Linda looked at her. “That’s certainly better.”

Their server appeared with menus and explained about the specials. She took their drink orders and left.

Linda put down her menu. “So, what do you do? I’m a stay-at-home mom. I was just getting my résumé polished to get back in the workforce when I turned up pregnant with this one.” Her smile turned wry. “Not that I don’t love my kids. I do. But there are days I want to put on office clothes and go talk to adults.”

“My sister has four kids and another on the way. I’m sure she shares your feelings.”

The mention of Maeve reminded Isabel to go see her sister. They’d talked by phone a few times, but it was silly that they were in the same town and rarely saw each other. It wasn’t as if Isabel was staying in Fool’s Gold forever. After the first of the year, she would be heading back to New York, and she wasn’t sure how long it would be until she returned.

“Do you have kids?” Linda asked.

“No. I’m divorced and we never quite got to that stage.”

“I’m sorry.” Linda’s brown eyes filled with sympathy. “That’s hard. But Ford’s very handsome.” She smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. “In a sexy, muscled, tall kind of way. If you like the type.”

Isabel grinned. “I’m finding I like the type very much.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Ford asked.

“Nothing you want to know.”

He studied her for a second. “I’m going to take your word on that.”

“Smart man.”

Although imagining the look on his face if he found out that very-pregnant Linda thought he was sexy would be kind of funny.

“You never said what you did,” Linda mentioned a few minutes later.

“My family owns a bridal shop in town. Paper Moon. As I said, I’ve been living in New York. After the divorce, I wanted to get away, so I came back to run the business for a few months.”

Linda sighed. “Oh, that must be fun. All those happy brides. You get to help them find the perfect dress. Is there drama?”

“All the time. Emotions are running high and there are often mother-daughter conflicts. One wants traditional, the other wants anything else.”

“Sounds exciting. Clyde’s in auto parts. His dad left him a struggling business and he’s turned it into a multistate distributorship. We have over twelve hundred employees.”

“That’s impressive,” Isabel told her, thinking she and Sonia had talked about hiring one other person as they started their business. Twelve hundred was unimaginable.

“He wants to bring the sales team to the retreat,” Linda continued. “To help them relate to each other a little better. Sales can be competitive and Clyde’s worried their sense of unity is getting lost.”

“Clyde sounds like a smart guy.”

“He is.” Linda smiled at her husband, then turned back to Isabel. “Except when it comes to naming our baby.”

The server returned with drinks and took their order.

Clyde passed the basket of warm rolls to his wife, then looked at Ford. “How did you two meet?”

“I used to date her sister.”

Linda raised her eyebrows. “Really? And she doesn’t mind you two are together now?”

Isabel held up both hands. “There has been a lot of space and time,” she said. “Ford and my sister were engaged fourteen years ago. I was desperately in love with him, but he didn’t bother to notice.”

“My mistake,” Ford said lightly. “Maeve and I were way too young. A few weeks before the wedding, she realized her mistake. Because I was still a kid, I pouted. I left town in a huff, joined the navy. I got out a few months ago, returned home and we opened CDS.”

Isabel realized he’d given all the facts, yet kept many of the details private. She liked how he didn’t tell Clyde and Linda about Maeve cheating with Leonard.

He leaned toward her and grinned. “Isabel wrote me. A lot.”

She laughed. “Like I said, I was fourteen and had a mad crush on him. I wrote and wrote.”

“That’s so romantic,” Linda told her.

“Not really. He never wrote back.”

“Not once?” Clyde asked.

Ford shrugged. “There were a lot of reasons. But I enjoyed getting her letters.” His smile faded. “I was a SEAL. We had some tough missions. Reading about Isabel being a normal teenager in high school helped. She was a little wild in college, though.”

She pushed him. “Don’t spill all my secrets the first night.”

He grabbed her hand and lightly kissed her knuckles. “I would never do that.”

“Then what happened?” Linda asked eagerly. “You came back, took one look at her and realized she’d been the one all along?”

“Something like that,” Ford admitted.

Just words, Isabel told herself. It wasn’t true, but it sounded good for company. Still, she found herself wishing he was telling the truth. That he had taken one look at her and had known they belonged together.

Foolishness, she thought. She and Ford were only pretend-dating. None of this was real. She was passing through town and he was a guy who didn’t know how to be in love. They didn’t belong together.

Sure, the kisses had been great and she was looking forward to more. She liked his company and enjoyed seeing him. They shared a sense of humor, and she had the sense that if she needed him, he would be there, but that was different. They were friends and their relationship was something they’d created to fake out the world.

* * *

“YOU DID GREAT tonight,” Ford said as he drove through the quiet streets of town.

Isabel leaned against the door and drew in a breath of cool air. She’d had just enough wine to give herself a slight buzz. She wasn’t going to start singing anytime soon, but if she started giggling, she might have trouble stopping.

“I had a good time. I thought you and Clyde would talk a lot of business, but you didn’t. They’re a fun couple.”

“I agree.” He glanced at her. “You’re a fun girlfriend.”

“Thank you. Except for this car, you’re a really good boyfriend.”

He pulled into her driveway and parked. “I love my Jeep. Do not mention the flames.”

She opened her door and stepped out. “Admit it. They’re starting to embarrass you just a little.”

He came around and put his hand on the small of her back. “Never. They represent my lost youth.”

“If these flames are your lost youth, you need to go out and find it.”

