Chapter Nineteen
Hudson
S he looks at me, wide eyed. And then smiles and tries to bluster her way out of it with healthy heapings of charm.
“What? Of course I do. Did you hit your head?” She bites her lip and takes hold of my arms and looks up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Scarlett, I had a long chat with the doorman and you don’t live here.”
“He’s new.”
I narrow my eyes, refusing to let the charm get to me as people give us strange looks as they go past into and out of the building and I really don’t give a flying fuck. This day got way too long the moment my brother dropped his little bombshell.
“To you, twenty-five years working at this building is classed as new?”
She smiles, but there’s a desperation there I don’t like. “In some cultures.”
“I don’t have time for this, Scarlett. Didn’t I tell you I don’t want lies?” I shake my head and pull free of her, regret bitter in my mouth and confusion in my veins. Why lie about something like this, that’s what I want to know, but it’s something she needs to share with me.
“I know. You did. But, after this morning…” She twists her hands in front of her and this isn’t the place for this.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Scarlett. Usual time.” I walk away from the entrance and cross the pavement to where my car waits and get in.
Once there, I lean back on the leather seat and close my eyes. My driver won’t go anywhere until I tell him to. And I need to think.
I want to get out and go back to Scarlett and put my hands on her. But if I do that, I know exactly where that will lead because she’s a fever in my blood. Last night and the very early hours of this morning weren’t enough.
But I want to grab hold and demand the truth.
That’s not going to work. I know that. If she wants to explain all this without trying to wiggle out of it, she needs to come to me.
It’s not that important in the grand scale of things, I suppose, but it does make me wonder… If she’s lied about this, what else has she lied about?
The door opens and the noise and warm air of New York invades the car, along with Scarlett.
I know it’s her. I can feel her there, a buzz in my blood, a heat on my skin. Her soft breathing is a call to me, too. And I gather my self-control, open my eyes, and look at her.
“I’m not lying, not really,” she says. “My family—”
“Scarlett.” She’s pretty, even in a panic, the color high on her cheeks, her hair still back but little wisps are like honeyed gold, dark and beautiful around her face. But I make myself ignore the physical attributes and push on. “You were there this morning. You know what’s riding on this.”
“I know.” Her hand is soft as she touches my arm and I like the feel of her, the connection. I shouldn’t, but I do.
I look at her hand and then at her and damn if I can’t smell those flowers again. But the look has the desired effect and she snatches her hand away.
“We’re running out of time,” I say, “especially now. We need to be on the same page and move things along.”
Scarlett nods and bites her lip. Then she leans forward. “We have, don’t you think?”
“Sex?” I laugh. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“I didn’t mean the sex.” The irritation is strong in her voice and it makes me want to smile, but I don’t, because down deep I’m pissed off with her for such a stupid lie.
“Then what did you mean?”
“The moving things along, getting to know each other, hanging out. You know…”
“No, I don’t. This is a transaction. I blurred lines I shouldn’t have to scratch an itch I should have ignored, no matter how good that was, but Scarlett, if we’re moving things along and you’re lying to me about something so simple, what else are you lying about?”
She goes pale. “People don’t always tell the truth about where they live. Especially when…” She swallows and looks at her hands. “Especially when they’re doing this. For money. Because they can’t afford to live here.”
I look at her and touch her now. I shouldn’t, I know, but that pull goes both ways and I’ve got myself under control enough to use it. I brush my knuckles slow and light along her cheek and then with my other hand draw her in closer, so our mouths almost touch. I can feel her like a beat in my blood, almost taste her again.
It’s a dangerous little game I’ve decided to play, but she’s not good at controlling her emotions, so I’m going to use that.
Her breath comes in little, short erratic bursts and her pupils dilate, and it takes real effort not to sample her mouth, just to make sure it’s as soft and sweet and ripe as it was this morning.
“Even with money problems,” I murmur, “your family has places all over Manhattan.”
“Hudson, please…”
“Please what? Kiss you? Let it go?”
That mouth is a siren’s song.
And her tongue touches the bottom lip, wetting it and the sight and what it sets off in my imagination makes me hard.
“Don’t humiliate me.”
“I’m not.” I slide my thumb over her bottom lip, along that tiny patch of wetness, wanting to dip inside. “I already know your situation, I’m just asking a question to understand. You put this place down as your address.”
“I…it’s a family place, but I don’t live there. I wanted you to think so.”
“I see.”
I did. Sort of. Her weirdness about me getting her a car to take her home now made sense. But why the hell would she hide where she lived from me unless that guy was part of it, the one she called Danny, the one who looked familiar for some reason…
“Hudson, look, I…I’m sorry. I am.”
I run my finger over her lips. And she sighs. The sound is soft and slides right through me as she leans further into my touch.
“We’re meant to be falling in love,” I say. The words are a little too easy, but I clarify. “On paper, and to the right people watching. So, it’s decision time for me.”
She frowns, pulling back a little, her hand now on my thigh, fingers suddenly tight. “What do you mean?”
“I need to decide whether to end this now or continue.” It’s hard to concentrate with her touching me, even if it’s not a sexual thing, because I’m still touching her and she does things to me, reaches in, and the line between me using this and me being tangled gets finer by the second.
“Hudson…” She takes a breath. “I—”
“This is very important to me and you know that.” The temperature in the air should be cooling fast with my words, but her proximity makes it rise. “And now it’s become even more important than I thought. If I go forward and you screw it up, I lose more than I ever thought. And if I back out now…”
“You lose.”
“Maybe. That would be on my terms.”
“No, Hudson,” she says, the fire in her voice stirring my blood. “You don’t give up. You need me to do this.”
I did. Like it or not, if I walked now, with half the time gone, finding a replacement would be beyond suspicious and— Shit. I’ve got myself in deep.
“We’re not on the same page, Scarlett. And we have to be if we’re going to move it along. Yet here you are, lying about something simple.”
“Where I live doesn’t matter. This isn’t for the government or the police.”
I need time that I don’t have to think this through. I need her to play my game. I need…I need Scarlett. “It matters to me. If I can’t trust you over that, or you can’t trust me enough to tell me where you actually live, then it won’t work. I demand total honesty, I told you that.”
She scoots closer to me on the big, wide leather car seat. We’re in our own private cocoon here, one of the benefits of my own bespoke town car. Scarlett searches my face. “No one is totally honest, that’s not how things work.”
It is in my world. Relationships are messy. Fake ones, it seems, included.
“It does here,” I say quietly. “It’s who I am, Scarlett. To do this properly, I need that from you, because they’ll sniff out something wrong in this fucking interview.”
“Hudson…”
“Scarlett, just tell me. What’s it going to be?”