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“Marin’s was a disaster!” I cried.
Asher gave me a smug smirk. “Yes, but it pushed her into the arms of her true love. And look at Layla. She and Jude are happy as pigs in mud.”
“That was a lucky coincidence,” I reminded her. “You guys set her up with the neighbor she’d been plotting to murder for months!”
“In everyone’s defense, we didn’t know that was who we were fixing her up with.”
“If there hadn’t been an underlying attraction, that date would have ended in a blood bath.”
She looked at me, narrowing her eyes in warning. “Well, it’s too late to back out now. Because there’s the guy,” she whispered just as averyattractive, very tall, extremely built man lifted his arm in a wave before breaking off from his group and coming in our direction.
“Oh my damn,” I said on a quiet gust of breath.
“Yeah. I told you,” she said smugly. “Like I’d set you up with just anyone.”
All of a sudden, I wished I’d taken the time to dig through my drawer early this morning to find the pushup bra that did incredible things for my boobs instead of slapping on the first one my hand touched, which I was pretty sure was an old nursing bra from back when Hazel was a baby.
Son of a bitch.
9
FORD
“Hey, man. Glad you could make it. I didn’t know whether or not you were on shift.”
I stopped beside Owen, who was currently manning a grill larger than any I’d seen before, instantly giving me a raging case of grill envy—not to be confused with what afflicted men with small dicks and made them go out to purchase massive trucks as compensation.
“Glad to be here. The new house looks great. Congratulations.” I clapped him on the shoulder and took the beer he had grabbed from the cooler at his feet and extended my way. I popped the cap with ease and brought it to my lips for a generous pull.
“Thanks. You been inside yet?”
I turned to the sliding glass door off the deck, the one Hardin had disappeared into when we first arrived. I’d fucked up. I wasn’t sure how, all I knew for certain was I had. One moment she’d been laughing and smiling, making my dick stir in my jeans, and the next there was a wall of ice between us. Her smile went from stunning to fake and the light in her beautiful eyes blinked out. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t put my finger on the cause of it.
I’d wanted to follow her inside, make her talk to me, but that would have been wrong for so many reasons. The feelings she’d been stirring inside me lately had no business reaching their way to the surface. Hardin Shields was a forever kind of woman, and I didn’t have that kind of commitment in me. I’d done the forever thing once before, and it had blown up in my face in the worst possible way. I wasn’t going down that road again. I couldn’t. It had nearly destroyed me. I’d managed to pull myself out of the wreckage, but I’d come out a different man.
I forced myself back into the present and lifted the beer bottle to my lips, taking a large gulp to parch my suddenly dry throat. “No, not yet.”
“No problem. I’ll give you a tour later. Just need to finish cooking. I should have started earlier. Asher rode my ass to do that, but I didn’t listen.” He pointed his large grilling spatula at me threateningly. “You better never tell her I admitted that.”
I chuckled around the mouth of my beer bottle. “Your secret’s safe with me, man.”
“Uncle Owen! Uncle Owen!” a tiny voice shouted, followed closely by his niece, Hazel, running up to us.
My heart wrenched just like it did every time I saw her. She shared features with Owen, having his same eye and hair color, but her beauty came straight from her mother. Her little smile packed a wallop, slamming right into your chest every time she hit you with one. I knew from experience, because every time the little girl smiled at me, I struggled to breathe. From everything I’d witnessed, she was a great kid, a testament to Hardin as a mother, but I’d made sure to keep my distance over the past four years.
It was wrong to put the memories of my past on a little girl’s shoulders, but it wasn’t exactly something I could help.
She gripped a paper plate in her hands with an open-faced hamburger bun slathered in so much ketchup it looked like the bread was bleeding. She leaned in close to her uncle and whispered conspiratorially, “Is it ready?”
He grinned down at her, adoration clear as day on his face as he held a finger over his lips. He slid a single hamburger patty, the only one in the bunch with a slice of cheese, off the grill and onto the waiting bun. “What’s the rule, kiddo?”
Her face grew hilariously serious. “That you’ll sneak my food early if I hide around the side of the house to eat it so no one else will know.”
He arched a brow and waited for more, causing her to giggle. The sound warmed my chest and pierced my heart at the same time. “And?”
“I’ll sneak you two of Mommy’s blondies.”
“Good girl.” Owen ruffled her hair and looked to me. “What do you say, Ford? You want in on this action? My Hazel girl here is all stealth. She can squirrel away as many as we want without anyone knowing.”
