by Jill Shalvis
She looked at him, his last few words still in her head. I feel like I’m home. “Ford?”
“Yeah?”
“Me too.”
Chapter 17
“A person who’s willing to meet you halfway is usually, conveniently, a poor judge of distance.”
TARA DANIEL
Tara walked into the kitchen and found Chloe sitting on the countertop, mixing up something that smelled delicious.
“A new exfoliating face scrub,” she explained. “Melon-flavored. The bonus is that it tastes delicious.”
Tara tried not to panic. “I thought you were making breakfast.”
“We are.” Mia came into the kitchen from the dining room carrying a huge casserole dish. “I made Good Morning Sunshine Casserole,” she said, looking adorable in fresh—and tiny—denim shorts and a stretchy tee. “Not strawberry pie, though I was tempted. It’s a casserole with some leftover ham, Tater Tots, and cheese, all mixed together.” She looked very proud of herself. “It’s already been served and cleaned up.”
Tara stared at this creature who was her own flesh and blood and felt her own pride bubble over. “Wow.”
“I know. Cute and talented,” Mia said.
Carlos came into the room from the back door. Mia turned a smile on him. The poor guy took one look at her mile-long legs in her short shorts, and walked smack into the island.
Chloe shot Tara a smirk.
Tara ignored her in favor of taking a good look at the teens, and didn’t like what she saw, because she was seeing a whole hell of a lot of heat. “Busy day,” she said to Carlos as he attempted to recover. “We need to hose down the front porch, water the flowers, and fix the flickering lights on the dock in case guests want to walk along there at night.”
“On it,” he said, and vanished back outside.
“I’ll help,” Mia said and followed him out.
Tara waited until the door shut behind them. “Those two are—”
“Having sex,” Chloe said helpfully.
“She said they weren’t.”
“Okay, but probably I should add some condoms to the baskets I just put out in the bathrooms.”
Tara choked, and Chloe patted her shoulder. “They’re seventeen, babe. That’s like ninety-nine percent hormones, as I’m sure you remember.”
Tara felt her gut clench. “I’m going to have to fire him.”
“Are you going to fire every boy that looks at her?”
“That or kill them,” Tara said, only half joking.
That night Ford ended up behind the bar at The Love Shack. Earlier he and Sawyer had gone out for a long sail, something that had never once in his life failed to soothe him. They’d had clear blue skies filtered only by a few scattered clouds. Winds had come out of the northwest with knots at twelve to fourteen, which actually was “holy shit” weather on a sailboat. Just the way he usually liked it. It’d taken every ounce of concentration just to stay on the water and not ten feet under. Sawyer had bitched about it the whole time.
The sail should have cleared Ford’s mind. It hadn’t. He just kept thinking. About his life, and what he was doing with it. About Mia. About Tara… And Christ, he was tired of thinking. Tired of his life being in flux.
And when had that happened? He’d thought he had things set up. He had money in the bank, and a job running the bar when he felt like working. He wanted for nothing.
Okay, that wasn’t quite true.
He wanted something new, something he’d never really wanted before—a relationship. In the past, any attempt at one had been rough to maintain while sailing eight months out of twelve. Hell, just seeing his own sisters and grandmother had been challenging, although now that he was no longer racing so much, his sisters managed to invade his life on a fairly regular basis.
Which meant that these days, a relationship could actually work.
Slightly terrifying.
Sawyer strolled into the bar after his shift. “Since you saved Logan’s ass, you’re now ahead in the polls by eighty percent.”
Lucky Harbor’s gossip train was the little engine that could. Nothing slowed it down—not real news, not decency, and certainly not the truth.
The door to the bar opened again, and in came Logan, not looking any happier than Ford. “Fucking perfect,” Ford muttered to Sawyer.
Logan headed straight for the bar. “You cheated,” he said to Ford. “I’ll take a beer and keep ’em coming.”
Ford served him. “What do you mean, I cheated?”
“A kid? You came up with a kid?”
