Taylor and Hudson. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Maybe Taylor is pregnant? It really doesn’t matter to me which one is having a kid. I’d just like to finally have a niece or nephew.”
“Whoa, slow down,” Harlow said, her voice filled with humor. “I don’t think Taylor is pregnant. She wants to wait until she finishes her doctorate. I could be wrong, but I kind of assume she and Hudson are going to announce that they’re getting married.”
I thought that over as I merged onto the freeway. “I think Hudson would have told me,” I finally concluded. “There isn’t much we don’t talk about.”
“I’m not so sure,” Harlow countered. “Don’t you think he would have wanted to get a yes answer out of Taylor first?”
“You might be right,” I grumbled. “In some ways, it kind of sucks that Cooper and I aren’t the first to hear about what’s happening with Hudson anymore. We’ve always been really tight.”
“Change is always hard,” Harlow murmured. “It wasn’t easy for you when Riley got married, either, was it?”
“I’m not sure I want to answer that because it may make me sound like a dick, but I will. It was hard because Riley and I used to hang out together. She came to Coronado for the weekends a lot, and we met for dinner in San Diego fairly often. I miss that. But I sure as hell wouldn’t want it any other way for her. I was happy for her. Seth was the right guy. She’s finally happy, and Riley deserves that. I just miss seeing her more often. It was kind of strange when she first got married, and all of a sudden she was rarely around anymore.”
“I’m sure she misses all of you, too,” she replied thoughtfully.
“We get together as often as possible now,” I told her. “It’s not like Citrus Beach is across the country. I guess we just all get busy doing our own things, but Riley never lets too much time pass before she announces one of her get-togethers. Although, we do usually get a lot more notice than this.”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if Hudson and Taylor really are getting married?” she said with a sigh. “At least one amazing thing would come out of the whole kidnapping ordeal.”
“I never thought about it that way,” I said. “But you’re right. I doubt very much if the two of them would have crossed paths any other way.”
Granted, Taylor had been a summer intern, but between the headquarters, and the laboratory next door, we had thousands of employees in those two buildings. Hudson rarely popped his head into the lab. Those interests were more up my alley. Hudson was more fixated on the actual mining operations.
“I never ran into a single Montgomery during my internship or as a permanent employee after that,” Harlow said. “You were the first one I ever talked to when we ran into each other two years ago in the lab. There’s thousands of people at Montgomery who I don’t know. I think we science nerds prefer to just hang out with our own teams.”
“I saw you around,” I admitted. “Not as an intern, but I saw you at the headquarters a few times after you became a team leader. You came over to file your reports.”
“I’m surprised you even remembered me,” Harlow said thoughtfully.
“You’re a very hard woman to forget,” I drawled.
Harlow had been a very beautiful blonde in a lab jacket, carrying what had looked like a huge pile of reports.
One, she was gorgeous.
Two, I had a thing for intelligent women.
Put those two things together, and hell yes, I noticed her.
I’d just never had the opportunity to actually have a conversation with her until I’d dropped into the lab that day.
“I still regret the way I treated you when we first met,” she said wistfully. “I wish I would have realized that most of the stuff I’d heard about you was utter and complete bullshit.”
“Not all of it,” I corrected, knowing I really had to set Harlow straight. “There’s plenty of shit I’ve done in my life that I regret. I told you that I didn’t sleep with every woman I dated, which is true, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never had one-nighters. I was a SEAL. For the most part, the Navy owned me. I watched some of the other guys try to have relationships, wives, kids. There were times when their service to the country had to come before all of those