Chapter 19

19

Hudson

Hudson’s Words To Live By:

Never let them see you sweat. Or pine. Or just whimper a little.

After I introduced him to my family and left him alone to be handed around like a new baby by all of my meddling siblings, I returned to my cabin to get control of myself.

Charlie Murray is here in Hobie.

I wasn’t able to stop repeating that new fact in my head.

Charlie Murray is here in Hobie.

It just didn’t compute. I couldn’t even picture him here. It was almost like… the wild Irish coastline was such a part of the man, it was hard imagining him anywhere else.

Once back in my cabin, I took the opportunity to indulge my inner toddler for a minute since there wasn’t anyone around to hear.

“He’s so sweet and sexy. What the hell is wrong with me?” I whined out loud, thrusting my fingers into my hair and yanking. “Ugh, fuck! He’s here to work, you asshole. Work. And so are you. Remember that.”

I reminded myself what exactly that meant. Work. So I sat down and made a list of all the reasons why lusting after the Irishman would be a terrible idea.

Ultimately it came down to the most important one: I couldn’t jeopardize a shot at making vice president for a fling. My mind automatically rejected the word “fling” to describe Charlie, but I didn’t know how else to describe it. It honestly didn’t matter whether it was a fling with a man or a woman because it would be a fling with a business partner critical to the success of this project. And to make matters worse, Bruce Ames was not a sensitive new-age guy who thought love was love. He was a stereotypical Texas good ole boy who thought gay was a four-letter word and holding another man’s hand in public was akin to bitch-slapping Jesus. I was sure he’d be unhappy when he realized how femme and out Charlie was, but I was just as sure he’d be willing to put up with it for the sake of the success of his pet project. What he wouldn’t accept was his future VP dating not only someone else right in front of him after said man accidentally didn’t propose to his daughter, but also dating a guy who looked like a girl but was very much not one.

Sure enough, when Bruce showed up a few days later for the first meeting and clapped eyes on the beautiful petite Irishman in the skinny jeans, F&B-branded golf shirt, and high ponytail, he was visibly taken aback. For a split second, he’d smiled—the same smile I’d seen him give the attractive young woman who served beer out of a cart near the ninth hole of Bruce’s country club in Dallas. But then he had the same ah-ha moment I’d had. The one in which your world flips over as you realize you’re drooling over the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. I had to hide my smile behind my hand.

It turned out, Bruce Ames was almost as much of a nervous babbler as I was when embarrassed. As he fumbled his way through introductions, Charlie snuck a wink at me that almost knocked me off my feet. It took everything I had not to bark out a laugh, but I managed to keep myself together in front of Bruce and pay attention in the morning meeting that followed.

Bruce had brought all the key players together for the first official management meeting. While Bruce himself wouldn’t be on site unless needed, the contractor, chef, head bartender, and brewery manager were already in place at least on a part-time basis to begin training and participate in the setup of the pub and attached brewery.

Charlie’s playful friendliness won everyone over right away. He had the energy of a new puppy and was damned near just as cute. Everyone he met loved the hell out of him, including my family. Especially my family.

And of course, I was no different. I hung on his every word and used any excuse to stay in the same room with him while we were working.

But if I thought having Charlie at the ranch was hard, it was nothing compared to working alongside him all day every day.

Two weeks into the project, I was exhausted from keeping my hands to myself. From keeping my lust to myself. From keeping my dick to myself. From jacking off several times a night thinking about the man down the hill in the bunkhouse.

“You’re doing it again.”

I turned around and found Charlie straightening up from where he’d been leaning over a folding table jotting notes on a legal pad.

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Staring off into space.”

I was staring at the way your silky hair falls down around your face when you lean over. And how your front teeth sink into your bottom lip when you’re concentrating.

I cleared my throat. “It’s getting late. You want to go grab some dinner at the Pinecone? West and Nico texted to say they were headed over. I guess Goldie showed up to spend some time with Pippa and booted the two of them out.”

By then, Charlie had been around the ranch enough to have become familiar with my family, at least the ones who lived full-time in Hobie. Since my brother West was my closest friend in the world and the local physician in our small town, Charlie had seen plenty of him and his family.

“Cheers. Let me make a few more notes first,” he said before leaning over again. This time when the hair fell down in his way, he absently scooped it all up in a messy bun on the back of his head with an elastic band he kept around his wrist.

