by Bella Andre
“I saw you playing with your nephews and nieces at the wedding. They lit up just being around you. You’re going to be great with your kids.”
“I had great teachers.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet your mother or your father at the wedding.”
“My mom and dad are amazing, although sometimes I wish they were a little more clueless like my friends’ parents. Because if you had met them, they probably would have guessed something was up with you and me...and then they would have asked me questions.” She definitely hadn’t been up to the kinds of questions her family would have asked, especially since she absolutely hated lying to her family, and her five-year omission already felt perilously close to a big fat lie.
“Speaking of questions, has my brother Ian tried to contact you?”
“He called me at midnight on Saturday.”
She’d hoped Ian had taken her at her word when she said that she could take care of herself. Clearly, he needed a reminder. She reached into her bag for her phone and said, “I can’t believe he thinks he can butt into my—”
Ford put his hand on hers to stop her from calling her brother and reading him the riot act. “He loves you, so I get why he’s so protective. I’d never want anyone to hurt you, either. Maybe you should go a little easy on him.”
She sighed as she reluctantly dropped her phone back into her bag. “At least tell me what he said to you.”
“Let’s put it this way...he strongly advised me to be on my very best behavior.”
“Or what? He’s going to hop a plane from London to Seattle just to punch you out?”
“Or he’ll be calling your brothers to fill them in on what’s going on with you and me so that they can all take care of the punching.”
She blew out an irritated breath. “If I want them to know what’s going on, I’ll tell them myself.”
“I hope you will, Mia.” His gorgeous mouth quirked up at one corner as he added, “Despite how physically risky a few hours with your brothers might be for the guy you bring home.”
Suddenly, she could see it so clearly, taking Ford home and introducing him as her boyfriend, even though she’d never brought a guy home before, not one single time in twenty-eight years. Her father would be protective but fair to Ford, her mother would likely fall for him at his first smile, and her brothers would take a heck of a lot of convincing that anyone could ever be good enough for their little sister.
“I always envied the kids at boarding school who had siblings,” he said, echoing what he’d said to her after the wedding. “I was sent to boarding school when I was five. My parents probably would have sent me away earlier, but none of the elite private schools would take a kid until he was in kindergarten.”
Even though she was glad that Ford was openly sharing another piece of his past with her, the sad look on his face had her wanting to pull him down on the blanket with her to kiss him until he forgot all about it.
“That must have been hard for you, to have to leave home so young.”
“It was better than staying home with the nannies. At school I had friends to play with. It was coming home at the holidays that was the worst part. My mother and father were strangers to me.”
Mia loved the holidays with her family. Dozens of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter celebrations over the years had been full of laughter and fun.
Obviously, everything she was feeling showed on her face because he said, “Don’t feel sorry for me. My parents might not have given a crap about me, but they never hurt me physically or verbally. No one ever said no to me, either. Not with so much money and influence behind my family name. Me and the chip on my shoulder were never hungry or bruised.”
Mia knew all about pride, and the lengths to which people would go to protect it. After all, when she’d badly needed support from friends and family after she and Ford had combusted five years ago, she’d shut all of them out. God forbid she should let any of them know that she had failed or made a bad decision.
“When we broke up,” she suddenly needed Ford to know, “I told myself all the same things. That I didn’t have an empty stomach. That I wasn’t bruised. That I had a great apartment and career. And I couldn’t stand the thought of any of my friends or family feeling sorry for me. Or worse, thinking I was making a mountain out of a molehill. So I kept it all inside.” She watched a lone ant head back toward a long trail of ants from which it had temporarily broken away. “But the truth was that I did need them. And when I finally had to spill everything to my best friends after seeing you on Friday, instead of feeling like a fool, I felt loved. But even knowing that my friends and family will always love me, no matter what, I still brought that pride chip with me to my cousin’s wedding and worried that people would find out about us.”
He reached into her bag and handed her the phone. “Here,” he said with a grin, “you can call them all now to fill them in.”
She took it from him, laughing. “If it makes sense down the road for me to give my cousins news about us, I promise to block out an entire afternoon to call each and every one of them.”
Maybe it had been a crazy thing to say, but suddenly the chance of a future with Ford didn’t seem completely out of bounds. After all, he’d just bought this house in Seattle, and he was actually telling her important things about his life.
She knew that it was easier for him to focus on her than himself. But for all the anger she’d nurtured over the past five years, now that she’d spent the past few days with him, she couldn’t deny that she cared again. Back then, whenever she’d had questions for him about his past, it had always been easy for him to pull her back into bed and make love to her until she’d completely forgotten all about them. And there was a big difference between begging Ford to share his life with her and his offering it up to her unprompted, wasn’t there?
Or, was that just her pride talking again? Because if she was really considering a relationship with Ford going forward, then could she keep locking her heart in a cage like this?
She dropped the phone back into her bag and looked into his dark eyes. “I don’t think we were done talking about you and your family, were we?”
