Now and Then (4 page)

And now she was floating. Or rather stumbling.
They
were stumbling down the hall toward Ford’s bedroom, desperate hands pulling at clothes still in the way, feet catching together until finally, Ford wrapped his arms around her and straightened, pulling her up and against him. Completely off the floor.

She giggled breathlessly as he carried her the rest of the way.

“You’re strong,” she gasped, running her hands over his shoulders and back, finding muscles bigger than she’d remembered beneath his shirt.

“Yeah?” he answered with another one of those grins she kept getting caught up in. “You like it?”

She nodded, because what wasn’t to like? He’d had a beautiful body at nineteen, but this, now—she couldn’t stop touching him, running her fingers between the valleys and cuts delineating each muscle. Licking at the strong column of his neck. Pulling more at his clothes because she didn’t want her mind to have even a second to think about what she was doing and how bad a mistake it might be.

All she wanted was to feel. Just give in.

Something she never let herself do, but being with Ford was different. She trusted him. No matter how many years had passed.

Ford cut to the left, and they were inside his bedroom. His hold on her loosened, allowing her to slide down his body, even as their kiss continued. Her toes touched the ground and he bowed her back, his mouth burning a trail over her jaw and neck.

“Jesus, Brynn, I can’t believe you’re really here,” he growled against her tender skin.

She shouldn’t be, but before that thought had even a second to take root, to taint something so incredible, she shifted her focus to getting beneath Ford’s clothes.

Her hands roamed over his chest and stomach to where she gathered his shirt and pushed it up and up and—
oh God,
his body was so nice. Lean packed muscles that flexed and shifted as he raised his arms to help her get his shirts off, bisected by a narrow trail of dark hair, starting at his navel and winding down into jeans that hung just right. Jeans that were straining at the fly.

Her breath caught.

Straining a lot.

She didn’t know what she wanted to touch first. Where to put her mouth. How to make the most of the playground in front of her. But then Ford was pushing her sweater off her shoulders, helping her out of the T-shirt, and dropping to his knees to kiss the skin across her belly while he unbuttoned her jeans. He tongued her navel and her fingers locked into the dark silk of his hair, tightening when he groaned and licked again.

Her body was vibrating with need and tension, her breasts swollen and her sex wet. Backing onto the bed, she felt the tight pulse between her legs at the sight of Ford crawling over her.

This was crazy. It was ten years since they’d been together, but when she looked at his face, into those eyes, at that smile—everything this man had meant to her was
still
right there. Even if that wasn’t what this night was about.

Stop thinking about it!

Ford met her mouth for another kiss, this one burning hotter than the ones that had come before. His tongue thrust past her lips, making her gasp around him as she felt that sexy, slick penetration all the way down to her toes. Her hips raised to meet the thick ridge still contained in his jeans and they moaned together.

Their bodies became a tangle of limbs, desperate and greedy.

He felt so good above her, but she couldn’t stop the voice in the back of her mind warning that he deserved better—

“Ford?” she asked desperately, aching to give herself over completely, but knowing she couldn’t like this.

His head came up from where he’d been devouring her neck. His hair was a sexy mess shooting in a hundred directions at once. It looked good on him, but she couldn’t let herself get distracted. He needed to know this was a one-time thing before they went any further.

“What is it, beautiful?” he asked, and then froze above her, his body going tense and his face blank.

She heard it, too, the faint strains of “Rock-a-bye Baby” sounding from somewhere in the apartment. Ford’s face broke into the widest grin she’d seen yet. He planted a hard kiss on her lips and started backing off the bed in a rush.

“I am so sorry about this, Brynn. Believe me, there’s only one thing in this world that could get me out of bed with you, and
this is it.
Maggie and Tyler Wells, the friends I told you about earlier—they’re having their baby.”

She remembered. It was the reason he’d had only the one beer, in case he needed to drive.

Responsible, reliable Ford.

She bet he never let down the people who counted on him.

“Oh Ford, that’s amazing,” she said, hopping out of bed and grabbing for her clothes, a nervous energy vibrating through her bones. Because she’d almost—and they shouldn’t—and as badly as she’d wanted to, it was so much better that they hadn’t. “I’ll be out of here in a flash.”

“No.” He stilled her scramble with a hand on her bare shoulder, the heat nearly searing her skin. “Look, I have to go, like now. I need to get the car and pull it around front and I’m going with them to the hospital. But you don’t have to leave.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, letting his eyes rove around the room before meeting hers and holding. “You could stay. Sleep here.”

