Chapter Five
Hudson hated mornings. Oh sure, there were people who weren’t morning people. But he was barely a noon person. The fact that he’d stayed up until almost four sketching ideas when he really wanted to be at the cabin painting hadn’t done a damn thing to improve his mood. So why was he ass to elbows on the subway with tourists on their way to see the sights before the weather turned frosty? Because of the woman who had stared back at him from ten new sketches when he’d finally strode out of his penthouse at the ass-crack of nine in the morning.
After getting off the subway, he made a quick dip into the coffee shop with a grand-opening sign hanging in the window a block from Felicia’s apartment and then walked the rest of the way to her place, balancing a tray of drinks and a box of pastries. His foot was barely on the top step before Honeypot’s yowling began. It went in his ear and straight to the middle of his brain like an extra-long ice pick. And he’d been worried about someone breaking into her apartment. That beast was better than any alarm. Luckily, since both of his hands were full, Felicia had opened the door, stepped out, and closed it behind her by the time he’d hit the last step.
Her hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, damp tendrils clinging to her neck, and her glasses were on, but the rest was a whole new vision. Sweat gleamed on her skin above the scoop neck of the blue sports bra covering her perfect just-a-handful-sized tits and below the band that wrapped tight around her rib cage. A pair of black and blue running pants clung to her shapely legs and stretched over her heart-shaped ass that had him considering all the possibilities. Sure, she thought she was hooked on someone else, but Hudson wasn’t dead, a monk, or legally insane.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, swiping a small hand towel across her forehead as her gaze landed everywhere but on him.
He forced his attention back up to her face, which didn’t make his blood rush straight to his cock any slower. “Bringing you breakfast.”
“Is that from Grounded Coffee? They just opened up a new location down the block.” She clutched the small towel to her chest and leaned forward and sniffed the box, a look of total bliss on her face, and tugged her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Obviously, the temptation of sugar beat out Felicia’s shyness. “I’ve been dying to get some. I can’t wait to get that in my mouth.”
He wouldn’t pop a boner at the dirty image that appeared in his head at her statement. He wouldn’t get a hard-on. He would just get a halfsie. That was totally acceptable. Yeah, if you’re fourteen, asshole. Get it together.
“Is this your way of making up for last night?” she asked, taking a peek from the box to his face.
Too much of his attention was taken up by the way a bead of sweat was doing a slow slide down her collarbone before disappearing beneath her sports bra for him to make any sort of mental connections. “Last night?”
“Don’t pretend.” She slapped the towel over her shoulder and planted her hands on her hips to give him the stare down—or stare up since he had a foot on her. It would have been more effective if her cheeks weren’t bright red already. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. That can’t happen again.” The words came out in a rush as if she had to get them out quickly or risk losing her courage. “If we’re gonna do this, it has to be like prison visiting hours. No touching.”
“You’ve visited someone in prison?” He had a hard time picturing doe-eyed Felicia Hartigan and her ant obsession anywhere near hardened, convicted felons.
A nervous giggle escaped. “I binged Arrested Development.”
Okay, that made more sense. “So, you also know there’s always money in the banana stand.”
Her mouth twitched, but she stomped out the smile before it could fully form, and stubborn Felicia rose to the surface. “Last night needs to be a one-time thing.”
“You didn’t like the kiss?” The one that had gotten him hard and made her soft and pliant against him. Oh, that was definitely happening again. He’d tried to convince himself otherwise all the way home last night, but by four a.m. in the middle of the worst insomnia ever, he’d rationalized it was for everyone’s benefit if he and Felicia explored this attraction. Made perfect sense. “It felt like you liked it. It sounded like you liked it.” That little moan had found its way into his very naked dreams last night.
“Liking it doesn’t matter.” Light pink splotches dotted her cheeks. “It can’t happen again. Deal?”
Since agreeing to things he had no intention of doing had pretty much been his MO since birth, and definitely since he’d become vice president of client relations (or as he liked to think of it: Flirt in Chief), putting a charming little white lie out there didn’t even make him twitch. “Deal.”
“Good.” Her smile took up the entire bottom half of her face and only looked fake because he was a man who knew all the tricks. “Come on inside. You can bond with Honeypot while I take a quick rinse off.”
He shifted his stance, his zipper taking the brunt of the movie playing in his head at the idea. “Sounds like a plan.”
And it would give him the opportunity to remember the entire point of this little excursion. This was Operation: Hey Tyler, You Dumbass, She’s Hot. Any action between him and Felicia, and there would be some, would be of the educational variety—not the fuck-I-forgot-my-brains-at-home variety. Keep it surface. Keep it fun. Keep it focused on making all the people happy so he could go secretly paint in his cabin in peace. Basically, it was his life as he’d been living it for as long as he could remember. And if his dick took notice of Felicia’s pert ass as he followed her inside her apartment? What could he say, he was an artist—he had an eye for beautiful details.
…
The cold water from the shower couldn’t hit Felicia’s face and pour over her sweaty body fast enough. That kiss had been the bane of her existence last night, and now Hudson was here in another pair of ass-hugging jeans and carrying pastry. That should be illegal. It sure as hell wasn’t fair.
