by Paige Rion
Andi heard the first couple things she said, but after that, her excitement turned everything into a blur. She’d done it! She’d really done it. She knew this was just one step in the right direction. Candy still had to find her a publisher, but Andi had always felt if she could snag the right agent, she’d get a deal. She had what it took and things were going to fall in place for her. She could feel it.
When Andi’s head stopped spinning, something Candy had said sank in. “Wait a minute. Ford knew you were offering to represent me?”
“Of course.”
Andi grinned, taking in the information, just as someone knocked on the door. Ford peeked his head in and smiled. “I heard someone let out an ear-piercing scream a minute ago, so I figured you were about done in here.”
Andi rolled her eyes, but her heart wasn’t in it, and she couldn’t tamp down her smile. “You knew,” she said.
Ford shrugged. “It was fun watching you squirm.”
Andi jabbed him in the arm while Candy looked on, a satisfied expression on her face. She stepped forward and said, “I won’t keep you two any longer. Ford, why don’t you take this young lady out for a drink, to celebrate or whatever young couples do these days?”
Andi ducked her head, unwilling to meet Ford’s eyes. She wanted to start out on the right foot with Candy, didn’t want her to get any wrong impressions. “Er, I actually have a boyfriend. Well, sort of.”
“Oh.” The surprise in Candy’s tone mirrored that in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have guessed.” After an awkward moment, she added, “Well, you’re staying for the awards and dinner tomorrow, right?”
Andi relaxed and glanced up at her. A question she could easily answer. “Yes.”
“I’ll see you there, then.” She moved her gaze to Ford, her eyes questioning. “I’ll talk to you later, Ford.”
He nodded, and in minutes they were out the door, with Andi back on the streets of New York, only one agent stronger.
Ford stopped her and grabbed her arms. “I have a business meeting of sorts this afternoon.”
“Oh.” Andi hadn’t been sure how they would spend the rest of the day, but the thought that she would have to spend it alone while Ford went off on his own hadn’t occurred to her.
“But I’ll be back in a few hours. How about we have some drinks to celebrate. I know it’ll be a little early, but the way I see it, you’ll want to get to bed on time, since you’re so old and all and hardly slept last night.” The gleam in his eye and the laughter in his voice made it impossible for her to get annoyed with his poor humor. “How about we meet in the hotel lobby at four o’clock?”
“I have nowhere else to be, so it’s a deal.”
“Now don’t charm me too much—I might get the wrong idea,” he said.
She rolled her eyes, just as her phone began to buzz in her purse. “Hang on,” she said, digging for her phone. She found it, but she’d missed the call. She checked the screen. Peter.
She took a deep breath. She knew she should call him back and felt the hooks of guilt latching onto her at the thought of ignoring him, but lately, it seemed every time something good happened, he twisted it around and spoiled it. Tonight, she wanted to celebrate. She didn’t want to be made to feel guilty. If he really wanted to talk, he should’ve returned one of her countless calls this past week.
Tomorrow she would think about Peter and worry over what to do about the future of their relationship. Tonight, she would drink and celebrate her small step toward success, and she would do it with Ford. After all, parents aside, he seemed to be the one person that believed in her as much as she believed in herself.
“Who is it?” Ford asked.
Andi bit her lip. “Um, no one. Wrong number.” She dropped the phone back in her bag and turned into the direction of the hotel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Andi scanned her reflection in the full-length mirror. She wore a short-sleeved blouse and canary yellow pencil skirt she got for a steal at a thrift store in Columbus last year. Smoothing her dark hair, she leaned closer to the mirror and assessed her makeup. Perfect.
She grabbed her clutch off the console table and left the room for the lobby. When she stepped off the elevator, Ford was waiting for her, his back turned. She walked toward him slowly, drinking him in as she did. Maybe it was the excitement of her morning, the fact that it seemed her relationship with Peter was all but over or Ford’s secret display of affection for her last night, but something between them had changed. Then again, maybe it was she who had changed. Because when she looked at him now, all she saw were possibilities.
She tapped him on the shoulder and he spun around, clutching a bouquet of wild flowers, the same kind that surrounded the cove, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the choice had been deliberate.
“I thought I’d bring some of home to you.”
Andi took them, breathless. “Thanks.” She moved her nose over the bouquet and breathed in the sweet scent of Callaway Cove in June.
“I can give them to the front desk for one of the staff to take up, if you like. That way, you don’t have to carry them around.”
“Sure.” Andi watched him walk to the desk, his movements unhurried. His gaze darted back to her as he spoke, and for the first time, Andi acknowledged that when she was with Ford, she felt special. She felt wanted in a way she hadn’t ever before.
“Ready?” Ford said, extending his arm.
She twined her arm in his and they made their way through the massive lobby into the bar. Once they sat, Ford ordered a bottle of champagne. The bartender brought the bottle to them within seconds and poured a taste for Ford. He took a sip and approved it, then handed Andi her own glass of the bubbly wine, topping off his own. Lifting his glass, he waited for her to do the same, then said, “To Andi.”
His eyes glittered under the dim glow of the bar lights. “May all your dreams come true, starting today.”
