The Sweetest Thing

Chapter 5

A few days later, Ford was at The Love Shack, out back in the small yard hosing down the tables and chairs. He had his music on low, but no matter how low he kept it, his neighbor next door-Ted the used bookstore owner-would poke his head out and ask for it to be turned down. Ford tried to picture what the guy’s house must look like and decided it was probably all Enya, cats, and houseplants.

Jax, who’d come to help, sat on top of one of the freshly cleaned tables, texting-obviously being hugely helpful.

“Working hard?” Ford asked, heavy on the sarcasm.

All hunched over so he could see his screen in the bright sun, Jax didn’t answer.

“Earth to Jax.”

“Hmm.” Jax’s dark head remained bent, his thumbs flying. “Working hard here, man.”

Ford narrowed his eyes. Once upon a time, Jax had been a hotshot lawyer who wore designer suits and drove a Porsche, but these days he stuck with Levi’s, tees, a beat-up old Jeep, and the laziest dog on the planet. He spent his days renovating and his nights doing Maddie, and he’d never seemed happier. Ford walked behind him to read what he was typing. “ ‘That’s very naughty, little girl; you know what happens to naughty girls,’ ” Ford read out loud. “Looks like work all right.”

Unrepentant, Jax grinned and hit SEND. “Hey, a relationship is work.”

“Yeah, I bet all the sex is killing you.”

“You ought to try it sometime.”

“Daily sex?” Ford asked.

“A relationship, you dumb ass. It’s been a while since… what was her name? That hot snowboarder you dated last winter?”

“Brandy,” Ford said and felt a fond smile cross his mouth.

“Yeah. Brandy.” Jax smiled. “I liked her.”

“That’s because she always hugged you hello and she was stacked.”

“Hey, she was also very nice,” Jax said. “Why did you two break up again?”

“Because her mother kept instant messaging me, asking when I was going to marry her.”

“Which sent you into flight mode,” Jax said. “And what about Kara, the one you actually did almost marry?”

“That was a long time ago. She…” Got a little fame crazy. His fame crazy, back during his serious racing days. “Didn’t work out. And you know all this already.”

“Still haven’t heard a compelling reason for you to be alone,” Jax said, “except that weird inability-to-commit thing you’ve got going.”

“I do not have an inability to commit.”

“Whatever, dude.”

“I don’t!”

“No? Then find someone to be with and let it work out for you.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

Jax slid his phone into his pocket and gave him a once-over. “You’re in a good place, so why not?”

Ford knew damn well that his life, at least on the surface, was in a good place. He had everything he needed, and the ability to get things he didn’t. Which was about as different from his childhood as he could get, having grown up wild and reckless and not giving a shit.

Good thing Jax and Sawyer had. Given a shit. The three adolescent best friends had stuck together like thieves, having each other’s backs through thick and thin. And there’d been a lot of thin. They’d been each other’s family, and still were.

But it wasn’t as if Ford didn’t believe in relationships. He did. In fact, he’d had his share of good ones. He just hadn’t had one that had stuck.

His own fault, as Jax was not so subtly pointing out.

“How about Tara?” Jax asked.

“Huh?”

“Let me rephrase. You ever going to tell me about the thing with her?”

“What thing?”

Jax shook his head in disgust.

Fine. So they all knew there’d been a thing. A huge thing. That one long-ago summer Ford had never been able to forget. He’d been working his ass off, living on his boat so as not to put a bigger burden on his grandmother, and feeling pretty alone and shitty while he was at it. Jax had been sent off to some fancy camp by his father, and Sawyer, the third musketeer, had gone to juvie for some fairly spectacular and innovative “borrowing” of a classic Mustang that unfortunately had belonged to the chief of police at the time.

Ford had been left to his own devices, and even working his fingers to the bone at any and all odd jobs he could get hadn’t kept his mind busy enough. There’d been long, hot nights alone on his boat until Tara had shown up.

With one glare of her angry, whiskey eyes, Ford had lost a piece of his heart.

He’d softened her up. She’d done things for him, too, but making him soft hadn’t been one of them.

They’d burned hard and bright that summer. And when Tara had shown up on his boat in tears, pregnant, they’d had two very different knee-jerk reactions. His had been that they could make it work. They could make a family, a real one. He’d drop out of school and marry her.

But Tara had different ideas. She’d known that she needed to let the baby go, that she couldn’t offer it any kind of life. Between the two of them, only she’d been grown up enough to see past her own grief. She’d explained to Ford that they couldn’t do this, that the baby deserved more than either of them could provide.