The kiss was an anomaly, a statistically insignificant event. It didn’t change anything. The goal was Tyler. It had always been Tyler. And less than thirty days from now, she will have achieved that goal. Deviation led to chaos, and she wasn’t into chaos. She’d had more than enough of that growing up to last a lifetime. The Hartigan household had been loving, but a totally, gleefully, no-holds-barred free-for-all. And for a quiet girl who liked books and bugs—not necessarily in that order—it had been more than a little overwhelming at times.
It wasn’t until Tyler’s family moved into the neighborhood that she finally stopped feeling like quite so much of a freak in her own skin. He was her ideal man. They were perfect for each other. Now all she had to do to successfully complete this experiment was factor in the new variable—better known as Hudson Carlyle—to get Tyler to finally notice her as more than just Frankie Hartigan’s little sister and the adorkable girl next door.
Refocused, she scrubbed the five-mile run off her skin, rinsed the shampoo-conditioner all-in-one out of her hair, and got out of the shower. A fast buff-dry and comb-through later, she grabbed an ancient Ant Life T-shirt and yoga pants, grateful that for her, bras were almost always optional. Dressed, damp hair hanging down her back, she hurried out into the living room before Honeypot got a chance to snag all of the pastries or take another swipe at Hudson—both were totally possible.
Of course, none of the above turned out to be the answer. Hudson lounged—his shoes abandoned on the floor—on her powder-blue tufted chaise beneath a print of her favorite Hughston painting. Honeypot lay curled up on his stomach, purring loud enough to make the walls vibrate. Shocked didn’t begin to cover it. That cat barely tolerated her, and yet here she was fawning over a total interloper in their lives.
“Don’t tell me your ability to charm the females of the world extends to cats,” she said.
“What can I say, ladies love me.” He scooped up Honeypot and placed her on the floor—a move that would have gotten Felicia slashed—before getting up and walking over to the box of pastries on the kitchen counter. “Bear claw or chocolate croissant?” He popped open the box top and looked in. “They threw in more, too. I think that’s a quiche Lorraine, and there’s a cherry danish among other things.” He looked up. “I wasn’t sure what you drank, either, so I brought a green tea, an iced coffee, a hazelnut latte, and a black coffee.”
How did the saying go? Never trust a rich guy bearing gifts. Okay, that wasn’t quite it, but it was close enough. She sniffed a trap of some sort, she just didn’t know what exactly. “What is this?”
His smile was anything but comforting. “A test date to determine what I’m working with.”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest and gave her an appraising look that went from the top of her head, where her more-than-damp hair was stuck to her skull, down past her T-shirt—that had her wishing she’d taken the time to put on a bra, skimmed past her yoga pants with the bleach stain spanning one thigh from a recent laundry accident, and down to her unpainted toenails. Tyler had known her since she had braces and zits, so the fact that she wasn’t a glamor girl wouldn’t be a surprise to him. That didn’t mean she wasn’t prepared to do a little…freshening of her look. Animals did it all the time to attract a mate, as Hudson rightly pointed out the other day.
Resigned to Hudson’s answer before she even put it out there, she asked, “Does that mean you want me to go get dolled up?”
“That’s just the glaze on the pottery.” Keeping his gaze on her, he reached into the pastry box and pulled out a bear claw before nudging the container across the counter to her. “I want to see the good stuff.”
Okay, she had no idea how to take that. She turned it over in her mind while she grabbed the chocolate croissant that was still warm. “You mean like conversation?”
Oh God, please say no. She hated small talk. It frazzled her brain and then her nerves kicked in and all that came out of her mouth was about ants.
“Sure, let’s start there.” He grinned and took a giant bite of the pastry. “Go ahead. Wow me.”
“Okay.” Her brain blanked, and her pulse kicked up a notch or twenty. She talked to people all the time. She had friends. She wasn’t a complete social dork. However, the pressure of being “on” had her palms sweaty as she grabbed the tea. “Um… How was your day?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Well, even though it’s hours earlier than I normally get up on a Saturday, and I’m not a morning person, it’s going okay. How about you?”
“I’ve been up since five.” She took a bite of the croissant and managed to bite back her moan of pleasure as the buttery, flaky, chocolate goodness melted on her tongue.
“Why?” he asked, before demolishing the rest of his bear claw in one bite.
She savored her next bite and tried to come up with the words to explain that nothing-can-touch-me feeling she got in the mornings. It was like the world was full of possibility and all she had to do was reach out and grab it. It was as close to fitting in with the world that she ever got.
“I like the city when it’s quiet,” A police siren blared outside the window. “Well, quieter. I have breakfast, read the paper, catch up on the latest journal articles, and go for a run.”
“Every Saturday?” he asked.
She nodded.
He grimaced. “That sounds horrible.”