Had you asked me several months before how I felt about man buns, I would have laughed you out of the room.

But were you to ask me now?

I’d get a man bun boner before you even finished the question.

I looked away and took the opportunity to determine what lights I needed to turn off before locking up. By the time we exited the papered-over glass doors at the front of the pub, I was already thinking about the rum and Coke I was going to order as soon as I sat down to dinner. Lord knew how much I needed to chill the hell out about everything. The job, the delay on some of the millwork, and my attraction to Charlie.

The two of us had spent many meals together over the past couple of weeks. Quick working lunches on a folding table at work. Long, lazy takeout dinners in the bunkhouse discussing the budget for the interior design of the pub. And even a couple of chaotic family brunches at Doc and Grandpa’s in which no work was discussed but Charlie was undoubtedly the center of everyone’s attention. Within a span of a couple of weeks, Charlie had become almost an extension of me. Where I was, Charlie was too. Where Charlie went, there I followed.

And during all of it, we both acted the height of professionalism. It was as if I’d never seen him naked, never had his hard dick pushing into my mouth or his slender finger sneaking into unspeakable places. We were coworkers. And that was all.

When we got to the restaurant, West and Nico were already seated in a booth, talking quietly with their heads together. I stepped back to let Charlie slide in first before I took the seat next to him.

West pulled his focus away from his partner enough to greet us. “Hey, guys, dare I ask how the project is coming along when you both look like warmed-over shit?”

“Gee, thanks, brother,” I mumbled. “Such a sweet-talker. Nico, you lucky bastard.”

Nico’s eyes crinkled as he laughed and bumped his shoulder into West. “While I wouldn’t have said it in quite the same way, he’s kind of right. Are you two getting any sleep?”

This time it was Charlie who answered. “I’m getting enough sleep but not nearly enough time outside with Mama. There’s a sheep trial coming up down near Austin in a couple of weeks I was hoping to go to. If I can’t get some training time with her, I’ll have to scrap it.”

A young woman introduced herself as our server and began taking our drink orders. When it came time for Charlie to give his, he looked up at her with his natural flirty nature. “What’s good here, love?”

Nico snorted into his fist, and West grinned from ear to ear. The server, swear to god, almost wet her pants and fainted on the spot.

“Ohmygawd, your accent! Where y’all from?”

“Ireland. Have you ever been?”

Nico tilted his forehead against West’s shoulder to bury his laughter in his husband’s arm, while West reached up to run his fingers through Nico’s dark hair.

“Ohmygawd, no! I’ve never been but that…” She swooned and sighed. “That’s just awesome. Seriously awesome. Say something else. Say something to me in Irish.”

“I don’t speak Irish, sweetheart,” he said, laying it on thick. “Just the Queen’s English with an Irish accent the same way you speak it with a Texas twang.”

The girl’s face was flushed with flirty excitement as she called to another female server who walked by.

“Ashley, ohmygawd, c’mere. You hafta hear this guy talk.”

I snorted and was quickly elbowed in the side for my insubordination.

“Calm down,” Charlie scolded. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m thirsty.”

Ashley walked up and made fluttery eyes at Charlie. Who could blame her? With his delicate facial features, dark eyelashes, mesmerizing green eyes, and unique red hair pulled back, he seriously looked like he’d just walked off a runway in Milan.

“Say something. Anything,” the first girl said with a look of eager anticipation on her face.

“Something,” Charlie said with a grin. “Anything.”

The young women both dissolved in a fit of giggles. I couldn’t stand this. It was so stupid. And it had nothing to do with the fact they were eying Charlie like they were imagining what he would sound like in bed.

Nothing at all.

“Would you mind grabbing those drinks for us please?” I asked our server as politely as I could. “Thank you.”

She narrowed her eyes at me before walking away with her friend.

West eyed me with a smirk. “Problem?”

Jackass brother.

“I’m thirsty,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “Some of us were working hard on a construction site all day.”

“Fuck you,” Charlie said under his breath. “I know you didn’t just imply I didn’t do my fair share of—.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then how exactly did you mean it?”

West and Nico looked back and forth between us.

“I meant that woman might not realize how in need of a drink I am. It has nothing to do with you.”

West looked over at Charlie. “What did my brother do?”

