by J. S. Scott
I waited and watched as Hudson tossed back half of his tumbler of whiskey before he spoke. “I have a confession to make, Ms. Hastings,” he said smoothly.
“Please, call me Laura,” I requested.
He nodded sharply. “And I’d like it if you’d call me Hudson.”
“So what’s your confession, Hudson?” I asked curiously.
His eyes stayed focused on my face as he answered, “I didn’t ask you here to talk about your company, even though I’m incredibly impressed by what you’ve done with it so far.”
“Why am I not completely surprised about that?” I said drily. “I thought it was a little strange that a businessman of your caliber was inquiring about my business. I am still a fledgling company.”
Then what in the hell does he want?
As I surveyed the tall, dark, and gorgeous man across from me, I couldn’t quite figure out why he unnerved me just a little. He’d been perfectly polite since the moment we’d sat down and ordered lunch and our drinks. But when our gazes met and held for a moment, I suddenly noticed that his eyes were gray, just like Mason’s.
It’s his eyes.
They were familiar, the shape and color so similar to Mason’s.
“Actually,” he started to explain, “I’m aware that Mason Lawson invested a significant amount of money into your company, so I’m curious as to how well you know each other.”
I hated the fact that I just couldn’t read Hudson’s face, nor could I interpret what he was thinking by looking into his eyes like I could with Mason. I had no clue where all of this was going. His face was stony, and it was impossible to find any kind of emotion in his expression.
“I can’t think of why that would be any of your business, Mr. Montgomery.” Okay, yes, I was defensive when anybody tried to get information about Mason. Especially billionaire businessmen who could very well have a nefarious motive.
“How well do you know each other?” he pressed.
I frowned. “Well enough that I’m not about to give you any information that isn’t common knowledge,” I said snippily as I started to stand up. “I think this meeting is over.”
It was obvious to me that he was using me to get info on Mason, and that definitely wasn’t going to happen.
“Wait,” he said urgently. “Don’t go. I’m not trying to get business dirt on Mason. I promise. I don’t operate that way.”
I hesitated. “You either stop playing games and tell me what you want, or I’m leaving.”
“Please sit,” he said politely.
“Talk first,” I demanded.
He grinned. “No wonder Mason was looking at you like he was crazy about you in those wedding pictures of Jett Lawson’s that I saw in the gossip columns. Stand down, Laura. I’m not competition to Lawson Technologies. Mason Lawson is my cousin.”
I was so surprised that I did sit back down. “What? How?”
“I didn’t intend to spill that information, but I didn’t want you to walk out the door before I could ask you a favor. Whatever your relationship is with Mason, I’m hoping you can try to convince him to return my calls. I’ve been trying to connect with him for over a year. We spoke once, but he told me that he had his own family, and he wasn’t interested in getting to know me or my brothers. But I’d really like to get to know him and his siblings.”
“So you’re related to him through his biological father,” I muttered, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
“You know that he’s adopted?” Hudson said with surprise in his voice. “He said none of his siblings knew.”
I nodded. “That’s true. They don’t. He doesn’t want to tell them.”
“So would I be wrong to assume that you and Mason are close?”
“We are,” I admitted.
“So can you give me any clue why Mason doesn’t want to be part of our family? Hell, we don’t have to act like we grew up together or anything, but it would be nice to be…friends. I just found out that he existed last year when I finally cleaned out some of my deceased father’s journals that had been stored away for years. He mentioned Mason, or I still wouldn’t have known I had a cousin out there that I’d never met. I called him soon after I found out, but he was really standoffish, which I thought was strange. It’s not like me or my siblings have done anything to cause him to be so aloof that he didn’t want to get to know us.”
I felt bad because Hudson sounded slightly injured. “I don’t know much, either,” I confessed. “He said his real father was an asshole. So I’m guessing that he just wants to stay away from the entire family.”
“He doesn’t want to know anything about the other side of his biological family?” Hudson questioned.
I shrugged. “Apparently not, and I think that’s his decision to make.”
Although I felt that it might be nice if Mason would give a relationship with his cousins a shot, knowing Mason, he probably felt it would be a betrayal to his brothers and sisters if he did.
Yeah, the logic was a bit twisted, but Mason was fiercely loyal to his family.
Hudson reached into his pocket and handed me his card. “It has my personal number on the back,” he said. “If Mason ever changes his mind, he can get ahold of me. I haven’t shared the information with my brothers or my sister, Riley. There’s no point if Mason isn’t willing to get together. It would just hurt their feelings if he wanted nothing to do with them.”
I took a deep breath, and chose my words carefully. “It isn’t personal, Hudson. And it has nothing to do with your family. But he doesn’t have a good impression of his bio dad.” Really, that was as much as I could reveal.
Hudson nodded. “With good reason. My uncle was an asshole, from what I understand. He died the year I was born. My father was pretty much cut from the same mold. But I’d like to think my generation all turned out okay.”
