I allowed my eyes to roam over him, his shoulders nearly as wide as the goalposts at the ends of the football field, biceps the size of tree trunks straining against his shirt sleeves. A tattoo of three soaring pine trees drew my eyes to the corded muscles of his right forearm. And his legs, all thick and solid beneath his dark jeans…
Sweet merciful fuck. Hudson Miller had certainly grown up during his time in the army.
“Who won?” someone called from below, snapping me out of my trance. Dozens called out their predictions, a fairly even split of both our names.
Hudson stepped to the side and gestured to me with both hands like he was presenting me as the prize on a game show. I pinched the ends of an imaginary skirt and curtsied for the crowd who hooted and laughed, applause and cheers erupting around us.
As I stood to my full height, Hudson leaned close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. “I would’ve baked you a pie without the bet, you know. As many as you wanted. You only had to ask.”
His minty breath wafted over my lips, and I was momentarily dumb struck. It’d be so easy to lean forward and press our lips together. To just…fall into him, allow him to wrap me up in his arms. To hold me like I meant the world to him and fall right back where we’d left off—namely, in bed.
Dammit, I couldn’t let that happen with him. Not again. We’d had a brief lapse of judgment all those years ago the weekendbefore he’d left, when we’d given in to temptation and slept together. Multiple times.
But things were good between us again. They hadn’t been at first, and okay, so they weren’tgoodnecessarily, but they were passable. I’d lost my best friend somewhere along the way, which hurt like hell. But I hadn’t losthim, and that was all that mattered to me. We were able to talk once in a while through text, and I had finally gotten to a point where I could ask Marianne about Hudson without feeling like my insides were going to cave in on me at the mere mention of his name.
This quasi-peace between us had taken a long time to reach. Even longer considering I’d been pretending for a great deal of it. But we were there, and I wasn’t going to allow anything to mess that up. Not again.
I smiled, pressing my hand to his chest and not-so-gently pushing him back a step or two. I had no illusions that the only reason I was able to shove him was because he let me. “And I would’ve gone to supper with you, if you’d just asked.”
“That so?” He raised his brows. “All right, then, I’m askin’ now. Will you have supper with me tonight?”
Tonight? No. Absolutely not. I needed to get my head on straight before I saw him again or I’d be in his bed before I could blink. And then when he left in a day or a week or whenever, I’d be right back where I’d been all those years ago.
And Hudson and I? Well, I wasn’t so sure we’d survive the fallout this time.
With a smile that felt wobbly, I turned and jogged down the steps toward where my sisters and Avery stood waiting.
“Sorry, I have plans tonight,” I called to him over my shoulder. “What, since I didn’t know you were making your grand entrance back into Havenbrook after ten years and all.”
When I got to the bottom, I turned back to find him staring at me, his eyes never straying from mine.
He inclined his head slightly. “Fair enough. I’ll get started on your pies tonight, but I expect you there tomorrow.”
“We’ll see.” I pressed my lips together and turned to walk away, ignoring the calls from several townspeople.
“Mac, hey!” Will yelled from behind me. “Wait up.”
“Seriously, slow down, girl,” Avery said, her heels clicking against the sidewalk. “If I’d known I’d be walking all over hell and back today, I’d have worn something besides these cute as fuck but completely impractical boots.”
“Keep up or shut up, ladies,” Rory said, her gait even with mine. “After waving a red flag at that bull, she needs to get the hell outta here.”
Avery snorted at the same time Will said, “About that… Are you sure you wanna go down the route of playin’ hard to get with him? For one thing, you only have so much time. How long’s he here for, anyway?”
“Marianne told me a few weeks when we spoke earlier,” Rory said.
A few weeks. It wasn’t enough time. Though, to be fair, a thousand weeks wouldn’t have been enough time.
“And second,” Will continued, “you wanna giveHudsonmore of a challenge?” She snorted and Rory joined in. “Let me know how that works out for you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MAC
No,giving Hudson a challenge probably wasn’t my brightest idea. He thrived on them, just like I did. It was our greatest source of commonality as well as dispute. So, yeah, I hadn’t really been thinking when I’d walked away earlier today. And I hadn’t intended to play hard to get. Not really. It just…sort of happened.
I’d been at work now for hours, and every time the door swung open, my eyes snapped there like a magnet. Something that didn’t go unnoticed by my pain-in-the-ass sister.
“I don’t know why you don’t just call him up and invite him over here,” Will said from her perch at the bar. She’d come in to meet Finn after he got off, but a call from a supplier was holding him up.
