calculating how fast he could get himself and Bailey in and out and then up to his place for a quickie without anyone noticing.
And that’s when he got the text from Max regarding Jacob.
Our boy’s finally confirmed safe and sound. Or at least as sound as he gets.
Hud let out a breath and felt a slight release in the knot in his chest as he entered the conference room. It was empty except for Aidan, who was pulling sodas out of the small refrigerator on the other side of the room.
Aidan straightened at the sight of Hud and gestured to the table. “I caught Gray and Penny on the table in the staff room last week. You don’t think they’ve been in here too, do ya?”
They both eyed the table and shuddered.
“They need to keep it to his office,” Aidan said. “Like normal couples.”
“Is that why your office door’s always locked now?” Hud asked.
Aidan smiled. “Hell yeah. And you’re one to talk. There’s been plenty of times when your door’s been locked over the past two months.”
Yeah, the best two months of his life, which were just about over.
Aidan, taking in his expression, got serious. “What? What did I just say?”
Penny came into the room. “Looks like you’ve just told him that Santa isn’t real.”
“I was ragging on him about Bailey,” Aidan said. “Which started, FYI, because of you and Gray.”
“Aw,” Penny said. “Using us as sterling examples of being the perfect Kincaid couple?”
“Bailey and I aren’t like that,” Hud said, finding his voice.
“Really?” Penny asked, tongue in cheek. “So when you’re holed up with her in your suite or your office, you’re what, just checking each other for ticks? Because the couple who fights off Lyme disease stays together? Is that it?”
“We’re not like that,” Hud repeated. “Not in the way you seem to think.”
“And which way is that?” Penny asked.
“Married.” Hud looked at Aidan. “Or nearly married.”
“Okay,” Penny said slowly. “So for the record, what would you say you and Bailey are like? And be careful here, Hud, because I’ve seen how she looks at you. She’s not just messing around. She’s a keeper for you.”
Hud took that in and told himself Penny was wrong. Because Bailey was just messing around. That was the whole point. “She’s not a keeper to me,” he said. “She’s not staying around after the mural is finished. There’s no reason for her to.”
Because he hadn’t given her one and he knew it. He opened his mouth to correct himself, and maybe to throw himself on Penny’s mercy and ask her how the hell he might turn this around when a sound had him looking to the doorway.
Gray and Kenna stood there holding pizza boxes. Just behind Kenna stood Lily and Hud’s mom.
And with them, holding Carrie’s hand, was Bailey.
Gray cleared his throat, gave Hud a you-are-such-an-idiot look, and strode in, setting the pizzas on the table.
Kenna did the same and looked at Gray. “If you and Penny have messed around on this table like, ever, I want to know right now.”
“The table is a messing-around-free zone,” Penny said, voice too bright.
Hud hadn’t moved. Neither had Bailey. But she moved then, taking Carrie to a chair and gently setting her up with a soda and a paper plate for her pizza.
“Thanks,” Carrie said and hugged Bailey tight. “I hope you’re not going to let my idiot son ruin your appetite.”
“No,” Bailey said, voice quiet but calm. “But I can’t stay. I have to… go.”
Hud closed his eyes because he truly was an idiot. When he opened them again, Gray had moved to Bailey and was hugging her. “You should know that the Kincaids have a brain/mouth disease,” he said to her. “It makes us say stupid shit we don’t mean.”
Bailey managed a small smile that made Hud feel even worse.
Aidan said nothing at all but kissed Bailey gently on the cheek.
Hud finally found his feet, which took him to the door, getting there just as Bailey did. He studied the emotion swirling in her eyes. “Leave,” he said.
Bailey took a step back but he caught her hand. “Not you.”
“Us,” Penny said and nudged Gray and Aidan to the door.
“But there’s pizza,” Gray complained.
“No,” Bailey said. “No one’s leaving except me.” She held up a hand when everyone protested in unison. “I’ve got some colors already mixed up. I need to use them before they dry.”
And then she was gone and everyone left in the room glared darts at Hud.
Or so he assumed since he stood there facing the door where Bailey had vanished. He could feel the weight of his family’s various emotions behind him—anger, disappointment, frustration—all stabbing him in the back. “Well?” he said. “Someone say something. I know you’re dying to.”
