Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(33)

HUDSON SAT THERE on the couch, holding her in his arms long after the emotional exhaustion had hit her and pulled her into a dark sleep.

An hour now and no signs of nightmares.

Resilient thing.

He couldn’t say the same for himself. Just the thought of that bullet narrowly missing Lia was a terrifying punch to his throat each time he imagined it. He knew he’d be having nightmares about this in the weeks to come. Though he’d only just found her, already he couldn’t bear the idea of his life without her.

She was this scrappy little miracle curled up against his side as though she’d been made to fit him and him alone. No rational logic in the world could trump this feeling right here.

If Lia could slay her demons, so could he.

Picking up his phone, he texted Gabe:

>>> CHANGE ALL MY IF’S TO WHEN’S.





CHAPTER NINE


“SO WHERE EXACTLY are we going for dinner?” Lia looked out the window at the streets of Phoenix whizzing by. She couldn’t for the life of her think of any good restaurants in this area.

“It’s a surprise.” Hudson fiddled with the GPS on his phone and took another right turn, taking them further away from the main metropolitan district. “So tell me again about this auction you’re going to tomorrow. Is it going to be like today’s one?”

Lia smiled. Since Hudson had a rare four days off from the set while the entire cast and crew were focused on a segment of the movie that he wasn’t needed for, he accompanied her to a private auction to bid on several pieces in a rare estate collection on behalf of one of her clients. “No. Tomorrow’s one is for a museum who’s subcontracting me to authenticate and bid on a specific item. I don’t have nearly as much autonomy.”

“Still. If you’re bidding on it, then the auction folks are probably going to roll out the red carpet for you like today, right?” He winked. “I swear, I felt like I was walking into that auction house with antique arms royalty this morning the way everyone acted.”

“Oh stop it. That’s not true.”

“It is, and you need to stop downplaying it. The auctioneer practically pissed his pants on stage each time you started bidding on an item. And I don’t blame him. Each of the pieces you bid on ended up turning into the most rabid auctions with the highest sale price.”

“That doesn’t happen all that often, at least not when it comes to rare antique arms. Collectors are generally very particular. But at estate sales, sometimes the auction fever hits and if there’s buzz about a certain bidder—like the kind my competitors purposely got folks worked up about this morning—it can drive sales up, which means less for me to spend on other items.”

Hudson’s eyebrows hopped up. “Sneaky.”

“Yeah. And as we saw today, it can be effective.”

“I still maintain you were a rockstar in there. Your competitors may have been doing it out of strategy, but it only worked because you were the real deal to begin with.” He pulled her hand up to his lips and grazed a kiss over her wrist. “And I, for one, enjoyed watching you in your element. You always make everything ultra-sexy. I was entirely disappointed they didn’t let me take home your bidding paddle. I swear, in the movies they let folks take it home.”

Laughter bubbled out of her at the memory of him asking the auction folks if he could keep the paddle as a souvenir. The auctioneer’s assistant had all but simpered at his request, making it clear over all the cooing and cleavage-thrusting and lip-licking, that though the auction paddles were not available to be taken home, she was.

And apparently, she was a very, very bad girl.

Lia hadn’t been able to help it, she’d had to hide her face behind the paddle in question to keep her hilarity at bay. When Hudson politely declined, and cast Lia a look that had shouted, “Stop laughing and help me out here, woman,” after the very, very bad girl kept on pushing, Lia called over one of her fellow collectors who she’d heard was into that sort of thing.

Not long after, everyone had gone home happy.

And Hudson had kissed her silly the second they got back to her apartment.

“Never really saw the appeal over the spanking thing until today,” Hudson had growled between kisses.

Jealousy, Lia discovered, was an awful, awful feeling. Swift moving and gut-consuming as well. A discovery she’d made sure to thank Hudson for by sweeping him off his feet.

Literally.

When he’d simply rolled into a martial arts tumble and shot out a hand to yank her down under him, they quickly found themselves in a steamy little grappling match that ended in him pinning her down and explaining gruffly that the butt he’d wanted to swat for making him crazy hadn’t belonged to Miss Auction House Barbie.

“Honey, if you don’t stop remembering what I think you’re remembering,” teased Hudson as he shifted his jeep into park, “I’ll have no chance in hell at winning over your brothers and father tonight.”

Her what and her who?

Blinking in confusion, Lia looked out the window and saw they were sitting in the Spencer driveway. “What’s going on?” She hopped out and circled around the car. “Did they invite you here for a Spencer Inquisition?” she hissed, mildly alarmed.

He grinned. “So that’s an actual thing? Gabe called it that when he invited me over.”