Chapter 21

21

Hudson

Hudson’s Luck:

You always want what you can’t have.

I chased after him and pounded my fist against the door to his room, but he ignored me. He thought I’d rejected him because I was straight. Clearly I wasn’t straight, and I damned sure hadn’t rejected him. I’d just wanted to slow down enough to be clear about what was happening between us. That hooking up couldn’t lead to anything more than casual sex. We each had families we weren’t willing to leave. He lived in Ireland for god’s sake, and I lived in Texas.

And his sister had been right: Charlie was looking for his Forever Man. There was no way I could be that guy for him. Besides the problem of geography, there was also the issue of my sexuality. Didn’t Charlie deserve to be with someone who knew what the hell he was doing? Someone who had a clearer sense of himself than I did?

But he hadn’t even let me explain.

I made my way back to the little cabin for the night and succumbed to an angry session of stroking myself off to images of Charlie’s lean body and soft smile despite my better judgment.

It made seeing him awkward, which left me grateful for the weekend when I could avoid him like the plague. The only problem was my meddling family. Grandpa and Doc wanted to know why I didn’t join them for Saturday breakfast, and my sister Sassy called me out on being a grump when I finally turned up at the barn for a trail ride late in the morning. If I’d waited to show my face on my own family’s damned ranch until a certain Irishman’s vehicle had left the premises, it was nobody’s business but mine.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she asked from the other side of the pony she was saddling. Our niece Tisha was coming to ride with us, and if memory served, she’d expect her new pony to be the first one ready to mount when she arrived with Seth and Otto.

“Are you talking to me or Peanut?” I asked, even though I knew she wasn’t talking to the pony.

“Is it Darci? I heard something happened to her last night and she ended up at the hospital.”

I snapped my head up. “What? What happened? Is she okay?”

Sassy met my eyes and shrugged. “I figured you might know. Stevie told me he saw her there when he was working the coffee cart overnight.”

I handed her Patty Cake’s bridle and asked her to take over for me so I could call Darci and make sure she was all right. Even though we weren’t together anymore, I still cared about her a great deal.

When she picked up on the third ring, I almost didn’t recognize her voice. She sounded tiny and exhausted. “Hudson?”

“Hey, yeah, it’s me. I heard you were at the hospital and wanted to check you were okay.”

“Not really,” she said, sniffling. “Can you… I hate to ask you this Hudson, but can you come get me?”

My heart clenched. She sounded plain worn-out and not at all her usual perky self. “Yeah, of course. You still there at the hospital?”

“Yeah. I’m done, but I don’t want to go home right now.”

Since Darci worked at the regional hospital outside of Hobie, she had an apartment on the outskirts of town. She refused to live at her parents’ hobby farm in Hobie because she took great pride in supporting herself. If she didn’t want to go home to her apartment, I wondered why she didn’t just stay at her parents’ place.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told her. “Leaving the ranch now.”

I apologized to my sister for ditching the trail ride and told her to give my apologies to Tisha. By the time I pulled my truck into the hospital parking lot, I’d come up with any number of possibilities about why Darci had asked me to come get her instead of a friend or her family members. Maybe I was wrong and her parents were in the city. Maybe her closest friends at the hospital were on shift and couldn’t leave to run her home. I also couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing there in the first place. Had she been mugged? Or worse?

I quickened my pace as I made my way into the emergency room and saw her huddled in a corner with her face buried in her hands. Her blonde hair was halfway out of some kind of up-do, and she wore a pair of royal blue scrubs that seemed to want to swallow her whole.

“Hey,” I said quietly so as not to startle her. “I’m here.”

She lifted her face up, and it took all I had not to gasp at the black eyes and large bruise on one side of her chin.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, reaching out to cradle her chin so I could get a better look at it. I realized she didn’t have black eyes but a big mess of dark runny makeup from crying.

She burst into tears and reached up to hug me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck and burying the good side of her face in my collar. I held her and let her cry but noticed she smelled like the perfume she saved for special occasions. There was a white plastic bag on the seat next to hers, and I caught a glimpse of a black sequined number inside. Ah, that would explain why she was wearing strappy high-heels with her scrubs.

“C’mon, let’s get you out of here,” I said, pulling her off me as gently as I could. That was her workplace and I knew she wouldn’t want her co-workers to see her so out of sorts.

I led her out of there with an arm wrapped around her shoulder and her slim frame tucked into my side. Her sniffles tapered off as I sat her in the cab of the truck and made sure she was belted in. Over the hood of the truck I locked eyes with a male nurse everyone called Norm who was known for being the biggest gossip in the place. I saw the minute he realized who I was and what I was doing. So much for privacy. This part of small-town Texas wasn’t known for its discretion.

Once I pulled out of the lot, Darci turned to me. “Do you think I could stay with you at the ranch for a little while?”

I wondered what the hell had happened to make her not want to go home.

“You know you can, but are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

She sighed and looked out the opposite window. “I got mugged and some jerk stole my purse. Can I get some sleep before I tell you the rest? I’m running on fumes here, Hudson.”

I nodded and stayed quiet after that, letting her drift off in her head the way she clearly wanted to. When we got to the cabin, I helped her into bed and brought some toast and juice for her to have before going to sleep. Once she drifted off in the middle of my big bed, I closed the bedroom door and made my way to the small table in the kitchen to do some work on my laptop. It was a beautiful sunny day for January, and I longed to be outside, either riding horses with my siblings or prepping the kitchen garden for spring planting. I’d had to sacrifice those things to live in Dallas, and since moving back to Hobie for the pub project, I’d realized what a loss that had been.

