No One But You (Silver Springs #2)(118)

As the two couples got up to dance, leaving Ellie alone at the table, she let go of a long sigh and flagged down a waitress. “Bring me three shots,” she said.

Maybe if she forced herself to get drunk, the rest of the night would pass in a merciful blur. The alcohol wasn’t good for her liver. She couldn’t help acknowledging that. But as far as she was concerned, it was absolutely vital for her poor, aching heart.

*

Hudson King loved women, probably even more than most other men did, but he didn’t trust them. He’d gotten his name from the intersection of Hudson and King, two streets in Los Angeles’s exclusive Bel Air community, where he’d been abandoned and hidden in a privacy hedge when he was only hours old, so he figured he’d come by that lack of trust honestly. If he couldn’t rely on his own mother to nurture and protect him when he was completely helpless, well...that didn’t start him off on the most secure path. Even once he’d been found, hungry, cold and near death, screaming at the top of his lungs, his life hadn’t improved for quite some time.

Of course, he’d been such an angry and unruly youth he was undoubtedly to blame for some of the hurdles he’d faced growing up. He’d made things more difficult than they had to be. He’d had more than one foster family make that clear—right before sending him back to the orphanage.

Fortunately, his foster days were behind him. He’d buried most of the anger that’d caused him to act out, too. Or maybe he just controlled it these days. Some claimed he played football with a chip on his shoulder—that his upbringing contributed to the toughness and determination he displayed on the field—and that could easily be true. Sometimes it felt as if he did have a demon driving him out there, egging him on, making him push himself as far as possible. Perhaps he was trying to prove that he did matter, that he was important, that he had something to contribute. He’d had more than one sports commentator make the suggestion, but whether those sports commentators had any idea what they were talking about, Hudson couldn’t say. He refused to see a psychologist, didn’t see the point. No one could change the past.

Either way, once he was sent to high school at New Horizons Boys Ranch in Silver Springs, California, where it became apparent that he could throw a football, his fortunes had finally changed. Now, as quarterback of the Los Angeles Devils, he’d been named first team All-American twice and MVP once, had a Super Bowl ring on his finger and everything else a man could want—a successful career, more money than he could spend and more attention than he knew what to do with.

Not that he enjoyed the attention. He considered fame more of a drawback. As far as he was concerned, being in the spotlight proved to some of the families who’d decided he was too hard to handle that he might’ve been worth the effort. But it made his little problem with women that much worse. How could he trust the fairer sex when they had so much incentive to target and mislead him? Getting involved with the wrong girl could result in false accusations of rape or physical abuse, lies about his personal life or other unwelcome publicity, even an intentional effort to get pregnant in hopes of achieving a big payout. He’d seen that sort of thing happen too many times with other professional athletes, which was why he typically avoided the party scene. He wasn’t stupid enough to fall into that trap.

So as he sat back and accepted his second drink at Envy in South Beach, he had to ask himself why he’d let his new sports agent, Teague Upton, talk him into coming to a club. He supposed it was the fact that Teague’s younger brother, Craig, was with them, making it two votes in favor to his one opposed. He could’ve nixed the outing even still. These days, he pretty much got his way whenever he demanded it. But since his former agent had retired, Hudson had only recently signed with Teague, and Teague lived in Miami, was proud of the city and eager to show him around. Not only that, but the game Hudson had flown in to play didn’t take place until Sunday, so boredom had something to do with it. Loneliness was a factor, too—not that he’d ever admit that. He was the guy perceived as having it all. Why destroy such a pleasant illusion? Being that guy was certainly an improvement over the unwanted burden he’d been as a child.

Besides, the owner of Envy had been very accommodating. Because Hudson didn’t want to be signing autographs all night, the club owner had made arrangements with Teague to let them in through the back and had provided them with a private booth in the far corner, where it was so dark it’d be tough to recognize anyone. From his vantage point, Hudson couldn’t see the entire dance floor—and only a small part of the pulsing, lit bar—but he could observe most of what was happening, at least in the immediate vicinity, and that beat hanging out alone in his hotel room, even if the skimpy dresses and curvy bodies of the women created a certain amount of sexual frustration he had little hope of satisfying...

“Hudson, did you hear me?”

Hudson lowered the hurricane drink he’d ordered so that he could respond to Teague’s younger brother. Teague himself had already found a woman to his liking and was hanging out with her closer to the bar. “Yeah?”

“What do you make of that little hottie?” Craig jerked his head toward a buxom blonde gyrating against some skinny, well-dressed dude.

“Not bad,” Hudson admitted. But he wasn’t all that impressed by the blonde. He was far more intrigued by the woman he’d been surreptitiously watching since he arrived. Slender, with her black hair swept up and away from her oval face, she wasn’t as pretty as some of the other women he’d seen tonight, but she wasn’t nearly as plastic, either. She seemed oddly wholesome, given the setting. The poise with which she held herself told him she deserved more attention than she was receiving. At times, she even looked a little bewildered, as if she didn’t understand all the frenetic activity around her, let alone thrived on it. She’d just ordered three shots and downed them all—without anyone looking on or clapping to encourage her, which wasn’t how most party girls did it. Then, while her friends were still off dancing, she’d gotten rid of the evidence and ordered something that looked like a peach margarita.