“Good.” The mental image of her like that put a foul taste in his mouth. “You wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if you did. What I’m talking about is”—he searched for the right word to pull her in—“an experiment. You don’t like my hypothesis that with a little visual tweaking you could catch Tyler’s attention so that the real you could reel him in for good? Fine. But you see it all the time in the animal kingdom. I bet even your ants do things a certain way to attract a mate. It doesn’t make them bad or shallow or any less genuine. But if you want to make Tyler really wonder what he’s been missing all these years, you need to shake things up a bit—not change, but tweak. So, what do you say?”

She crossed her arms and pursed her mouth, the move making her nose scrunch up, and he held his breath. He’d made his case. All she had to do was say yes, and everyone would win. Felicia would land Tyler, he had no doubt about it, and she’d be happy. Or, even better, she’d realize when she actually had a choice of Tyler or no-Tyler, she was definitely better off no-Tyler—the guy was way too much of an idiot for someone like Felicia, who, let’s face it, probably only wanted Tyler because she couldn’t have him. So he’d help get her the thing she wanted most, and he’d hope like hell that at the end, she’d want someone else—him, at least for the moment. He wanted her on his canvas and in his bed until he figured out what it was about her that was so damn captivating. He wouldn’t deny it. Not to himself anyway.

Felicia would be happy he set her free of her childhood crush to find a man who was better than either himself or Tyler to share her life with. Then, Captain Clueless could find himself a woman. Any woman but Felicia.

He couldn’t stop the grin overtaking his features. Sometimes, he was just too fucking brilliant.

“Nice try.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “But not in this lifetime, which means this is the end of your tour.”

Hudson’s grin melted into a frown as he watched her walk away, not exactly sure what had happened to him, the supposed legendary charming Carlyle. Being turned down for the second time within twenty-four hours by the same woman was a new experience for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he was turned down even once. Felicia was anything but usual, though. Fascinating? Stubborn? In desperate need of his help? Yes, to all of the above. Turning the problem over in his head, he lingered in the ant lab trying to understand how such small creatures—or people for that matter—could pack such a big punch.

Chapter Three

The days were still sunny with blue skies, but an early October chill had already rolled up Sixteenth Street along with a biting breeze that sliced through Felicia’s light jacket as soon as she walked out the museum’s side door a few minutes after she’d told Hudson good-bye. Using her taxi app had been a good call and—bonus!—it was already waiting for her. Hustling across the sidewalk before the light changed and the massive stream of people hurrying home from work grew even thicker, she straightened her spine and popped out her elbows a little and tried to make herself seem as big as possible. She felt a little ridiculous, but when you were five feet and one-half inch on a tall day, you had to do what you could to avoid being trampled in the Harbor City crush.

She fought her way through the dense crowd across the wide sidewalk and reached for the door handle of her ride. Before she could wrap her fingers around it, though, a large hand with a few specks of blue paint on it beat her to it. Her jaw tightened. Oh no. No one was snagging her ride home. Ready for battle, she turned and looked up…right into the face of Hudson Carlyle.

He shot her a cocky grin. “What a coincidence.”

That’s what the kids were calling it these days, huh? “Stalk much?”

“Not at all. I was chatting with your boss Eddie and happened to spot the same cab as you. No reason we can’t share, is there?” He opened the door.

“It’s unlikely we’re going the same way.” It was expensive to live anywhere in Harbor City, but the people in his tax bracket lived uptown, not on the East Side where her one-bedroom apartment was.

“There you go assuming again before your facts are in,” he said.

Ugh. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She hated when he was right—and he was. She was doing it. Again.

“Come on.” She slipped into the cab, her heart beating a little faster than normal—because of annoyance, obviously—and slid across the seat until her hip was against the opposite door.

Hudson got in behind her, his broad shoulders taking up entirely too much space, and closed the door.

“Where to?” the driver asked as he pulled into traffic.

Hudson looked up from the mile of space between them, a grin playing on his lips, and stared at her expectantly. The challenge did not go unnoticed. He wasn’t going to say anything, the manipulative pain in her ass. First, he sabotaged her morning with that so-called tour. Then, she couldn’t stop wondering about the kiss that had almost happened between them—she swore he was going to seal the deal before the real tour group walked in, and she was not excited at that possibility. She. Was. Not. And now, he’d elbowed his way into her ride home.

“I promise I just want to share a cab,” he said. “Ladies first.”

She didn’t believe it, but he didn’t give off a stalker vibe, even though she’d accused him. Oh, Hudson was determined, all right, but her danger alarms stayed quiet, and her gut didn’t rumble. Sometimes a cab ride really was just a cab ride.

The cabbie cleared his throat.

Felicia huffed out a sigh. “Forty-fifth and Havston.”

“You got it.” The driver nodded and cut off two cars in his effort to hurry up and get in the left-hand lane before the traffic congestion bottled them in.

Cars blurring past them, she swiveled in her seat and gave Hudson her best glare—the one that made her six-foot-six redwood tree of a brother, Frankie, shiver in his steel-toed workbooks. It had exactly zero effect on Hudson. Wait. It did have an effect—the glutton for punishment relaxed against the seat, somehow managing to all but eliminate the space between them, and winked at her.

That actually worked on women? What a frightening thought.

Thinking tall thoughts, she straightened her spine and pressed back her shoulders. “Is this where you try to go all Henry Higgins again?”

“Nope.” There went that lazy curl of his lips. “I changed my mind.”

Well, that answer sucked all the wind out of her sails. She slouched back against the seat. “Good.”

It was exactly the answer she wanted. If it wasn’t for the fact that he gave in waaaay too easily. But for someone who’d shown up at the ant lab with some bullshit story about wanting a tour, to a guy who just happened to go for the same cab as her, his giving in didn’t fit. Sitting there, surrounded only by the sound coming from the in-taxi TV as the traffic went from a flowing stream to a plugged-up sink, she turned it around in her mind but couldn’t come up with an explanation. He was up to something, but she couldn’t unwind his logic, and it made the tips of her ears itch.

Tags: Avery Flynn Harbor City Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net