Page 135 of Smooth Sailing

There’d been a change in him since Madison left.

There was something almost fatalistic about him.

Sure, I could see how we’d started was weird. We hadn’t had a date. We’d had one kiss. Police and the FBI were a part of our lives. And we were living together and sleeping together without the fun sex parts that came with those.

And onward from all of this, our road was pretty rocky.

Hugger would have to go back home.

I would have to stay here.

I could say the emotion I felt was hate at the knowledge that, eventually, he was going to leave.

Just that. Him leaving.

This was how used to having him around I’d become.

And how much I liked it.

It got worse thinking we’d have to try to get to know each other over phone calls and texts, and figuring out times for visits, and then there was the expense of that.

I didn’t know a thing about motorcycle clubs outside what I learned when watching that documentary about Chaos, but I suspected, if you were in one, they wanted you to be in it, not living with some chick in another state. And what I learned in that documentary pretty much confirmed that suspicion.

As for me, well, it wasn’t like jobs in art conservation and preservation were a dime a dozen. They were pretty damned thin on the ground.

I was set here. I’d lived here my whole life, outside the time I spent in London.

But I’d really liked the time in London. The different food, weather, people.

Oh, God, I was becoming one of those women who searched for reasons to uproot her life for a man.

And the man for whom I was searching for these reasons I hadn’t even known a full week.

“You also look good and have a nice outfit on,” Hugger’s voice came at me, so I looked up from not quite tying the bow to see him walk into the kitchen.

He had nice jeans on, a caramel-colored button-down that did great things for his tan skin, blond-brown hair and brown eyes. And his shoulder-length hair was back away from his face, not hanging in it, like usual. It didn’t look like there was any product in it. It appeared dry, but it stayed away from his face, and there were cute flips at the ends.

At the sight of Hugger’s version of cleaned up, I clamped my thighs together and prayed the padding of my bra was doing its job.

“Don’t meet a woman’s dad lookin’ like a bum,” he finished, coming to a stop beside me.

“You never look like a bum,” I retorted.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

I did, and it meant a lot he made an effort.

Hugger, I had absolutely not failed to note, was all about effort, bringing me coffee, pitching in with the dishes, making the bed (really well, I fell into a thirty second freeze of shock that morning when I saw how, while I’d been doing my hair, he’d made the bed exactly like I did).

I was stunned he’d never lived with a woman. He acted like a man who’d been trained.

Then again, it was clear his mother had meant the world to him, so maybe it was her who did the training.

If so, I thanked her, because by all evidence gathered thus far, she did a phenomenal job.

Cautiously, because he didn’t hide anything (not a thing), but still, I could tell he sometimes felt awkward with some of the things we’d talked about that day, I asked, “Have you met many parents?”

“Dated a lot in high school,” he stated freely. “Dads of high school girls tend to want to meet the boys their daughters are hanging out with. So yeah. Also met Mandy’s folks.”

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