Chapter 4
4
CLAIRE
“How you feeling?” he asked me, dipping his face to catch my eye. I swallowed hard. Now that the lightheadedness was passing, it seemed to be replaced completely with mortification. If I could’ve melted down into the floor and disappeared, I would’ve.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry,” I said in a rush.
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said, and though I couldn’t see his lips, I had the sense they were tipped into a smile. I was aware of every part of his body that currently touched me—one hand still on the side of my face, nearly cupping my cheek, and two fingers pressed into the pulse point on my wrist. Hudson, though, seemed to have forgotten about all the spots we touched—that is until he realized in a single burst and pulled back his hands like they were burnt.
“I do have to apologize,” I protested. After all, look at how uncomfortable we both were thanks to me. “Thank you for helping me. I…get like that sometimes.”
“You have panic attacks?” he asked.
Only with hot guys in elevators , I wanted to joke, but instead I nodded dumbly, not wanting to elaborate on his basic explanation. “If everything you said about having your booster and getting tested was true, you can take off your mask if you want,” I said, eager for a subject change. “I test myself every Monday, and I’m fully vaccinated. Besides, it sounds like we’re going to be here for a while.”
“Are you sure?”
Had it been anyone else on Earth, I wouldn’t have suggested it. I would’ve put my mask back on and pretended my panic attack hadn’t happened, but I really wanted to see Hudson North without his mask on. Just for a few minutes, just this once. “I’m sure. Go ahead.”
Hudson slid back, toward the opposite wall, putting six feet between us. I didn’t bother to point out that we were in an enclosed box, so the six-foot rule probably wouldn’t help. He was just trying to be nice, and I didn’t want to talk about the realities of being trapped in a tin can, suspended on wires, God-only-knew-how-many feet in the air. I also didn’t want to say anything that might stop him from taking off his mask. What was wrong with me?
Hudson slipped the surgical mask off one ear and then the other, flexing his jaw as he set the mask in his lap. And Christ, what a jaw it was.
I had first noticed Hudson a couple months earlier. He had dark waves and dark eyes to match and a body I was positive looked magnificent without clothing on. He’d had a mask on every time I saw him—a fact which only made him more attractive in my opinion, but which left the lower half of his face a total mystery to me. You can never be sure what lies under a surgical mask until it’s removed, but even before I saw his whole face, I would’ve bet anything Hudson was top-to-bottom handsome as hell.
And still, I’d underestimated him.
He’d clearly been clean-shaven at some point in the recent past, but a five o’clock shadow darkened his strong jaw and chin. His nose was wide in a way that would’ve been unattractive on another man, but fit him perfectly, and his lips—his lips were decadent. They were wide and full and it was impossible not to imagine them on my skin. He grinned, revealing a set of perfectly straight teeth. His canines were just a touch too long, and I wondered what it would feel like if he nipped me.
These were not my normal thoughts . Maybe he was wrong and I wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
“Thanks. I have to wear it for work all day, and it’s nice to take it off.” Yep. It was nice alright. I could agree with that.
“What do you do?” I asked, in need of a distraction from imagining his lips and teeth all over my skin.
“I’m a paramedic,” he replied.
I felt a rush of gratitude, realizing he hadn’t lucked into helping me out of my panic attack. “The last few years must’ve been hard,” I said. He nodded, his wide lips pinching for a moment. “My sister is a doctor,” I added, then felt a blush creep up my neck. It wasn’t like I’d done anything on the front lines of the pandemic. More like I’d stayed home until my anxiety had begun to spin out control. “Anyway,” I continued awkwardly, “thanks for helping with my little panic attack back there. I’ll assume you’ve seen worse and I’ll try not to be too embarrassed.”
His smile was back, tilting his lips, and I felt a little proud I’d been able to put it there, although I suspected it was more commonplace than the frown that had replaced it briefly. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve seen worse,” he said. “It’s usually the men.”
“The men?” I asked, confused.
“Statistically, men are more likely to panic in an elevator stall. I’ve responded to a few cases with men in fullblown panic attacks. It wasn’t pretty.”
I’d never heard that before. I sat up straighter, my eyes widening with interest. “Do you know what percentage of men as compared to women?” I asked.
His grin deepened, but this time it looked like he might laugh at me. “Not offhand, no.”
Now the heat was climbing straight up my neck and onto my face. “Of course not,” I agreed. I’d look it up later. If we were ever rescued from this horrible elevator, that is.
