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“Go away, Ryder, I’ve got this,” Hudson says to his brother.
“I’m fine.” I take a breath and try to smile. “See?”
“Well, as much as I’d love to stay and see how this all plays out, I’ve got a meeting to get to.” Ryder looks seriously disappointed.
And Hudson looks like he wants to kill him. In this, I might be on Hudson’s side. Because right now, I feel a little like an attraction at a circus sideshow.
“She’ll be calling you, but I figured I’d give you the heads up.”
“Thanks,” Hudson says, not looking anywhere near as perturbed by this as I am. “I don’t have anything else from Jenson.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels. Guess we’ll find out when this goes through.” His brother puts his phone away. “And at least we know what’s riding on it.”
That doesn’t make me feel any better.
Ryder starts to head to the door and stops. “Twenty minutes, at The Park.”
That’s an old school, famous brasserie that old moneyed New York love. It’s gorgeous, it’s art-deco because that’s the era when it was built, and it’s expensive as hell.
I’m in my work clothes.
Inside me the panic and a new round of fury whip themselves into a frenzy.
The moment his brother leaves I turn on him.
Hudson raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you go get ready?”
I start ticking things off on my left hand. “One, I just found out. Two, you’re damn lucky I came back to see if you wanted me to email the Meyer group before I left since apparently, they’re important. Three, I live in Brooklyn. I can’t get home and back in twenty minutes. Four, The Park? I’m not dressed for The Park. That’s five. And it brings us back to three.” I start on the right hand. “Six, why do I have to meet your damn mother again, anyway? Seven, this isn’t in the contract. Eight—”
“Stop, I get it. This is a lot.” He says it in a way that tells me he doesn’t think so, that tells me he’s thinking I’m overreacting.
And that sets the anger boiling and spitting.
I glare at Hudson. “No. You don’t get it. That can be nine through to a million—”
“Hey.” He grabs my hands in his. They’re warm and they make me fuzzy about the edges and then I remember what we were doing and I try to pull them free but Hudson doesn’t release me. “Scarlett, stop being a baby.”
Oh. God. This man knows the exact buttons he shouldn’t push. I hate him. Violently.
“I’m not. You’re the mama’s boy.”
He laughs. “I’m a what?” His thumb moves slowly against my skin, sending shivers through that spitting, boiling, wild anger. I’m a complete firestorm and his touch is heaven.
And I’m not having it.
“You apparently can’t do anything without her. And why do I have to go alone?” I should pull free, move away. I should—
“She wants to see you, Scarlett.”
“So she asks and you jump?” I spit the words at him.
They bounce away from his sudden Teflon surface. “Technically that’s you and, come on, you know the deal.”
Those low, calming, velvety tones are not what I need, even as I want to sink down into them. And he’s cooling the anger because he won’t stop that sinuous slide of his thumb against my skin. I swallow. “It’s not to meet your mother.”
Hudson’s eyes narrow a little. “I didn’t plan this.”
His phone starts ringing at that moment and that only sparks my anger again. “You call her mother.”