Ford was silent for a few long moments before he finally said, “That week with you here in Seattle was the closest I’ve ever let myself get to anyone. I’d been so used to standing on my own, making my own way, everyone else be damned. And then, there you were. Not just breathtakingly beautiful, not only the sexiest thing I’d ever seen or touched, but you simply opened your arms and heart and let me in. It scared the hell out of me, Mia.”
She could understand everything he’d said up until the admission that he’d been frightened. “Why would my caring about you scare you?”
“For so long, I’d told myself that I didn’t need anyone else, that I didn’t care if no one ever really loved the real me, that it was enough for the fans who screamed I love you from the audience to only love my music instead of the man behind the guitar and microphone. But then, from the very first moment you came into my life, it was so easy, too easy, to need you...and to want you with me all the time. I felt like I couldn’t breathe without you, could no longer picture living the rest of my life as a man on an island. And it was even worse, because I knew you were too independent and loved your friends and family and career too much to say yes to my ultimatum.”
“Are you saying that you were already gone before you even asked me to drop everything for you?”
“I didn’t know how to stay.”
She needed to know. “And now you think you do?”
He let out a long breath. “I sure as hell hope so. Because if I hurt you again, it wouldn’t be your brothers coming after me to tear me to pieces. I would beat them to it.”
No one could ever call Ford Vincent fragile. But for the first time, Mia saw the vulnerability he’d worked so hard his entire life to hide from everyone else.
Including her, until now.
“When I
saw you again out of the blue on Friday,” she said carefully, “I assumed you hadn’t given me a single thought in five years. But even though I now know I was wrong, you’ve got to understand that I really tried not to think about you at all. At least, until the past few days. I mean, I obviously can’t resist you whenever we kiss, but—”
“Friends,” he reminded her. “I want us to be friends first.” As if to make his point, he picked up the champagne bottle and poured two glasses. Handing her one, he said, “Here’s to a beautiful friendship.”
He’d promised not to push her too fast again, and while a part of her was relieved that it looked like he was going to make good on his promise, before she could clink her glass against his, another part of her couldn’t resist asking, “Do you always make out with your friends?”
“Not usually,” he said with a slow grin as he obviously understood where her question was coming from, “but I’m pretty big on change lately, so I say, why not throw making out into the friend bucket?”
Her lips were tingling even though it had been quite a few minutes since they’d last kissed. Heck, her entire body was tingling just being near him like this.
“You know, since there’s a pretty big spread between kissing and having sex, maybe I should make a list of everything in between,” she suggested, “and you can show me the line that you’re not going to cross.”
His eyes quickly darkened with desire. “Lord, the way you tempt me, Mia.” But instead of reaching for her the way she wished he would, he said, “Even if you make a list that you know damn well will make me crazy, you and I are going to be friends first before I make love to you again. It’s a promise I’m making to both of us, and one I’m not going to break.”
Mia knew a lot of powerful, rich men. The ones she was related to were great, but the rest of them usually took whatever they wanted without worrying about what anyone else needed or wanted. Ford could have already had her back in his bed by now. But, instead, he seemed truly committed to gunning for something more than a couple of great rolls in the hay.
Who would ever have thought this was possible?
Certainly not her.
Still, whether or not this whole no-sex-until-friendship plan made sense, she didn’t particularly care for living by a set of rules she hadn’t had any part in making. Which was why she couldn’t resist messing with him a little bit more.
“I actually do think you may be right about friendship being what we were missing before, but—”
“Why do I have a feeling your but is going to push me right to the edge of reason?”
She lifted her lips in a smile, loving that he knew her so well already, even though they were just at the beginning of their road to friendship. “But I just can’t see how a few orgasms here or there would be breaking your no-sex-until-we’re-friends rule.”
“I’ll never know how to love you the right way if I don’t also know how to be your friend, Mia.” His dark eyes were intense as he asked, “If an orgasm will get me there, you know I’d die to give you one right now. Tell me, will making you come make us better friends?”
She swallowed hard. Every time she tried to take things to a lighter place, he made sure she knew just how serious he was about wanting to be with her.
“No,” she had to be honest and tell him, “it won’t.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said softly, and then, “Do you know what will?”
It was a good question, one she hadn’t really ever thought about. But even if she did, she wasn’t sure that her brain was where the answers about friendship were going to come from. Not when her heart had always been in charge of whom she trusted, whom she loved.
So though she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t let her heart lead her down the wrong road with Ford again, she simply couldn’t fight the powerful urge to take his hand and pull him down on the blanket with her to stare up at the blue sky.
The two of them were silent for a long while, their hands linked together, as they watched the puffy white clouds slowly change shape above them. Birds flew back and forth between Douglas fir trees.
Finally, she said, “I think this might be a start.”
And when he turned to smile at her and the last pieces of ice around her heart melted away, she knew that it really was.
Chapter Nineteen
Tuesday quickly shaped up to be one of those crazy days where Mia was on the run from house to house with so little time to spare between showings that she got neither breakfast nor lunch. Not even, she thought with a whimper of longing for her espresso machine in the office’s break room, a cup of decent coffee to jump-start her motor.
