walking over to the box of pastries on the kitchen counter. “Bear claw or chocolate croissant?” He popped open the box top and looked in. “They threw in more, too. I think that’s a quiche Lorraine, and there’s a cherry danish among other things.” He looked up. “I wasn’t sure what you drank, either, so I brought a green tea, an iced coffee, a hazelnut latte, and a black coffee.”