“For?”

Maddie and Jax smiled at each other, and their looks were so heated that Tara felt like her eyebrows went up in smoke.

“Aw.” Chloe grinned. “You were totally going to do it, right there on the couch.” She grabbed Tara and dragged her back to the front door. “Just pretend we never showed up. Carry on.”

“We can’t now,” Maddie said, laughing. “You’ll know.”

“Yes,” Chloe said. “And also, we’re never going to sit on that couch again, but don’t let that stop you, Ms. Attack-Her-Boyfriend-in-the-Attic.”

“Hey,” Maddie said, still beet red. “What about Tara in the pantry with her two men?”

Tara sighed. “Not a true story,” she said to an avidly listening Jax. “Logan and I haven’t been together like that in over two years.”

Chloe grinned at Maddie. “Notice she didn’t deny having Ford ‘like that.’ She’s totally doing him. I mean look at her. Hello, she’s still glowing. Sex is so great for the skin. Wish I could come up with a skincare formula that gives that same glow. I’d make bank.”

Maddie studied Tara’s face and grinned, too. “Oh yeah, she’s definitely doing Ford.”

Jax looked pained. “Okay, you’ve got to stop saying that. Bad visual.”

Maddie laughed and hugged him close. “Here, baby, let me give you another one to replace it with.” She whispered something in his ear and then gently but firmly kicked her sisters out of the cottage, locking the door behind them.

That afternoon, Ford was behind the bar finishing up his monthly inventory. Jax usually helped, but he didn’t show up until after it was finished. “Thanks for the help,” Ford grumbled, then took in the wide, goofy-ass grin on Jax’s face. “What?”

“You’ll see,” Jax said cryptically, and vanished into the back to do some paperwork.

The place was filling up when Maddie came in wearing a goofy grin that matched Jax’s.

“Only one man I know who can put that smile on your face,” Ford said.

Maddie laughed, something that had once upon a time been very rare. “Or potato chips.”

Ford grinned at her. “What’ll it be, Beautiful?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” She set her hand down on the bar and nearly blinded him with a diamond.

“Jesus, you need sunglasses to look at that thing.” And although he’d already seen the ring—Jax had shown him yesterday—Ford hugged her tight, then lifted her hand and smiled. “Hard to say no to a ring like that.”

“Maybe it’s just plain hard to say no to me.” Jax came in from the back carrying a tray of clean glasses. He took one look at Maddie flashing the ring and smiled from ear to ear. He set down the glasses and hopped over the bar to yank her into his arms. “Hey, wife.”

“Not yet, I’m not,” she said, laughing as she shifted into him. “You have to get me down the aisle first.”

“It’s going to happen.” Jax lowered his lips to her ear, whispered something that made her blush, then kissed her.

And kissed her.

“Get a room,” Ford said and nudged them out of his way, their mouths still fused.

They vanished a few minutes later, and Ford figured that he’d be lucky if Jax surfaced sometime tomorrow. It wasn’t a problem; neither he nor Jax was scheduled to actually tend bar tonight. But since Sawyer had a date too, Ford was left on his own with no plans ahead of him. In the old days, he’d have found himself some trouble.

Or a woman.

Neither appealed. So he got in his car and drove, and found himself at the inn. Carlos was in the yard, hosing out a big pot burned black.

“What happened?” Ford asked.

“Tara burnt the stew.”

This was so odd that it took a moment to process. “She did?”

“Earlier. She said she was distracted. And now she’s added pissed to the list.” Carlos looked around to make sure they were alone. “If you don’t have to go in there, maybe you shouldn’t. No offense, but you tend to make things worse.”

Ford had a feeling he’d already made it worse, that maybe she’d burned the stew when they’d been out on the water. “Does she need dinner for the guests? I can go pick something up.”

“No, she’s whipping up some fancy burgers right now. She’s putting some really stinky cheese and seasonings in with the meat and calling them gourmet. She told me if I wrinkled my nose one more time she was going to rearrange it for me.” Carlos let out a rare smile because, as they both knew, Tara could barely reach his nose. “Mia’s helping her.”

When the kid said Mia’s name, a special quality came into his voice that Ford recognized all too well. Carlos was completely and helplessly wrapped around his daughter’s pinkie.

They walked into the kitchen together, smelling the burned stew before they crossed the threshold. There was a fan going, and two candles, but they weren’t helping yet. The room itself looked like an explosion in Hell’s Kitchen. The counters were cluttered with cooking utensils and ingredients, and a temperamental Tara stood at the stove, spatula in hand. When she caught sight of Ford, her eyes narrowed and her grip on the spatula tightened as if she was fighting the urge to smack him with it. “You,” she said.

“Me,” he agreed lightly. A few hours ago, she’d been na**d and panting his name. Now she was back to the Steel Magnolia.

“Sugar,” Tara said in a voice that was pure Pissed-Off South. “You need to go far, far away.”

A few weeks ago, he’d have taken that to mean she didn’t want to see his face within a six-hundred-mile radius. Now he knew the truth. He distracted her. He could live with that. “Came to see if I can help.”

“I think I know how to make burgers,” she said smoothly. “But bless your heart.”

In other words, f**k off and die.

Carlos gave him a look like “told you so.” He turned to Mia and the two of them exchanged a glance that wasn’t all that hard to interpret for anyone who’d ever once been a horny teenager.

“So… I have to run into town to get the mail and fill up the propane tank,” Carlos said casually.

“Oh! I’ll help,” Mia said quickly.

Amateurs. “No,” Ford said at the same time as Tara.

Carlos let out a breath and left through the back door. Mia shot Tara a look of perfected teenage annoyance and grabbed the two vases of flowers she’s just arranged, leaving through the double doors to display them in the front rooms.