“Mason is a very good man,” I felt compelled to tell him. “And his siblings are amazing, too. Like I said, it’s nothing personal. He’s not blowing you off because he’s trying to be a jerk. I just don’t think he’s completely okay with being adopted. He didn’t find out until he was almost finished with college.”
“Ouch,” Hudson said sympathetically. “So he’s still trying to deal with that?”
“I think so,” I said noncommittally as I put his card in my purse. “Be patient. He might come around some day. I’m hoping he’ll tell his siblings eventually. It won’t matter to any of them. He’s always going to be their brother. It’s a difficult situation because he loved his adoptive father very much. He was the man who raised him, and loved him until the day he died in an accident, along with Mason’s mother.”
“I get it,” Hudson answered. “He’s had a lot of shit to deal with over the last decade or so. I guess I understand why he’s never returned my calls after our initial discussion. But I don’t have to like it.”
I wondered if Hudson knew the whole story about how Mason’s mother had gotten pregnant, but I didn’t want to pry into the details. That was something Mason and Hudson would need to talk about if Mason decided he wanted to know more about his bio family.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you much more information. I care about Mason too much to break his confidence,” I told Hudson regretfully.
Maybe I thought that Hudson and Mason would probably get along, and I was a true believer that you could never have enough family at your back since I had none myself. But the ultimate decision of whether or not Mason wanted to communicate with his cousins was completely his call.
Hudson’s grin returned, and I had to admit that it made him even more handsome than he already was. “I think we’d all like to be invited to the wedding,” he said teasingly.
“What wedding?” I frowned at him.
“Yours and Mason’s,” Hudson replied as his smile got broader. “Come on, Laura. No man is going to spill his guts to a woman unless he plans on marrying her. He’s obviously told you more than he’s told his siblings.”
<
br /> “Still trying to drag more personal information out of me?” I asked. “I hate to burst your bubble, but Mason and I have no plans of getting married. We’re just…seeing each other.”
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t explain why Mason had told me the truth when he hadn’t even told his siblings. It was way too personal.
“He trusts you,” Hudson observed. “And with good reason, I might add. Trying to get any significant information out of you is nearly impossible, much to my dismay.”
“I’d never betray Mason,” I said in a warning voice. “Ever.”
He nodded with what looked like approval as he answered, “I respect that. Then we can change the subject. Tell me about your business. I’m interested.”
I let out a sigh of relief that we could discuss something else, but I never got a word out of my mouth about Perfect Harmony.
I heard a stuttering sound that sounded like gunfire, and then I was immediately struck with a searing pain to my right side.
I watched in horror as Hudson reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a handgun. He rocketed out of his chair and tackled me to the floor, his body covering mine as the popping sound continued for what seemed like an eternity.
Somebody is shooting up the restaurant!
“Stay down,” Hudson growled. “Don’t fucking move a muscle.”
I wasn’t going anywhere with Hudson’s weight on top of me, but I had no plans of balking at his order in the first place.
My breathing was ragged and painful, and the whole room was spinning.
My body started to shake beneath his bulk, and I suddenly thought that I wished I had told Mason that I loved him.
By the sounds of the mass panic and screams all around me, and the continuous shots coming from a weapon, I was pretty sure I’d never have the chance to tell him in the future.
“Fuck!” I heard Hudson’s angry hiss. I knew he’d been hit. I’d heard an inflection of pain in his voice.
One moment, my mind was racing, trying to figure out if there was anything I could do to help Hudson.
And then, in a heartbeat, everything went dark.
Mason
“She’s only been gone for five days, and I feel like it’s been a year,” I complained to Carter as we sat in my office on Friday afternoon.
He shot me a knowing grin. “She’s back Sunday night, right?”
“Yeah, so don’t expect me in the office until late on Monday,” I warned him.
“Bro, you look so damn miserable that I think you should take Monday off.”
“I might,” I answered irritably.
Jesus! I’d played every damn mind game I could think of to take my thoughts away from Laura. Not one of them had worked.
“You’ll live,” Carter said with an amused chortle. “It just doesn’t feel like you’re going to right now.”
I glared at him. “Easy for you to say. You know that Brynn will be there when you get home.”
“She was gone a week ago,” he reminded me. “So I know how you feel. And I have to say I’m glad she’s done modeling.”
“You talk her into that?” I asked suspiciously.
“Oh, hell, no,” Carter replied. “In the end, I want Brynn to be happy. It was her decision. How about Laura?”
“Her decision, too. I wouldn’t want to see her do something she doesn’t want or isn’t ready to do.”
Carter looked down at his cell phone as he said, “It’s funny that their independence is one of the things we love about both of them, but it’s one of the hardest things for us to accept.”
“It isn’t that I can’t accept it,” I told Carter, my tone thoughtful. “I just don’t want to see her get hurt. If she could go anywhere she wanted to go without the danger of some crazy bastard causing her harm, I’d be fucking happy to suffer through that time without her if she was happy. But I have a lot of enemies, Carter. Too many. We didn’t make it to the top without sending some companies under, or killing off their business. Money is a big motivator when it comes to crazies. It isn’t like we haven’t had people make serious threats to us in the past.”
