Now and Then (Dare to Love #3)

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  She was definitely going to need another drink, but more to sedate the increasingly restless herd of butterflies now showing signs of gamma-ray exposure the way they’d started walloping her belly since Ford’s casual comment about not letting her get away.

  Down, girl. That wasn’t what this was about, no matter how tall or handsome Ford had gotten.

  Because while there would probably always be some small part of her that wondered what might have happened if she’d made different choices ten years ago, the simple fact was…she hadn’t. The kind of happily-ever-after she’d started to let herself believe in with Ford Meyers ended the day she’d come home from the only term of undergraduate education she’d been able to complete and found the rug pulled from beneath her. All her hard work and plans for nothing. And her father full of excuses for the latest humiliating train wreck he’d made of their lives.

  Shaking off the thought, she focused on the now. Her chance to reconnect with Ford and catch up, like any old friends might. To see if that goofy guy who’d stolen her heart so long ago was still there. If he was as sweet as she remembered. If life had been good to him.

  But that was all this would be. With her dad getting out, her latest reprieve was over two years ahead of schedule. Daniel “Call me Danny” Ahearne would be back, circling her life while whatever stability she’d built since the judge’s gavel struck circled the drain. And it wouldn’t just be her life; it would be the life of anyone close enough to her to get caught in the current.

  Not Ford. Not this time.

  So half an hour would be Brynn’s limit before she gave the guy who’d been the sweetest part of her life a hug and wished him well. Forty-five minutes max.

  The waitress took her order and then Brynn met his eyes again. “Okay, beer’s on the way. So let’s have it. Spare no detail.”

  —

  “Marry me,” Ford said two hours later, meaning it probably more than he should. Because damn, this girl. The Ms. Pac-Man shirt hadn’t been the half of it.

  Grinning into her beer, Brynn shook her head and, after a swallow, set the bottle back on the table. “See, this is why I don’t lead with the job thing.”

  No shit. If word got out she was behind the camera, shooting the Bulls games from under the net, there’d be a line a mile long of guys throwing themselves at her feet.

  “The freaking Bulls,” he said again, sounding like a tool even to himself, because she knew. But the Bulls!

  “Just the home games, though,” she added with a shrug.

  Just the home games.

  “Right. No big deal, then.” And neither were the NBA on TNT East Coast games she traveled for. Or the White Sox games she covered during baseball season. Not at all.

  Another one of those half-shy laughs and Ford was wondering, even with the population at large not knowing she had the coolest job on the planet, how she was sitting across from him and still single? But that’s what she’d said when he finally gave in to the question that had been burning on his tongue since he’d gotten his first look at her.

  Not married, divorced, dating, recovering from a breakup or even anyone’s mom.

  Brynn was available.

  Sort of. Since in her next breath she’d clarified the part about not being in the right place for a relationship with all the travel and crazy work hours and focusing on her job. He figured there was more to it than that, because in his experience, there always was. But whatever the reason, he was fully behind anything that had kept her single up until that very minute.

  Yeah, things had ended badly between them. Abruptly and in a way he hadn’t been able to wrap his head around for nearly a year after. But they’d been kids. Not anymore, though. They’d grown up. Taken the lessons life doled out and learned from them. He sure as hell had, and behind the smiles and laughter there was something in Brynn’s eyes that made him think maybe she had, too. That maybe their paths crossing again could be a good thing. This time, a real thing.

  Brynn rested her elbows on the table in front of her, her smile sitting a little crooked on her mouth. “What’s that laugh about?”

  Me getting ahead of myself, that’s what.

  “Nothing,” he said instead. “Just still can’t believe I’m sitting across from you, is all. Can’t believe how much the same it is talking with you.”

  Because as different as their lives were now from when they’d met, it had been like this the first time, too. From the first words between them, it had been like everything was suddenly falling into place.

  Those deep green eyes held with his a beat, and then she looked away as another blush washed over her cheeks. The girl could swear like a sailor, though she desperately tried not to, and trash-talk like—well, like Maggie, now that he thought about it—but there was still that shyness about her. Still the sweetness. Still the fun.

  Her gaze drifted back to his again, her lips curving into the smile she’d given him that first day in the quad—the one that got his inner caveman thumping his chest. And like that he was back at the beginning, in too deep before he’d even realized he was sinking.

  “Um, excuse me?”

  Ford looked up from the notebook he’d been roughing out a new game in, frustrated at the interruption because he’d left the dorm to get away from Ava’s phone stalking so he could concentrate.

  “Yeah,” he replied, trying to keep it polite because, well, hell, there were enough shitheads in this world and he wasn’t interested in being another one. Half glancing up from his notebook, he’d only barely registered the girl in front of him when the fog of deep focus cleared and his attention snapped back in what had to be a pitifully obvious double take.

  Red hair shining in the August sun.

  Irish eyes.

  Freckles peppering the neat line of her nose.

  Gorgeous, with a tentative smile on lips so pink and full—yeah, there were ideas already stewing in the shady regions of his mind he wasn’t too proud of. Because this girl also looked sweet.

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  And she’s talking to you, numbnuts. Don’t fuck this up!