A couple of hours later, there was a knock on my door. West and Nico stood on the front porch to ask if I wanted to come to Dallas with them for the night.

“We’re taking Charlie clubbing and then staying over at Saint’s place. He’s in town if you can believe it,” West said.

“Who’s watching Pippa?” I asked, stalling for time. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tag along and find an excuse to dance with Charlie. The idea of him on the prowl in one of the big clubs in the city without me set my teeth on edge. But I couldn’t leave Darci, and honestly, I had no business going to a dance club in the city just to sit and stew over someone who wasn’t mine.

“We just dropped her off with Doc and Grandpa for a sleepover. They’ve been begging to keep her, so it worked out. Saint’s stoked about seeing Charlie again,” Nico added with a grin. “He might have mentioned how freaking pretty the guy is. I can’t help but want to ink all that virgin skin.”

The Irishman was going to be the cause of my broken molars one day soon.

“You’re not inking him,” I ground out. Nico’s eyes widened in surprise, so I tried to soften my tone. “He doesn’t have any tattoos, so clearly that’s not his thing.”

It didn’t occur to me until later that I couldn’t possibly know how virgin his skin was unless I’d seen him in something more revealing than the long sleeves and long pants he wore to work every day. I hoped like hell neither Nico nor my brother had caught the slip.

“Anyway, I can’t go. Darci’s…” I realized I couldn’t tell them what had happened since I didn’t know myself. “Staying here,” I finished lamely.

“Oh,” West said, reaching for Nico’s hand. “We’ll leave you alone, then. Sorry.”

I wanted to correct their obvious assumption that she was there for some kind of romantic reunion, but I owed it to her to keep the real reason for her presence at my place private. If she wanted to lie low for a few days, it wouldn’t be fair to feed the rumor mill about her injuries.

“Have fun, and be safe on the road,” I called out to them. At the last minute I couldn’t help but add, “Take care of my coworker. Don’t let him out of your sight; we’ve got a busy week ahead at the pub.”

Was I petty? Maybe.

I heard a chuckle and turned to see Charlie wandering up behind West and Nico with an overnight bag in his hand.

“Don’t worry about me, Hudson. I’m still in my twenties, remember? I can handle a night out and still make it to work on Monday unlike you old fellas.”

“Hey,” I said stupidly.

“You coming with us?” Charlie asked. Was that insecurity I saw in his eyes before he plastered on the smile?

“I can’t. I…” I took a breath, trying to figure out how to say I wanted to come but had to help a friend instead.

Just then Darci came shuffling out of my bedroom half-asleep and took the turn into the bathroom, calling out to ask if I had any clean towels for her shower. None of the men could see her from where they were standing, but it didn’t matter, because there was no mistaking the unintentional insinuation. I felt my stomach drop out when I was sure I saw what looked like flash of pain in Charlie’s eyes.

“Oh,” Charlie said, dropping the smile. “Sorry. You’re busy. We’ll leave you alone then.”

Before he could turn to leave, I blurted, “Wait!”

He turned back to face me. This time the hurt and disappointment were clear as day. My heart squeezed tightly in my chest while West, Nico, and Charlie all waited for me to explain myself.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I just…” I took a deep breath and locked eyes with Charlie, trying desperately to send him an unspoken message of some kind. I wasn’t even sure what. “Have fun, okay? Be safe. Those places are breeding grounds for—”

“West has hand sanitizer and condoms, don’t worry,” Nico teased. “Let’s go.”

As the three of them made their way back toward where West’s SUV was parked, I heard West mutter, “I don’t carry hand sanitizer and you and I don’t use condoms.”

Nico laughed and threw an arm around his husband. “Shhh, you’ll worry your brother. Let him think we’ve got all the bases covered. I’m sure Charlie has condoms.”

I turned back inside before I could hear if Charlie answered. I didn’t want to think of him needing condoms at the club in Dallas. The very idea of it made me want to beat the shit out of something.

When Darci finished showering and made her way out to the main room of the cabin, I shook myself out of the mental pity party and got up to help her settle on the sofa under a patchwork quilt that lived in a basket by the TV.

“Want some tea or coffee?” I asked. “I can make your favorite cheesy pasta if you want.”

She looked up at me with a grateful smile, and I was reminded of the sweet woman I’d initially been attracted to the year before.

“That would be perfect, thanks. But just some ice water with it. I’m probably going to go back to sleep before long if I can.”

Once I got everything fixed and set on a tray, I brought it to her so she didn’t have to get up. I took my own bowl of pasta and a beer and made myself comfortable in the armchair next to the sofa.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

She glanced up at me through her bangs. She’d brushed her hair at some point and pulled it back into a loose ponytail, and her face was devoid of the traces of makeup that had been on it at the hospital.

“I was out on a date,” she said hesitantly, as if worried I’d be upset at the news.

I nodded as encouragingly as I could. “It’s okay. Go on. I heard you were seeing a pharma rep at work. I assume it was with him?”

“Yeah, his name is Greg. Anyway, we got into a big fight after being out late at a fundraiser. We ended up calling things off, which is how I wound up coming home in the middle of the night.”

I opened my mouth to interrupt her to ask if he’d hurt her, but she stopped me with a hand up.

“I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. He didn’t touch me.”

I let out a breath. Thank goodness. If he’d laid a hand on her, I was going to have to kill the man. “Go on. Tell me exactly what happened,” I said.