Their eyes locked and they sat there, glasses raised, until Ford cleared his throat and took a deep drink of his champagne.
“Thank you,” Andi whispered.
He nodded. “What will your parents think when they find out you got one of the best agents in the industry?”
Andi shook her head, imagining them in her mind’s eye, and laughed. “It’s really hard to even picture it because I still can’t believe it myself. I know I’m only halfway there and so many books never get a publisher, but…” She trailed off, realizing with regret that Peter’s negativity had rubbed off on her. There had been a time when she’d never questioned herself.
“Candy will get you a deal. Trust me. She never loses at anything,” Ford said.
“What about you? You mentioned doing the Oprah gig.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“What changed your mind?” She took a sip of her drink, then rested her chin in her hand.
“Maybe it’s someone who changed my mind.”
Andi felt the flush in her cheeks.
“I think I’m done hiding. I’ve found something I want more than privacy,” he said. Reaching over to her bare arm, he trailed his fingers across her forearm, leaving fire everywhere he touched. Shifting his gaze, he watched his dancing fingers as he spoke. “You know, I remember when I got the call from Candy … God, I was down and out. I needed it. Bad. At the time, she hadn’t made much of a name for herself yet. We were just two newbies trying to make our mark.” His hand stopped moving and his eyes took on a faraway gleam as he spoke.
“I had finally broken free of everything holding me back in Bellingham. I’d cut all ties with the drug world. I hadn’t pushed a single thing in over a year, my mentor had been gone that long or more and I was broke. I had spent all I had, which wasn’t much, sailing from city to city. I was at the point where I knew something needed to change. I was hungry most days and figured it was time to grow roots somewhere, at least temporarily, if I didn’t want to starve. But I was scared. Scared everything I had escaped would somehow follow me no matter where I wen
t. When you’re so used to a certain kind of people, a certain lifestyle, it’s easy to fall back into the same patterns.”
Andi watched him as he spoke. She took in his tan forearms and the way he wore his dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves, despite his tie and slacks. His full lips moved over a strong jaw with a hint of dark stubble, and Andi marveled at the way his carefully constructed walls always seemed to crumble when he spoke to her of his life before.
“She called me just as I was docking in a small town just off Rhode Island and told me one editor from a large house had fallen in love with my book, and I landed a contract for $500,000. I about fell right off the side of that old sailboat, and then I was sure I heard her wrong. For days, I thought she must be mistaken.”
He laughed at the memory, and Andi joined him. “What did you do then?” she asked.
“Candy sent me some money. Not much, but enough of her own cash to get me by until they cut my first advance check.”
“She did that?”
Ford took a sip of his champagne. “Yup. Said I wasn’t wasting my time waiting tables or working on a dock somewhere when I had more books to write. She told me to get my ass back on the water and write another. That’s the thing about Candy—when she believes in you, she really believes.”
“And?” Andi rested her face in her palm, fascinated.
“And that’s exactly what I did.” He glanced over at her. “I wrote like a madman the next few years, getting everything down that I could.” He curled his lip. “I didn’t care about the money. Hell, at the time, I did nothing with any of it. I hoarded it away, always afraid something would happen and it would be all gone or I’d be on the streets again. Later, as the pain started to go away and I published more books, life slowed down, and I began to enjoy the fruits of my labor.”
Andi nodded but she sensed something missing in his story. “But?”
He sighed. “You don’t miss much.”
“Maybe I just know you better than you think.”
“Maybe you do,” he said, his voice soft.
“I quickly discovered it didn’t matter how many books I wrote, how much money I made or how many so called ‘friends’ I surrounded myself with. I was lonely.” He toyed with the stem of his glass as he spoke. “For a time, I thought it had something to do with my non-existent relationship with my mother, and so I found her and attempted to repair things, but that proved useless. And then I realized I needed what anyone in this world needs to be happy.”
“What?”
“Love. Someone to share my life with,” he said, meeting her eyes. “And then I met someone.”
Andi hated that she experienced a ridiculous surge of jealousy at the words and also hated herself for trying to figure out who the lucky woman may have been.
“As you can see, though, I’m irreparably single, which doesn’t make it hard to imagine how that worked out.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in love?” she asked.
“I would say I’m more of a cynic. And with good reason.”
“Are you still looking?” Andi couldn’t stop herself. The words were out of her mouth before she could think twice.
He said nothing for a moment, searching Andi’s face as if thinking carefully about his answer. “Something like that.”
Andi lifted her glass to her lips with a shaky hand and took a sip, needing something to distract herself from the energy that coursed between them like an invisible current.
“Back at Candy’s office—” Ford’s eyes gleamed as he spoke “—you said something about ‘sort of’ having a boyfriend. What did you mean by that?”
Andi paused, her glass to her lips, staring at him over the rim. She set it down and played with the clutch in her lap. What could she say when she didn’t even have the answers herself?
“It’s complicated. I don’t know what’s going on, exactly. I haven’t talked to Peter at all this week. I have no idea what’s going to happen to us or even if there is an us anymore.” She shrugged. The admission felt good, and so she went further. “I don’t know if I want there to be an us.”