When she was gone, Tara shook her head. “Why don’t they tell you that raising a teenager is like trying to nail Jell-O to a freaking tree?”

Ford laughed softly. “Probably because the entire race would die out.”

“He looks at her,” she fretted. “A lot. He looks at her like…”

Risking his neck, Ford came up behind her and slid his arms around her. “Like I look at you?” he asked against her ear, enjoying the way she shivered before she shoved him away.

“Stop that,” she said.

“That’s not what you were saying earlier. You were saying ‘Oh, Ford. Harder, Ford—’ ” His sentence ended in an oomph when she elbowed him in the gut.

“I have far more important things to do than relive our little…” Apparently she couldn’t come up with a satisfactory word for what they’d done because she closed her mouth and inhaled sharply through her nose. “We have a bigger problem.”

“I wouldn’t classify anything that happened between us today as a problem,” Ford said and kissed her jaw.

She pushed at him again, her mood clearly changed by the talk of the teenagers. “We have a mission, Ford. It’s called Keep the Daughter Fully Dressed.”

He grimaced.

“No, I mean it. That boy takes his job around here very seriously, and I greatly appreciate that. But there’s something else he takes very seriously and that’s our daughter. Do you hear me?”

“Honey, right now everyone can hear you.”

Tara shook her head. “It’s not happening, Ford. Not on my watch.” She pointed at him again. “Or yours.”

He arched a brow. “You don’t see the irony in all this?”

“Of course I see the irony! I don’t give a hoot about the irony!”

Ford very carefully relieved her of her weapon—the spatula—and once again wrapped his arms around her so she couldn’t get violent. Holding her tight against him, he pressed his face into her hair. He couldn’t help himself. “Even if someone had given a shit about keeping us separated, it wouldn’t have helped. We’d have found a way.”

“Maybe not.”

“We’d have found a way,” he repeated. “I was very determined.”

Tara sighed. “Smartass.”

“You like my ass.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s true, though it’s not even your best part—Oh crap!” She sniffed, then sniffed again and whipped around to the stovetop. “Christ on a stick, I did it again! I burned another meal!” Shoving free, she flipped off the burners and stared in horror at the blackened burgers.

They could hear running footsteps, and then the door flew open. “Fire! Fire, fire!” Chloe shrieked, inhaler in one hand, fire extinguisher in the other. When she saw the burned burgers, she stopped and sagged in relief. “Jesus! Jesus Christ, I thought we were burning the place down again!”

Tara sank to a chair in utter disbelief. “I never burn things. And yet I’ve burned the last three meals I tried to make.” She lifted a shocked gaze to both of them. “What’s wrong with me?”

Neither Ford nor Chloe was stupid enough to answer that question. Ford poured Tara a fairly large glass of wine and turned to the refrigerator. In less than three minutes, he had the flame going again and was slathering butter on Tara’s freshly made bread and slicing cheddar cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches.

“I can’t serve plain old grilled cheese,” Tara protested, downing her wine.

“It’s not plain old grilled cheese,” he said. “It’s Jax’s Chillax Grilled Cheese. It’s the only thing the doofus could make until he was twenty-four. Damn good recipe, though.”

“You’re fixin’ this for me,” she said.

“Trying.”

“You have a habit of doing that, helping me.” There was something new in her eyes, something Ford couldn’t quite put his finger on but hoped like hell meant that she was finally beginning to see him.

All of him.

Chapter 23

“Love is when someone puts you on a pedestal and yet when you fall, they’re there to catch you anyway.”

TARA DANIELS

The summer shifted into high gear, complete with tourist surge and the long, hot, lazy days that were followed by long, hot, lazy nights.

Every Wednesday night, the town hosted Music on the Pier, and Ford always ran a booth for The Love Shack. He’d hired Carlos for help with the setup, and as Ford arrived, he expected that the kid would be working hard.

Instead, Ford found him working hard on swallowing Mia’s tongue.

When neither of them noticed Ford’s approach—they were pretty busy after all—he cleared his throat.

Nothing. He did it again, putting some major irritation into the sound, and the two teenagers finally jumped apart.

“Hey,” Mia said, breathless, swiping a hand over her wet mouth. “We were just…”

Ford raised a brow, curious as to how she was going to finish that sentence. Instead, she fell silent. “Checking each other’s tonsils?” he asked her.

Mia grimaced, and Carlos slid his hand into hers. A show of comfort and solidarity, and though his shoulders were a little hunched, he stood his ground right next to her. Ford stared at him, and though Carlos definitely squirmed, he held the eye contact.

“It’s my fault,” Mia said quickly. “Not his.”

“No,” Carlos said. “It’s mine. Sir.”

Ford scrubbed a hand over his face. Sir. Christ, if that didn’t make him feel old.

Mia stepped in front of Carlos. Or tried to, but the kid wouldn’t let her. “I can kiss who I want,” she said with soft steel reminiscent of Tara.

Ford looked into her earnest, sweet face. Seventeen had never looked so young. “Mia—”

“I mean, I know you’re my father, but I already have a dad.”

Intimidation went out the window. So did the wind in his sails. “Yes, I know.”

Mia stared up at him with those bigger-than-life eyes, the ones that haunted him with what-ifs. “And Carlos is a good guy,” she said, glancing up at the kid still holding her hand, smiling at him.

Carlos didn’t return the expression, but his eyes never left her face.

Ford let out a breath. “I know that, too.”

“And so am I,” she said. “I’m a good kid.”

“My own personal miracle,” Ford said with feeling.

Mia hesitated, as if she hadn’t been prepared for him to be so agreeable. “So you can trust me to live my life. You know that too, right? As well as letting me make my own mistakes?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me. Mia…” Ford searched for the right words. “Do you have any idea how many times I hoped I’d get to meet you? Get to know you?”

“No.”