  “No, no. You’re fine,” he assured her, shooting to his feet and giving her a smile he could only hope came across as chill and not all overeager asshole. “Go ahead.”

  “Right, so I was on this freshman orientation tour and we were in the athletic center when I guess I got distracted, and next thing I’m looking around and realize I have no idea where my group is. I thought maybe you saw them come through this way. There were like fifty people.”

  Man, he wanted to be her hero. Bad. But the flat-out truth of it was, there could have been a marching band rolling through and chances were he wouldn’t have noticed. When he got his head into something, the rest of the world kind of fell away. It drove his sister nuts. Okay, it drove everybody nuts. Still, maybe he could help, because not only was this girl about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, but she was standing in front of him wringing her fingers like she actually believed missing her orientation tour mattered.

  Cute. And appealing, because he liked girls who took things seriously. Even if it was just a tour of their new campus.

  “Sorry. I was distracted myself,” he said, showing her the design he’d been sketching before he’d remembered not to advertise what a top-tier nerd he was.

  The girl’s brows arched and then she took a step closer, reaching for the side of his notebook as though she thought he’d pull it away before she was ready to give it up. Not likely.

  “Are you an art student? I was thinking basketball with the height and you sitting on the steps here,” she said, nodding to the athletic center behind him. “But then I guess you’re both?”

  He let out a laugh, because everyone thought he played basketball. “Neither, actually. I mean beyond shooting hoops with the guys once in a while, I don’t play for the school. Just watch. Avid fan. And the sketch is for a game I’m designing. I’m a Business and Computer Science guy.”

  “A
game? Wow, that’s—that’s so crazy cool,” she exclaimed, sounding like she actually meant it.

  “You a gamer?” he asked, not daring to hope. “Have a favorite?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, when it comes to games, I’m more of a sports fanatic. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer, hell—” Her cheeks turned pink and she gave her head a small shake. “Heck, I’ll even watch golf.”

  His throat went dry, because next to girls who loved gaming, girls who loved sports were about as hot as it got. And seriously, a guy couldn’t ask for everything.

  A breeze drifted through, catching a few soft spirals of that pretty red. Absently, she tucked them behind her ear and squinted up at him, her smile all but eclipsing the sun and doing something to the center of his chest he’d never felt before.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like video games,” she added ruefully. “But aside from the sports ones I’m a bigger fan of the old stuff than the new. Put Donkey Kong in front of me and I’ll be there until next week!”

  Ford swallowed. Hard. Because, hello, girl he was going to marry.

  But rather than get down on his knee right then and ask, he rubbed at the back of his neck and offered, “How about I take you back over to the administration building where the tour started and if we can’t meet up with them, I’ll show you around myself.”

  Chapter 3

  Brynn was breathless, her lashes wet from tears of laughter, and that seldom used place in the center of her chest aching for all the things it couldn’t have. She’d ordered a second beer, or a third counting the one she’d had before seeing Ford, but it remained largely untouched thanks to the way the conversation kept rolling between them. They’d talked and joked, finding humor in those few shared months together without dredging up the crummy ending to their story. Ford smugly confessed to breaking their pact about not watching Lost without her, updated her on the friends they’d shared back in school, broke her heart with news about the death of his parents, and made her grin with tales of his little sister marrying Sam—which, for the record, she’d totally called ten years ago, and without even meeting them.

  He’d kept at it with the game design and even found some success, which was awesome. And while it sounded like he still needed to work as a property manager on the side, it made her happy to hear he’d followed his dreams and achieved his goals.

  For her part, she hadn’t been quite so forthcoming. It was easy to talk about work. Tell him about Jet and how he’d actually been the one to get her her first job, interning with the Brewers in Milwaukee. But not how she’d known him from her neighborhood growing up. Or how her choice to work with pro athletes hadn’t solely been based on her love of sports, but on the fact her father and, more important, Timothy O’Shea—the man profiting from her father’s weakness—had a strict no-go policy regarding national sports leagues. Brynn was able to work with some of the highest-paid men in the country and know she’d never get pressed to go to them for a bailout. Too much publicity with those guys. Too many resources. Way too jaded. Which meant too much risk for O’Shea and her dad, and a safe workplace for Brynn.

  Yeah, there were things about her family she hadn’t shared with Ford the first time around—the gambling, the debt, the criminal acts. The cops knocking on their door in the middle of the night if they were lucky, someone else knocking if they weren’t.

  Untruths she hadn’t cleared up—like her father owning a hardware store instead of just working in one a few months before he’d been fired for stealing. Like her having an awesome big brother who was a little overprotective, instead of the jerk who’d literally sold tickets to her bedroom window when she was sixteen. Like having a loving mother who always put her first, instead of a mother who loved her husband to the point of not being able to protect her own children from his mistakes.

  Things she’d been ashamed of growing up and foolishly thought she’d be able to leave behind when she escaped to college with the money her grandfather saved for her. Things she could have told him about now, but honestly, he didn’t need to know.

