Page 7 of The Prey
Now she just fascinated him in a different way.
Ryan clung to her.
She looked so damned beautiful, so right.So…fascinating.
She laid her head against his son’s and held him. Then…she looked up…and her eyes met Hudson’s.
He couldn’t look away.
Thatwas Hudson’s defining moment. When he knewexactly what he wanted and was going to get next. He’d always been a ruthless strategist, planning out every part of his life with very limited detours.
And now…he knew exactlywhohe wanted.
Her.
He wantedthiswoman in his own cave.
The Giavonna she washere.
Thatwas the woman he wanted now. He was going to make it happen. His bed was the first place to start.
He just needed a plan.
4
The manjust wouldn’tstop.
Hudson had been watching her all morning.
He was driving her crazy. Every time she’d turn, his dark devil eyes would be trained right on her. Watching. Like…he was trying to figure her out or something. The man just wouldn’t stop watching her.
He was like a lion watching his prey. Just waiting to pounce and destroy. She’d seen him with that calculating look in his eyes so many times before. Just…never had it been turned inherdirection.
After Anthony left with the four older kids, she cleaned up Madeline and Mari Lynn. Mari Lynn was ready for her nap. Gia rocked her in the chair by the window, her eyes on Maddie while the little menace bounced and sang along toScraggle-Popps.
Hudson settled at the kitchen table after he’d cleaned it up quickly, his files spread before him. He was supposed to be working. He’d asked her to bring him those specific files yesterday.
But it was the little looks he was sending her way that disconcerted her. The man was most definitely plottingsomething. Gia had worked with him long enough to see that for herself. She had to give it to him—he’d behaved himself very well with the kids around. He hadn’t said one thing to her that he shouldn’t. And he’d helped however she’d needed it. Without her having to ask or tell him what to do. They hadn’t argued even once—today. Or…since he’d found her rocking Ryan the night before.
He'd been looking at her differently ever since.
He was very good at thedaddything. And the older brother thing with Hala. But…having him in her territory—she was ready for that man to go right back to where he belonged.
Fast.
Finally, Mari Lynn was asleep. Maddie had already climbed up onto the couch and looked like she was about to go out at any moment, too. She had the blanket Gia had knit her when she was a baby—it went with Maddie everywhere—and her battered stuffed Milly Silly Scraggle-Poppdoll. It seemed likeScraggle-Poppswere everywhere with the kids lately.
Nap time soon was inevitable. The girls would be out for about two hours, if Gia was lucky. That was about all the time Gia would have to get some things done.
George’s girls were rambunctious little monsters most of the time—and very much like their mother. Gia absolutely adored them. She tried to spend as much time with her brothers’ children as she could. She was thirty now. She did want kids of her own someday, but… Trusting a man was her biggest battle. She didn’t know if she’d ever trust a man again—it had taken her two years to come to that realization alone.
She thought maybe she could with Ronnie’s brother. She’d told Anthony yes, when he’d asked her on the porch to go with him to a function at the Barratt Hotel in Finley Creek next week. For the hospital there. He’d been out of the area for years, justcoming home in the last year. He didn’t know many women, he’d said.
Well, she didn’t fully believe that, but she trusted Anthony reasonably well. Anthony was genuinely one of the nicest men she wasn’t related to that she knew. He was probably the best man she could think of to get started dating again.
She couldn’t keep living so afraid.
That was exactly what she’d told Hala, too. She had to live up to her own advice, right?