Ford was surprised at this. “You didn’t know about Mia?”
“I knew that you’d had a baby. I didn’t know that baby had grown up and then shown up.”
Ford had been wondering how much Logan and Tara talked, if at all. Not much if it’d taken him this many days to learn about Mia. This fact made him feel marginally better.
“I can’t compete with that,” Logan said and took a long pull of his beer before turning to Sawyer. “How the hell do I compete with that?”
Sawyer shrugged. “You were married to her.”
Ford slid Sawyer a look, and Sawyer shrugged again. “He asked.”
“Yeah,” Logan said, finding solace in Sawyer’s words. “You’re right. We were married. She used to call me her superhero.” He looked at Ford to make sure he was listening. “I was her Superman, her Green Hornet, her Flash Gordon, all rolled into one.”
On Logan’s other side, a group of women with a pitcher of something pink and frothy were blatantly eavesdropping. One of them was Sandy, town clerk and city manager. Sandy was pretty in a no-nonsense way and never lacked for male companionship, though she’d been ignoring men in general since last year when she’d gotten two-timed by some asshole in Seattle. She was eyeing Logan like maybe she’d finally gotten over it.
“Looks like you’re in trouble, Ford,” Sandy said. “He’s got you with the superhero thing.”
“Do you even have to be in good shape to drive a race car?” someone asked.
It was Paige, from the post office. Ford could have kissed her.
“Hey, it takes more core body strength to control a car than a boat,” Logan said in his defense. “And I’m completely fit. Look.” He raised his shirt to show his abs.
The women all hooted and hollered. “Nice eight pack!” Amy said. She was a waitress at the diner, and tonight she was also Sandy’s fearless wingman. In her late twenties, she was tall and leggy and blonde, and in possession of a smile that said she was not only tough as hell, but up for dealing with whatever came her way. “Your turn, Ford,” she said with a grin.
This produced even more ear-splitting woo-hoos. Ford looked at Sawyer, who raised his beer in a go-for-it toast.
Oh hell, no. “We’ve had this conversation,” Ford told whoever was listening, which was exactly no one. “I’m not going to show you my stomach.”
This only made them all yell louder.
Logan grinned. “You’re afraid of the competition. It’s okay; no worries.”
Goddammit. Ford wasn’t afraid of shit. So he lifted his shirt.
The crowd went crazy.
Sawyer shook his head.
Ford sighed.
“Nice,” Amy said. “I declare a tie.”
Sandy was on the fence. “I don’t know. I think we need more examples.”
At this, Amy grinned wider and turned to Ford and Logan. “You heard her, boys—whip ’em out. Sandy, you gotta tape measure?”
Ford, who’d just taken a drink from his Coke, choked. Sawyer smacked him on the back, hard.
“Worth a shot,” Amy said with a shrug.
Sandy smiled and nudged her shoulder to Logan’s. “Never mind the poll, Logan. Besides, Tara’s not the only woman in town. You know that, right?”
He sent her a slow smile. “She’s not?”
“Nope.” Sandy scooted a little closer to him. “And you can be my superhero any time.”
At two a.m.,
Tara was still lying in bed, gazing at the clock. In a few hours, she needed to be wide awake and making breakfast for their guests’ last day, but she couldn’t relax enough to sleep.
And this time, it had nothing to do with Chloe’s snoring, because Chloe wasn’t even home yet. She’d gone out with Lance and friends, and they were God knew where, doing God knew what.
Maddie was at Jax’s, safe and sound. One worry off Tara’s plate, but she had plenty more. She’d caught Mia and Carlos in the marina building earlier. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d interrupted since they’d leapt away from each other faster than she could blink, but the guilt on their faces had been disturbing.
Short of firing one of them or locking Mia in a chastity belt, what could she do without looking like a first-class hypocrite of the highest order?