They reached her back door. Ford turned the door handle and sighed. “When are you going to start locking your door?”

“This is Fool’s Gold. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“It could.”

“Oh, please.” She brushed off his comment. “You want to come in?”

“I am in.”

“Okay.” She kicked off her shoes and walked barefoot across the hardwood entryway. “That’s always the best part of the evening. Even the heels that start out comfortable usually end up hurting by the end of the night. There’s math involved. An inverse relationship between how gorgeous the shoes are and how much they hurt my feet.”

She dropped her purse on a small table in the hall and started toward the living room. Halfway there, she paused.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Ford shrugged out of his suit jacket and hung it on the coatrack by the door. His tie followed. He toed out of his shoes and then walked toward her with an air of determination that made her tummy get all fluttery.

“You have this strange look in your eye,” she murmured. “It’s predatory.”

“That’s how I’m feeling.”

She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat. She wasn’t nervous, not exactly. If she had to define the tingle in her body, she would say it was anticipation.

He reached for her and she sidestepped him. “We have to talk first,” she said.

One eyebrow rose. “I’m not that interested in conversation.”

“Still, it’s necessary. Before we do, you know, the sex thing.”

His mouth twitched. “The sex thing?”

“Uh-huh. Because that’s where this is going.”

He shifted so he was leaning against the wall. “Good to know. What do we have to talk about?”

This was not the best time for her head to be fuzzy, she thought, sure she had a comprehensive list memorized but unable to recall it that second.

“I’m on the pill,” she began. “I like having my periods regulated, and my doctor said it was safe for me to stay on it after my divorce.”

“I brought condoms. We’ll still use them.”

“You planned this?”

“I was optimistic. Besides, I’m a SEAL. It’s my job to be prepared.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I thought that was the Boy Scouts.”

“Them, too. What else?”

“I don’t think I’m doing it right,” she admitted. “The sex thing. If I was good in bed, Eric wouldn’t be gay.”

“You don’t have that much power.”

“It wasn’t very good with Billy, either.”

“Or the hordes?”

She sighed. “Right. Him, too. I think it’s me. That I’m not—” She waved a hand up and down the front of her body. “Maybe there are parts missing or something.”

He straightened. “Is that it?”

“Don’t you want to talk about the parts?”

His gaze drifted over her body. “I would love to, but not in the way you mean.” He took a step toward her. “Because if that’s all, I’d like to get started.”

She scurried back a couple of steps. “No, that’s not all. You can’t undress me.”

“Is this an Amish thing?”

“Amish? What do the Amish have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. Why can’t I undress you?”

She felt herself flushing. “What do you know about SPANX?”

Now it was his turn to look startled. “You want me to spank you?”

“No! Of course not. Jeez. Not spanking. SPANX. It’s...” She sucked in a breath. “It’s shape-wear. You can’t take it off me. It’s not sexy and you’ll probably hurt your back. I’m not this skinny naturally. I have to take it off myself or you won’t want to have sex with me.”

Was he being stupid on purpose or was this a guy thing?

“Just go in the bedroom and wait,” she told him. “I’ll take care of this myself and join you.”

“No way. You’re not taking care of anything yourself. Besides, if we’re talking underwear, I want to watch.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ISABEL HAD NOT PLANNED to relive the granny-panty scene from Bridget Jones’s Diary ever, but here she was, having her own humiliating moment.

“But I could be almost na**d,” she told Ford. “With almost no work on your part. Isn’t that nice to think about?”

“I like the work.” He both looked and sounded confused. “Isabel, I’ve been with my share of women. There’s not very much I haven’t seen.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen this!”

Before she could come to her senses, she undid the hooks holding the wrap dress in place and let the silky garment fall to the floor. She stood in front of him wearing her beige shape-wear that went from the scoop-neck top to midthigh.

“It’s a slip,” he said.

She put her hands on her h*ps and momentarily enjoyed how narrow and firm they felt. Of course, all that was going to change when she wrestled her way out of the SPANX.

“It’s more than a slip. It’s practically magic. But that’s not the point. There’s no way you can get this off me. So I’m going to go into the bathroom and take it off—”

She wasn’t aware of him moving, but one second she was talking and the next she was in his arms and he was kissing her.

It was a good kiss. All lips and tongue. Her determination melted along with the rest of her. She wrapped her arms around him and hung on. He touched her hair, her jaw, then dropped to run his fingers along her spine.

He straightened and looked her up and down.

“Just let me go to the bathroom and I’ll—”

Ford reached for the straps over her shoulders. He pulled them down her arms. The garment peeled away, over her breasts, her waist, her h*ps and ended up in a rolled circle at her feet. She stepped out of it.

“Problem solved,” he announced, his voice filled with satisfaction. “Anything else?”

Aside from the fact that he was fully dressed while she was standing there in a bra and very brief panties?

“Uh, not really.”

“Good.”

He nudged her toward the hall. She started walking, aware that he was unbuttoning his shirt as he went. His pants were lost in the doorway, and by the time they reached the bed and she turned around, he was na**d. Completely na**d.

Isabel stared at the broad shoulders, smooth chest and narrow waist. He was all muscle, with chiseled planes and sculpted lines.

“I welcome comparisons,” he told her.

She laughed. “Fine. Eric was much thinner and shorter than you. Billy had a similar build, but wasn’t as muscled.”

“And the horde?”

“I don’t really remember.”