Slow Heat

Bailey laughed. “Not Aidan?”

“Yes but see, Aidan is my sin on a stick.”

The radio crackled and then Hud’s voice came on, calm and sure. “Got one of them. Need assistance. Over.”

Both Bailey and Lily gasped and leaned into the radio.

“Two minutes out,” came Aidan’s reply, also calm and sure. “Do we need to call the police? Over.”

“I am the police,” Hud responded. “This one’s taking himself on a joyride in the terrain park. He’s about three-quarters of the way down the run. I’ve got eyes on him from the bottom and I’m watching him hotdog it while holding lit sparklers in each hand, having a party of one. No visual on the other. Over.”

“I’ll go to the top,” Aidan said. “Maybe he’s still up there. Over.”

Two minutes later, Hud was back on the radio. “Got idiot number one,” he said, sounding slightly strained. “He says idiot number two crashed and needs assistance. Heads up, idiot number one’s impaired and was combative. Over.”

“Was?” came Aidan’s voice.

“He came around to my way of thinking. Over.”

Lily and Bailey stared at each other. Lily poured them each another shot.

“What’s this one for?” Bailey asked in a stage whisper, although who she thought was listening, she had no idea.

“If you’re going to love one of the Kincaids, you should know, sometimes alcohol is necessary.”

Bailey blinked. “Who said I was going to love one of the Kincaids?”

“It’s all over your face.” Lily knocked her cup to Bailey’s. “It’s okay, honey. They’re worth it. They’re worth every second of this crazy, topsy-turvy, wonderful ride.”

Bailey drank to that. Was she going to love him?

You already do, a very small voice whispered, way, way, way back in the depths of her brain. No, make that her heart. Her brain most definitely hadn’t caught up yet.

And how could it? Her heart and brain had never, not once, both been in love. She’d never really been a whole person.

Hud was most definitely a whole person. He had a very full life of his own making. But her life wasn’t full at all and never had been. She was starting to get that that was what her list had really been about. “You’re easy to talk to,” she told Lily.

“It’s the alcohol.”

“No, I mean it,” Bailey said. “This is nice for me. I don’t have a lot of close friends.” She never had, because she’d never been a part of any sort of normal life, nothing even close. And she’d seen what her mom and Aaron had gone through, preparing themselves for her death. She’d never been able to bring herself to get close to people just to cause them pain.

Lily reached out and squeezed her hand, seeming to understand without having to be told. “I’m always here. And since I’m relatively new to being back in Cedar Ridge, I’d be thrilled to consider you a good friend.”

Bailey might have embarrassed herself by getting choked up, but the radio squawked.

“Need backup,” came Aidan’s voice on the radio. “Handcuff your idiot to a rail and come to me one hundred yards to the west. Over.”

“Ten-four,” was all Hudson said.

Ten minutes later, Hudson’s voice came over the radio again. “In sight. Over.”

“Confirm visual,” Aidan said.

“I see a guy hanging off the rails by his homeboy boarder pants,” Hud said. “Which are hooked on his ankle, his credentials dangling in the breeze. He’s yelling something about losing his sparklers and suing us. Over.”

Lily and Bailey gaped at each other.

“That’s him.” Aidan’s cool, calm voice had a sliver of humor in it. “I just thought you’d want to see this. Kinda makes the past hour worth it.”

“Kinda does,” Hud agreed.

And then five minutes later came Hud’s voice: “Who the hell goes snowboarding commando?”

“This guy apparently,” Aidan said. “And you’re not the one standing beneath him. Every time he moves I get to meet Jim and the twins all over again.”

Inside the warm office both Lily and Bailey snorted and choked on their shocked laughter.

Thirty minutes later their two men walked into the offices.

“The menfolk returning home from the hunt to collect their women,” Lily whispered to Bailey and giggled. She covered her mouth with her hand.

Bailey grinned too. She was absolutely drunk. But then she got a good look at Hudson’s beautiful face and the black eye, and her grin faded.

Chapter 25

Hud walked into the offices where he’d left Bailey an hour before. Aidan was right on his tail, trying to get an ice pack on Hud’s eye. Which wasn’t going to happen.

“Hud, man, you need to ice it.”

“It’s fine.” Okay so it throbbed like a bitch and so did his knuckles from where he’d punched the idiot after getting sucker-punched himself, but hell if he’d admit that.

“It’s going to swell,” Aidan said.

“Back off.” All he wanted to do was to collect Bailey and get the hell out of work mode for half an hour. Hell, he’d take ten minutes. But since Mother Nature had granted him a stay of execution with a glorious storm, he was thinking he might actually have all night.

And he wanted every single minute of it.

Aidan was hovering again, still trying to get the ice pack on Hud’s face. Hud pushed him away. “If you don’t get the fuck away from me with that thing right now, I’m going to shove it so far up your ass you’ll be shitting blue gel for the rest of your natural life.”

“If you won’t let me look at it,” Aidan said tightly, all pissy as he always got when he didn’t get his way, “we’ll need to have medical look at it.”

“Man, we are medical.”

“But—”

“Jesus. I’m an EMT and I say I’m fine,” Hud snapped.

“I’m an EMT, too, jackass, and I overrule you.”

“How the hell do you figure that?” Hud demanded.

Aidan looked smug. “I’m older than you.”

“Oh, shut up.” Hud turned to face the room and found Lily and Bailey sitting on his desk with their legs folded beneath them Indian-style. The radio sat between them, as did a bottle of Jack—which if he wasn’t mistaken was nearly empty—and two Dixie cups.

He went brows up. “Ladies.”

Bailey looked at his face and gasped. She went to hop down off the desk but got tangled in her own legs and would’ve fallen on her face if he hadn’t caught her.

When she got her sea legs, she blinked up at him. “You’re hurt.”

“And you’re tipsy.” Hud turned to look at Lily, who was beaming dreamily at Aidan. “You were supposed to watch her, not get her drunk.”

“Hey,” Lily said, slurring her words a little bit. “She’s a grown-up. She didn’t need a babysitter.”

“Nope,” Bailey said, popping the P sound. She reached up and touched Hud’s eye.

He sucked up a wince and caught her hand in his because she was more likely to poke out his eyeball than gently touch his bruise.