Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 154(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 154(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
Hudson was lucky. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to grow up in such a loving family. I know I was lucky to have Killian, but it would have been nice for us both to have that kind of support outside of each other. The wistfulness I felt must have shown in my eyes because Hudson’s filled with questions. Guessing what they were likely to be and not ready to answer them, I continued to guide the conversation. “And Rae?” I said, referring to the woman Dara had mentioned earlier in the day.
He leaned forward, bracing his crossed arms on the table, his expression casual. I searched for pain or anger in his eyes but saw nothing but calm. “My ex-fiancée.”
Whoa. Okay. Fiancée. Why did that cause a painful twist in my chest?
“We broke up nearly a year ago. We’d been together five years. She proposed to me.” He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t like it. I know that probably makes me a macho man dick in your eyes but I didn’t want to be proposed to. It was up to me to do the proposing.”
I shrugged, not bothered by this in the least, because frankly, as a romantic, I’d want to be proposed to. “You’re a traditionalist.”
“Yeah, when it comes to that shit I am. I said yes because I loved her and I didn’t want to hurt her. But over the years I managed to somehow put her off anytime she broached the subject of wedding planning. Finally everything came to a head. She pushed for me to set a date and I finally realized I loved her but the connection wasn’t there. We broke it off. I broke it off.”
Oh wow. I suddenly felt sorry for Rae.
“I felt like shit about it, for not knowing my own mind, but looking back I know there was a part of me deep down that knew she wasn’t the one. I just couldn’t admit that to myself, or her, for a really long time.”
I tilted my head in contemplation because I was surprised by the information he’d just imparted. “You believe in ‘the one’?”
Hudson swallowed, almost as if he was nervous. “I do now.”
The air around us grew still at what he’d just implied.
Holy …
“Hudson,” I whispered, not knowing what to say.
I found I loved what he was implying but it scared the absolute bejesus out of me, too.
“Never felt about her the way I feel about you and I’ve only just met you,” he continued, holding my gaze in his.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter suddenly appeared, giving me a chance to collect my thoughts.
Once he had our order, I turned back to my dinner date. “We should think about this before it goes any further.”
He shook his head. “We can do that later.”
Panic made the butterflies in my belly flutter up toward my heart, their wings kicking it into hyper speed. “No, we can’t because I live on the other side of a pretty big ocean and that’s not a small problem. We should discuss what that means before we go any further.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I want it so our hooks are so deep in each other it doesn’t matter what problems we face, we’ll do whatever we can to overcome them together.”
“This is insane. We just met!”
“Yeah, we did. And yeah, it’s crazy.” He leaned across the table again, his voice pitched low and sexy. “But tell me you don’t feel like you’ve known me forever. Tell me it’s not just about sex. You feel it, I know you do. This is more than just amazing sexual attraction. There’s a connection here, angel.”
“How can that be? How do you know?”
“I don’t know how I know. I just do. If people knew how this shit worked, someone would have written a formula for it by now so everybody got a piece of the good life.”
“Oh my God.” My fingers trembled as I reached up to push my hair off my face.
“We stumbled onto something special, Autumn. We would be fools to turn our backs on it when other folks aren’t so lucky.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” I continued to deny him.
“Then tell me. I told you about my family. Tell me about yours.”
The fact was, after hearing about his family, I wasn’t so sure about telling him about mine. Although part of me was looking for an excuse to break the inexplicable bond between us, the other part of me was afraid that if I told him about my upbringing he might decide we were too different.
And how messed-up was that?
He’d turned my emotions into a war unto themselves.
“Autumn?”
I glanced out of the window toward the town he’d grown up in. “I’m from Glasgow. I have a big brother, Killian. He’s my half-brother, really—we had different dads—but that’s just a technicality. He’s my brother.”