A motor that was both roaring to life whenever she thought of Ford and then sputtering as she forcefully reminded herself not to repeat her mistakes by falling so fast and hard for him again. They hadn’t done more than kiss a little on the blanket in his yard, but even that had been so overwhelming to her senses that she’d ended up accepting a client’s last minute request to do an impromptu showing just to have some space away from Ford to think.
She’d tried to be rational about everything he’d done, everything he’d said since he’d reappeared in her life on Friday morning, but rational thinking had never been her forte where Ford was concerned. Plus, it was one thing when he was coming at her with straight-ahead seduction in mind. Honestly, though she wanted him like crazy, she could have discounted that.
But knowing he wanted them to be friends first?
Way to cut right through to my heart, rock star.
Still, while he’d been on her mind nearly every second since they’d parted the day before, she wasn’t at all prepared to walk through the front door of Sullivan Realty and find him sitting in the lobby, his long legs kicked out in front of him as he chatted easily with her receptionist.
“There you are.” He slowly unfurled his gorgeous body from the chair and gave her a look full of so much heat that she was pretty sure her hair was in danger of catching fire. “Got a minute?”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at him for surprising her like this. Why hadn’t he called her to say he needed to meet? Not only had she just sold him a really expensive house, but they were—
She sighed. That was just what they were trying to figure out, wasn’t it? Were they ex-lovers? Budding friends?
Or more?
“Of course. Go on into my office. I’ll be there in just a second and we can talk about what you need.”
He studied her for a minute. “How about I make you a cup of coffee on my way there?”
She nearly groaned in anticipation of the caffeine-induced relief. “Please. The machine is in the break room. Orlando can show you the way.”
As soon as he disappeared into the main part of the office as if he owned the place, Betsy said, “I’m sorry, I wanted to send you a text to let you know he was here. But he insisted we wait until you were done with your showings. I think—” Her receptionist abruptly cut herself off as though she didn’t want to speak out of turn.
“I’d very much like to know what you think,” Mia told the woman she liked a great deal and trusted to deal with all incoming calls and potential clients.
“I think there wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to go. Because despite a few random walk-ins asking for his autograph when they realized who he was, I got the sense that he felt comfortable here.”
“How long has he been waiting?”
“About an hour.”
“Ford was sitting here for an hour?”
“Honestly, the time flew by. We got to talking about my kids and grandkids, and he was full of questions about local schools and Little League teams and gymnastics classes. Does he have children?”
“No,” Mia said, but as she thought about what he’d said to her when they were walking through the house he’d just bought, she added, “Not yet.”
Through the mostly glass walls of her office, she could see Ford laughing with one of her extremely star-struck empl
oyees. Orlando was doing a much better job of holding it together today, but everyone else was practically trembling with excitement. Clearly, Ford was not good for her employees’ productivity. But maybe that was okay, because his presence clearly made them all so happy.
Sure, she had a couple of big stars in her family, but she’d never seen someone who wasn’t a blood relation deal so well with fame. Where other musicians she’d worked with to find property in Seattle had made absolutely certain that she never forgot for one second whom she was dealing with, Ford seemed to go out of his way to do exactly the opposite.
“Thank you for keeping him company, Betsy.”
“It was my pleasure,” the older woman said with an uncharacteristic blush. “He’s not exactly hard on the eyes, is he?”
“No,” Mia said with a laugh at just what an understatement that was. “He certainly isn’t.”
* * *
Ford had the steaming cup of espresso waiting for her when she walked into her office.
She grabbed it from him with a gasp of “Thank God,” then immediately took a sip.
“Damn,” he said, “I never thought I’d be jealous of a cup of coffee. But I’m not sure you’ve ever looked at me quite like that before.”
Thankfully, she could already feel the kick from the blessed triple espresso he’d made her as she pinned him with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t wait with Betsy in the front room for an hour to fish for compliments, did you?”
“No,” he confirmed. “I came because seeing you is the best part of every day.”
Even as his sweet words warmed her, she said, “And?”
“I mean it, you know. Seeing you makes everything a thousand times better. Even when I know I can’t touch you because all of your employees are watching us.” He grinned at her and she was already charmed despite herself as he admitted, “But since you mention it, there is something I’d really like you to help me with.”
“Is there a problem with the house?”
“Nope, the house is great. I was filming a promo at EMP this morning for the Seattle show this Saturday, and the manager was talking about all the kids who come through the music section of the museum and don’t really want to go home at the end of the day when they’re locking up.” Ford’s eyes shuttered. “I was one of those kids, and I know if I’d had a place like that to hang out in, all that music history, all that inspiration from the original Experience Music Project building, it would have helped.” When he looked back at her, his eyes were clear again. And full of excitement. “I want to open a place in Seattle for kids to come and play music with each other. A rock camp. We’ll bring in musicians, local ones and some of the big-time guys, too, who owe me some favors.”