The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

Hudson sighed. “Think they’re done talking business yet?”

“Doubtful,” Linus replied, pulling out into traffic.

She couldn’t see the driver’s face from her position, but she couldn’t miss the smile lines crinkling around his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. Again, Hudson surprised her. The easy relationship between him and someone who was obviously an employee was as genuine as it was unexpected. She shifted in her seat, the guilt of her preconceived notions about him taking up the little bit of space between their bodies and crowding her even more.

“I suppose we can’t avoid it any longer,” Hudson said. “Off to the seventh level of hell. At least there’ll be alcohol.”

Hudson winked at her, but there was no hiding the tightness around his usually smiling mouth. He was up to something. Again. She just had to figure out what—and she would, she didn’t have a choice. With an analytical brain like hers, variables just meant more questions and she had to have answers. She mulled the problem in silence for the next ten blocks as they made their way to one of Harbor City’s hot new neighborhoods, but couldn’t come up with a solution. By the time Linus double-parked in front of the restaurant, she was as frustrated as that time she was seven and had yet to solve the old Rubik’s cube of her parents she’d found boxed up in the garage.

“You’re not planning on sabotage?” she asked as soon as Linus got out.

“No way.” There was that teasing grin that did funny things to her stomach even though she should be immune—after all, she knew the real reason behind this outing. “I’m totally hooked on you. Have been since I set eyes on you at the fundraiser.”

If she’d have rolled her eyes any harder, they would have fallen out of their sockets. “No need to go overboard. No one’s going to believe love at first sight. I’m more of an acquired taste. That’s what we need to go with here.”

He quick pivoted in his seat to face her. The move brought his knee in contact with hers and sent a jolt of awareness that made her entire leg tingle all the way up to her core. Reflexively, she clenched her thighs together. His gaze dropped to her lap. Shit. She really needed to get replacement batteries for her vibrator because that was the only explanation for her body’s reaction. That it always seemed to happen around Hudson was correlation, not causation.

The passenger door opened from the outside, but she couldn’t tear her attention away from Hudson’s dark smolder.

Finally, he dragged his gaze up to her face. “You don’t think anyone would believe I’d fall for you at first sight?”

“I know so,” she said, white knuckling that bit of truth and the bravado she’d need to make it through the night. “Now let’s go inside and you do what you do best—flirt your ass off.”

…

If there was a Misery-style super fan with a sledgehammer ready to swing down on Hudson’s leg and he was forced to pick who was shocked more when he and Felicia arrived at the table, he’d go with his sister-in-law Clover. Sawyer and Tyler were too busy doing the tough-guy-glaring-because-I-can’t-whip-out-my-dick-and-tape-measure thing to take notice of his and Felicia’s arrival.

“Hudson,” Clover exclaimed, elbowing his older brother—who happened to be her new husband—in the ribs. “You made it.”

He shrugged. “Mom keeps telling me I need to take more of an interest in the family business, so here I am.”

“Thank God. Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” Sawyer grumbled.

“Not likely since there is absolutely nothing of that proposal that works for my client,” Tyler shot back.

Sawyer snorted. “What a load of absolute bullshit.”

“Find a room already, would you two,” Hudson said. “Now, how about we pretend to be civilized people so as to not scare off my date.”

“Your date?” Clover asked, the glimmer in her eyes reminding him way too much of the one his mom used to level at his brother during Operation: Marry Off Sawyer.

While part of him wanted to get up and run from even the idea of getting married, he had to play it smart. Clover could unintentionally help him get exactly what he needed out of this dinner: a temporary ceasefire between Sawyer and Tyler by distracting them both into wondering exactly what was going on with himself and Felicia. Of course, driving Tyler nuts with some kind of lust-powered Felicia-related jealousy wasn’t gonna happen tonight. Oh, he wasn’t going to do anything to harm her efforts that way, but she’d done it already to herself. She looked like a very unsexy librarian and kept giving Tyler the same look a dog gave a T-bone steak.

“Let me introduce Felicia

Hartigan. She’s an entomologist at the Harbor City Museum of Natural History with a specialty in myrmecology. Also, she has a one-eyed cat that’s in love with me. Felicia, you know Tyler. This is my brother Sawyer—don’t take offense, he’s permanently grumpy—and his wife, Clover, who obviously has a fetish for that type of thing along with an addiction to DIY.”

Hudson pulled out a chair for Felicia next to Tyler and took the free chair on her other side. The move gave him a front row seat to observe her flirting skills.

“Myrmecology?” Sawyer asked.

“I study honeypot ants,” she said.

“Whatever you do, don’t ask her how they got that name before we eat dinner,” Hudson said. “Trust me.”

“Regurgitation, or allowing others to drain you of food to feed others isn’t that unusual in the animal world,” she said before taking one of the dark brown rye rolls in the middle of the table that were already on everyone else’s bread plates. “Anyway, if you had to choose between eating that or starving, I know which one you’d pick.”

“Starvation,” the men at the table said, practically in unison.