Ford nodded. “Did you tell him the good news? About getting an agent?”
“No,” she said and realized just how much that one little word revealed about their relationship.
“And what do you think that means? You did something today that only one to two percent of writers do, something that will launch your career, and your first inclination wasn’t to run and call him to share the news. Instead, you’re here with me. Someone who’s very clearly, not Peter. And nothing like him.”
Andi shifted in her seat and took a long drink of her champagne. He was right. And, if she was being honest, everything inside of her wanted him right now.
“You’re not in love with him,” Ford said plainly.
“Peter’s a good guy.”
“I know he is. He’s a great guy. For someone else. Andi…” He grabbed her arms and forced her attention to him. “You need more than what he can give you. He’s not in love with you. He’s in love with … with some false image of you.”
“Please…” She closed her eyes.
“What? Stop? So you can ignore the truth like you’ve been doing?”
Andi said nothing. The warmth of Ford’s hands on her arms, the pleading, determined light in his eyes, seared through her to the bone. And though she knew he was right, she needed confirmation. “How can you be so sure?”
“That day at the cove, when you almost drowned.” He clenched his teeth as if the memory still affected him. “Afterward, when I kissed you …”
Andi gasped. It was real. Her fingers rose to her lips automatically.
“The way you kissed me back. I knew. I knew right then that Peter didn’t own you. Your heart didn’t belong to him. I took a step back after that morning because I realized you could deny it, but you felt for me just as much as I felt for you. And I knew you would come to me. That you were already mine. You just needed time to realize it.”
He pressed her hand to his chest. She spread her fingers, fanning them over the warm contours of his upper body, feeling the faint beat of his heart, until the world around her seemed to grow hazy and her pulse quickened to match the pace of his. She couldn’t think, but for the first time since she met him, she didn’t want to. She was tired of fighting, tired of denying this thing between them, whatever it was.
Her shoulders fell forward and before she could stop herself, she tilted her head up to him and brushed her lips against his. Soft at first, as if from a dream. Then she leaned into him, letting herself melt further into the kiss, deepening it. She teased him with her mouth, her tongue, loving the feel of him so close to her.
She released a breathy moan as Ford’s hands moved to her face, through her hair, to her neck, then her shoulders, as if trying to convince himself she was real. That this wasn’t just a dream, and she wouldn’t disappear the second he opened his eyes.
His tongue brushed hers, and their lips moved together as if they were made only for kissing each other. Her hands moved from his chest to his back, and all she could think about was how he’d breathed the life back into her that day at the cove. How he’d believed in her writing. How she had felt something between them, something special, that very first night at the mill.
“Andi,” he murmured.
The breathy call of her name recalled the image of him from last night, sitting across from her in the dark, calling her name, staring at her with longing and brushing, first his knuckles, then his lips against her cheek. And she realized with sudden clarity that since the day Ford had come into her life, her heart had not been fully Peter’s. Or her own. It had been his.
She pulled away from his embrace, her breathing ragged. His palms were resting on her cheeks again and his eyes were hungry, glittering with desire. She wanted nothing more than to fall back into his arms, go up to their room…
But there was something she had to do first.
“I have to—”
she swallowed, struggling to keep from losing herself in his eyes “—I have to call Peter first. I can’t...” She shook her head. “I have to talk to him. Before—”
“Go.”
With that single word, she left Ford at the bar and made her way to the elevator. She got on and counted the seconds until the doors opened again, then leapt onto the floor. Walking with her head down, she rehearsed what she would say. She focused on her breathing and pressed a hand to her beating heart. She could do this. She could end things with Peter. She had to. It was the right thing. For all of them.
She glanced up as she approached their room and her heart stopped.
“Peter,” she breathed.
Dressed in a suit and tie, Peter sat in front of her door, his face turned down. He glanced up when she said his name and jumped to his feet.
“Finally.” His face relaxed and he smiled at her, as if he wasn’t sure she would be glad to see him. “I’m sorry I took so long to return your calls. I did a lot of thinking. But before you say anything, please hear me out.”
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small black box, held it out and dropped to one knee.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“What are you doing here?” Andi took another step forward, her eyes darting between Peter’s face and the small velvet box.
“I’m on one knee, holding out a ring. I think that’s pretty obvious.” The corner of Peter’s mouth tugged into a smile, but when Andi said nothing, it faded. “Can we go inside to talk?”
Andi stood motionless until the words sunk in. “Oh. Of course. Come on.”
He rose from his knee, as she unlocked the door and stepped into the room. Her heart galloped in her chest and for a moment, she wondered if it was possible to have a heart attack simply from nerves.
She ran her hands through her hair and turned to him, unsure of what to do with herself. Just moments ago, she’d left the bar with nothing but Ford and ending things with Peter on her mind. But now…
“This last week was torture.” He moved toward her and took her hands in his. Andi squeezed, trying to still the shaking. Taking this as affirmation, Peter smiled and ducked his head to catch her gaze. “I know you’re probably wondering why you didn’t hear from me all week. And I’m sure my presence here is a shock. I can’t imagine what you thought when you left for this trip and I still hadn’t reached out to you.”