Authors: Gemma Brooks
She flashed her infectious smile once
again, and I couldn’t help but return it. “I’d love to. Alec has my number if
you ever want to get a hold of me.”
“Sounds great,” she said before waving us
off and shutting the door.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Alec when we got
back to the car. “I love her. I’m in love with her. Isn’t she the greatest
thing ever?”
“Yeah, you haven’t stopped smiling for
the past hour,” he said. “I knew you’d like her, but sheesh. Didn’t know you’d
be that smitten.”
“I’m a smitten kitten,” I joked. “But in
a total girl crush, friend kind of way.”
Alec winked at me. “Mm, hm.”
In the car on the way to his condo,
Alec’s phone buzzed.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s Mia,” he said. “She just texted me
and told me to give you her number. She wants to do coffee sometime.”
“Are you serious
?!
”
“Uh, yeah,” he said as he playfully
rolled his eyes and handed me his phone.
“That was fast,” I said. “She must be
smitten with me too.”
I pulled my phone out to start putting
her number in, but the last thing I expected was to see that I had a missed
call from Hudson.
And a voicemail.
I promptly added
Mia to my contact list then shoved the phone back into my purse.
The second I had a minute alone at Alec’s
place, I whipped my phone out and listened to the voicemail from Hudson. I
wanted to be by myself when I heard it because it was either going to be really
bad or really good.
“Brynn,” he said, his velvety smooth
voice making me melt on the spot. “Come home. Please.”
I heard him breathing, as if he wanted to
say something more, but he hung up. For once, he wasn’t using his convincing
words. He wasn’t telling me to calm down or that I was overreacting. Most
importantly, he wasn’t giving up on us. Despite everything he still had some
fight left in him.
He must be a glutton for punishment, I
thought. That or he must truly be crazy for me.
I dialed him back as quickly as my
fingers would let me, and he answered in the middle of the first ring, just
like before.
“Brynn,” he answered.
“Hi,” I replied. I didn’t know where to
begin.
“So…” he said.
He must have been waiting for me to make
the first move.
“I got your voicemail,” I said. I
probably sounded like a complete idiot. We’d never had such an awkward
conversation before.
“And?” he said.
“I’m just a little confused,” I said.
“About what?”
“You want me to come back and you chased
me down earlier when you saw me, but you changed the code on your gate,” I
said. “You locked me out.”
Hudson let out an indiscernible groan.
“Brynn.”
He was clearly frustrated with me.
“What?”
“I changed the code because I didn’t want
Ava getting in,” he said. “I have no idea how she got in the other night, but I
wanted to take all precautions, so I had the code changed to something else.
Your birthdate actually.”
Was this man for real?
“Oh,” I said. I was a total asshole.
“Yeah,” he said, echoing me. “Oh.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I asked.
“When did you give me a chance?” he
replied. Match point. “You get so worked up sometimes, Brynn. It’s like there’s
no getting through to you. Once you get an idea in your head, you’re convinced
that it’s a fact when most of the time it’s fiction.”
“What about you going to Ava’s?” I asked.
“I saw you there, Hudson, with my own eyes. I saw it.”
“Do you know why I went there?” he asked.
“I went there to put an end to all this insanity. I told her if she so much as
bothered you one more time or broke into my house or tried to contact me, she’d
be sorry.”
“Hudson,” I sighed. “You’re too nice. I’m
sorry, but that kind of a threat isn’t going to scare someone like her.”
“She knows I could end her career if I
wanted to,” he said. “I have so much dirt on her. I know things. Horrible
things. If she bothers you one more time, she knows her career is over in this
town.”
“Doesn’t she have dirt on you too?” I
asked, remembering her words that night by the pool. “She mentioned your deep,
dark secrets or something.”
Hudson laughed. “She’s so dramatic. That
was just her trying to get under your skin. I have no deep, dark secrets. I
could run for office, I’m so clean.”
“Oh,” I said. “How did she know about the
ring?”