Her lips parted on a protest, but he was already going on. “I know that sounds nuts, I know it’s too soon and we’ve barely started to catch up. But Jesus, Brynn, I know you feel it, too. So…stay. I want you to stay. We can talk in the morning. I’ll make you breakfast.”

Not trusting her tight throat to words, she nodded, hoping her smile held up under the open, honest eyes searching her face.

It must have, because he leaned in, the smile not leaving his lips as he kissed her once and then started backing out of the room fast. “This is going to be good, Brynn. I’ll see you when I get back.”

Three minutes later, Ford and his friends had pulled away from the front of the building and five minutes after that, Brynn let herself out. A single sheet of paper lay folded on top of Ford’s pillow with the most honest thing she’d given him all night written in blue ink.

This was a mistake. I’m sorry.

Ford balled the sheet of paper and fired it across the room. He was beat, whipped from the roller coaster the past seven hours had been—the pure fucking happiness over seeing Brynn again, laughing with her and taking her in his arms; the rush of adrenaline pumping urgency and anxious tension while he waited to make sure Maggie and her baby were okay, the joy and relief when he saw with his own eyes they were, when he touched that perfect little head of dark hair and so-tiny fist—and then
this.

A nut-crushing combination of disappointment, frustration, and just enough humiliation to ensure there was no way he missed it.

God
damn
it, she’d done it again.

Brynn had spent the day hiding out in her less-than-a-month-old apartment, contemplating subletting the place and moving back to the South Loop where, through six years of living in Chicago, she’d never
once
run into Ford Meyers. Of course moving again wasn’t really an option. She did okay money-wise with her MLB and NBA shooting schedules, but after the last hit to her savings—
thanks, Dad
—and the money she was kicking in to cover her mom’s mortgage, she wasn’t comfortable risking a sublet falling through and getting stuck with two monthly payments or, worse, having to buy herself out of a lease. Which meant she was just going to have to suck it up and stay.

A hard truth that would have gone down a hell of a lot easier with a pint of Cherry Dark Chocolate and a Cousins Sub. Maybe a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Or even a slice of toast. Anything, but she’d gone through her last package of ramen for breakfast and the sole inhabitants of her fridge—a four-day-old half-eaten Big Mac and the two-weeks-expired quart of milk she hadn’t braved up enough to face pouring down the drain yet—were off the table.

She’d planned on grocery shopping this morning. But that was before she realized Ford Meyers lived less than four blocks from her apartment.

Ugh.

Wrapping her favorite Milwaukee Brewers blanket around her shoulders, she pushed off her couch and shuffled to the window, squinting down West Le Moyne Street, and—yep, perfect, she was pretty sure that sliver of gray way down there was his place.

She could never go out again.

A plan she’d be totally on board with if not for the ominous grumble originating in her empty stomach, reminding her she was hungry. More like gnaw-off-a-limb starving, which meant she was going to have to go out.

Squinting harder, she wondered if she got a telescope if she’d be able to see Ford’s front door. Not because she was some kind of stalker, but just so she could keep tabs on where he was. Like, when he left the apartment. When he got back. Maybe take a few notes on his schedule, so she’d know when it was safe to risk venturing outdoors and
not
run into him.

Another plaintive cry from her stomach and she shrugged off her blanket in a huff, tossing it over the back of her La-Z-Boy recliner. She was being ridiculous. Ford Meyers wasn’t the bogeyman. He couldn’t be everywhere at once. Heck, Wicker Park wasn’t that small and she’d gone a solid month living there without seeing him, which meant chances were good she’d go at least that long without seeing him again. And worst case, even if she did run into him, so what? They’d kissed and she’d realized it was a mistake.
It happened.

They’d be adults about it.

Mature. Totally mature.

That’s what she’d thought right up until the minute she’d been sweeping a shelf of snacks into her cart at Go Grocer and looked up to see Ford walk through the front entrance.

Shit,
he was running on fumes. Barely functioning after no sleep the night before and dealing with his too exuberant sister, who’d been springing around his place all day, demanding information about the lipstick on his T-shirt from the night before and gushing over the sheer perfection of little Penelope Anne Wells. And yeah, the baby was cute as hell. But Ava bubbling away while he tried not to think about Brynn and the taste of her lips and the feel of her pressed so close to his body and those half-desperate little noises she made when he’d kissed the place where her neck and shoulder met—
shit,
he was doing it again.

