“No,” I shot back firmly. My friends meant well, but they had both drunk the Kool-Aid. They were card-carrying members of the happily-ever-after cult. I, on the other hand, had always wanted to be free.
At least, that was how I’d felt until recently. I hated to admit it, but watching both of my best friends fall head over heels, madly in love—even if it was with my brothers—had made me start to want things that I never had before. Things like someone to go to Movies in the Park with. Someone to argue with over what pizza toppings to get. Someone to pick me up and take me to bed after I’d fallen asleep five minutes into watching a movie that I’d insisted on. Someone to kiss me until I forgot where or who I was. Someone who looked at me like Trace looked at Cara or how JJ looked at Destiny—like his entire world started and ended with my smile.
If I’d felt more than a little off balance when I’d realized I’d wanted more than just a one night stand, coming to terms with the fact that I might actually want to be in love had turned my entire world inside out. Up was down. Night was day. Nothing made sense.
I was truly hoping that it would pass. That it was just a phase. Or maybe an illness. A disease that I’d unwittingly contracted. If that was the case, then all I had to do was figure out what the antibody was and I would be cured.
“Ooooooh, I think I know who we should put at the top of the list.” Destiny’s lips parted in a smile so mischievous it made Dennis the Menace look like a choirboy as she looked past me.
“Yes!” Cara clapped her hands together in enthusiastic agreement, her gaze focused in the same place. “The hero of the hour!”
“Who are you two all worked up over…?” I turned and looked over my shoulder just in time to see one Mr. Hudson Reed coming our way.
I opened my mouth to refute their nomination, but unfortunately no sound came out. Seeing the crowds part like the Red Sea as Hud, in full uniform, stalked towards me with a hard, unbendable gleam in his gaze had struck me speechless. I wished I could say this was a once in a blue moon occurrence, but sadly he’d always seemed to wield that voodoo over me. The worst part about it was, lately his super power of striking me silent was gaining strength. What used to take action like hearing his voice, or feeling his touch, could now be accomplished by his mere presence.
“Our hero!” Both Cara and Destiny shouted the second he was within earshot.
“I’m not a hero,” he said flatly. His tone was in full work mode, which was sexy as all hell and just as frustrating.
“I beg to differ. You saved Harmony when she went off the road into the ditch,” Destiny stated matter-of-factly.
“And you let her keep Romeo,” Cara rushed to interject.
Hudson ignored my friends’ praises and instead of addressing them, his golden gaze locked on me. The second our eyes met, every inch of exposed skin on my body broke out in goosebumps and my face heated with a blush I was praying no one noticed.
Why? Why did he have to be the one man who caused my body to come to life like no other? Why did he have to be the only man in over a year who did put the zippidy in my do da? Where was the justice in that?
Chapter 4
Hudson
“Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of the rain dance.”
~ Loretta Reed
Shit.
As much as I’d thought I’d prepared myself to come and talk to Harmony, the second I’d laid eyes on her any defenses that I’d put in place had crumbled. My mind went blank, my pulse raced and my palms grew damp like I was a nervous, pimple-faced teenager. Even though the opposite sex had never made me nervous.
For as long as I could remember, I’d known what I wanted and hadn’t been afraid to ask for it. When I was in kindergarten, I remember Maisey Turner’s long, silky blonde hair brushing against my arm on the playground, and the sensation made me want to kiss her. So, I’d told her that was what I wanted to do. I’ll never forget the moment that—after looking down nervously at her black patent leather shoes—she lifted her blue eyes up with a smile that was still seared into my memory, leaned over, and pressed her lips to mine before running away giggling.
I hadn’t known it or fully understood the lesson I’d learned that day, but in my twenty-eight years, being honest and vocal about what I wanted had served me well both in and out of the bedroom—with one exception.
Harmony Briggs.
When it came to her, I kept my desires locked in a chest that I’d buried so deep no one would ever discover them. Which meant I tried to keep any interactions I had with her to a minimum. Every time I was in her vicinity it was like a mental and emotional unearthing. That fact made what I was about to tell her scarier than hell.
“Where’s the dog?” I barked in frustration.