Chapter Thirty-two

Mia loved being in Ford’s audience with her parents and brothers. Considering how much Ford meant to her, it was strange to realize she’d only ever seen him play one show—the night they met. He hadn’t had any more tour dates that week they’d holed up in the hotel, and then after they’d broken up, she couldn’t bear the thought of watching him play. As excited as the capacity crowd clearly was for him to take the stage now that the opening act was over, Mia knew no one’s anticipation could match her own.

Her parents had arrived not long after she’d emerged from his dressing room. Her mother gave Ford a hug and her father’s handshake was warm and totally welcoming. Dylan had arrived next, looking like he’d come straight from one of his boats again. But where, Mia wondered, was Adam?

Reading her mind, her mother put a reassuring arm around Mia’s shoulders. “He’ll be here. Don’t worry.”

As though those were the magic words, Adam suddenly appeared. He was trying to act cool about their special boxed-off seats right at the front of the stage, but Mia knew it was his rock ’n roll dream come true.

Tempted to punch him again for making her worry that he was still upset about her dating Ford, Mia handed him her Slushie instead. If their positions had been reversed and her brother was falling for a woman whom she wasn’t sure would stick around through thick and thin, Mia knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut, either. They loved each other too much to stand by quietly while someone hurt them.

Adam took the peacemaking drink from her and after a long sip where he demolished half of it, the lights on stage and throughout the stadium went completely black. The hooting and hollering began in earnest alongside the chanting of Ford’s name.

And then there he was, her beautiful rock star, standing in the middle of the spotlight, effortlessly commanding the attention of the massive crowd.

From the first note he played on the same electric guitar that she’d held in his dressing room while he made love to her, Mia was utterly spellbound. His songs, his musicianship, his humor, his intensity—every single aspect of Ford’s show was simply mind blowing. Add in the fact that he singled her out in the huge crowd and sang all of his love songs straight to her, and Mia ended up so lost in the music that ninety minutes later she was more than a little surprised when the lights suddenly went up for intermission.

After her parents and Dylan told her how great they thought Ford was, then left to go pick up some T-shirts for everyone before he came out to play his second set, she knew Adam had stayed behind because he wanted to say something to her.

“You were right,” he grudgingly admitted. “Ford’s a good guy. “

She grinned, thanking God that her brother didn’t have the faintest clue what Ford had done to her in his backstage dressing room two hours earlier. “I know. And I want you to know that you shouldn’t feel too bad about the way you behaved through most of dinner, because I’m planning on being just as tough when you finally fall in love.”

Clearly intent on ignoring her sisterly threat, Adam gestured toward the massive crowd behind them. “I don’t know many people who would give all this up the way Ford said he’s going to. He really does love you, Mia.”

She knew her brother was only trying to finally say the right thing and let her know that he approved of her relationship, but instead of relaxing her, the reminder that Ford intended to give up shows like this for her made her chest clench tight.

Adam was leaving their box just as Natasha stepped into it. “I’ve never seen Ford perform like this. Honestly, it’s one of the best rock concerts I’ve seen in my entire life. I knew you’d be good for him, Mia, but I had no idea that the change would be this big. He was amazing before, but now...” The filmmaker grinned. “Well, I don’t need to tell you. You were here. You saw it for yourself.”

And she had. She’d seen how happy he made people. How deeply he inspired them.

She’d told herself that she needed to see for herself whether he was truly giving up touring because of her, or if he was ready to retire from shows anyway. Now she knew the truth.

Ford should be nowhere close to retiring.

Right when she had finally admitted to both herself and Ford that she loved him with every last piece of her heart, Mia had to face the painful truth: He didn’t belong stuck in a waterfront house in Seattle with her trying to keep himself busy with projects while she ran her real estate business.

He belonged to this.

Natasha pressed her finger to her earpiece and listened carefully for a moment before nodding her head and saying, “Sure, I’ll let her know.” She looked at Mia. “Ford would like you to come backstage before he goes back on.” Natasha laughed and rolled her eyes. “Typical rock star stuff, right?”

Mia made herself laugh along with the other woman, even though she could no longer ignore the twisting of her gut. And the snippets of conversation she heard from Ford’s fans as she walked past them to get to the side of the stage only reinforced what she now knew she’d need to do.

“I’ve been sober for five years, ever since I saw Ford play live and I told myself all I needed to do was make it from one show to the next.”

“I never would have picked up a guitar if I hadn’t wanted to play along to his songs and now I teach music in schools.”