And he really didn’t want to.

Because last night with Brynn had been good. And even though it hadn’t been more than a handful of hours, there was something about being with her again, talking and laughing with her, that just clicked. It felt right in a way things never seemed to feel right to him.

But apparently all that right-feeling goodness was just a mistake.

Fuck.

So he was beat, burned out in both body and mind. Too tired to hit a restaurant, too irritable to deal with delivery, too stir-crazy to throw anything together from his fully stocked fridge. Which was why he’d started walking—and ended up at Go Grocer.

And seriously, as wiped as he was, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed her if the blur of motion at the farthest edge of his periphery hadn’t stalled, going stone still, before doing this crazy sort of dodging left, then right, left, right, little hand flail and then jumping back to—and this was pure speculation, but he was pretty confident about it—
hide
behind the aisle.

At which point all that
burned-out, beat,
and
wiped
evaporated beneath the stylish overhead track lighting. His senses sharpened. His focus closed in, narrowing down to one…single…thing. That ribbon of red curl dangling free of the Brewers ball cap he’d seen just before it disappeared around the corner.

Brynn.

Ford stood where he was, arms crossed, debating whether to follow her to the back of the store or let her be and just head up to Olivia’s Market instead. Give her the break she’d obviously been looking for. Only then he thought about the way she’d been looking at
him
last night. When he first caught her in that bear hug from which he hadn’t wanted to let her free and while they’d been talking. And after, when he’d had her back at his place. Beneath him, on his bed.

“This was a mistake.”

Maybe it was. He turned for the front of the store, but instead of walking out, hung back as the curves he’d had his hands all over the night before skulked down the next aisle.

What was one more mistake when it came to this girl?

The cart emerged first with Brynn white-knuckling the handle from behind, her head ducked low to near Quasimodo proportions. And beneath her coat, another sweet tee. This one yellow, with a quote from the cult classic
Donny Darko
scrawled within that twisted bunny graphic.

Man, he couldn’t get enough of this girl.

“Hey, Brynn,” he greeted, not bothering to keep the “gotcha” out of his tone as he leaned over her cart, and, feeling just the slightest bit evil, added, “Almost didn’t recognize you there.”

“Ford, I…uh…I—” Color burst into her cheeks in a satisfying rush, but not nearly so satisfying as the color he’d seen in them when she’d been panting his name less than twelve hours earlier.

He raised a brow, watching as she struggled for something to say, her rosy lips trying to take shape around a few different words that refused to come. Finally, she let out an unsteady breath and swore. Skillfully, before trying to correct it with some benign PG alternative. Damn, he’d missed that conflicted mouth of hers.

There were a lot of ways the next minutes could go, some more predictable than others, but in the end Ford opted for the path Brynn would be least expecting.

“Want to see a picture of the baby?” he asked, holding out his phone in offering.

Maybe it wasn’t playing fair, tripping her up with Penelope’s wrinkled little mug, but then maybe fair wasn’t Ford’s highest priority.

“Oh my God,” she cooed in that reverent way females did when confronted with a tiny fresh one. “She’s adorable.”

His shoulder brushed against hers as he admired the one-day-old darling he was shamelessly using for personal gain. “She is. There are a bunch of pictures—scroll through if you want.”

Brynn glanced up at him, her eyes anxious and guilty. Not the look he wanted to see in them at all, so he leaned closer and, sweeping his finger over the screen, flipped to the next snap.

“Precious!”

Then she was flipping through herself, admiring a little puckered kiss in one, the shock of monkey hair in the next, what she called a Cheerio mouth, and—his personal favorite—the snap he’d caught of Penelope double-fisting her parents’ fingers. One in each hand, banded across the smallest belly he’d ever seen.

But then his attention shifted from the pictures he’d already looked at a dozen times that day to the woman he’d been hoping to find in his bed when he’d returned in the early hours of the morning. The woman he needed to understand better if he wanted a shot with her.

And he did. There was something primal about the way he felt with her. It was unreasonable. Irrational. And he didn’t fucking care, because that feeling was so good, the only thing that mattered was making sure he got more.