“Not at all. It’s my favorite part of every week.” She sipped the green tea and then took a deep inhale of the hint of jasmine wafting out of the cardboard to-go cup as she did so, her gaze tripped on the early birthday card from her mom that she had stuck to the fridge with an ant magnet. That was the point of all this, not sugary carb goodness. For Tyler, she could push past her natural shyness and take a few steps outside of her comfort zone. That meant staying focused. “We need to get down to it. The clock is ticking, and I don’t need help talking to Tyler; I need to make him jealous. I did a lot of thinking last night about what you said.”
“But not the kiss,” Hudson said, his focus dropping to her mouth.
Hot spots blazed high on her cheeks. “And in the animal kingdom, creatures do have superficial, visual ways to attract a mate. An example is the Long-Tailed Widowbird.”
He gave her a blank look.
Okay, time to dial down the nerd a bit or at least translate it into regular English. “They’re these gorgeous jet-black birds in Africa with orange-and-white shoulders, a blue-tinted bill, and nearly two-feet long tails. The tails make them much more visible to predators, but it is the key to attracting a mate.”
“So, you want a longer tail?” he asked, swiping her cup and taking a quick drink of tea. His face twisted the moment the liquid must have hit his tongue. “Ugh. That stuff is awful.”
“It’s an acquired taste,” she retorted, taking back her tea. “What I’m saying is that I am prepared to go through some sort of superficial makeover to get Tyler.”
“Okay, that’s a start,” he said, resting his forearms on the counter and leaning forward—close enough that she couldn’t miss the musky tease of his cologne.
She couldn’t place the scent, but it made her eyes flutter just a bit and her thighs clench. Fucking pheromones.
“However,” he continued, “there’s more to catching Tyler than just looking the part.”
“Oh, I know.” She nodded her head in agreement, relieved that he was seeing the brilliance of her plan. She may not have a ton of confidence in human interaction, but when it came to arranging an experiment, she had absolute faith. “That’s why you’re going to be there making him jealous.”
“I don’t know about that.” He reached out and took a strand of still damp hair, winding it around his finger.
“It’s perfect.” Gaining inner sass from some place she hadn’t even been aware of, she smacked his hand away, freeing herself, and took a step back from the counter. Having the two feet of granite between them suddenly didn’t seem like enough. “You don’t even want to know the number of studies I found last night that delved into the effect of what wanting what someone else has on mate selection in humans.”
“There are studies on that?”
“Lots of them.” Her initial Google search had pulled up more than fourteen million hits.
He pushed back from the counter, taking one of the to-go cups with him. “It’ll never work.”
The look of know-it-all smarm on his handsome face as he took a drink, watching her over the rim of his lid, was enough to make her want to march right over to him and—ohhhhhh! He almost got her that time. He just wanted to rile her up. Her brothers had loved to do the same thing. They’d push right past her natural shyness until she reacted. She’d learned to avoid getting drawn in with them, and she sure wasn’t going to fall for it with Hudson. She inhaled a long breath through her nose and held it for the count of three before releasing. There, much better.
“It will,” she said, her voice as firm as her resolve. “I’ve done the research.”
He rounded the counter to her side, stopping just short of where she stood, too stubborn to give up ground in her own apartment for the sake of her crazy libido. His gaze dipped down to her mouth, then to her hard nipples poking against the T-shirt—obviously she was cold with her hair being wet like it was. For five nerve-wracking seconds she just stood there, anticipation crawling across her skin as he dragged his gaze back to her lips. She didn’t want another kiss. She didn’t. But her tongue darted out and wet her lips of its own volition anyway.
“And if it doesn’t work?” he asked, a rough grit to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
The words were out before she’d thought them through. “Then, we do things your way.”
“No matter what?” He took another step forward.
“Within reason,” she said, her voice shaky.
She could feel his body heat, see the way his pupils had dilated, and her fingers twitched with the need to reach out to touch him.
“Fair enough,” he said.
He reached out.
Her breath caught.
He moved his hand past her, leaving a trail of almost-coulda-been behind him and took a cherry danish out of the box behind her. Air filled her lungs with a whoosh as she watched him take a bite.
“One for the road,” he said with a grin, his voice back to its normal teasing tone. “I’ll be back at seven. Wear something boring-business-dinner-hell appropriate.”
She blinked, trying to catch up with the jump the conversation had taken. “What for?”
“Carlyle Enterprises client dinner,” he said as he backtracked to the chair, put on his shoes, and then moved toward the door, Honeypot curling between his legs in a figure eight as he did so. “Tyler will be there. It’ll be the perfect little test environment for your theory.”
Hustling to the door, she picked up the cat, refusing the flinch when the ingrate sank her claws into her forearm. “I’m right.”
He gave her an indulgent smile and opened the door. “Of course you are.”
The man may not have many brain cells—at least not ones he’d admit to—but he was smart enough to get out and close the door behind him before she could formulate an appropriately scathing remark. And she would. It would just take a few hours—and even if he was still around, she probably wouldn’t be able to get it out. Honeypot hopped up onto the counter and then the windowsill, where she started wailing. That man. He’d pushed his way into her life, made her cat fall in love with him, and was questioning her tactics. Well, Mr. Hot and Rich was about to learn just how very wrong he was.