“That’s a good question,” he said. “Still
trying to figure that out.”
As always, everything he said made
perfect sense. We were headed right back to where we came from.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t want to keep
going rounds with you to prove to you that I really love you, Brynn. I’m not
going to keep doing this. Either you love me or you don’t. Either you want to
be with me or you don’t.”
“I do love you,” I said. “I love you so
much it’s scary.”
“And that’s your problem,” Hudson said.
“This whole time you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Guess what?
It’s not going to drop. Stop running away when things get a little tough. It’s
you and me, Brynn. Us against the world.”
My eyes burned hot. I loved him so much,
and he was so right. But he didn’t deserve me. I’d put him through the ringer
and we’d only been together barely a few months. I’d never understand why he
fought so hard for us. All I knew was that he made me feel like the luckiest
girl in the world. I had to stop fighting it and just accept it or we’d never
work.
“I’m leaving in a couple hours for New
York,” he said. “I’ll be back on Sunday. Brynn, come home.”
Just like that, he’d reeled me in once
again.
***
Coming back home to Hudson’s was
bittersweet. Bitter because I never should have left him the way I did and
sweet because it was good to be home again. The only thing missing was
him
, but he’d be back in a few more days.
I typed the code into the box by the gate
and smiled at the fact that he’d made it my birthday. After parking the
Mercedes in the garage, I headed in the back door kitchen entrance. I could
hear Flor’s voice. She seemed to be deep in conversation, so it was no surprise
when she didn’t hear me come in.
“Yes, Ms. Fox,” I heard her say.
What? I mouthed to myself. Was she
talking to Ava
?!
“She’s moving back in today,” Flor said
in a low voice. “He will be home on Sunday. Yes, I can do that. I’ll let you
know, Ms. Fox.”
“Flor,” I said as I stepped closer to
her.
Flor was startled by my voice and dropped
the phone on the marble counter.
“Ms. Brynn,” she said as she plastered a
fake smile on her face. “Good to see you. Welcome back.”
I squared my shoulders back and crossed
my arms. So she was the mole all along. She was the one feeding Ava all her
information.
“How could you, Flor?” I asked. “How
could you betray Hudson like that?”
She planted her feet firmly in place as
she stared back at me with her piercing brown eyes.
“You’re simply not good enough for him,
Ms. Brynn,” she said.
“That’s not for you to decide,” I snapped
back. “What gives you the right to meddle in Hudson’s personal life?”
Flor’s bottom lip trembled and her rude
demeanor quickly changed into a sorry
one
as she knew
it was all over. She’d been caught.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Lo siento. Lo
siento.”
She started sobbing and buried her face
into the palms of her hands.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked. I wanted to
comfort her, but I was still angry. I had a lot of questions.
“Ms. Fox paid me a lot of money,” she said.
“Money I sent to my family in Mexico. My mother is sick. That money was paying
her hospital bills.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to
believe she had some sort of honorable intentions underneath all the shitty
things she’d done.
“You have to come clean to Hudson,” I
said.
“No,” she replied with tears in her eyes.
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” I asked.
“Either you tell him or I will.”
She mumbled something under her breath as
she sighed, realizing the extent of the damage she’d done.
“I think it’s time for you to leave now,
Flor,” I said. “We’ll see you next week. That’ll give you a few days for both
of us to calm down and for you to think about what you want to say to Hudson.”
Flor wouldn’t look at me as she walked
out the door.
***
“Brynn?” Hudson called out Sunday
afternoon as he walked through the door. “You home?”
Flying from around the corner, I
practically jumped into his arms. It had been nearly a week since I’d seen him
last and we were due for some incredibly hot makeup sex.
He let the bag on his shoulder drop to
the floor as he wrapped his strong arms around my waist and pulled me in. His
breath
sweet like cinnamon, he leaned down and placed his
soft lips onto mine.
“I’ve been waiting so long to do that,”
he said.
“I missed you,” I replied.
“Me too.”
