My Kind of Wonderful(25)

So she answered his question honestly. “I spent over a decade with an expiration date,” she said.

“Cancer?”

“Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Got it just before I turned fifteen. I was handed a death sentence but somehow managed to wrestle the beast against all the odds.” She shrugged. “I get that most people make a bucket list when something bad happens, but I never did. Ten years is a really long time and for most of it I wasn’t normal. My life wasn’t anything close to normal. I was really sick, way too sick to do much of anything.” She shrugged. “Even so, my doctor always gave me options and she said one of those options needed to be a good spirit. So I secretly dreamed big. And when I got rid of the cancer and I started to feel… normal, I guess, I wrote down the list I’d been secretly dreaming of. A what-I-get-to-do-now-that-I-get-to-stay-alive list. Probably silly but there it is.”

She waited for the usual platitudes, empty and meaningless and rather annoying, but again they didn’t come.

What did come stunned her. “Not silly, not even close. I think you’re incredibly brave,” he said quietly.

She automatically started to shake her head no because she’d never thought of herself as brave before—the opposite actually. There’d been plenty of times when she hadn’t been able to see the end of the line, hadn’t been able to imagine herself getting to this point, had in fact wanted it just to be over.

So “brave”? Nope, but she sure could get used to seeing him look at her like she was and maybe she’d get brave by osmosis. “Thank you,” she said just as quietly. It’d only been a week but she’d half convinced herself that she’d imagined the chemistry between them. She hadn’t, and she was glad.

“So you’re good,” he said.

She nodded.

“Stay that way,” he said, and took the hammer from her hand.

“Am I keeping you from anything important?” she asked as he tossed the hammer aside and began to pull out long pieces of steel and planks of wood.

“Depends on your definition of ‘important,’” he said, easily moving the long pieces of steel, the muscles of his shoulders and back moving enticingly beneath his shirt. “Been up since three a.m. on avalanche control and was about to grab breakfast.”

Good Lord. He’d been working for six hours already. And now she had him loading steel and wood, carrying it around the side of the building, and putting it together so she could access the entire wall. “Listen, I can get someone else to help me—”

“Bailey?”

“Yeah?”

“Shh.” Once he had all the material stacked near the wall they began to put it all together, and she had to admit she could never have managed on her own.

Not to mention that working in such close proximity as they were, there was a lot of accidental touching. A brushing of hands, bumping of shoulders… And every time he pulled back.

“What is that?” she finally asked when they stood on the second level of the scaffolding. She was hot, insulted, and dammit, also annoyingly turned on.

“What’s what?” he asked.

“You know what. You’re acting like you’re afraid to touch me.”

“We both know that’s not true,” he said, eyes hot, making her remember when he’d pushed her back against her car and touched her plenty. In fact, if he’d touched her for another minute or two, she’d have had an orgasm right there in the parking lot.

“I’m not afraid to touch you,” he said.

“Then you feel sorry for me because I was sick,” she said, hating that idea.

He winced with guilt but not pity, which was good. Pity would have brought out her homicidal tendencies.

“I told you I’m not sick now,” she said.

Hudson looked her right in the eyes. “And I heard you.”

Her heart skipped a little beat. “So if you’re not afraid of me and you don’t feel sorry for me, what’s the problem?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze swept over her, from her eyes to her mouth, and locked in.

Stepping into him, she poked him in the chest. “Well?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Don’t push me on this, Bailey.”

She pushed him.

He gave her a long, hard look that didn’t scare her off. Nor did he budge.

She glanced up at him, hands on hips.

He shook his head and muttered “f*ck it” and then hauled her up against him and covered her mouth with his.

The kiss was hot and wet and deep and amazing, and by the time he lifted his head from hers, she could hardly remember her point, much less her name.

Holy.

Cow.

A couple of wolf whistles had her jerking back from him. Some of Hud’s crew had arrived to help with the scaffolding.

Good timing, too, because God knew she wouldn’t have found the strength to stop what had probably been the hottest kiss of her life. “That’s not a problem,” she whispered, deciding to play it light. “That was fun.” She turned away before he could get the truth in her eyes, but he grabbed her. “Careful.”

Right. They were on the second tier of the scaffolding, fourteen feet up from the ground. Given the look in his eyes, she hadn’t been the only one feeling the heat. “I’m okay.”