Read Online Now and Then by Mira Lyn Kelly - Free Book Online Page A

it?”
    It had been.
    As it pertained to men in general, she’d been good with how simple her life was. How she didn’t have anyone else to worry about—aside from her immediate family, of course, but that worry never went away. And because it didn’t, the last thing she wanted was some extraneous guy offering his judgment on a situation he would never be able to comprehend—a complicated dynamic she wouldn’t want to explain. A problem that could remain hers and hers alone as long as she kept the walls up and the emotional interlopers out.
    But relating to Ford specifically? Fine, there were times when she’d been lonely. When she remembered what it had been like to have Ford’s arms around her and she missed it. Missed that connection and feeling of belonging, of being part of a whole. She missed that sense of the world falling away when he kissed her and she missed knowing he was there for her, even when she couldn’t let him be. And yes, there were times when she’d been desperate for someone to talk to, to lean on. Someone to hold her when the injustice of it all felt too much. When she wished it could have been him almost as much as she was grateful it wasn’t.
    Sure, she had friends. Friends like the guys out in the bar. People she joked and chatted with on a superficial level, but didn’t let get too close. Which was for her protection as much as theirs. Heck, even Jet, the one person who knew where she’d come from and what her life had been like. Who knew about Ford. Even with him, she kept the walls between them. Safer that way.
    Smarter.
    Lonelier.
    But mostly she knew better than to give in to something as selfish as loneliness. Mostly she’d been able to convince herself she had everything she needed…until she’d seen him again.
    And now?
    Ford planted a palm against the wall above her head and leaned in closer still. His mouth and jaw teased through the hair at her temple in that way that made her senseless. His lips rubbed over the sensitive shell of her ear, curving when that betraying little moan escaped and her hands met the hard planes of his chest. “Is
Fred
giving you everything you need, Brynn?”
    “Please,” she whispered, no longer sure of what she was begging for.
    Using his free hand to cup the side of her face, he brushed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip in a slow, back-and-forth caress that sent a shot of desire straight through the center of her.
    “If he was,” Ford continued, “I don’t think you’d be looking at me the way you are right now.”
    “How am I looking at you?” she asked, needing to know what it was Ford saw, when all she felt was confused.
    “Like you want me, almost as bad as I want you.”
    A weak breath trembled past her lips, taking the last of her resistance with her. Because when he stood this close to her, that ache in her veins, the compulsion to touch him, to feel more than the warm puffs of his breath in her hair, became unbearable.
    Ford was right. She needed more.
    She wanted it. And maybe, despite the fact that her dad was about to crash back into her life and she was sure to feel it like a grenade, maybe it didn’t have to mean Ford would. Maybe no one had to know they were together. Or if someone figured it out, the fact that Ford was really just an average guy working two jobs to keep up would keep him off her dad’s radar. Maybe she could stop worrying about all the things that might go wrong and just enjoy this one thing that for the first time in too long felt so right.
    “Stop thinking so hard, Brynn. This doesn’t have to be anything more than right now.”
    Her heart skipped at the possibility. “It doesn’t?”
    Ford searched her eyes. “Not if you don’t want it to.”
    Want
wasn’t the issue.
    “Kiss me, Ford,” she whispered into the scant space between them.
    Ford’s fingers delved deep into her hair as he promised, “So good, you won’t remember Fred’s name.”
    And then his mouth was coming down on