My Kind of Wonderful(69)

“Back off.” All he wanted to do was to collect Bailey and get the hell out of work mode for half an hour. Hell, he’d take ten minutes. But since Mother Nature had granted him a stay of execution with a glorious storm, he was thinking he might actually have all night.

And he wanted every single minute of it.

Aidan was hovering again, still trying to get the ice pack on Hud’s face. Hud pushed him away. “If you don’t get the f*ck away from me with that thing right now, I’m going to shove it so far up your ass you’ll be shitting blue gel for the rest of your natural life.”

“If you won’t let me look at it,” Aidan said tightly, all pissy as he always got when he didn’t get his way, “we’ll need to have medical look at it.”

“Man, we are medical.”

“But—”

“Jesus. I’m an EMT and I say I’m fine,” Hud snapped.

“I’m an EMT, too, jackass, and I overrule you.”

“How the hell do you figure that?” Hud demanded.

Aidan looked smug. “I’m older than you.”

“Oh, shut up.” Hud turned to face the room and found Lily and Bailey sitting on his desk with their legs folded beneath them Indian-style. The radio sat between them, as did a bottle of Jack—which if he wasn’t mistaken was nearly empty—and two Dixie cups.

He went brows up. “Ladies.”

Bailey looked at his face and gasped. She went to hop down off the desk but got tangled in her own legs and would’ve fallen on her face if he hadn’t caught her.

When she got her sea legs, she blinked up at him. “You’re hurt.”

“And you’re tipsy.” Hud turned to look at Lily, who was beaming dreamily at Aidan. “You were supposed to watch her, not get her drunk.”

“Hey,” Lily said, slurring her words a little bit. “She’s a grown-up. She didn’t need a babysitter.”

“Nope,” Bailey said, popping the P sound. She reached up and touched Hud’s eye.

He sucked up a wince and caught her hand in his because she was more likely to poke out his eyeball than gently touch his bruise.

Aidan scooped Lily up off the desk and gave her what looked like a bone-crunching hug.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“I’m perfect,” he said, sending a smug smile in Hud’s direction. “No one got a shot in on me tonight.” He kissed her and tossed the ice pack to Bailey. “Good luck with that,” he said. “He’s a terrible patient.” And then he carried Lily right out of the office. Given the giggles coming from the latter, he wouldn’t be bothered by Hudson’s countenance again until at least tomorrow.

“Does it hurt?” Bailey asked him softly.

“No.” Liar, liar…

Reaching back, she locked the door and turned to him. He stepped into her at the same moment and they reached for each other. The kiss started out gentle but didn’t stay that way. Finally she stumbled back a step and gave him another of those brain-melting looks that made him want to beat his chest and drag her off to his cave like the Neanderthal he was.

Still smiling at him like maybe the sun and the moon rose and set in his eyes, she slowly lifted his hand… and very gently guided the ice pack in to his goddamn throbbing eye.

He opened his mouth, but she set a finger over his lips.

He stared at her as the cold absorbed into his skin, soothing the ache as surely as having her pressed up against him soothed the rest of the world away, back behind a brick wall where nothing could get at them.

“Better?” she asked, her hand over his on the ice pack.

“Yes, but that’s because you’re pressed up against me,” he said. “It’s not the ice pack.”

She shook her head. She was onto him. Then her smile faded. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “He got in one good punch before I restrained him. It happens.”

But not to him. It’d been a damn long time since anyone had gotten the jump on him, and he had no idea why it had happened tonight.

Don’t you? a voice asked inside his head.

Yeah, okay. So he knew exactly what had happened. Bailey. He’d gone into that call thinking about her, soft and warm in his bed for the whole night. And suitably distracted, he’d been taken by surprise.

That shit had to stop.

But now here he was with a soft, warm, sweetly sexy woman in the circle of his arms, and not just any woman but the one he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of since he’d first seen her on top of the mountain.

An instant connection, his first in too damn long.

Somehow she got him. She got him on a level that no one really had, not since… Jacob.

And even knowing that this was going to come back and bite him on the ass at some point didn’t stop him. He drew her close and breathed her in and said her name on a shaky exhale.

“Yes,” she murmured back, her fingers sinking into his hair, answering the question he hadn’t voiced out loud.


As Hudson’s arms tightened around Bailey, she became aware of the closeness of their bodies. No, that was a lie. She was always extremely aware of Hud’s body.

He walked her backward and she came up against the credenza. He dipped his head and even as her brain screamed, You need to think this over, she was lifting her face and parting her lips to accept his.