Oh…that was interesting.
Normally he was a by-the-book, take-no-prisoners, strong silent type. But maybe, just maybe, there was a human heart beating beneath the muscled planes of his chest. In spite of the fact that the one time I’d attempted to charm his snake had been a colossal failure and the most humiliating night of my life, maybe he wasn’t quite as robotic and immune to me as I’d thought.
A smile wider than a mile spread on my face as I dropped my chin in a nod. “Yep.”
“Since when do you have a dog?” He folded his arms in front of his chest and the motion caused his bulging biceps to pull the material of his uniform taut.
Oh, my…
Of their own accord, my eyes traveled down his body and back up again. His stance reminded me of a gladiator ready to battle in the center of the Roman Colosseum. Feet shoulder-width apart, arms crossed. The badass, domineering authority he exuded was running over my arousal-blocker and swoon-guard like a sexy freight train.
“Harmony…the dog?”
I blinked up at him and told him a version of the truth. “I’m dog sitting.”
He didn’t speak, which was typical for Hud. He was a man of few, if any, words. Sadly, my body was reading his silence as foreplay. But in fairness, my hormones read anything Hud did around me as foreplay. My throat constricted as I tried to ignore the lust that was rushing through me.
Focus. I needed to focus. All I had to do was get him to forget about this fender bender and let me go on my way. Otherwise I was in trouble. Real trouble.
“If there’s any damage, just let me know what I owe you.”
His head tilted slightly to the right, and I could hear the amusement in his voice as he asked, “You in a hurry?”
“Yeah, actually I am. I need to get over to Destiny’s.”
Okay, using my pregnant best friend/sister-in-law as a get-out-of-jail-free card was definitely not my proudest moment, but I was sure that she would forgive me.
“Is she in labor?” His voice deepened, the way it did whenever he was worried or concerned about something or someone.
The baritone rumble sent a shiver dancing down my spine. I’d always wondered if there were times that his voice grew even deeper. Like say…intimate times. That thought immediately pushed play on one of my most frequent fantasies. Hud and I were in bed. Naked, of course. He was hovering over me, my legs wrapped around his hips, and his lips brush my ear as he tells me how bad he wants me. How bad he’s always wanted me…
“Harmony.” Hud’s harsh tone hit the stop button on my erotic daydream. “Is she in labor?”
Oh right. My get-out-of-jail-free card.
“No. She’s just miserable and she needs me to distract her from the fact that she’s two weeks overdue.”
JJ, my brother and Destiny’s husband, was best friends with Hud. I knew that he was aware of her uncomfortable condition. Last Tuesday at the boys’ weekly poker game JJ hosted, Destiny broke down in tears because she could no longer see her feet. She’d told Cara—the third in our best friend trio and, my brother Trace’s fiancée—about the horrified looks on the guy’s faces when the waterworks had started, and then Cara told me.
I sat, semi-patiently, tapping my fingers as I waited for him to decide my fate.
His nostrils flared and he inhaled deeply before he leaned down, resting his forearms on the frame of my driver’s side window. “You need to pay attention when you’re driving. Someone could’ve gotten hurt…”
He paused, but I was already doing my internal happy dance, because it looked like I would be getting off with a warning.
Maybe karma wasn’t so bad after all.
Then, in what felt like slow motion, Hud reached up and took his glasses off. When his eyes met mine I sucked in a startled breath. The look in his dark gaze was TNT to my carefully constructed emotional walls. He demolished them with a single stare.
“You could’ve gotten hurt,” he gritted out in a gravelly tone.
It took me several seconds to absorb the gravity of the words he’d spoken because I was so busy reeling from the aftermath of his explosive gaze. When the initial stun wore off, the combination of the intensity in his golden brown eyes and the emphasis he’d put on you had goosebumps breaking out on my skin as the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. If the man staring at me was anyone but Hud, I would bet my family farm that he was about to kiss me, and that he was genuinely concerned about my driving habits. But…it was Hud, and he’d always treated me like an annoyance. Someone he had to put up with, and ignored whenever possible.
So why was he looking at me like the thought of something happening to me was too much to bear?
Did he care if something happened to me?
I mean really care?
Did he want to kiss me?
Or more than kiss me?
When I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. Me. Speechless? No, that wasn’t possible. I had to say something. I needed to find out if I was crazy. If what I was feeling was real or just a figment of my overactive imagination.