“I was having the worst day before I got here tonight, and now it’s one of my all-time best.”

Natasha disappeared to join her film crew as soon as they found Ford. He was talking with his drummer, but when he saw Mia, he quickly closed the distance between them and picked her up to swing her in a circle.

“I love having you here tonight.”

Her throat felt tight as she said, “Your show is amazing, Ford. I didn’t forget how good you were, but seeing you on stage again is just mind blowing.”

He kissed her, then, and she poured all of her love for him into it.

“I love you, too,” he whispered against her lips. “Stay backstage for the rest of the show. Right here where I can see you, where I can come and kiss you anytime I need to. Like now.” He traced her lips with his tongue. “And now.” The gentle bite of his teeth against her lower lip made her knees even weaker than they already were.

His band had already launched into the opening bars of the first song of his second set when she whispered, “I would do anything for you.”

And a few minutes later, as she listened to Ford thank the crowd for all the great years they’d given him on the road, knowing it was his way of saying goodbye to them even if the audience members didn’t understand that yet, Mia knew that she would truly do anything for the man she loved.

Even if it meant letting him go...instead of letting him give up everything for her.

* * *

The rain was pouring down hard by the time they got back to his house and ran toward the tower. There was no shower in the tower room, but the heavy downpour had taken care of washing him clean.

Through their linked hands, Ford could feel how hard Mia was shivering when they reached the top of the tower stairs. He’d purposely gotten her wet the other night when he’d thrown her into his pool, but tonight, though her silver dress stuck to her every curve like a sexy second skin, he only wanted her dry and warm and in his arms. Maybe it would have made sense to stop in the master bedroom and bathe first to warm up and dry off, but without even needing to discuss it, it had been clear that they would bypass the house for their special room, high up in the Seattle sky.

Seconds after closing the tower door behind them and turning on the lights, he had her dress off and was wrapping her in a thick blanket. Again and again he ran his hands over her until she stopped shaking quite so hard.

“I promise I’m going to warm you up all over in a minute.”

Stripping himself down as quickly as he’d stripped her, he picked up another blanket to wrap around his damp body, then pulled her down onto his lap. Tonight, knowing they were going to begin their new life together, he’d stashed a little blue box under one of the pillows.

“I need you closer,” she whispered as she shifted on his lap to burrow beneath his blanket so that they were skin to skin, her chest pressed to his, her arms around his back, her legs wrapped around his waist. “I never want to let you go, Ford.”

For once, he didn’t have any protection on him, but he knew how much she loved family, and he couldn’t wait to start making one with her as soon as possible. Little girls and boys who would fill up their home with laughter and love.

“I never want to let you go, either,” he said as he lifted her slightly over him so that she could wrap her legs fully around him and sink down over his erection on a sigh of pleasure that shook through both of them. It was the first time he’d ever been inside of her bare, with nothing between them but damp skin and heat, and he knew nothing in the world would ever feel this good. Only making love with Mia.

“You’re still shaking,” he murmured against the crook of her neck. He was no longer sure if it was because she was chilled from the rain. Just in case she still had any doubts, he desperately needed to put them to rest. “Don’t you know I’d do anything for you? Don’t you know that I’ll always put you first?”

“I love you so much,” she said in a raw voice that shook just as much as her body still was, even as their lovemaking heated up more and more with every stroke of his body inside her. “More than I ever knew it was possible to love.”

And as they took each other over the edge of pleasure that was both sweet and sinful, Ford knew it was finally time to ask her to be his.

Forever.

* * *

Ford was stroking his hands over her back and Mia was trying to get her synapses to start firing logically again when he said, “The first time I saw you here in the tower, I wanted to ask you to marry me.”

Drawing back from the crook of his neck where she’d been resting her head, Mia watched Ford reach beside them to pull a little blue box out from beneath a cushion.

Oh God, he couldn’t do this now. He couldn’t ask her to marry him when she’d finally accepted just how much she loved him...and that loving him meant setting him free. She opened her mouth to try to stop him before her heart broke any more than it already had, but the sheer force of emotion in his dark eyes stole her words away.

“I look around this house, I walk through this city, and you’re everywhere. You haven’t just made music matter again for me, you’ve made everything matter.” When he opened his hand, there was a ring in it with a large sparkling yellow diamond in the center. “Marry me, Mia, and make me the happiest man on the planet.”

She hadn’t cried over him since that night in Miami, when she’d believed nothing they’d felt for each other was real. Now that she knew just how real their love was, her tears finally fell again.