“How ‘bout you? What do you do?” he asked.
“I’m an auditor,” I said, and though I liked my job and was proud of my job under regular circumstances, I felt oddly self-conscious telling this epically handsome man.
“So you make sure businesses are on the up and up?” he asked.
I assumed his polite interest was due to the fact we were trapped together. Under normal circumstances no one asked follow-up questions.
“I’m an internal auditor, so companies hire me—the firm I work at—” I corrected myself, “to evaluate risks and controls and then advise the management.”
I expected his eyes to glaze over, but he shrugged and said, “I can’t say I understand those words in this context,” he admitted, “but you seem passionate.”
My back stiffened, and I dipped my chin to look at him seriously. “I like seeing the quantitative improvements that come as a result of my work.” He pursed his lips tightly, and this time I was sure he was trying not to laugh at me. “Are you laughing at me?” I asked, feeling my cheeks flame as his grin broke through to the surface.
“No,” he said in a rush, but I knew he was, and I felt around my lap until I found my discarded mask, pulling it back on my face.
“I’m sure they’ll be here soon. We don’t have to talk,” I said coolly. If we didn’t talk, I wouldn’t say anything humiliating.
Hudson slid across the elevator floor gracefully, ending up sitting next to me. He sat close, and yet not one centimeter of his skin touched mine. I’d sat in closer proximity to people in movie theaters and on airplanes, but I’d never felt so acutely aware of another human’s body. “You’re right. I was laughing a little,” he admitted, nudging me gently with one elbow. I huffed, twisting myself to put a little more room between us. Every logical part of my brain was reminding me to keep my distance, even while my body demanded I shift back. Hell, my body wanted us even closer. Visions of climbing onto Hudson’s lap flooded my brain, as unwanted as the images of plummeting to my death had been minutes earlier.
“I’ve never heard anyone use the word quantitative in regular conversation before.” He nudged me once more. “I’m not making fun of you. It’s cute.”
“ It’s cute is condescending shit attractive men say to keep women in their place,” I snapped.
“You find me attractive,” he said—a statement, not a question.
If I’d needed evidence he was an asshole, those four words were proof enough. There was no conceivable way this man had ever looked in a mirror and questioned his looks, even for a second. I’d known he was handsome with his mask on, but I’d never anticipated the effect he’d have when the mask came off. Hudson North had movie-star good looks and a smile I wanted to squeeze into a syringe and mainline. It was unfair for any one man to have the power this man was packing in a single grin. He shot that smile in my direction and my body ached—it clenched, it longed— in a way I could only associate with the intimate moment right before a man plunges inside a woman, when the anticipation of giving yourself over and being filled by another human drowns out every other sound in your head.
I swallowed, pushing the thoughts from my head and demanding my body fall in line. I wasn’t the first woman to respond to that smile, I was sure, and I wouldn’t be the last, which was exactly why Hudson was off-limits. He knew he was hot as hell and didn’t need me to verify it. “Your ego needs that?” I asked dryly.
He looked up as if considering the question, then gave a small shrug that was irritatingly adorable. “Apparently it does,” he replied. “But for the record, I found your choice of words—quantitative—” he clarified, “endearing. There’s little point keeping you in your place when 'your place’ is beautiful, sophisticated, and far smarter than I am.”
Dammit. I didn’t want this compliment to make me feel warm all over, but it did. Stupid, handsome Hudson North.
“Did you grow up in the city?” he asked.
His question shocked me out of my thoughts. “What? No. I, um, my family lives upstate.”
“Me too. Cranberry Falls. You heard of it?”
“I know Cranberry Falls,” I said, knitting my hands together and settling them into my lap. “I grew up in Bridgeport.”
“We’re neighbors!” he declared triumphantly, and he wasn’t wrong. Cranberry Falls and Bridgeport were only a town away from each other. “You visit often?”
I sighed, wishing he’d brought up any other topic. Suddenly fighting illicit Hudson-thoughts seemed far preferable to the flood of wedding/week off/Grant Dupree stressors that were now filling my brain. “I have to go back in a couple weeks,” I grumbled.
“You don’t want to?” he asked, wide-eyed but grinning like the world’s sexiest Cheshire. I let myself stare at that grin, hoping it might take my mind off the wedding worries, but with thoughts of this wedding in my head, the smile had lost its potency, and instead of the sexual ache I’d felt moments earlier, now I only felt a little pang in my chest. Probably the beginnings of another anxiety attack. “It’s a long story,” I muttered.
