He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze swept over her, from her eyes to her mouth, and locked in.
Stepping into him, she poked him in the chest. “Well?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Don’t push me on this, Bailey.”
She pushed him.
He gave her a long, hard look that didn’t scare her off. Nor did he budge.
She glanced up at him, hands on hips.
He shook his head and muttered “fuck it” and then hauled her up against him and covered her mouth with his.
The kiss was hot and wet and deep and amazing, and by the time he lifted his head from hers, she could hardly remember her point, much less her name.
Holy.
Cow.
A couple of wolf whistles had her jerking back from him. Some of Hud’s crew had arrived to help with the scaffolding.
Good timing, too, because God knew she wouldn’t have found the strength to stop what had probably been the hottest kiss of her life. “That’s not a problem,” she whispered, deciding to play it light. “That was fun.” She turned away before he could get the truth in her eyes, but he grabbed her. “Careful.”
Right. They were on the second tier of the scaffolding, fourteen feet up from the ground. Given the look in his eyes, she hadn’t been the only one feeling the heat. “I’m okay.”
That got a half smile out of him. “Glad someone is.”
So he was just as affected as she. Something to think about. Later. When her mind cleared of the sensual daze he’d put her in.
The guys went to work building the scaffolding and she went back to standing there as if nothing had happened. As if her world hadn’t just been completely rocked to the very foundation.
The entire structure was in place by eleven.
And then she was alone with her wall. She had the iPad and her rough draft, and with that she went to work dividing the wall into equal sections to begin sketching.
That night Bailey stayed in a one-room efficiency apartment on-site. She stayed up late filling in more details for the mural and got up early to get back to the wall. When she walked up to it and took in the sheer size of it, the doubts crept back in.
Hard.
As she stared at it and the reality of what she planned to do, her heart started pounding, and in spite of the thirty-two degrees and the windchill factor, she began to sweat.
It’s just math, she reminded herself. It was just a management of size, and as a graphic artist, she knew this. She was good at this.
But standing there with an impending anxiety attack barreling down on her, she panicked. What made her think she could pull this off? The mural, the list… hell, everything. What did she know about living life?
“Problem?”
At the sound of Hudson’s voice behind her, she jumped and shoved her iPad back into her cross-body saddlebag at her feet. “No.”
“Then why are you talking to yourself?”
“I always talk to myself,” she said.
“You always tell yourself you’re an idiot?”
She sighed and turned to face him. He was in his gear, and given the tenseness of his shoulders it appeared to have been an extremely long morning already. Or maybe it was her. “Remember how you didn’t want me to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“Well you win.”
“Tell me it’s a six-pack of beer and a pizza.”
Not able to find the funny, she shook her head. “I’m going to get white paint to cover the grid I made and put it back to the way it was and make your day.”
He stared at her for a long beat. “Did I leave and come back to an alternate universe?”
“Yes. And the Bailey in this universe is messed up.” With that, she scooped up her bag, threw the strap over her head, and stalked off. The effect was less dramatic than she’d have liked since she caught the bag on the scaffolding and was jerked around and brought up short. Which meant she had to untangle herself with an audience, and that of course took way too long.
Hud actually had to come help her, his big hands and dexterous fingers pushing hers aside and easily freeing her.
“I was trying to walk off in a snit,” she said.
“I have a sister, so I majored in snit,” he said. “Talk to me.”
She sighed. “I think I just need to go home and clear my head.”
“Understandable,” Hud said. “But tell me you’re coming back next weekend.”
She met his gaze and realized her mistake because his eyes drew her right in. “You didn’t even want this,” she said quietly.
“Things change,” he said back just as quietly. “Go home. Regroup. I’ll see you next weekend.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
He studied her for a long moment. “Because I know what it’s like to doubt yourself. But I also know what it’s like to want something bad. And you want this. The mural.”
And you… “Maybe things change,” she said.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “But my money is still on you.”
Chapter 9
Hud lived in a 1950s ski lodge about a half mile up the fire road from the parking lot. The resort had abandoned it in the ’80s for a new lodge, so the Kincaids had taken it over and now called it home.
The three-story log building was drafty in the winter, leaked in the spring, and couldn’t be efficiently cooled in the summer. But to Hud and his siblings, the place was the only true family home they’d ever known.
The Kincaid siblings had divided the lodge into four living quarters. Aidan and Lily, and also Hud, were on the bottom floor in two separate suites. Kenna had taken half the second floor, the other half being full of all the crap they’d accumulated over the years. The third story was for the marrieds Gray and Penny, and the rest of them tried real hard to ignore the occasional fighting match—and then the squeaking bedsprings that always followed said fighting match.
The weekend had ended and the crowds left Cedar Ridge en masse. Including Bailey, who hadn’t painted over her markings on the wall. Hud was going to take that as a sign that she would be back. He hoped so, which surprised him. There was something about her, something that made him smile, made him think, made him… yearn.
Monday night he and his siblings ate pizza in the open living room. Annihilated might have been a better word. It’d been a Ski for Schools day, meaning that Cedar Ridge cut the price of the ticket by fifty percent and then split the proceeds with the local schools. It was their way of giving back to the schools, and it brought a ton of traffic in. People loved to ski for half off. And the resort more than made up for the lost income in rentals and food. The full house actually gave them a huge boost for the day—and gave them extra income to go toward their debt.
It seemed that just about everyone within five hundred miles had turned out to ski that day.
“Met with the bank today,” Gray said quietly when they’d eaten everything but the cardboard boxes the pizzas had come in.
Penny sighed and slipped her arm around him, setting her head on his shoulder.
“We’ve got nine months before the balloon payment is due,” Gray said. “No extension.”
Kenna opened her mouth.
Gray pointed at her. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“But I have buckets of money locked away,” she said. “Because you made me lock it away. It’s worthless to me, dammit. I want you to use it. Why won’t you let me give it to you for this, to save us?”