Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MAC
I rested my head on my daddy’s—er, my—desk and closed my eyes. I could do that because I was acting mayor, and there wasn’t anyone around to tell me I couldn’t.
I was acting mayor. Who thought this was a good idea?
Certainly not my daddy. Since I’d taken the seat at his desk on Monday, he’d done nothing but hover, stare over my shoulder, or elbow me out of the way when I wasn’t doing something “correctly.”
Basically, he was being his usual overbearing, pain-in-the-ass self while also not listening to his doctor’s orders to take time off. My momma was having none of it. She’d allowed it for all of two days, and then she’d swung the hammer hard, hiding Daddy’s car keys so he had no way to get to town hall and forbidding anyone from giving him a lift. God bless her, because the in-person pop-ups courtesy of Richard Haven had finally stopped.
Now all I had to contend with were the incessant phone calls. Every fifteen minutes, Daddy called about something or other—none of which were overly important. All of which could wait until the thirty-second of Never. It’d gotten so bad, I couldn’t hear a phone ringing without cringing.
As if that weren’t bad enough, I’d been continually knocked down at every meeting I’d tried to attend on the mayor’s behalf this week. On my daddy’s schedule had been meetings with the sheriff, the council members, and the school board.
I’d dutifully gone to each, complete with a tablet Will had procured me for making notes, but I could’ve left the thing in the office for all the good it’d done me. Hell, I could’ve just stayed in the office because the “meetings” were a giant waste of time.
This week alone, I’d been told more times than I could count that they didn’t feel comfortable discussing issues with me because I was too young, not to mention a lady. Initially, I’d laughed. Ha. Hilarious .
And then I’d realized they’d been serious. The first time it’d happened, I’d stared, gaping at Sheriff Halsey, my daddy’s best friend and a man who’d been in my life for almost three decades, unable to find my words.
I’d found a hell of a lot of them after I’d gotten home that evening and had washed the day off myself. I excelled in make-believe arguments in my shower, and if this week were any indication, I’d be a gold medalist in the shower-arguing Olympics when this was all said and done.
So, yeah, I was exhausted, trying to do a job I didn’t exactly know how to do, just out here floundering by myself. What I really needed was a nap. Maybe I could close my eyes for just a second… No one would?—
A knock sounded at my door before it opened, and I snapped my head up, a piece of paper sticking to my forehead. I reached up and yanked it off my face, hoping whoever had walked in hadn’t seen that.
Hudson leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, amusement dancing in his eyes.
So much for the futile hope that he didn’t see anything.
“What’re you doin’ here?” I asked.
His gaze ping-ponged all over my face, reading me, so I sat up a little straighter and hoped I didn’t look as defeated as I felt. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Do you?” I ignored the way my stomach flipped over all the possible propositions he could suggest…most of them dirty. I’d been ignoring a lot of dirty ideas lately. Too bad my dreams made up for it.
He nodded. “I do. I want you to come campin’ with me this weekend.”
Memories flashed through my mind of all the times we’d gone in the past. We’d spent a solid seventy percent of our childhood outdoors, between the lake cabin and my parents’ property, and we’d had so much damn fun fending for ourselves out there in the wilderness.
I was horrified to realize a knot had formed in my throat over thoughts of how things used to be between us. God, I hadn’t thought it’d be this hard to have him home. I hadn’t thought having these memories resurface would feel like I was being cracked right down the middle. Like I was excavating my soul.
And now I had not only my memories of our past, but our present, too. Thoughts of what we’d done in the woods the other day had been on a near-constant loop in my mind, keeping me company at the most inopportune times.
It was hard to force the council members to take me seriously when I spent the majority of our extremely unproductive meeting squirming in my seat.
“I can’t.” I blinked, realizing that croak had been me. I’d truly had no idea what I was going to say to his offer until the words came out of my mouth. But as soon as I said them, I knew it was what I needed to do for my self-preservation. “I, um, have to work. At the bar.”
Hudson cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing on me. “That so?”
“Mhmm,” I said, false chipperness in my voice. “So sorry about that, but I won’t be able to?—”
“Cut the shit, Kenna.”
“Excuse me?”
“I already know you’re off this weekend. A little birdie told me.”
A little birdie named Willow Grace Haven, my no-good, rotten sister who was now dead to me.
“Oh, well, I…” I racked my brain, trying to come up with a plausible solution. Something other than telling him, Sorry, but you scare the living daylights out of me, and I’m too much of a chicken to spend uninterrupted time with you. “I have to fill in for someone.”
“No, you don’t.” He stalked to my desk, braced his hands on the top, and leaned forward until our faces were only inches apart. “Admit it—you’re scared.”
I gaped at him, my mouth dropping open on an offended huff. “I am not.”
“No? Then come. If you’re not scared and you don’t have to work, why not?”
“Because I…have a lot of things to do around the house.”
He stared at me, his assessing gaze never straying from mine. Then, quietly, he said, “Don’t tell me I have to make a bet with you to get your ass out there.”
I snorted. “Are you new here? Who says you’d win said bet? For all you know, you might be spendin’ your weekend cleanin’ out my gutters.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Can I assume if you’ve already got your terms decided, you’re in?”
Of course, I was in. When was I ever out ? But instead of telling him that, I said, “Only if I can decide on the challenge.”
“Done,” he said without hesitation.
I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes, my brain working overtime to come up with something impossible for him to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go with him—it was that I did . And that scared the ever-loving hell out of me. Better to steer clear of him for a while, for my sanity’s sake.
Suddenly, inspiration struck, and I shot him a smug smile. “All right, hotshot, let’s see who can get Grumpy Gleaves to grin first.”
Gleaves Philander was approximately 270 years old and had been the town grump for as long as I could remember. Every day, he sat outside the barbershop, scowl firmly in place, as he scrutinized the passersby and mumbled under his breath about them.
Fortunately for me, Gleaves seemed to have a soft spot for me. It’d started when I’d given him an extra muffin I’d gotten from The Sweet Spot one morning during one of my ride alongs with Edna. Baked goods bought friendship with the grump, apparently. And I wasn’t above exploiting that friendship in the name of winning this bet to keep my heart safe.
“Fine,” he said. “But just so we’re clear, when I win, I get you for the weekend up on Havenbrook Ridge.”
“ If you win, I think you mean.”
“No, Kenna.” He leaned even closer to me until I felt the warm gust of his breath against my lips. “ When .”
Heaven help me, I wanted to lean forward and press my mouth to his. Wanted to slip my tongue inside just to remind myself that, yes, he did taste as good as he smelled. And shit , he smelled good. Fresh and crisp and manly.
Thank God this was going to be an easy win for me, because I had no idea what I’d do if I were forced into close proximity with Hudson for two days with nowhere to go and a single tent to sleep in.
Fifteen minutes later, I watched in stunned silence while Hudson and Grumpy Gleaves laughed and joked like they were old chums. In the couple years I’d been slipping him extra muffins, I’d barely caught a twitch of his lips, and now look at him. Who even knew the man had teeth?
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Hudson had played me. Except I’d been the one to suggest this bet, which meant there was no possible way he could’ve orchestrated this to his benefit.
Whether he did or not was irrelevant, because the fact of the matter was I’d lost the bet. And, like it or not, my weekend plans had just been filled. I just had to make sure my heart survived the trip.