My Kind of Wonderful by Jill Shalvis Read Free Book Online Page B

heart felt lodged in his throat as things suddenly started to make some sense.
    Why she’d felt so frail to him.
    The list she’d referred to a couple of times. Jesus, he really hoped it wasn’t a bucket list…
    Beneath the table Gray kicked Hud—hard, dammit—and gave him a look that said,
Do something
.
    And if Hud had known what, he would have.
    “She’s right,” Penny said smoothly. “It’s most definitely warm in here. And by the way,” she said to Hud’s breakfast thief, “we insist on paying for supplies.” Her expression and tone were perfectly normal.
    How the hell did she do that? How could she not want to cup Bailey’s face and make her assure them that she was okay?
    “That’d be great,” Bailey said. “I do need scaffolding.Carrie thought maybe you had some here somewhere. Does anyone know if that’s true?”
    Penny turned to Gray, who nodded. “It’s in the storage container,” he said.
    Wasn’t anyone paying any attention?
Hud wondered wildly. Bailey was still fighting with her sweater, which she couldn’t get unzipped because it’d gotten caught. He actually reached out to help but she swiveled and sent him a don’t-even-think-about-it glance, so he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them off her. Message received. She was fine and completely capable and wanted to ignore what she’d clearly been through, and he was to pretend to see no vulnerability. Got it. “You can’t do this for free,” he said.
    She blinked those baby blues, leveling him, and he realized the problem. She thought he pitied her, which was actually the opposite of the truth. He admired her.
    But he still didn’t want a mural.
    “Why can’t I do this for free?” she asked.
    Yeah, genius, why not?
“Because…” Again he turned to Gray.
    But Gray was very busy licking some butter off Penny’s finger, the asshole.
    “Because,” Hud finally said, “it’s not only crazy, it’s not—” He broke off when his phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” he said, and pulled out his phone, staring stupidly down at a text from… Gray. Lifting his head, he sent his brother a look across the table.
    Gray jerked his chin to the phone.
    Hud blew a sigh and accessed the text.
    What the fuck, man? She’s got a LIST. You can’t call a dying woman crazy!
    Hud quickly thumbed a response.
    We don’t know anything about her.
    It was Gray’s turn to work his thumbs, and a moment later his response came through.
    Penny wants this, so don’t fuck it up or I won’t get sex for a month.
    They already had sex more than bunnies. And the problem wasn’t so much that Hud walked in on them doing it. It was that he
kept
walking in on them. Just last week he’d gone out to their building’s private hot tub and there they’d been, steaming up the already steamy air, gasping and clinging to each other.
    Hud had executed a one-eighty so fast a drill sergeant would’ve been impressed. But then two nights later he’d gone down to the kitchen for something to eat and found Penny sitting on the kitchen island with her hand down Gray’s pants and her teeth on his throat. So Hud didn’t give two shits about their sex life and he glared at Gray before responding with:
    Jack off for all I care, we’re not doing this.
    Kenna raised a brow. “You boys going to share with the class?”
    “
No
,” Hud said, and poured her and Penny more orange juice. They both smiled at him but weren’t distracted in the least, dammit.
    Penny snatched her husband’s phone.
    “I’m in the middle of a game,” Gray protested.
    “Or texting Hudson like a three-year-old.” She accessed the texts, read them, and rolled her eyes again. “Seriously?” she said to Hud.
    “Hey,” he said. “
Your husband
started it.”
    “I’m the youngest,” Kenna told Bailey. “But as you can see, I’m most definitely the smartest.”
    Hud pinched the bridge of his nose, counted to five, and then looked at Bailey. She’d finished his entire plate. Either the