Aidan grinned as Hud pulled out the pair of siren-red male bikini briefs from Big Dog. On the fly it read:
CHOKING HAZARD!
Hud stared down at them while Aidan laughed his fool ass off. The ongoing gag, of course. Now he had to wear these tomorrow or suffer the consequences. Way back, they’d started out with obnoxious ties. Hud missed those days, but Penny had vehemently objected after Gray had been forced to wear a tie with a large penis on it to a bank meeting.
So far Gray had managed to keep this new trend from her, but it was only a matter of time.
Aidan was still grinning, clearly quite proud of himself because he knew Hud wore boxers and hated briefs with the same intensity he reserved for snakes and spinach.
“Notice the timing,” Aidan pointed out helpfully. “You have to wear them tomorrow—Bailey will be up tomorrow,” he added, cackling like he was bent over his cauldron.
“Be afraid,” Hud said. “Because you’re next.”
Aidan didn’t look too worried.
Hud shoved the briefs back into the brown bag, flipped Aidan off, and finished his beer.
Bailey didn’t get out of Denver Friday night as planned. She’d had a late-afternoon doctor’s appointment—a big visit. Three months had passed since her first all clear—six months total since she’d last shown cancer the door. She desperately wanted to hear that the second three-month check confirmed the same but she knew the drill. It was a hurry-up-and-wait thing. It’d be Monday or Tuesday of next week before she got the results.
Still, as always, her oncologist had given her a list of options of what could happen and how they’d deal with it. Mostly, and most importantly, the doctor felt optimistic that Bailey was still in the clear.
Bailey liked that option best herself and decided to take a page from her grandma’s book.
Worrying about something is like wishing for it to happen. Just pretend it’s all good. Pretend enough and it becomes real.
So she set her alarm for four in the morning and at the asscrack of dawn on Saturday, she hit the road, arriving at Cedar Ridge with the first hint of the sun.
She parked and went to stand in front of her wall. Her breath crystalized in front of her face and she was glad the day was supposed to get up near fifty degrees. She didn’t want her paints to freeze.
She tilted her head back and took in the mural. The tree was finished, its roots stretching across the bottom of the wall, the branches and leaves looking alive as they took over the top. Along the way there were spots for the five Kincaid siblings to appear. Gray sat on a throne—his ski helmet his crown and his staff a ski pole. Penny sat in his lap with one arm around his neck and the other on a ski pole as well. Skis adorned all four of their feet.
When Bailey shifted slightly, so did the image—as planned. Depending on how you looked at them, they were either sitting looking at each other or sharing poles as they skied as one.
Aidan was in search and rescue gear, hanging off a branch of the tree like Tarzan. Lily was tucked under one arm, and the two of them were looking at each other and laughing.
Everything to the right of that was still only penciled in and even then only up to Hud. She’d drawn him in ski patrol gear complete with his backpack right in the middle of a crazy jump off the top of the tree—which she’d covered in snow so that it also looked like a mountain cliff. He was in great form with knees bent and skis high enough to see the bottoms. Which read: I’VE GOT YOUR BACK.
She still had to draw Jacob and Kenna, but she knew she’d done a good job and had never felt so excited about her work before.
“Bailey?”
At the voice she hadn’t expected to hear, she whirled around and yep, there was Aaron. He stood at the base of her scaffolding, although she hardly recognized him without his usual suit. He was in jeans and a down jacket, and she was so surprised to see him that she nearly slipped off the scaffolding as she climbed down.
His arms came out to steady her but she stepped back as soon as she could. This wasn’t one of those happy surprises. More like the opposite. Cedar Ridge was hers. This was her little secret, her happy spot.
Wrong as it might be, she didn’t want to share it. “Aaron, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you were up to.”
Still staring at him, she lifted a hand and pointed upward to the mural.
Instead of even looking at it, he gripped her arms and pulled her in and kissed her with a desperation she could taste. For a beat she allowed it, holding still, trying to feel it.
But she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything except his admittedly very nice mouth pressing against hers and his equally nice body doing the same. It was… nice.
No fireworks. No shortness of breath. No quivery belly, and the bones in her knees didn’t dissolve. Shaking her head, she pulled free.
“You didn’t feel anything,” he said, sounding unhappy. “Not even a little bit.”
She grimaced. “Aaron—”
“No, I get it. I didn’t either. Christ.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. I knew it. I knew things changed for you after I screwed up and hooked up with Donna, but I had to give it one last try.” He cupped her face, and with eyes soft gave her one last kiss. Light this time. Friendly. Warm. “I’ll always be here for you,” he said.
