My Kind of Wonderful(16)

Hud didn’t see the funny, and Kenna looked his way and snorted. “He hasn’t seen the movies if you can believe it,” she told Bailey.

“Everyone should see the Harry Potter movies,” Penny said. She looked at her husband. “You loved them when we watched them, right?”

“Right,” Gray said with a perfectly straight face and then when Penny turned away, he shook his head at Hud. He’d either slept through the movies or had been trying to have sex with Penny instead of watching them.

“No worries, we’ll make time for the interviews,” Penny assured Bailey. “Even my curmudgeonly brother-in-law.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Kenna said, “you can just portray him any way that strikes you.” She laughed the evil-baby-sister laugh.

Oh yeah, Hud thought. This just got better and better.





Chapter 6


Bailey spent the day individually interviewing the Kincaid family for the mural. Well, interviewing everyone but Hud, whom she’d saved until last.

Or more accurately, put off until last. She wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was between them, but there was most definitely a problem. At least he had one.

She didn’t. Well, other than being rendered stupid by his voice, his smile, and the way his ass looked in pants…

But it was more too. She’d seen the way he was with his mom. Genuine. Loyal. Fiercely protective.

Not muted.

She could tell he was the same way with his siblings—all half siblings, as she now knew—and his siblings’ significant others as well. It appeared that when Hudson cared, he cared with his entire being, and damn that was attractive. In fact, several times he’d reacted instinctively to try to help her, a perfect stranger. First on the mountain and then at the table. And at first she’d assumed it was pity, exacerbated when she’d accidentally removed her cap and he’d seen her head. Knowledge had come into his gaze then.

And sympathy.

Which had made her grind her back teeth. Because it had only been after that when he’d accepted the idea of the mural really happening. And actually, not accepted so much as resigned himself to it.

And that made her mad. Furious, truthfully, because she didn’t want him to feel bad for her.

But you do want his wall…

And the truth was that she didn’t feel pitied by him. She felt like maybe that was just who Hudson was to the very core—a guy who genuinely cared.

And as much as she didn’t need him to, as much as she wanted to be independent and do things for herself, she couldn’t help admitting that soaking up some more of his warmth and strength wouldn’t be a hardship.

She sighed. She was sitting outside on a bench on the covered patio facing the wall. She’d just finished talking with Kenna when she caught sight of Gray and Penny in the throng of people moving about. They stood on the steps outside the lodge. Penny wore black leggings and fabulous high-heeled boots and a snug silver jacket that showed off an enviably curvy figure. Her long brown hair fell free to the middle of her back. She looked like a snow princess.

Bailey wasn’t vain but she really did miss her hair. Three months since her last chemo treatment and she was lucky to have a few inches of new growth, but it wasn’t thick or luscious. Nope, not even close. Instead it seemed like ostrich fuzz. Bedraggled baby-ostrich fuzz.

Gray grinned at Penny, a confident sexy grin, and for a beat he looked a lot like Hud as he leaned in close to his wife, putting his mouth to her ear. Penny laughed at whatever he whispered, probably a naughty little nothing, and wrapped her arms around him tight.

Gray lifted her up, one hand around her back and the other palming her butt, and kissed her. It looked like a really great kiss, and Bailey’s heart gave an envious pitter-patter.

She wouldn’t mind having a man look at her like that, like she was his entire world, and she really wouldn’t mind being kissed like that either. Busy with that thought, she nearly jumped out of her skin when Hud slouched onto the bench next to her. He leaned back, stretched out his long legs, and tilted his face up to the low midmorning sun now slanting in beneath the patio roof.

He wore dark sunglasses and his ski patrol gear. Black cargo ski pants. Long-sleeved outdoor wear that fit him like a glove. At least a day of scruff on a square jaw. Dark short hair, wind tousled and standing up in a way that only made him seem sexier. Damn him.

So he was a brooding, silent type, so what? She had little to no experience with that because for far too long things like hot guys with ’tudes had been luxury items that she’d never had time for. She’d never had time for anything except survival.

But she’d done that, she reminded herself. She was alive and now planning on staying that way. So it was definitely time to treat herself to the things she’d missed out on.

Like painting a mural. Skiing in the Rockies. Learning to ballroom dance. Explore some castles in Europe. See the Greek Islands. Skydive. Her list, basically. Which meant that the prickly Hudson Kincaid could bite her, sexiness and all. She took a quick glance and found him watching her, a look in his eyes that made her the prickly one. “We’re not going to talk about it,” she said. “Ever.”

“Which?” he asked. “The fact that you can’t read a map but you expect me to believe you can create a sixty-foot-long, thirty-foot-high mural? Or that you manipulated me into doing it anyway?”