And then there was Ford. A small part of her wanted to be cuddled up with him right now. Okay, a big part. She fluffed her pillow and once again tried to fall asleep. It didn’t happen. She started wondering if the bills had gotten sent out, and if she had gas in her car, and whether or not she had fresh peaches for tomorrow’s pie. And where was Chloe, dammit? Rolling out of bed, she picked up her cell phone. “You’d better be okay,” she said to Chloe’s voice mail, then hung up and padded into the bathroom, where she took a hot bath. Thirty minutes later, warm and toasty, she climbed back into bed to try again.
Her heart tripped when she saw her cell phone, blinking multiple missed calls on the nightstand. The last time that had happened in the middle of the night, Chloe had been arrested with Lance for staging a sit-in at one of the Washington logging companies up on Rascal Pass. “Be okay,” she whispered to Chloe as she accessed her messages, her pulse pounding. “Please be okay so I can kill you myself.”
The first message was indeed from her sister. “I’m fine,” came Chloe’s voice. “I’m alive and playing paintball at an all-night venue—don’t wait up. And Jesus, stop worrying, I’m a big girl.”
“Oh sure,” Tara muttered to no one. “I’ll just stop worrying. Cuz it’s that easy.”
The next message surprised Tara into dropping her irritation.
“Tara,” came Ford’s voice, not quite sounding like his usual laid-back self. “Yeah, so I thought you should know that I don’t think I’m a bad idea. I mean I can be bad, but I can be good, too. I can do good things… lots of very good bad things…” His voice was all low and husky, and combined with the words, had heat slashing through Tara’s stomach. “But,” he went on with deliberate slowness. “I don’t think I can be your superhero.”
At that, she pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at it. Superhero? Where had that come from? In the background, she could hear loud music and lots of laughter. Probably The Love Shack.
“I’m maybe, possibly a little drunk,” he said, and shock reverberated through Tara. Ford wasn’t a drinker. His biological father had been, and one of his stepfathers, and it’d turned him off of alcohol. Plus, for as easygoing as he was, he liked his control.
A lot.
“So this superhero thing,” he went on. “All the skills I have, you’ve already seen. I’m guessing I do okay in the body department, because you seem to like it well enough. After all, just a few nights ago you were licking my—”
At this point, there seemed to be a scuttle with the phone, and Tara could hear Sawyer in the background saying, “Just hang up, man, or I’ll do it for you and consider it a public service.”
“Back off,” came Ford’s voice, and then there was another tussle. “Some people have no fuckin’ manners,” he said, slurring slightly. “I want you to know that if I could be your superhero, I totally would. But there’s no way my ass is gonna wear a pair of tights, not even for you.” He paused thoughtfully. “I could do sex slave, though. That seems like a fair trade, right?”
Tara laughed and covered her mouth in utter surprise. The man was clearly drunk and uncharacteristically out of control, and yet he could still make her laugh. And if the truth was known, in the bedroom Ford had never failed to command anything less than her full attention. Which meant he had it backward. She was a slave to him. To his hands, his mouth…
“What I’m trying to say is that I’ll always be there for you, Tara. You need someone to help you, I’m your guy. You need a couple or three orgasms? I’m your personal toy. You need to let off some steam, someone to yell at, I’ll be your doormat. Wait. Skip that. I’m not a good doormat—Hey,” he said to someone else. “Back the fuck off—”
Click.
Tara was looking at her phone when the last message came on. “Goddammit. Logan’s still here, and he stole my phone. Fucker. He had his shot with you and blew it.” His voice lowered again. “He doesn’t see you like I do, Tara. All in charge and bossy and sexy as hell with it. He wants you barefoot and pregnant. Nothing wrong with that, but you’re more. So much more…”
Tara felt her throat tighten as the message ended. He did see her. The real her. She took a minute to gather her thoughts, then decided she couldn’t possibly not call him.
He picked up just before it would have gone to voice mail. “Hey,” he said, sounding rougher than he had in his messages. “It’s late. You okay?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing, Sailor.”
“I’m good,” he said. “But I could be better.”
“Need a ride?” she asked.
There was a beat of surprise. “You’d do that?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitating.