“You can’t stay in Seattle.”

He stared at her as if he couldn’t have heard her correctly. But disbelief quickly gave way to confusion. “Everything I want is here, Mia. Especially you.”

“That’s not true.” When she saw the hurt rise up in his eyes, she went down on her knees before him and took his face in her hands. “I know you love me and you want to be with me. But you also belong on stage, Ford. Not just at an occasional fundraiser, but playing stadiums in front of hundreds of thousands of people.”

“Maybe I needed that before, but I’m not a kid dreaming of glory anymore.”

“You keep talking about glory, but when you’re on stage, it’s so much more than that. When you sing to people, magic happens, Ford. You make people happy. You inspire them. You touch their hearts and their souls with what you do and who you are. I know my brothers weren’t exactly acting like your biggest fans last night at my parents’ house, but you should have heard the way they talk about your shows. And it’s not just because you’re so talented and your songs are so great. It’s because you are so happy and inspired up there that there’s no way it can’t rub off on absolutely everyone in the audience.”

He covered her hands with his, closing his eyes as he moved his face so that she was stroking his stubble-covered cheeks. She could feel the ring between them, the ring that she wanted so badly to let him slide onto her finger.

But she could never forgive herself for stealing him away from the place where he truly belonged.

“I love being on stage,” he finally said when he opened his eyes again so that she could see everything he was feeling. “I would never lie to you and say that I didn’t. But I want to be here for you. I wasn’t willing to give up the road before, didn’t even consider it, though I expected you to give up your life for me. But I need you to know how much I love you, Mia, enough to give up absolutely everything for you, without regret, without ever looking back.”

“Oh, Ford.” She leaned her forehead against his. “I used to think love was all about the grand gesture, red roses, and sunset serenades. But now I know love is wanting you to be everything you’re meant to be and never wanting you to push away a part of yourself for any reason. Not even for me. I don’t need you to run through a burning building for me or to write me a love song to know that your love is real. All I need is for you to tell me what you really want.”

“You, Mia. I just told you, you’re what I really want. Why won’t you believe me?”

It should have been exactly what she wanted to hear, but just as she had with Colbie and Brooke in the bar, she knew in her heart when one of her best friends was simply telling her what they thought she wanted to hear rather than the truth. She would never want her girlfriends to feel that they had to hold back what was in their hearts because they were worried about how she’d react...and she wouldn’t let the man she loved do it, either.

“Of course I believe that you want me, just as much as I want you. But I can handle hearing the rest of it, Ford, hearing what else it is you really want. We’re best friends, remember? And that’s what friends do—they talk to each other and say things they really mean, even if they think it might hurt the other person to hear them.”

He hesitated for a long moment before saying, “I won’t lose you again.”

She knew where his fear of losing her came from. When his parents had wanted him to be someone he wasn’t, and he couldn’t do it, they’d turned their backs on him forever. Obviously, it was what he thought she was going to do to him now.

A lightning bolt jumped in the sky just then, and Mia felt as if it had struck her. Because what if loving Ford didn’t mean setting him free?

What if loving Ford meant never, ever letting him go?

She put her arms back around him and hugged him tightly, the sweet press of their still-connected bodies as sensual as it was comforting. “No matter what you say you want, you’re not going to lose me. I love you just the way you are. You don’t ever need to change for me because you think I won’t love you if you’re not following my rules for how life is supposed to go.” She pressed a kiss to his lips. “Now tell me what you really want, and no matter what it is, I promise I’m not going to go storming off or take my love away.”

“You,” he said again. “I want you.” But then he finally pulled out of her arms. As he stood to pace the tower, the blanket pulled away from his body so that he was gloriously na**d as he finally admitted, “I want music.” It sounded as if the words were being wrenched straight from his gut. He took a deep breath. “I want family.” Finally, he turned back to face her. “Everything. I want everything, Mia.”

But even though he was finally telling her the truth, she could see the fear in his eyes as he said, “But I could never ask you to leave your work, your family behind for me. Not when I know how much both of those things will hurt you. I don’t want you to change for me, either.”

Another lightning bolt shot through the sky as she moved to stand in front of him and take his hands in hers. “I already have changed, Ford.”

She hadn’t fully realized this truth an hour ago, had believed there was only one way for both of them to stay true to themselves—by leading separate lives. But now she finally understood something that she’d been too young, too frightened, too overwhelmed, to understand before. Even though her mother had tried to help her see it at dinner on Friday night.