“I know.” She ran her hands up his arms and hugged him. “And thank you.”
“For?”
She smiled. “For hooking up with Donna.”
He smiled back. “One day you’re going to miss me.”
“I know.”
He winked at her and slipped his arm in hers. “Breakfast? Come on, I’ll buy while you wait for the temps to come up a little.”
Why not. “Okay,” she said, but then—drawn by a force she didn’t understand—Bailey turned her head. And found Hudson standing about twenty-five feet away. He wore his dark sunglasses, but she didn’t need to see his eyes to know he’d witnessed the kiss. Nope, that was in every tense line of his tall, leanly muscled bod.
Chapter 16
Hud’s morning had started at oh-dark-thirty with a ski patrol training session and then an incident report meeting, which had been interrupted just now by a call. A bunch of teenagers had gone up to Devil’s Face and dared each other to race down. Problem was, Devil’s Face was a double diamond and these teens were at best intermediate skiers. The math didn’t add up.
Not that this had stopped them.
One of the teens had apparently crashed and burned on the moguls, but no one had actually seen him go down. His buddies had all skied by, leaving him up there knocked out by his own snowboard.
The teen’s dad blamed one of the other dads, and then the moms had gotten into it, too, and also a grandma. The ensuing fight belonged on a trashy TV show and not on Hud’s mountain.
It was nine in the morning and he was already burned out for the day.
So things weren’t overly improved when he’d caught sight of some guy sucking on Bailey’s face.
It turned out that his day could get more shitty. Good to know.
“Hudson,” Bailey said when she stopped kissing the guy and the two of them walked his way. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He looked at the man at her side.
“Oh,” she said, putting a hand on the guy’s arm—her free hand because the other arm was already linked in his. “This is Aaron,” she said. “Aaron, this is Hudson Kincaid, one of the brothers who owns this place.”
So now Aaron knew who Hud was. But Hud still had no idea who Aaron was.
The guy offered a hand, and Hud spent a nanosecond trying to decide between shaking it and shoving his fist in the guy’s face.
Except that made no sense. None at all. Bailey wasn’t his, and even if she hadn’t made it crystal clear the week before that she wasn’t in the market for a relationship with him, he didn’t want one.
So he had no idea what his problem was.
None. Zero. Except… he did. He kn
ew exactly what his problem was and his name was Aaron.
“I just needed to see that she’s in good hands when she’s up here,” Aaron said. “She’s important to me.”
Yeah, Hud was getting that loud and clear.
“As her fiancé,” Aaron went on, “I worry.”
Hud stopped breathing. His lungs just refused to accept air.
“Ex,” he heard Bailey say firmly. “Ex -fiancé.” She smacked Aaron in the chest. “You always forget that part.”
“Whoops,” Aaron said. “Sorry.” Except he didn’t look all that sorry.
And he didn’t look like an ex either.
Hud pulled his radio off his belt and stared at it wondering why it went off twenty-four-seven except for when he needed it to. “I’ve got to go,” he said, still staring at the radio.
“But it didn’t make any noise for once,” Bailey said.
“Got a meeting,” Hud managed, and spun on a heel and took off toward the offices.
Marcus, their equipment manager, intercepted him halfway. “Hey, there’s a problem with the quad chair on the backside. My guys’ll have it under control in a few minutes but I just wanted you to know—”
“I’ll check it out,” Hud said.
“I got it, I didn’t mean for you to—”
“I’ve got it,” Hud repeated.
Ten minutes later he was at the quad chair, which indeed had jammed. But Marcus had been right, because maintenance had the problem solved before he even got there. Which left him at the top of the mountain and, for the first time in too long, with nowhere else to be.
Which meant his mind was free to go ninety miles an hour and it did so, flashing images across the back of his eyelids at warp speed.
Bailey sitting at the top tier of the scaffolding with brush in hand, holding a look of fierce concentration on her face as she painted the Kincaid family tree in super-size.
Bailey sitting with his mom, listening to her babble on with sweet patience and not an ounce of condescension.
Bailey laying on his bed, flushed, eyes hot, body soft as she showed him her port scar, a visceral reminder of her fucking bravery.
Bailey meeting his gaze head-on and saying she didn’t want a relationship…
Bailey kissing her ex-fiancé…
His radio went off. Thank God. An emergency, which would take his head out of his own ass and put him back in the game.
A kid and an adult had reportedly collided on the bunny hill down at the bottom, near the parking lot. From where he stood it was a seven-minute hard ski. There were at least five team members who were closer than Hud, and who could and would get there first.