He looked around the elevator, which glowed a dull yellow under the fading emergency light, and spread his arms in a wide shrug. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself with a sudden abundance of time.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. Something about this moment, trapped in a dimly-lit elevator, felt frozen in time, like I could tell Hudson all my secrets without consequence. I slipped my mask off, setting it back in my lap, and he nudged me with his elbow. “Glad you decided to stay,” he joked.
“So,” I began, inhaling deeply, the whole story poised at the tip of my tongue, ready to unload on this unsuspecting stranger, “I have three sisters.”
“Oof. I thought one sister was a lot.” He chuckled. “Where do you fall in the mix?”
“Emily is older, Tess and Nora are younger. Nora is only twenty-two, but she’s getting married in two weeks.” I sighed. Even to a stranger, it felt wrong to say how heavily her choice weighed on me. I was supposed to be supportive, not questioning Nora’s age and commitment.
“May I ask how old you are?” Hudson asked, pulling me from my thoughts once more.
He shifted in my periphery, and I glanced back to find he’d dropped his head back against the wall of the elevator. The new angle gave me a view of his Adam’s apple, and my eyes followed its tremble and bob as he swallowed. Could an Adam’s apple be sensual? “I’m twenty-seven. You?”
“Twenty-eight,” he replied, rolling his head to look at me. “But I interrupted your story. Please, continue.”
I licked my lips. I didn’t have to tell this story. I could make one single move—toss a leg over his lap, maybe—and lose myself in him. Plenty of women would be thrilled to be trapped indefinitely with a man who looked like Hudson, and here I was treating it like a therapy session. There were so many things I could say to him, but I said, “Anyway, Nora has been dating Ethan for a couple of years?—”
Therapy it was, then.
“I take it you don’t like Ethan?” he asked, probably because I still couldn’t say Ethan’s name without it sounding like a curse. I was working on it.
I bit my lip. “He’s just immature and, and…” I didn’t know the word for the gut feeling Ethan gave me, the same feeling I had every time I thought back on my relationship with Dan and considered all the red flags. “Flighty,” I finished lamely, shaking my head almost instantly. “That’s not the word I want.”
Hudson didn’t comment, and I proceeded to tell him the story of Ethan and Nora and finally, Grant Dupree.
“May I ask a question?” he said finally.
In retrospect, I’d probably been talking the better part of a half hour, so another voice was a welcome relief. “Please.”
“Why not just date Grant? Wouldn’t you get everyone off your back if you gave him a shot and it didn’t work out?”
I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t considered it, and God knew it was precisely Emily’s argument every time we talked, but I couldn’t make myself do it. “There are a million reasons,” I mumbled—the same response I gave my family when they asked the question.
“Hit me with one,” he said, and I looked at him, wide-eyed and surprised, trying to decide how much I was willing to share.
“This is going to sound stupid,” I said, and he sat up straighter, twisting to get a better look at me. He said nothing, but his expression made it clear he was ready to hear. “I have a gut feeling about Grant, too.” He didn’t reply, and I kept talking, needing to fill the embarrassing silence. “I don’t have any empirical evidence, I’m just sure Grant will turn out to be a bad guy—that he’d win me over just to break my heart.” I clamped my lips together, thinking I’d already said too much, and that Hudson would probably assume I was crazy. And perhaps he’d be right. In the time since I broke up with Dan, I’d wavered between thinking he’d taught me to be less naive, and thinking he’d broken me beyond repair. And maybe it was both.
Dropping Hudson’s eye contact, I picked at the hem of my dress where it sat spread over my knees. “No empirical evidence?” he asked.
“No, just my gut,” I replied, pulling on an errant string.
“Claire,” Hudson said. I looked up to find him smiling, looking on the verge of laughter once more.
“I know it’s stupid,” I said defensively.
He touched my knee, not far from the string my fingers still held, and my breath hitched. His fingers were rough and warm on my skin. “Why is that stupid?” he asked.
I spread my arms in an oversized shrug. “I can’t tell my little sister she can’t get married because of some vibe I get from her fiancé.”
He cocked his head. “Are we talking about your sister’s fiancé or his brother?” Hudson asked, and I knew it was a reasonable question, because I was jumping between the two in my head.
“Both—either. I don’t know. They’re the same, Hudson.” And they were. I didn’t trust either Dupree brother, but I also didn’t have any good reason why not.