Page 50 of Gossip Game

He brushed a kiss along the top of her head. “Thank you.”

Thank you for opening my eyes. For being you. For giving yourself to me.

“Mmm,” she murmured against his shoulder. “I think you’re the first guy to ever thank me for sex.”

“Get used to it,” he growled while trying to ignore the ugly sensation churning deep in his gut at the thought of anyone else experiencing what he just had with Charlotte.

Wearing a smug smile, she rolled onto his chest, letting her long legs drop to either side of his hips. His breath hitched when she settled her core on the part of him arguing for an immediate repeat performance. Charlotte was noticeably less affected, her focus intent on tracing a finger along his shoulder.

“I owe you a thank you, too. Thank you for having my back that night in London. You could have walked away.” She looked up at him then, her blue eyes melancholy. “You probably should have walked away given all the bad karma that came about because you played along with me.”

As if.

There was no way he could deny Charlotte anything she asked of him, even back then. Besides, he’d never walk away from a woman in need of rescuing. Even knowing the bullshit Bucky Kincaid would heap on him, Noah would still make the same decision.

He brushed a piece of hair back from her face. “You’re worth it.”

She looked away. “You say that now. You didn’t think so once upon a time.”

Noah slammed his eyes shut with a groan. “The things you overheard. I didn’t mean them. My ego took a serious blow, and I acted like an ass.”

There was a ghost of a smile on her lips when he opened his eyes. She traced a circle on his chest. He rested his palm on her cheek.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said solemnly. It pained him to know she’d felt less than because of the idiotic things he had spoken out of spite.

“I guess we both did some stupid things. Something tells me we still have some issues, though. Mainly the big one about you thinking you’re not good enough for me.”

He jerked his eyes to the ceiling, swearing violently under his breath. “Meemaw has a big mouth.”

“She’s not afraid to speak her mind. To tell it like it is. I adore that about her.”

Noah almost laughed. He was right about the two women being alike. There should probably be an emergency alert broadcast every time those two got together.

“And for your information, I’m working hard not to be hoity-toity and snobbish anymore.”

The sight of her bottom lip quivering sent a stab of pain to his chest. He reversed their positions. She let out a little shriek that he silenced with his lips.

“It was never about you,” he said when she was pliant beneath him. “It’s more about my hang-ups. I’m a small-town boy who hasn’t seen much of the world. I don’t want you to wake up one day and decide I’m not enough.”

There. He’d said it out loud. She opened her mouth to protest, but he silenced her with another kiss.

“You’re going to tell me it doesn’t matter,” he murmured against her mouth. “And in my head, I know that. But it’s very much a guy thing. I want to be your everything.”

Her eyes were shining with unshed tears when she shoved at his chest. He pushed up to balance on his forearms.

“You stupid, stupid, man.” She sniffed. “I don’t want a jet-setting playboy. I want a man who will kiss me senseless in an elevator then lay beside me on a hotel bed and watch my favorite movie without getting all handsy. The perfect guy for me is the one who crouches down to meet a sick little boy in the eye. A man who allows his wily grandmother to con him into bringing a girl home for her birthday.” She cradled his chin with her fingers. “Don’t you see, Noah? This small town is the place where you get the most attractive part of you. Your integrity. I don’t want a guy who can order a martini in five different languages. I want a guy whose entire town admires him so much they’ll show up at a high school football game wearing his jersey.”

“You make it sound a lot more glamorous than it is.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “You don’t realize how lucky you are to have grown up in a place where you have connections and history. I was raised in Manhattan among a million other people who only made it a point to know me because of what I might be able to offer them—money.”

He leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. Anyone who’d stood in a grocery store checkout line for the past twenty years had—thanks to the tabloids—a front-row seat as Charlotte went from poor-little-rich-girl to princess. Sure, Noah’s life growing up hadn’t been easy, given what his family had to endure. But there was a lot of truth to what she said. Like it or not, this town had given him a safety net to live his life as he wanted.

“You’ll always be more than enough for me, Noah Hudson,” she whispered. “You were exactly what I needed and wanted from the moment we met.”

He swallowed roughly. She was wrong. He was so unworthy of this woman. Except he wasn’t going to deny himself any longer. She wanted him. She believed in him. He’d do whatever it took to make himself the man she thought him to be. Beginning right now, by making her shout his name in ecstasy again.

Noah’s dad nudged him with his shoulder. “You look a lot more relaxed than you did when you arrived yesterday.”

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