Slow Heat

“You got a plan?”

“No,” Hud admitted.

“Groveling usually works. You hit your knees and you grovel like there’s no tomorrow. I’m talking until you have rug burns, man.”

“I’ve got time to figure it out. I’ve got until she finishes the mural to convince her that I’m worth a real shot.”

“How long is that?” Aidan asked.

“She’s close… At least today, hopefully one more weekend, I don’t know.”

They drove up to the resort. It was six thirty. The lot was still mostly empty except for staff vehicles, the groomers, ski patrol, cafeteria workers…

Bailey’s car was nowhere in sight.

Aidan caught that too. “I don’t see her, man—”

Hud slid out of the truck and went running to the mural site. Halfway there, Marcus tried to stop him to talk.

“I’m late,” Hud said.

Marcus looked surprised, as well he should. There were no lifts running, no staff still waiting on him for anything, and no meeting for another half hour. “But—”

“Sorry, I’ll get back to you,” Hud promised.

Four minutes later he stood at the base of the mural as the first snow fell. The complete mural, which meant she’d stayed up all night to finish it.

It was gorgeous. He and his siblings in larger-than-life form, taking on the world together.

Their world.

It took his breath away. But everything was gone. The scaffolding remained, nothing else. No brushes, no paint, no rags.

No Bailey.

Chapter 30

That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Marcus said as he came to a stop next to Hud. “She was packing up and fretting about taking down the scaffolding. I offered to do it for her so she wouldn’t have to.”

Hud scrubbed a hand down his face.

“Is that a problem?” Marcus asked.

“Yeah, but only because he’s a dipshit dumbass,” Aidan said, coming up behind them both.

Gray and Penny as well.

“You missed her?” Penny asked with some incrimination in her tone.

“Yeah,” Hud said. “I missed her. Between that all-night call and making sure my mom got back home and medicated, and dealing with the latest news on Jacob—”

Everyone gasped.

“He’s okay,” Hud said quickly. “I got the email just before you all showed up at the conference room last night and then everything went to hell and I forgot to tell you. He made it back, his entire unit did. All is okay.” He shoved his hands through his hair. All was okay, except for himself…

“Man, this is not what any of us want for you,” Gray said. “Get the hell out of here and go after her. We’ll hold the fort down.”

“I can’t let you take it all on,” he started.

Gray was already shaking his head. “Listen, we’re not being martyrs here. You’ll be back with her. Bailey loves it here and she belongs here every bit as much as you do.”

“And even if that’s not true,” Penny said, chiming in, “even if she doesn’t want to live here with all the crazy, so what?”

Gray looked at her. “So what?”

“Yeah,” Penny said. “So what?”

“So this is Hud’s home,” Gray said. “You don’t just leave your home.”

Penny shook her head at him. “You’re missing my point, babe.”

“You’re telling him it’s okay to leave.”

“It is,” Penny said, more gently this time. She looked at Hud. “She’s worth it. Love is worth it.” She turned back to her husband and looked at him until he sighed and nodded. Penny gave him a warm smile and met Hud’s gaze again. “Go wherever the love takes you,” she said.

“Yeah,” Aidan deadpanned. “Because Hud’s the go-where-love-takes-him, hippy-dippy one of the family.”

Penny glared at him and Aidan lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, so maybe he can learn…”

Hud ignored all of them. “I thought I had more time to get her to stay,” he muttered to himself.

“Just how much time did you need?” Gray asked. “You knew this day was coming.”

Yeah, he had. But he’d kept thinking that falling in love was the last thing he needed to be doing, that it was ridiculous, and that he didn’t have time for it.

But watching Bailey attempt to carve out a life for herself from nothing, continually picking herself up by the bootstraps and doing her best in order to give life everything she had, made him realize something. Something big.

He really had shut himself off.

And Aidan was right. He was a dipshit dumbass.

“Hud,” Penny said gently. “We’re all here. We’ll cover for as long as it takes. Go after her. We’ve got your back.” She paused. “Do you need me to say it again?”

“Probably should,” Aidan piped in. “I mean, you had to tell me about a million times and he’s even slower than me, so…”

Penny rolled her eyes at the love of her life’s other brother and then met Hud’s gaze again.

He shook his head. “I can’t just leave. I’ve got a staff debriefing in twenty minutes. We’ve got a massive storm moving in, two patrollers on leave, and—”

“You leave because love is all that matters and you love her, you sorry ass,” Penny said.

So much for her being the nice one.

“Haven’t you done enough for all of us?” she demanded. “The answer’s yes, by the way. So do not use us as an excuse to stay. Your mom wouldn’t want that, and Jacob, well he’d just beat the shit out of you for even thinking it.”

Hud nodded and whipped out his phone. He hit Bailey’s number.

He went straight to voice mail. “Bailey,” he said. “Call me.” He paused. “I’m coming to you, okay? So call me. Please.”

Bailey drove away from Cedar Ridge, the storm on her tail the entire way. Halfway, she thought she would have to stop and wait the weather out, but luck was on her side, leaving her just ahead of the road closures. It took her a nerve-wrecking four hours to get home though, and by the time she pulled up to her apartment complex, she was a shaky mess. She looked at her phone, which beeped a voice mail from Hud.

She’s not a keeper to me.

The words were still reverberating inside her head. When she’d first processed them, her heart had leapt into her throat, and there hadn’t been enough air for her to breathe ever since.

When she heard Hud’s voice saying, “Call me,” she sucked in a breath. Nope, she couldn’t do it. So she deleted the rest of the message without listening to it. She got that he was probably worried about her. But she didn’t want his worry.

She wanted what she couldn’t have. His love. She sent him a brief text that said: I got home safe. And then she turned off her phone.

On top of her nursing job, her mother was the building super and had the first apartment. Bailey let herself in and found her mom in the kitchen pulling frozen cookie dough out of the freezer. She took one look at her daughter and turned on the oven. “We’re going to need the cookies cooked, not just raw dough,” she guessed.