He turned and started stalking towards the barn-like structure with Romeo trailing behind him wagging his tail happily. Knowing that I really didn’t have a choice, I followed them. My eyes tracked his backside like a heat-seeking missile locked on its target. That was one fine looking ass, and the body it was attached to should be registered as a lethally sexy weapon.
For as long as I could remember I’d done everything I could to get Hudson Reed’s attention. Most of the time it didn’t work, and when it did, it wasn’t the kind of attention I wanted. Maybe I was too hard on karma, because it seemed that two hundred hours of Hud’s attention for breaking Romeo out of doggie jail was tipping the scales of justice in my favor.
Yeah, supervised community service at the haunted house wasn’t looking too bad. Not. Bad. At. All.
Chapter 6
Hudson
“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
~ Loretta Reed
Using my body weight as leverage, I leaned in with my shoulder and forced the heavy, wooden barn door open. The stale smell of hay, dust and wood shavings billowed out with the strength of a dragon breathing fire. Stepping inside, I reached down and picked up a few pieces of the debris that was littered across the dirt floor and tossed it into a pile that I’d started when I arrived. That was about an hour before I’d seen Harmony sitting in her car. She looked as horrified as the time her senior class went to the cemetery after prom. I had just graduated from the University of Texas and moved back home. My first night back I’d been driving home from my friend Colton’s house and saw a terrified Harmony walking alone on the path that led to Wishing Well Cemetery.
That night, five years ago, had been eye opening for a lot of reasons. Seeing Harmony that vulnerable was surprising in and of itself, but my reaction to her vulnerability was even more shocking. The second I’d seen her expression and body language, I wanted to pull her into my arms and chase away every fear, every worry, every thing that tried to hurt her. I wanted to tell her she never had to be scared again because I would die before I’d ever let anything bad happen to her.
Obviously, I hadn’t done any of those things.
Instead I’d snapped at her to get in the truck and drove her home while she’d talked a mile a minute about how she’d thought she’d be fine going into the cemetery with her friends, but once she got there the fear had been paralyzing and caused her to go mute. When her feet had planted themselves in place next to a large headstone, her friends hadn’t noticed. She’d opened her mouth to scream to get their attention, but no sound had come out. She’d finally been able to force her feet to move and she’d run out the way she’d come.
That’s when I’d seen her and picked her up. The primal protective emotion she’d stirred in me had been bad enough, but when I’d pulled into Briggs Farms to drop her off, she’d thrown her arms around me and nuzzled her face into my neck as she breathlessly thanked me over and over again.
To this day, if I closed my eyes, I could still feel the heat of her sweet breath fan down my neck, still feel her soft breasts pressed up against my chest, still smell the unique scent of wildflowers and strawberries that was uniquely Harmony.
It meant I needed to keep my eyes wide open for the next five weeks.
Picking up a rotted two-by-four, I tossed it on the pile. Scanning the area, it was not lost on me that this place didn’t look like much now, but it was perfect for what I needed.
“You can start in here. This all needs to be cleared. Put it in piles. A dumpster should be here by ten. When it gets here you can use the wheelbarrow to haul it out.”
When I didn’t hear any signs that my instructions were being followed I looked behind me and saw that Harmony hadn’t made it over the threshold of the barn door.
She stood outside, framed perfectly in the rectangular entrance with the sun backlighting her, hands planted firmly on her hips, head cocked to the side. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and I couldn’t help but notice the way the rays of sunshine picked up the blonde and red highlights that ran through her auburn strands. I was also having a hard time ignoring the slender slope of her smooth neck that her hairstyle showcased. My mouth watered as I tried to erase the vision of my lips brushing against the soft, supple skin between her jawline and collarbone.
It didn’t work.
Her nostrils flared as she exclaimed, “Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”
Yes. I had. But not in the way she thought. I had lost my mind thinking that I could be in this deserted, secluded location with her for even one day and still have a shred of sanity intact. Especially considering the jeans she wore molded to her body like a second skin while her thin cotton t-shirt pulled tight across her full chest. All of it was making me feel things that I had no business feeling.