Carter nodded as he scrolled through his phone. “Yeah. I get it. And you get more of those than anyone because you do the heavy lifting on the business end.”
I watched him, knowing I didn’t have his full attention. Unlike some people, it wasn’t like Carter to have his face buried in his phone while he was having a discussion. “What are you doing?”
He looked up immediately. “Looking at a breaking news story about one of those crazies we were talking about,” he said carefully. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened. Some asshole went into a San Diego restaurant and started shooting with a modified assault rifle.”
“Where in San Diego?” I asked him, telling myself that it could have been anywhere.
“Close to downtown,” he said absently as he continued to look at news articles. “Two people died, and there’s a lot of wounded.”
“What else do you see? I mean, what are the chances that Laura was anywhere near there?”
San Diego was a large city, and chances were that Laura was somewhere else. I’d texted with her earlier in the morning, and she’d said she had a couple of business meetings.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to see if there were any messages that I hadn’t seen.
Nothing from her since morning.
I quickly sent her a text to let me know she was okay because I’d heard about the shooting.
“Are you texting Laura?” Carter asked.
“Yeah. I just want to make sure she was far away from that location.”
Carter looked up at me, his expression grim. “Jesus! I don’t want to tell you this…”
There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut as I saw his expression.
Carter wasn’t an alarmist, so the tension on his face was fucking terrifying.
“What?” I said in an edgy voice. “Just tell me.”
Carter stood and walked to my desk. “Laura was there. Apparently with Hudson Montgomery, although how the hell she knows him escapes me. Maybe they’re friends?”
Hudson Montgomery?
Why in the fuck would she be in a restaurant with him?
“The reporting has to be wrong. She doesn’t know him. She never mentioned seeing him while she was in San Diego.”
“It’s not wrong,” Carter said solemnly as he put his phone right in front of me. “That’s her picture with him that was taken by a reporter for the gossip columns right before the shooting started. They stalk all the Montgomery brothers. I guess they got a photo of the two of them together before the chaos started. The reporter survived, and they just broke the picture with the story. Hudson Montgomery was there with Laura. I don’t know why they were together, but I am sure it was totally innocent.”
I stared at the photo in front of me, enlarged to full screen by Carter.
It was Laura and Hudson Montgomery.
Their hands were touching, and they looked like they were in some kind of serious discussion. There was no smile on Laura’s face, which was highly unusual for a woman who was as upbeat as she was.
“What the fuck,” I growled, and then slammed my hand down on my desk so hard it was fucking painful.
“We need to find out what happened, Mason. Don’t jump to conclusions until we have the facts. We need to know if Laura is okay,” Carter said calmly as he took his phone back. “Let me make some calls.”
I stood up, trying to get my head together. “I’m heading there now,” I told him. “Let me know what you find out. I need the jet ready to fly.”
“Did your jet come back to home base after dropping Laura off?”
I nodded. “It’s here.”
“I’ll call the crew. Mason, try not to jump to any conclusions about Laura and Hudson. She’s not interested in him.”
“Fuck that!” I growled. “I just need to know that Laura is okay. That she’s alive and well. I can deal wi
th Montgomery later. Hell, I trust her. I just don’t trust him.”
Carter nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort here since Jett isn’t around, and I’ll call some people and find out anything I can. You know we aren’t going to get much from general news reports. I’ll call you once you’re in flight,” Carter said as he followed me out of the office door.
“I’m heading straight to the airport,” I told him as we stopped in front of the express elevator.
I raked a hand through my hair, trying not to think about Laura being anything other than unharmed, while Carter called my flight crew to make sure they’d be ready to take off.
“Did they say who died?” I asked Carter after he hung up. Part of me didn’t want to know, but I needed something to keep me from losing it.
We were stepping into the elevator as Carter kept flipping through stuff on his phone. “One male, one female. No other info.”
Holy! Fucking! Shit!
I ignored the way my heart was hammering, and the chest pain that was tearing through my sternum.
Carter gave me a supportive clap on the back as we stepped out of the elevator. “She’ll be okay, bro. We have to keep believing that until we find out otherwise,” Carter said hoarsely.
“I have no damn choice but to believe that. Any other outcome is unacceptable,” I rumbled as we walked through the lobby.
“Brynn is going to be worried sick. And she’s going to want to talk to Laura. So keep me posted,” Carter insisted.
“I will,” I replied absently, my mind already focused on figuring out what in the hell had happened in San Diego a few hours ago.
Carter and I parted when we got to our designated parking spaces.
I knew he was headed back to his house to talk to Brynn, and to dig up any information he could find.
I broke nearly every traffic law in existence on my way to the airport.
I was in the air and headed south within an hour to see if I was going to stay relatively sane, or if my entire world was going to come crashing down on my head.