Page 91 of That Time I Kissed My Beachfront Boss

If my mother pulls up right now, she’ll see Hudson Blaine on the porch hovering above my body, like he’s about to devour me whole.

“My mom,” I mumble.

“Whoa.” Hudson pulls away from me with a choke. “I told you to say ‘stop’,” he groans. “Not bring up your mother.”

“But she’ll be here any minute,” I say. “And now’s not the time to do or say anything we’ll regret.”

“Who says I have any regrets?”

I meet his gaze, my pulse still sprinting. Behind me, a car rolls up the cobblestone road in front of the inn. Under the crunch of the tires, I recognize the hum of my mother’s station wagon.

“There’s my ride,” I say, without looking over my shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come back later?”

“No.” He exhales, long and loud. “Enjoy your day off. You’ve earned it.” He cuts his gaze beyond me and hauls his face up into a smile. “Hey, Mrs. McCoy.” As he waves, I marvel at the kind of man that he is. One who seems to have no other agenda than to make the people around him happy.

One who thinks I’m amazing.

“Hello, Hudson,” my mom calls out.

I gather my bathrobe around me and lift my chin. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Can’t come soon enough.”

Back at Big Mama’s, I take a hot shower and change into my own dry clothes for the first time in more than twenty-four hours. And what a twenty-four hours it’s been. I can’t stop picturing Hudson’s face, his eyes pinned on mine. And my brain keeps replaying his words in that deep, low voice.

I’m permanently interested.

I just might be too.

But what does that mean for us going forward? How on earth could that even work? I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to focus on a single other question today—not with the memory of Hudson’s eyes and his voice and his arms around me on a continual loop in my heart—but then I come out of the bathroom and see I’ve got two missed calls from Darby.

My brain shifts into high alert, and an ache spreads through my stomach. That triplet connection is no joke. Spidey-senses multiplied by three.

So I call Darby back, hoping nothing’s wrong. Like she didn’t get dropped from her residency program or grow a second nose or find out Tess has a higher IQ score than she does. Maybe Darby’s just missing me. I suppose this could happen, even with her.

I’m very missable.

Darby answers almost immediately, which means she was probably standing by with her phone in hand, waiting. Not a good sign. “Hey, Liv,” she garbles out over a series of sobs. “Thanks for calling me back,” she snuffles. This is not like my sister at all. Darby has always been the rock of us triplets. Steady, strong, and upright. But it sounds like our Tower of Pisa is leaning.

Or maybe even toppling.

“Ahhh, Darbs. What’s wrong?”

“Angus and I are done,” she blubbers.

I fight a gasp, and stop myself from blurting out a reaction. Neither would be helpful to her right now. Darby doesn’t need to know how shocked I am, but she and Angus Scott have been attached at the hip since their second year of med school. I’d honestly be less surprised to hear she grew a second nose than that the two of them broke up.

I press a hand to my chest, gathering myself. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Instead of an answer, I just hear more sniffling and the loud honk of Darby blowing her nose. “No pressure, if you just want to cry,” I say. She still doesn’t respond. “I’m also willing to make an Angus voodoo doll to stick needles into. Unless it’s your fault. Is it your fault? Who do I need to stab here? You or him?”

“I wish I knew!” she wails. “First, I found out he was going to apply to the same specialty I was, which—okay, fair enough—a little competition is good for a future pediatrician. But before we could even really talk it out, he just … he disappeared!”

“What do you mean he disappeared?”

“I mean one day he was at the hospital doing rounds like always, and the next day he wasn’t. He’s never been late to a shift before. He’s even more anal about punctuality than I am. So I went straight to the chief resident, and she told me Angus dropped the program. Without any warning, either. She was pretty flustered herself. She couldn’t give me any details, of course. Stupid HR confidentiality.”

“Did you try calling him?”

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