He considered her for a long moment and then rubbed his jaw, looking away. “Annika, I’m not trying to be confusing.”

She waited for more, her heart thumping. So they were back to this again? She should tell him it didn’t matter, that she shouldn’t have brought it up. She should leave. Being in a room alone with Hudson Craft, even when she hadn’t been drinking, was a heady experience—one in which she didn’t trust herself. When he was silent, she said, “Right. That’s just your natural state, then. Confusing as hell.”

His eyes burned into hers. “Maybe I can make things a bit clearer.” He stepped forward, so they were just a breath apart. Placing a big hand on her arm, he said, his voice a rumble, “I meant what I said at the fountain. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you quoted Florence Nightingale to me in a dim bar in Vegas: ‘Happiness is the gradual realization of a worthy ideal or goal.’”

Annika’s heart thudded in her chest. Walk away, she instructed herself firmly. Nothing good will come of this. Even though she wanted to hear what exactly he’d been thinking about her, and even though she was dying with curiosity about how he was going to make things “clearer,” she was definitely going to walk away. She was going to turn right around and go find June—

Hudson closed the gap between them, the hard lines of his body molding to her soft ones. She tipped her head back and stared into his green, green eyes, her breathing coming in shorter, quicker pants. There was a smile on his face—just one corner of his lips tipped up. She placed her hands against the firm muscles of his chest, intending to push him away, to wipe that smirk right off his face, to tell him she was no Hudson Craft groupie.

But he took her touch as an invitation. The smirk disappeared as he cupped her cheek in one enormous hot hand, the other at her waist, tugging her even closer, impatient, demanding. And then his lips covered hers.

Annika’s body responded before her brain could yell its outrage. She was enveloped by his clean smell and brilliant, radiating warmth, like a surfer being swallowed by a wave. Her cheeks burned where his stubble scraped against them, just the right amount of rough, sandpaper against silk. His mouth claimed hers, equal parts firm and soft. He kissed the way he did everything else—sure and self-assured. He nibbled her bottom lip, no tongue, smiling against her mouth, teasing her even now, in this moment. She nipped at his lip in response, hard, and he laughed gently before opening his mouth wider, giving her what she really wanted.