“Fine,” Gray said. “I’ll go first. Good going, Ace—you’re even more of a dickwad than Aidan here was when he met Lily.”
“Hey,” Aidan said. “I wasn’t a dickwad.” He turned to Lily. “Was I?”
She patted him on the arm.
Aidan blinked. “Is that a yes?”
“Well…” she said evasively.
Hud was still staring at the door. He shook his head. What just happened?
“In a nutshell?” Gray asked, making Hud realize he’d spoken out loud. “You told the woman you love that you don’t love her.”
“And then you missed your opportunity to take it back,” Kenna said. “The window for those things is really short. It’s like the three-second rule when you drop food. You have three seconds to pick it up and eat it or you have to throw it away, even if it’s a cookie.” She shook her head. “You threw it all away, Hud.”
He opened his mouth and then shut it and turned to Penny, the only logical one in the room.
She smiled at him sadly. “I’m afraid they’re right this time. This one time…”
Bailey went straight to the mural. Her security blanket. She’d just gotten to the base of the wall and climbed up to the second level of scaffolding when she felt someone right behind her. She turned and faced—perfect—Hud. Because what had just happened wasn’t humiliating enough.
“Bailey—”
“No,” she said, pointing at him, voice shaking with the depths of her fury. “Don’t. You don’t have to say anything, I get it.”
She was just glad she hadn’t spilled her guts in the past two weeks, revealed any more of her feelings for him. That was her saving grace, she told herself. He had no idea how much he’d hurt her and it was going to stay that way.
He studied her for a beat and she didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t the words that came out of his mouth.
“I told you I wouldn’t regret what we shared,” he said, his words insidiously quiet, his voice flat.
She hated that most of all. “That you did,” she agreed. Hell if she’d thank him for it. She had to fight to keep her expression just as nonexistent as his—not easy when her heart had been cracked in half. “How nice for you to be able to turn your feelings on and off so easily,” she managed coolly.
He didn’t answer, not that she’d expected him to. She concentrated on dragging air in and out of her lungs until she no longer had the urge to cry. Because no way would she allow him to see her weak. She was going to stand strong if it was the last thing she did. Turning away from him, she faced the mural.
But Hud didn’t go. She ignored him for as long as she could, which wasn’t very long. The weak winter sun behind them cast their shadows on the mural, his a lot taller and broader than hers. “You’re in my light,” she said.
“We need to talk.”
She glanced over her shoulder. He was in ski patrol gear, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. His expression was dialed to dark and brooding, and his shoulders were set in grim determination. “I think we’ve talked enough,” she said.
&n
bsp; His jaw tightened. “You misunderstood what I was saying to Penny.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” she said, concentrating on her painting. She was on the very last part, finishing up the caricature of Jacob. She’d decided to put him in an airplane, flying past the mountains painted behind him with his eyes on the horizon, a very small smile playing about his mouth. Then she spent some time filling in the heart and soul to the piece.
Her heart and soul.
“You said you couldn’t be pushed away,” he said quietly. “You said that to me. Was it a lie?”
She stilled and stared sightlessly at the mural in front of her, telling herself not to react to the… disappointment?… in his voice. “I need you to move a few feet to the left,” she managed.
“That would take me right off the scaffold.”
“Yes,” she said.
And then she went on painting, her heart in her throat. She heard his radio go off at his hip, then heard him respond that he was offline.
She sucked in a breath at that. But whoever was calling for him was insistent and the call was an emergency, which had her sucking in another breath.
Someone was hurt.
“Bay,” he said quietly. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to.”
This she didn’t answer. She told herself she was absolutely not listening for him to climb down and leave her alone. Not even a little bit. To ensure it, she pulled her earphones from her pocket, slid them into her ears, cranked the music on her phone, and tried to cancel out the real world.
But two minutes later she couldn’t stand it anymore and turned to face him.
He was gone.
She forced air into her lungs and nodded to herself, acknowledging that she’d done this, and kept painting. When it got dark, she didn’t stop. She didn’t go to bed.
She kept painting. She figured she had maybe six hours left on the mural and she was going to finish tonight if it killed her.
It nearly did. She stayed up all night and finished just before dawn, and it was worth it. As she stepped back to take it all in with the day’s first light, it caught her breath.
