Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(11)

What was he talking about?

She looked down and gasped.

Grabbing an oven mitt, which was barely helpful, she tried her best to hide the evidence that she liked wearing low-rise boyshort panties and sprinted back to her bedroom to look for the jeans she’d probably shucked off sometime during the night. It wasn’t an uncommon thing. But it was extremely uncommon for someone to actually notice that she did it, seeing as how she hadn’t had a guy greet her right out of bed since her husband.

And even he’d barely seen as much as Hudson had.

She dismissed the irony of that thought to her mental bank of things she’d write in her can’t-make-this-stuff-up memoir one day.

Finding a wayward pair of flannel shorts under her bed, she yanked them on and went back out to the kitchen, only to find Hudson had plopped himself onto the couch.

Good Lord. Why did he have to go and sprawl out like that? Lia thought, averting her eyes upward as if in silent prayer. Hudson’s current seating posture just made her imagine him pinned under her, spread eagle with her legs wrapped around his in a ‘Saturday Night’ wrestling move—so appropriately named. She exhaled a hot breath.

That’s when she realized he hadn’t had a pillow or anything to make his night comfortable. He’d stayed on her old couch while she’d been fifteen feet away. Bottomless.

Well, hell. That whole melting at the knees thing from the movies was apparently a real thing. Tamping down the girly swoon factor she felt for the first time ever, Lia sat down beside him and checked the growing bruise on his face.

Ouch.

Bad night for her to have worn an anklet. She refrained from telling him that his bruising had rather, um, pretty decorative qualities. There’s no way she’d be able to pull that off without cracking a very ill-timed smile.

“Hudson, I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He gave her a lopsided grin that looked more self-deprecating than anything else.

There it was. That lack of an ego she was certain she’d seen in him even. Another turn-on.

“It was my fault for surprising you in the dark, sweetheart. I knew better.”

That’s when she remembered what he’d said earlier about his coming over in self-defense. She must have heard him wrong, right? Feeling her cheeks flush bright red, she decided to ask straight out, curiosity never really being one of the things she could keep bottled up and all. “You mentioned you were trying to stop me from doing something earlier?” A passive question.

...That got one hell of a fired response from him if the darkening of his stormy gray eyes had anything to say about it.

“I wasn’t trying to stop you per se. More asking for mercy. At least until I was out of earshot.”

She blushed even brighter. “Hudson, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I don’t have…one of those.” Only because she’d never built up the nerve to buy one. Not even online. She could just imagine that plain brown box with the smiling arrow buzzing away by some fluke when Richard, the town’s sixty year-old mailman, brought it up to her doorstep.

Hudson shook his head in confusion over her statement and immediately winced. Blinking slowly in dull pain, he eventually peered open an eye again and studied her face.

“I’m not lying.”

“I can see that.” He frowned. “But I swear I heard the buzzing.”

“Oh!” She ran back to her bed and grabbed her watch from under the comforters. “It was the alarm on my watch. I have an online auction at six this morning and I’m bidding on behalf of a client for several pieces. I set about seven alarms in a row a minute apart since I’m horrible when it comes to the snooze button.”

“That’s some watch. Mine has one measly alarm, and it certainly doesn’t vibrate.”

“It’s one of my brother’s inventions. You remember Gabe, right? He’s the one that probably lo-jacked your phone last night. Gadgets are his thing.” She slipped the watch back on her wrist. “He even rigged it to read my mood via my wrist—sort of like how a lie detector works—and play music accordingly, through some sort of algorithm that’s linked up to playlists and Satellite radio. Basically he has the mind of a genius and a desire to live forever as a teenager. Or Peter Pan.”

“Does it use headphones or a speaker?” asked Hudson curiously.

“Both. He built speakers into the watch but it also has Bluetooth earphones as well. Why?”

He leaned over to try and see the face of the watch. “Because with the way you’re blushing right now, I’d pay good money to hear what music that little device will be playing in response.”

She gasped and pulled her wrist away. “NO. That’s…private.”

He attempted to chuckle but stopped with another smothered wince and slid sideways so he was laying down fully on the couch, ice pack wedged against his head via one rock-hard bicep, while his Thor-like forearm covered his eyes. “So this was all because of a vibrating watch. For the massive headache I have right now, I think I’m going to imagine it the good way,” he teased. “Some sexy music in the background, and you with a seven-speed vibrator calling out my name.”

She almost swallowed her tongue. His knowing vibrator speeds, she would need to revisit another day. The part about her calling out his name last night?