“Would you do it for Logan?”
She closed her eyes and decided to give him the truth. “Not without killing him first.”
“But you wouldn’t kill me?”
“Maybe just maim or dismember.”
“Bloodthirsty,” Ford said, sounding cheered by the thought.
“Yeah.” She hesitated. “Ford, about Logan.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you and I have been nothing but a mistake?”
“No. It’s the part where I tell you that Logan’s not a factor between us.”
Another beat of surprise. “Okay, keep talking.”
She let out a huff of laughter. “He never was, you know.”
“But you still care about him.”
“Very much,” she agreed. “But I’m not in the same place I was when I was with him. So what’s with the superhero thing? Because you should know, no one’s ever been my superhero, Ford. I’ve never wanted one.”
“Okay, now would be a really great time for a but. Like, ‘I’ve never wanted anyone to be my hero, Ford, but now that I’m back in Lucky Harbor you can be my hero, anytime.’ ”
Tara laughed and lay back in her bed, wondering at the need to have him here with her right now, chasing away the shadows. “I scare most guys, you know.”
“Not me.” Ford’s voice softened. “I like how tough you are. Tough on the outside, and soft and creamy on the inside.”
Again she laughed. “That sounds vaguely obscene.”
“Really? Cuz I was going for overtly obscene.”
“Do you need a ride or not?”
“Nah. Sawyer’s got me.”
“Oh, God. He arrested you?”
“Hey, I’m not that drunk.”
“Yes, he is,” came Sawyer’s voice.
She smiled. “This is unlike you.”
“I know. Logan drank me under the table. Fucker.”
“Logan’s with you too?”
“Was.”
There was something in his voice now, something he was holding back. Probably Logan had found female companionship in the bar and Ford was trying to protect Tara’s feelings, which wasn’t necessary.
She knew Logan. She knew that although he thought he loved her, at least the woman she’d once been, above all else Logan loved his career and the lifestyle that went with it. Pretty women were drawn to him. She’d be shocked if he’d managed to sit in the bar tonight without garnering female attention. He hadn’t cheated during their ma
rriage, but it’d definitely been rough on her ego knowing how easy it would have been for him to cheat if he’d wanted to. She’d traveled with him for a while because of it, but the grueling schedule, plus being in the way and feeling so damn alone even while surrounded by his entourage had nearly done her in. Plus, what did it say about her marriage that she’d felt as if she needed to babysit him?
“So,” Ford said. “About that sex slave thing—”
She rolled her eyes. “Say good-night, Ford.”
“ ’Night, Ford.”
She closed her phone, not knowing whether to laugh again or simply be touched.
Both, she decided, and shook her head, a smile breaking through. He made her laugh, always. Just as he made her feel.
Always.
Her heart knew that, but her brain resisted. Her brain was capable of accessing memories and calculating odds and wasn’t ready to believe that this could work. But this time at least she fell right to sleep and slept the rest of the night.
Chapter 18
“Don’t take life too seriously or you won’t get out alive.”
TARA DANIELS
Tara woke up at the crack of dawn, disconcerted to find Chloe still wasn’t back. She got up and showered then came face-to-face with her baby sister tiptoeing into the cottage, covered in red, blue, and yellow paint. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Barely.”
Tara looked Chloe over, marveling at the mess. “You look like a cross between a rainbow and a combat survivor. What—”
“Don’t ask.” Chloe dropped her clothes on the spot and padded naked to the shower. “There’s a delivery for you on the porch.”
Tara opened the front door. Sitting on the top step was a vase of beautiful wildflowers, obviously picked, not purchased, with a piece of paper that simply read Tara.
They were beautiful. The question was, who were they from? Neither Logan nor Ford were exactly the go-out-and-pick-wildflowers type. Tara carried the flowers across the yard to the inn’s kitchen, set them on the counter, and mixed up a batch of muffins. She was back to staring at the flowers when Maddie came in the back door with an armload of fresh flowers of her own and stared at Tara’s.