It’d come out better than she could have imagined.
Which didn’t ease the pain in her gut.
Or her heart.
Just as the first of the sun’s rays peeked over the mountain, she got into her car. She pulled the list from her pocket and crossed off the mural.
She eyed the rest of the list, trying to force her mind to settle on one item because she needed a direction now, more than ever, something to jump right into and take her mind off what had happened.
Skydiving?
No, she decided. She’d just discovered she was going to get to live, no sense in tempting the fates.
London maybe… Yes. That would do nicely. And she put her car into gear and headed off the mountain, not looking back.
Okay, she totally looked back, taking in the glorious colors of the new day in her rearview mirror.
Wishing…
But even as she let herself half hope, the words replayed in her mind. She’s not a keeper to me…
As the words washed over her again, she strengthened her resolve and hit the gas.
Chapter 29
Hud almost always knew what to do. On the mountain. On the job. With his mom. With any of his family, really—with the sole exception of Jacob—he knew what to do. And he did it.
A dad who’d walked when Hud had been so young he didn’t remember much of him at all? He’d handled it.
A mom who had a little problem sticking to reality? He’d handled it.
Having to move around because of poverty as a child due to said mother not being able to hold down a job for long? He’d handled it.
Finding out at twelve that he had siblings who wanted him in their lives? He’d handled it.
But then Jacob had left him. Walked away like their dad and never looked back, and Hud had finally come up against something he couldn’t handle.
So he’d faked it. He’d faked it pretty damn well too. He’d faked it for so long now that he’d given off the air of handling it just fine. And it had become true.
But losing Bailey? No, he couldn’t handle that. Wouldn’t. He’d make sure of it. He had no idea how, yet, but he’d figure it out and handle it like he had everything else.
If he ever got off work. The call that had taken him away from her last night had originated when a woman called the police because her boyfriend and his best friend hadn’t come back from skiing at Cedar Ridge for the day.
Dispatch had called Hud and put him on it. He’d done a quick sweep of the parking lot for any cars that didn’t belong to staff.
There were zero.
When he called the woman directly, she’d told them that she’d dropped the guys off that morning with the directive to call her when they’d finished skiing.
That call had never come.
The mountain had been swept at closing, as always. All of ski patrol skied the entire mountain at dusk yelling, “Closing,” checking every nook and cranny.
They never left anyone on the mountain.
But at the very end of the phone call the woman had admitted that the two men had been talking about going off-trail to ski, in an area clearly marked NOT CEDAR RIDGE PROPERTY.
Hud had been forced to call back all the staff who’d already left for the day, and they’d spent the long hours of the night combing the out-of-boundary areas along with search and rescue.
It was five in the morning before the woman called dispatch again to tell them she’d heard from the guys. Apparently they’d left the mountain at closing and had gone to the Slippery Slope and gotten drunk. They’d hitched a ride and had just showed up at home.
Unbelievable.
Penny had taken Carrie to the Kincaid lodge, where she’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Hud. He’d walked in at five thirty in the morning, bleary-eyed, knowing he had to take her home for her meds before anything else—including going to Bailey. He got his mom up and out to the parking lot, where he discovered Aidan’s truck blocking his.
Aidan waved them into his vehicle saying he was headed to McDonald’s for breakfast and it wasn’t out of the way. He didn’t say another word on the ride, but Carrie had woken all the way up and had plenty to say.
“It’s not too late to make things work with Bailey,” she started.
Hud had spent the entire night out in the cold on the mountain searching for dumbasses, so he’d had lots of time to replay what had happened in his head. He didn’t need to discuss. He’d screwed up, big time. And the worst part was, his life was so crazy he didn’t even have time to fix it. “Mom—”
“No, I know you. You’re stubborn. So determined to be a damn island. But you can do this, baby. You can stop pushing away people who care about you. You can learn to accept love. You accept mine, you accept your siblings’, why can’t you accept anyone else’s?”
Aidan snorted beneath his breath and turned Hud’s way for his response.
Hud didn’t have one. He put on his sunglasses and stared out the windshield. A storm was blowing in, a hell of one given the gunmetal-gray clouds pouring in over the mountain peaks like smoke coming out of a cauldron. He hadn’t had a spare second to check the