  She didn’t want Ford’s pity. What she wanted was for this man to have a happy memory to remember her by. She’d hated the way she ended their relationship—hated knowing that she’d poisoned all the good between them with that last phone call. With the stupid lie she’d thought would be easier than the truth she’d been too humiliated to share.

  So she focused on the good things. The fun stuff.

  She laughed, loving the feeling of it overflowing inside her as Ford told her about Sam’s cousin Tony Farrow—that kid she could remember hearing about ten years ago, the mouthy goof who’d made it a daily habit of professing his love for Ava—taking their buddy Mitch Wells to the Fifty Shades of Grey opening to pick up women. His pregnant friend, Maggie, and how bad it freaked him out when she’d accidentally rubbed her huge, hard belly across his ass. And how he’d had to cheat to beat his sister when they’d been racing to see who could assemble the coming baby’s travel bassinet.

  And when the laughter finally eased, slowing and stretching until it became one long sigh, Brynn propped her elbow on the table and rested her cheek in her hand, watching him as he watched her. It was there in the space between them—the connection, the pull from all those years ago. So tempting, she found herself getting a little lost in his eyes, wondering how that dark hair—shorter and neater now—would feel between her fingers after so long, remembering what it had been like to have his kiss and to give in to all the unruly emotions this man brought to the surface.

  Just another minute. Then she’d go.

  “Brynn,” he said, his already deep voice deepening even further to a tempting low rumble. Only a ghost of the smile they’d been sharing remained on his lips.

  A minute that ended too soon, because she knew that look. And whatever words or actions were about to follow, she had to stop them. This, tonight, had been perfect and she didn’t want anything she’d have to say, any explanation she’d need to make, to ruin it.

  “I should get going,” she preempted, checking her watch for effect. She choked for real and then, checking again, said, “Oh shit—shoot, darn it, shoot—four hours?”

  Ford laughed, sliding off his stool and coming around to help her with her jacket. “Guess we lost track of time again.”

  Again. He said it like it was just yesterday and not ten years ago when they’d talked until the coffee shop closed, then moved back to the front stoop of her dorm, where they talked some more until security strolled through whipping that Maglite around at three in the morning. Ford had stood so close, looking down into her face, into her eyes, and she’d whispered his name, Fred—yeah, the wrong name as it turned out because the tall, dark, and desperately cute guy in front of her was named Ford, not Fred like she’d somehow gotten in her head—killing whatever moment might have been and sending them both into punch-drunk peals of laughter.

  But now with Ford standing so close, his big hands running down her arms, maybe it felt like yesterday to her, too. Like that twelve-hour tour of the campus and all the days and nights that followed were just that close. Still within reach.

  Like taking it would be as simple as turning around within that tight space in front of him so their bodies brushed with the motion, letting her fingers drift against the planes of a stomach that still looked as trim as it had in college, tipping her head back and—

  And it was definitely time to get out of Dodge.

  Pasting on a smile that wasn’t 100 percent sincere, Brynn stepped well out of brushing/drifting/tipping territory and shot Ford a friendly glance over her shoulder.

  “This sure was nice, Ford,” she exclaimed, her belly still in turmoil from those freaking jacked-up butterflies and their ceaseless assault.

  One dark brow arched at her, but then Ford was nodding, smiling pleasantly, too. “Sure was.”

  A light pressure settled at the small of her back, and even through the layers of her jacket, sweater, and shirt the se
nsation of Ford’s big hand resting there was like touching a broken Christmas light when she was a kid. Slightly shocking and definitely a bad idea to allow to go on. But that low charge running over her skin, spreading warm and slow…she hadn’t been able to resist it then, either.

  What were a few steps, right?

  Wrong. Because then they were outside the bar, the chill night air and flurries not doing a thing to cool the heat winding through her veins.

  A couple of rapidly chattering women bustled past them, their animated conversation filling up the night before it dropped off as they rushed down the sidewalk together toward the next streetlight.

  The fingers at her back flexed, urging Brynn around so she was again facing Ford. Only this time when their eyes met, he was still touching her and—just wow. The palm now curved around her waist was waking a simmering sense of anticipation within her she had no right indulging in.

  If only it didn’t feel so good.

  Drawing a deep breath, she braced for what Ford’s eyes were promising would come next. He would ask for her number and she’d let him down as easily as she could. It wouldn’t be fun and there wouldn’t be any sense of conquest in it, because the only one missing out would be her. And then because Ford was Ford, and most definitely as sweet as she remembered him to be, he’d take her letdown like a gentleman, letting her off easy with a well wish and a smile.

  Yeah, she was ready for it.

  Only then instead of asking her for anything, Ford—the guy who’d gotten her permission to hold her hand the first time—reached for her, pulling her into a kiss he took with the kind of world-rocking finesse she’d never known before. Not even with him.

  She should have stopped him, stepped out of his hold and apologized for giving him the wrong idea, but any gentle put-off she’d had in mind was lost to the decadent sensation of his fingers sliding beneath her hair, wrapping in it as he pulled her closer.

  Her thoughts scrambled, muscle memory took over, and suddenly she was going to her toes, tipping back for more of a kiss that had most definitely matured with age. For the slow, sinking press of his lips against hers.