Charlie squeezed my arm to stop me from answering. “Someone had to go sit in a cushy design studio half the day to make the final decisions about fabrics and shit. I told Hudson to go, but he insisted it had to be me since it was critical to the authentic look and feel of the place. Now he’s complaining about having to work the site by himself.” Charlie turned to look at me. “You know I would have rather stayed back and fixed the damned glass rack situation instead of trusting it to Mark.”

“Dude,” I said, still salty over my lack of beverage and the fawning women who were still shooting glances at Charlie from across the restaurant. “I didn’t say a word about that or about you. Someone needed to go get their Rhonda on. Better you than me anyway. You know I’d do just about anything to get out of running into her.”

Rhonda Dolas was an interior decorator who had tried on several occasions to get me to ask her out. We’d gone to high school together, and she’d been close friends with one of my high school girlfriends. It seemed like she’d accepted that as the reason nothing had ever happened between us back then. As soon as she found out I was working on the big pub project Bruce Ames had hired her to consult on, she’d renewed her mission to pin me down for that elusive date I “owed” her.

“Oh right, Rhonda,” Charlie said, getting that mischievous twinkle in his eye I was beginning to know so well. He turned to face Nico and West. “She’s got the hots for our Hudson here. Asks about him all the damned time. I would have been back to the pub much quicker if I hadn’t been having to tell her everything I knew about him.”

I gaped at him. “What? Are you kidding? What the hell did you tell—”

“Yes, Hudson. I’m kidding.”

West and Nico chuckled. “I remember she used to bribe her older brother to let her borrow his car so she could go to all of Hudson’s away football games. The car was a very unique shade of teal, and every time we saw it at one of Hudson’s games, we’d laugh and say—”

I dropped my face into my hands, remembering. “‘Surprise, it’s Rhonda’s Honda.’ You guys weren’t very creative.”

Charlie snickered. “Figures you were a football player.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“You’re so… all-American. Tall, handsome, clean-cut. Small-town Texas boy who plays by the rules. You’re like a walking cliché. I’ll bet you were prom king or some shit too.”

He thinks I’m handsome.

West’s eyes lit up. “Tell him, Hudson.”

“Fuck you,” I said, craning my neck for that damned server. Was I ever going to get a drink?

West leaned across the table toward Charlie. “He was homecoming king, which is almost the same thing. Homecoming in Texas is a big deal.”

Charlie turned to me. “See? Told you so. Now tell me something about you I’d never be able to guess. Something not cliché.”

It was clear he didn’t think I’d be able to come up with anything. And as long as those clover-green eyes were sparkling at me, it was true. I couldn’t even think when those eyes were on me. But Nico spoke up instead.

“He left boxes of fresh vegetables on the porches of the poor families in town every year at harvest time.”

I stared at him in surprise, and West turned to do the same. Nico ignored us and continued to talk with a soft smile on his face.

“I’m sure he thought no one ever knew who’d done it, but I saw him once. It was the middle of the night, and I was outside sneaking a cigarette. We had a gravel drive, so my mom, my sister, and I had never been able to figure out how they left the box without us hearing footsteps. That night I learned his secret. He parked his pickup at the street and walked all the way down to our front porch in the weeds so not even his shoes would crunch on the gravel. He set the box down and snuck back up to his truck. I know for a fact he left those boxes in front of at least fifteen houses around Hobie. I used to hear my mom talk about it with some of the other ladies.”

I didn’t want to hear this. It was never meant to be a thing people knew about. If my father had found out, he would have accused me of stealing from Grandpa and Doc. “No, I didn’t—”

West turned to me with a look on his face that made it seem as if he’d never known me before.

“You did. You totally did. You and Grandpa spent so much time planting a kitchen garden, yet we never seemed to eat much of the food you grew. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped. Hell, we all would have helped.”

I craned my neck again in desperate hopes of spotting anyone who worked at the Pinecone and had access to alcohol. “Can we not—”

“What made you start?” This time it was Charlie who spoke. I glanced at him and saw genuine interest. But I still felt uncomfortable talking about it.

“Is it just me, or do we still not have our drinks?” I asked, raising my hand for attention from any server even if it appeared rude. “You know what? I’m going to go find her.”

I stepped out of the booth and went to look for our wayward server.