But instead of giving in to the instinct to make
more
happen by backing her into the closest corner and working that sweet spot beneath her ear until she pleaded with him to take her right there, or just as tempting but with fewer law enforcement ramifications, throwing her over his shoulder and carting her back to his bed where he’d start with the aforementioned sweet spot and work his way south until her fingers were knotted in his hair, he had the taste of her on his tongue, and she was begging him not to stop, ever—he was going to play it differently.

“You have anything real in here?” he asked, riffling through crackers, popcorn, and chips, finding nothing he’d even remotely associate with an actual meal. “It’s all snack stuff.”

Brynn raised a single shoulder in response, showing him the phone like he’d never seen the pictures on it. “She’s so itty-bitty in your arms!”

Yeah, she was. Light, too. And in truth, he hadn’t taken a steady breath until she’d been back in Tyler’s hold.

“You picking up anything for dinner?” he asked, starting to push the cart and smiling to himself as Brynn followed him into the next aisle.

“Maybe some pasta stuff—look at you guys with your Santa hats on. Love that Maggie wore the red stretch suit with that big belly.”

So she’d kept going past the baby pictures, which meant, mistake or not, she’d still been curious about him. “Yeah, she’s a lot of fun. Loved being pregnant, especially once she started getting really round.” Then, pulling over at the pasta section, he selected a jar from the shelf and added it to the cart. He added noodles. Moved to the next aisle and threw in a spring salad.

Brynn walked beside him, her focus no longer on the phone.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she offered, quietly, her eyes meeting his for only the briefest contact.

Stopping the cart, he turned to her. Tried not to get caught up in her eyes or distracted by her mouth—which was parted the slightest bit, teasing him with a hint of wetness where she’d moistened her lip.
Christ.
What he said now and how he said it would mean the difference between seeing Brynn again and having her jumping behind lampposts every time their paths crossed in the future.

“You mean because of the way you took advantage of me right there on the street?” he asked, fighting for a straight face when her chin pulled back in surprise. Not what she’d been expecting him to say—
good.
“Look, I wasn’t going to bring it up. But since you did, apology accepted.”

And yeah, definitely the right call on that one, because now the color playing around in Brynn’s cheeks was the kind that didn’t make either of them feel guilty or bad. And that smile pushing hard at her lips—yeah, that was all his.

“So
I
took advantage of
you
?”

Tongue pushing against a back molar, he nodded. “And then threw me away like yesterday’s news. Gotta say, I felt cheap.” He’d felt fantastic. Better than he could remember in years. Right up until he found her gone. “Used.”

“Dirty?” she offered, with a look that said she just hadn’t been able to resist.

He leaned closer, so his lips nearly brushed her ear. Voice low, he answered, “
Very
dirty.”

Those Irish eyes went wide and Brynn stared up at him, her breath unsteady, her body still so close.

And then, because he was right there and he couldn’t resist, he caught the brim of her cap and gently pulled it off. Streams of loose curls tumbled around her face and shoulders in a haphazard spill that had his fingertips tingling as he remembered the way all that softness had felt between them the night before. The years before.

That same feeling hit him again.
This is right.

Another trembling breath and her eyes closed, her body swaying infinitesimally closer to his. He could give in to that urge building hot and hard within him, lean into the closing space between them and kiss her. God knew he wanted to—only some small rational part of him which miraculously hadn’t shut down with the rest of his brain function when he’d heard that too tempting shuddering breath knew it would be a mistake. And not just because they were standing in the middle of the Go Grocer—though as far as
game
went, he didn’t have to check the manual to know moves made in the refrigerated aisle scored negative points—but also because
nothing
had changed since the night before…and until it did, he wasn’t willing to risk what might well be his last shot with Brynn on it.

So instead of sliding his fingers deep into the thick mass of her hair and taking the kiss that would lead to all the more-than-kissing every part of him was begging for, Ford wrapped a single lock around his finger and gave it a light tug.

Brynn’s eyes popped open, a furrow digging its way between her brows when she realized he’d stepped back instead of closer.

“Hey, load some actual food into your cart here. I’m going to grab a basket and pick up a few things myself.”

“Oh, um, o-okay,” she stammered, looking adorably perplexed. And why wouldn’t she. Ford couldn’t imagine any guy in his right mind taking a pass on—well, shit, anything that Brynn Ahearne was offering. But that was exactly what he was going to do, because unless he wanted the same result he’d gotten last night, the next time he got Brynn anywhere near a bed…she was going to be the one dragging him to it.