“I know who I am now, Ford, in a way I didn’t know before. When I was twenty-three, I was so scared of how quickly I lost myself in you and your life. That fear of not knowing how to hold on to my own identity made me believe that I was better off without you. But now I’ve finally learned that loving you, supporting you, isn’t going to make me any less. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be nothing more than an extension of you, or a footnote in your documentary unless you pack up all your touring gear in a storage locker in Seattle so that you can be home every night to celebrate one of my deals.”

“So,” he said slowly as his thumbs rubbed gentle circles into the backs of her hands, “if you don’t want me to give up touring and I don’t want you to give up your career in Seattle, but neither of us wants to be apart—”

“Then I suppose we’re just going to have to figure it out one thing at a time, even if it means I have to give up a few big deals along the way—”

“And I skip playing some stadiums—”

“And we miss a few family dinners if we have to.”

“No, I don’t want to miss too many family dinners,” he told her, his eyes warm and loving.

“I agree,” she said with a smile as she brought their hands up to hold them over her heart. “We definitely shouldn’t miss too many of those. And if things start to feel out of balance, we’ll work together to fix it. I’m not young or foolish enough anymore to think it will be easy, but—”

“You’re worth it.”

“So are you, rock star.”

The next thing she knew, he had her on her back on the blankets, and he was levered over her, her br**sts pressed hard to his chest, her thighs trapped between his.

“Now that we’ve got all that settled, how about an answer to that question I asked you earlier?”

Of course he had to know what her answer would be, and the yes was right on the tip of her tongue. But just as the anticipation of waiting to make love again during the past week had ended up being more fun than she could ever have imagined, she had to wonder just how fun it would be to add a little anticipation to his marriage proposal.

“You promised no ultimatums this time around,” she reminded him in a sassy voice, one she knew always got him going in a big way, especially judging by the feel of his erection against her thigh as he began to kiss his way down her body.

His stubble scraped in the most deliciously sinful way over the swell of her br**sts as he said, “True, but I never promised not to seduce a yes out of you.”

“You wouldn’t make love to me until you knew for sure that I loved you, but now that you know I do, you’re planning on using sex to get your way with everything from here on out?”

He lifted his head from her br**sts to grin at her. “Sure am.”

“But—”

How could she finish her sentence when he was licking one nipple while he played with her other breast? Just as she was figuring out how to catch her breath again, he switched his hands and mouth to the other side.

“Mmm?”

The vibration from his throat to her skin made her shiver. And when he began to lick and nip his way down the undersides of both breasts, it would have been so much easier just to give in to his seduction and forget what she needed to say. But somehow she found the will to get out her next words.

“—that’s not—”

She gasped as he slipped his fingers between her thighs and into her. Clearly, it had been smart to keep sex out of their relationship until they’d built a strong foundation first, because she could barely hold a thought in her head when he was touching her like this.

But even more than she loved his touch, she loved him.

“Oh hell,” she finally said, “go ahead and do your worst.”

“Already there, baby,” he murmured against her stomach, before kissing his way lower, and then lower still. “Only you’re about to get my very best.”

And he wasn’t kidding, because just then his mouth covered her and his tongue and hands were slipping and sliding over and into her in the most wonderful way. She was so close, so damned close, and she was going crazy right there on the edge...until he suddenly homed in like a laser with his lips and tongue and fingers and gave her exactly what she needed.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Her orgasm was still rocking and rolling through her when he slid the ring onto her left hand. His grin was a mile wide as he moved back over her so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him.

While admiring her new engagement ring over his shoulder, of course.

“Think you’re pretty sneaky, don’t you, doing whatever it takes to make me say yes?”

“If you think that was sneaky,” he rasped in a husky voice against her mouth as his hands roamed possessively over her, “you should see what I’m going to do next.”

“Let me guess—it’s on that list of yours, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he confirmed as he thrust deep inside her in one hard stroke to stake his claim on her body as well as her heart.

“Have I mentioned,” she managed to inform him with her own saucy grin, even though it was really, really difficult to string coherent words together when he was moving inside her like this, “that I’ve got a list of my own? One that starts with blocking out all of tomorrow to call each and every one of my family members with the news of our engagement, just like I promised you I would.”

And as he told her just how much he liked that plan by crushing her mouth and body even closer to his, her last clear thought before her cl**ax stole her every functioning brain cell, was that life would always be an adventure with the man who was not only her best friend and her lover...but also the other half of her heart and soul.