And she’d been right. They’d done the right thing. Ford knew that. He’d always known that, but losing the baby had been hard.

Losing Tara had been even harder.

When she’d shown up in Lucky Harbor again after seventeen years, the emotions he’d capped off had easily surfaced again, shockingly so, but he hadn’t worried. He’d known she was only in town to inspect the inn Phoebe had left them. He figured she’d be in and out.

But here it was, six months later, and she was still poking at his old wounds just by being here. He scrubbed a hand over his face. It’d taken him a long time to be okay about all that had happened, but it still haunted him when he let it. He’d done the right thing by signing away his rights to his daughter, he had. He’d done the right thing for both the baby and Tara. But there was always the regret.

Since that time, he’d done his damnedest to live his life in such a way that there were no more regrets, so that he called the shots. And yeah, maybe he did so to the point of being too ready to just let things go.

And people.

He shrugged. It’d all worked out fine. Or it would have, but now Tara was back in his world, and in no apparent hurry to leave.

She’d lived her life very carefully, with purpose. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. And what she didn’t. Ford knew he belonged firmly in the latter category.

Worked for him. He was an unhappy memory to her. And a risk, a bad one. He got that. But defying all logic, their attraction was still strong.

“You look like you just had a Hallmark movie moment with yourself,” Jax said.

Ford ignored him and turned to the gate as someone came through.

Carlos. The kid often came by looking for extra work in spite of the fact that he already worked at the inn and also bussed at the diner, on top of going to school and being head of his grandmother’s household.

A situation that Ford understood all too well. “Hey. Need some hours?”

“No, I’m good,” Carlos said. “I’m on at the inn today. Maddie sent me into town to get some stuff. She asked me to come by and tell you that tonight’s the night.”

Ford nodded. “Tell her to consider it done.”

“Consider what done?” Jax asked.

“The inn’s appliances were delivered today,” Ford told him. “Maddie asked me to stock their kitchen tonight, as a surprise for Tara.”

Jax raised a brow. “Really?” he said, his tone suggesting that he found this little tidbit fascinating.

“Like you don’t know that Maddie burns water,” Ford said. “And Chloe would probably booby-trap the place just to irritate Tara. So Maddie asked me to do it. It’s no big deal.”

“I just find it interesting that you’re helping the woman that you claim to not be interested in,” Jax said in his annoying, lawyerly logical voice.

Ford had never claimed not to be interested, and Jax knew it. He’d simply refused to talk about it.

“Maddie said to remind you that it’s a surprise,” Carlos said. He grimaced and shuffled his weight, looking uncomfortable now. “She said I should mention that twice, since you don’t always take direction well.”

Jax grinned proudly at this. “That’s my woman.”

“And she said you’re to stay out of it,” Carlos said to Jax in apology. “She said… ah, hell.” The kid pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “You’re not to poke at Ford,” he read. “You’re to leave him alone or else you can forget about tonight.” Carlos carefully folded Maddie’s note back up and didn’t look at either man directly.

“That’s your woman,” Ford said to Jax dryly.

“Let me see that.” Jax snatched the note from Carlos, unfolding it again to take a look. “Damn, she really did write that.” He handed it back.

“So the inn will be empty?” Ford asked the kid.

Carlos nodded. “Maddie said she has plans with Jax-assuming he doesn’t mess with you over this. Chloe’s giving a yoga class at the rec center. And Tara will be out.”

“Out,” Ford said. “Out where?”

Carlos hesitated and went back to his notes, even turning the paper over, but apparently there was nothing there to help him.

Ford thought of all the things that “out” could mean. She could be out bossing people around at the diner. She could be out shopping for more of those fantasy-inducing, uppity clothes she favored. Hell, maybe she was out making a list on how to further stomp on his heart.

Nah, she’d already done that.

“She has a date,” Carlos finally said.

“A date?” Jax looked surprised. “Tara?”

If things had been different, Ford might have laughed. As it was, suddenly he couldn’t breathe very well. Captain Walker to Air Traffic Control, we have a fucking problem. “A date,” he repeated.

Carlos was edging his way back to the gate. “Yeah, that’s what Maddie said.”

Huh. Ford should like the idea of her dragging some other guy’s heart through the mud instead of his, but Tara on a date. Nope, he could roll it around in his head as much as he wanted, he still hated it.