I traced my fingers behind his ear and
ran my hand through his thick, dark hair. I loved the way he looked at me. It
was like nothing else mattered to him.
Nothing else in the
world.
He stepped away and led us down the hall
towards his bedroom, pulling me by the hand and yanking me closer to him the
second we stepped inside and shut the door. His expression was hungry, almost
needy, as he began removing his shirt. Reading down to unbuckle his pants next,
I began stripping down one article at a time, our eyes never leaving each
other’s.
I walked backwards until I reached the
edge of the bed, where I laid back and waited for him to pounce. His moves were
slow, deliberate, and calculating. He was taking his time, though he was
definitely holding back.
The heat of his body soon covered mine as
he buried his face in my neck, biting and kissing my soft skin as his fingers
traced down the length of my body until they stopped between my thighs.
With his hot mouth leaving kisses all
over me, his fingers slipped inside me. One finger first, then two. I relaxed
my hips and let him do all the work. He was devouring me one bite at a time, as
if I were the most delicious thing on earth.
As he worked his way south, I grew wetter
in anticipation of what was coming next. Within seconds, I could feel his hot
breath on my sex and his wet tongue tracing and swirling around my clit.
His hands pressed against my inner
thighs, spreading them as far as they could go. And soon, he rose up onto his
knees and gripped his thick cock, placing it at my entrance. I was ready. I
wanted him inside me. I wanted to feel close to him again.
With no warning, he pressed himself
inside me, slow and gentle, and we were connected once again.
“Oh, god,” I sighed. “I’ve missed this so
much.”
He said nothing as he stared deep into my
eyes and continued to make love to me. He buried his face in my neck once
again, nibbling my ear this time, as his hands gripped and traced every curve
of my body.
“I love you, Brynn,” he said. His hands
reached down and gripped my sides as he rolled me over on top of him.
Straddling his manhood, I rocked my hips
back and forth on him while his thumb pressed against me clit. My long,
chestnut hair spilled down my shoulders and covered my breasts as I rode him. I
was getting close, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold off.
I tossed my head back, letting my hair
fall behind my shoulders, and grabbed my breasts. I bucked a little faster and
faster yet, until I was right there at the brink.
A few soft moans escaped my mouth as my
body went crazy. I felt the pulsing of his cock inside me, and seconds later it
was all over.
Collapsing in his arms, I was spent.
Nonchalantly wiping the perspiration from my brow, I pulled the hair from my
eyes and nuzzled up under his arm next to him on the bed.
Basking in our post-coital bliss, he
suddenly sat up and reached over to pull something out of his drawer.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
He slipped something over my right ring
finger.
“My ring,” I said. It was the canary
diamond eternity band I’d tried to sell back to the jeweler. My cheeks burned
with embarrassment. I was mortified.
“How’d you get this?” I asked.
“They called me last week,” he said.
“They thought maybe it had been stolen.”
He laughed.
“If you needed money, all you had to do
was ask,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” I puffed. “I’d just
accused you of cheating on me. I wasn’t about to ask you for a single penny.”
“You know I’d have helped you anyway,” he
said. He placed a sweet kiss on my forehead.
“I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pay
for my mom’s treatment,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to keep paying for it.
That’s why I tried to sell the ring. I was going to pay you back.”
“Brynn,” he stopped me. “You don’t have
to explain. It’s fine. I would’ve done the same thing. But for the record, I
never would’ve kicked your mom out of treatment. You should know me better than
that.”
On the inside I was cringing with
embarrassment.
“Just so you know, I have a job now,” I
said. “I work for Alec as his assistant.”
“You don’t have to work,” Hudson laughed.
“I want to,” I said. “I want to have my
own money.
My own career.
I hate being dependent on
someone else.”
“Okay,” he said. “I can respect that. If
that’s what you want, I get it.”
“Thanks for being so understanding,” I
cooed as I cuddled up closer to him. I couldn’t get enough of him. He was truly
amazing.