But he still headed that way. Three minutes into the trip, he was able to take in the lodge as it came into view and he nearly wobbled off his skis. He’d been skiing since he could walk and it’d been a damn long time since anything had shaken him into a near tumble, but this did it.
Apparently just as momentarily stunned by the sight, Aidan pulled up next to him and stopped short, sending snow flying into the air with his edges.
“Wow,” Aidan said.
Yeah. It was a big holy shit moment for Hud too. Not only was Bailey an artist—a hell of one, too—but she’d captured the Kincaid spirit. Her mural was the embodiment of what the mountain meant to them, depicting the love of the entire place in a simple tapestry-like painting of the family tree.
“Really amazing,” Aidan said softly. Reverently.
Speechless, Hud could only nod.
What had once been just a wall that no one had even looked at was now a nearly half-painted mural. It was a gorgeous, epic rendering with vibrant colors that popped. Gray and Penny were… amazingly 3-D. As was the half of Aidan she’d filled in.
This morning he’d been close enough to see some of what she’d planned for him. The bare outline of Hud depicted him in the middle of the sort of ski jump only a superhero could have made, but it had made him smile.
She was having fun with it and fun with them, portraying the family in a way that included their patrons in the joke.
“So what happens when she’s done?” Aidan asked.
The question didn’t help the burning in Hud’s chest. The mural was both a tangible thing and a ticking clock, and the time was already winding down. “She leaves.”
Aidan tore his gaze off the mural and met Hud’s eyes, his own lit with surprising understanding. “Have you told her you don’t want her to?”
Hud looked at him.
“Don’t even try to deny it, man.”
Hud sighed. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” Aidan asked. “Or won’t?”
“No, I mean can’t.” Hud shook his head. “She just came through what should’ve been a death sentence. Do you get that? She’s lived the past decade of her life thinking that tomorrow wasn’t going to come at all. Ever. Those days and weeks and months and years were spent inside doctors’ offices and hospitals, in cold, white rooms with no sense of joy or hope or anything real.” He stared at the mural. “And then when it was miraculously over, she made a list. A list of things she’d never been allowed to do, things she could only dream about—like painting a mural—and she’s working her way down that list.”
“Cool,” Aidan said. “But what does that have to do with not telling her how you feel?”
“How are you not getting this?” Hud asked. “The mural’s the first thing she’s done from that list. What in the hell kind of guy would I be if I selfishly tell her my feelings and then maybe she ends up staying with me instead of going off and sailing the Greek Islands or learning how to ballroom dance in Rome?”
“The kind of guy who fell in love,” Aidan said. “The kind of guy who could do the list with her because he’s been just as locked up for the past decade as she, making sure everyone in his life gets taken care of except himself.”
Hud stared at him. “Bullshit.”
“No,” Aidan said, taking a step into him now and getting right in his face. Angry. “What’s bullshit is that you think it’s okay for her to go get the life she deserves but you don’t think it for yourself.”
“My life doesn’t lend itself to relationships.”
“Look at that—even more bullshit,” Aidan said, not impressed. “I mean, yeah, you’ve got a lot going on. And more responsibilities than you know what to do with. But your family’s standing right here at your six, man, willing and able to take more on to ease some of it. All you have to do is let go.”
Hud thought of his mom. How was he supposed to pass off the burden of her care? She was his mom. And then there was Jacob. Wherever the hell he was, Hud was going to find him, but that was on him. Just as he was Carrie’s son, he was Jacob’s twin. And as for Gray and Aidan, he already was more indebted to them than he could ever pay back for taking in his little family of three when they’d had nothing. Plus, they all had their own shit to deal with. Shit Hud could and would help with because they’d done so much for him. But no way in hell would he add to their burdens. “It’s not that easy to let go,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Aidan insisted. “The people in your life, the very people that you’re counting now in your head as responsibilities, they don’t have to be a burden to you. We don’t want to be a burden to you.”
“You’re not,” Hud said.
“Yeah? Then prove it. You’re standing right here telling me Bailey can’t love you because she has too much to do, but we both know you’re the one who feels that way. You won’t let yourself love.”
“Will you stop with the love shit?” Hud asked. “I’ve got more important stuff than to worry about that right now.”
“Jacob, right?” Aidan asked. “But Jacob’s gone, man. He’ll come back when he’s good and ready, and not a second before. That’s not on you, Hud. You don’t have to put your life on hold just because he’s gone.”
Hud closed his eyes. “Yes, I do.”
“Why?” Aidan demanded.
“Because it’s
my fault he’s gone.” Hud swallowed hard and shook his head at the memory of his harsh words. He was still able to