Tara’s blind date had made dinner reservations for them at a sushi joint in the next town over.

Probably for the best.

She’d asked Boyd to pick her up at the diner because one, she didn’t want to have to go back to the inn to change after her shift, and two-and she really hated to admit this even to herself-she didn’t want Ford to be at the marina and possibly see her getting picked up. She couldn’t explain that one even to herself.

What she hadn’t expected was for Boyd to be several inches shorter than her, fifty pounds heavier, and dressed in a suit. “Do you eat here for free?” Boyd asked. “Because we could stay here tonight if that’s the case.”

“Wow,” Jan whispered as Tara walked by her perpetually grumpy boss. “He’s a catch.”

Tara ignored her.

“Do you have flats?” Boyd asked. “Because looking up at you makes my neck hurt. No offense.”

Perfect. Because now they were going to have to go back to the inn after all, so she could change into flats.

It wasn’t as if she was an Amazon, she thought to herself as they walked the pier to Boyd’s car. Most men seemed to be okay with her height. Sure, once in a while she wished she was shorter so she could actually feel… petite. Protected.

Just right.

But the truth was that only one man had ever made her feel that way.

“I just really hate having a neck ache,” Boyd said.

He hated a neck ache, and she hated a headache, which she could feel coming on. This did not bode well for the evening ahead. For a moment, she looked past the Ferris wheel, eyeing the way the pier jutted from the beach into the ocean almost as far as she could see, and wished she was…

Sailing.

Ridiculous. She got into Boyd’s car. He kept his eyes on the road as he drove slowly toward the inn. Slowly, as in a-herd-of-turtles-stampeding-through-peanut-butter slowly. The guy didn’t pass a single indent in the road that didn’t require a nearly complete stop. When they finally pulled up before the inn, Tara checked for gray hair while Boyd took a good look at the place.

Tara looked, too. She was so damn proud of what she and her sisters had done here. It’d been a long haul but the beach inn looked warm and welcoming, and she couldn’t wait to see it filled with guests.

“Are you going to paint it?” Boyd asked.

“Yes.” In fact, the painters were due tomorrow. She’d been waiting for a week. If they didn’t show, she was going to get out a paintbrush and do it herself.

“Because it really needs to be painted if you want to make any money.”

“We’re aware,” Tara said as mildly as she could. “Thanks. I’ll change my shoes and be right back.”

“No, offense,” he said, getting out of the car with her. “But in my experience, letting a date out of my sight never works out well for me.”

Surprise. And if he said “no offense” one more time tonight, living wasn’t going to work out well for him.

Boyd smiled grimly. “I don’t think I make the best first impression.”

“Maybe if you didn’t require them to be shorter than you, that would help,” Tara said.

He nodded. “That’s good advice.”

They walked up the steps to the inn. “Hey,” Boyd said. “You could cook for us here; I wouldn’t mind. Grandma said you were an amazing chef. What do you suppose you could whip up?”

A major attitude, that’s what she could whip up. Bless his heart. And to make it worse, she was craving comfort food for some reason, hankering for hot fried chicken and cold potato salad like nobody’s business. Which proved that while you could take the girl out of the south, you couldn’t really take the south out of the girl. “I haven’t stocked the kitchen yet,” she said. Not to mention that she’d just spent the past eight hours on her feet cooking at the diner. “Our appliances were just delivered. I haven’t even unpacked the dishes.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.” He followed her inside, right on her heels, taking the whole not-letting-her-out-of-his-sight thing very seriously. As she moved through the bottom level on the brand new wood floors, Tara drew in a deep, satisfied breath at the scent of fresh paint and polished wood. More pride filled her, as well as something more, that sense of…

Home.

She was still basking in the surprise of that sensation when she realized someone was rattling around in the kitchen.

The place was empty tonight, or was supposed to be, but there was a light beneath the double kitchen doors and from the other side she heard the low, unbearably familiar voice that she’d have recognized anywhere.

“Oh, fuck, yeah.” Ford, speaking low and husky. “That’s the way, baby. Just like that.”

Boyd blinked at Tara. “Uh, that sounds a little like someone’s… you know.”

Yeah. She did know.

“That’s right, nice and deep,” came Ford’s voice. “Right up the center.”

Tara turned back to Boyd to tell him to wait and bumped right into him. “Stay,” she said firmly, and pushed open the door to face her sexy-as-hell intruder doing God-knew-what in her kitchen.