“Missing from my life.” He took her empty coffee cup and shoved it into the now-empty bag and wadded it all up. Then he executed a perfect three-pointer into the trash in the kitchenette on the other side of the room.
It hadn’t occurred to her that Jacob had walked away from his family and never returned. Bailey had been upset with her mom plenty over the years, but she’d never once considered going away and breaking off all contact, every last tie.
“I meant it about quitting, Bailey,” Hud said, stretching out an arm along the back of the couch where his fingers settled just behind her neck. “Don’t quit. Not because of me. Don’t let me win. I don’t deserve it.”
“It’s not because of you.”
“Then what?” he asked. “You’re not the quitting type.”
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“I think I do.”
She met his gaze. His mouth was still curved slightly but his eyes were serious. Serious and she found herself wanting to fall into them and drown. “I let my doubts take over,” she admitted.
“You can do this.”
The words fueled her and filled a hole she hadn’t realized was inside her, much less that it needed filling. Before she even realized what she was doing, she leaned toward him.
He cupped her jaw, his thumb rasping over her lower lip. Then he sucked the pad of that thumb into his mouth. “Mmm,” he said, voice low and gravelly. “Chocolate.”
That’s when she remembered she was in her pajamas—a pair of sweat bottoms cut off to indecent heights and a thin, tight tank top that wasn’t going to hide the fact that certain parts of her were happier to see him than other parts. She was embarrassed but she could tell by the heat in Hud’s eyes that embarrassment wasn’t what he felt… Far from it.
“Oh boy,” she whispered as he cupped the back of her head and drew her mouth to his—
His radio went off.
He stilled for a beat, their mouths a fraction of an inch apart, the anticipation so high she nearly cried before slowly pulling back. “Duty calls?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Blowing out a sigh, he rose to his feet.
Bailey did the same, a hand to her chest, trying to calm her heart rate.
Impossible.
Especially when he looked at her for a long moment and then pulled her in again for one quick kiss. Just the appetizer on his menu, but no less potent for it. It left her dumbstruck—kiss -struck, she corrected.
He flashed her a crooked smile. “Kick ass today, Bailey,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 10
Hud left Bailey’s knowing he’d be deeply distracted by the memories of her, soft and warm from sleep, in those teeny-tiny PJs that spurned even more fantasies—all of them down and dirty—for the entire day.
Not two minutes after leaving her, his body still thrumming with want, ski patrol was called to the top of lift eight.
Two young twentysomethings, brothers, had been seen fighting on the lift as it neared the top. Apparently one brother had started out with angry words that degenerated into fists. Somewhere along the way, one of the brothers slipped off the lift and fell about twenty feet. Wearing a helmet had definitely saved his noggin, but he’d broken his arm and possibly his clavicle as well.
Which hadn’t slowed down the fight much. Reportedly, the other brother had climbed down the lift to join his brother.
When Hudson and Mitch and a bunch of other ski patrollers arrived on scene, the pair were still rolling around on the snow, fists flying, directly beneath the lift, which the lift operator had stopped.
This meant that there was a long line of people hanging over the mountain, skis and boards dangling as they waited for the lift to get moving again, watching in rapt fascination as the idiot brothers wrestled and yelled at each other.
“I didn’t say you could sleep with her!” one yelled.
“She dumped you!” the other yelled back. “You said she was a crazy bitch!”
“Yeah, so why did you screw her?”
“Because she’s a hot crazy bitch!”
“I’m going to kill you!”
Hud dragged one free while his team grabbed the other.
They looked so much alike that they were clearly brothers. And they continued to fight, though now they were united in that fight as they tussled with the ski patrollers instead of each other. But Hud and his team quickly got them under control and restrained.
One of the brothers, the one who’d slept with the “crazy bitch,” was cradling his clearly broken arm.
“Shit,” the other said, staring at the arm. “You broke it again.”
“You broke it!”
They argued about that the entire time Hud and Mitch were strapping the injured brother to a sled, preparing to take him down the mountain.
As they began the descent, the uninjured brother stayed alongside so that the two of them could continue to yell at each other.
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you owe me fifty bucks,” the injured one yelled from flat on his back. “I won our last two bets and you’ve never paid up! Cheapskate!”
“I don’t owe you shit! You stole my bike and crashed it!”
“That piece of shit was no good anyway!”