The door to the bar opened again, and in came Logan, not looking any happier than Ford. “Fucking perfect,” Ford muttered to Sawyer.
Logan headed straight for the bar. “You cheated,” he said to Ford. “I’ll take a beer and keep ’em coming.”
Ford served him. “What do you mean, I cheated?”
“A kid? You came up with a kid?”
Ford was surprised at this. “You didn’t know about Mia?”
“I knew that you’d had a baby. I didn’t know that baby had grown up and then shown up.”
Ford had been wondering how much Logan and Tara talked, if at all. Not much if it’d taken him this many days to learn about Mia. This fact made him feel marginally better.
“I can’t compete with that,” Logan said and took a long pull of his beer before turning to Sawyer. “How the hell do I compete with that?”
Sawyer shrugged. “You were married to her.”
Ford slid Sawyer a look, and Sawyer shrugged again. “He asked.”
“Yeah,” Logan said, finding solace in Sawyer’s words. “You’re right. We were married. She used to call me her superhero.” He looked at Ford to make sure he was listening. “I was her Superman, her Green Hornet, her Flash Gordon, all rolled into one.”
On Logan’s other side, a group of women with a pitcher of something pink and frothy were blatantly eavesdropping. One of them was Sandy, town clerk and city manager. Sandy was pretty in a no-nonsense way and never lacked for male companionship, though she’d been ignoring men in general since last year when she’d gotten two-timed by some asshole in Seattle. She was eyeing Logan like maybe she’d finally gotten over it.
“Looks like you’re in trouble, Ford,” Sandy said. “He’s got you with the superhero thing.”
“Do you even have to be in good shape to drive a race car?” someone asked.
It was Paige, from the post office. Ford could have kissed her.
“Hey, it takes more core body strength to control a car than a boat,” Logan said in his defense. “And I’m completely fit. Look.” He raised his shirt to show his abs.
The women all hooted and hollered. “Nice eight pack!” Amy said. She was a waitress at the diner, and tonight she was also Sandy’s fearless wingman. In her late twenties, she was tall and leggy and blonde, and in possession of a smile that said she was not only tough as hell, but up for dealing with whatever came her way. “Your turn, Ford,” she said with a grin.
This produced even more ear-splitting woo-hoos. Ford looked at Sawyer, who raised his beer in a go-for-it toast.
Oh hell, no. “We’ve had this conversation,” Ford told whoever was listening, which was exactly no one. “I’m not going to show you my stomach.”
This only made them all yell louder.
Logan grinned. “You’re afraid of the competition. It’s okay; no worries.”
Goddammit. Ford wasn’t afraid of shit. So he lifted his shirt.
The crowd went crazy.
Sawyer shook his head.
Ford sighed.
“Nice,” Amy said. “I declare a tie.”
Sandy was on the fence. “I don’t know. I think we need more examples.”
At this, Amy grinned wider and turned to Ford and Logan. “You heard her, boys-whip ’em out. Sandy, you gotta tape measure?”
Ford, who’d just taken a drink from his Coke, choked. Sawyer smacked him on the back, hard.
“Worth a shot,” Amy said with a shrug.
Sandy smiled and nudged her shoulder to Logan’s. “Never mind the poll, Logan. Besides, Tara’s not the only woman in town. You know that, right?”
He sent her a slow smile. “She’s not?”
“Nope.” Sandy scooted a little closer to him. “And you can be my superhero any time.”
At two a.m., Tara was still lying in bed, gazing at the clock. In a few hours, she needed to be wide awake and making breakfast for their guests’ last day, but she couldn’t relax enough to sleep.
And this time, it had nothing to do with Chloe’s snoring, because Chloe wasn’t even home yet. She’d gone out with Lance and friends, and they were God knew where, doing God knew what.
Maddie was at Jax’s, safe and sound. One worry off Tara’s plate, but she had plenty more. She’d caught Mia and Carlos in the marina building earlier. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d interrupted since they’d leapt away from each other faster than she could blink, but the guilt on their faces had been disturbing.
Short of firing one of them or locking Mia in a chastity belt, what could she do without looking like a first-class hypocrite of the highest order?
And then there was Ford. A small part of her wanted to be cuddled up with him right now. Okay, a big part. She fluffed her pillow and once again tried to fall asleep. It didn’t happen. She started wondering if the bills had gotten sent out, and if she had gas in her car, and whether or not she had fresh peaches for tomorrow’s pie. And where was Chloe, dammit? Rolling out of bed, she picked up her cell phone. “You’d better be okay,” she said to Chloe’s voice mail, then hung up and padded into the bathroom, where she took a hot bath. Thirty minutes later, warm and toasty, she climbed back into bed to try again.
Her heart tripped when she saw her cell phone, blinking multiple missed calls on the nightstand. The last time that had happened in the middle of the night, Chloe had been arrested with Lance for staging a sit-in at one of the Washington logging companies up on Rascal Pass. “Be okay,” she whispered to Chloe as she accessed her messages, her pulse pounding. “Please be okay so I can kill you myself.”
The first message was indeed from her sister. “I’m fine,” came Chloe’s voice. “I’m alive and playing paintball at an all-night venue-don’t wait up. And Jesus, stop worrying, I’m a big girl.”
“Oh sure,” Tara muttered to no one. “I’ll just stop worrying. Cuz it’s that easy.”
The next message surprised Tara into dropping her irritation.
“Tara,” came Ford’s voice, not quite sounding like his usual laid-back self. “Yeah, so I thought you should know that I don’t think I’m a bad idea. I mean I can be bad, but I can be good, too. I can do good things… lots of very good bad things…” His voice was all low and husky, and combined with the words, had heat slashing through Tara’s stomach. “But,” he went on with deliberate slowness. “I don’t think I can be your superhero.”
At that, she pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at it. Superhero? Where had that come from? In the background, she could hear loud music and lots of laughter. Probably The Love Shack.
“I’m maybe, possibly a little drunk,” he said, and shock reverberated through Tara. Ford wasn’t a drinker. His biological father had been, and one of his stepfathers, and it’d turned him off of alcohol. Plus, for as easygoing as he was, he liked his control.
A lot.
“So this superhero thing,” he went on. “All the skills I have, you’ve already seen. I’m guessing I do okay in the body department, because you seem to like it well enough. After all, just a few nights ago you were licking my-”
At this point, there seemed to be a scuttle with the phone, and Tara could hear Sawyer in the background saying “just hang up, man, or I’ll do it for you and consider it a public service.”
“Back off,” came Ford’s voice, and then there was another tussle. “Some people have no fuckin’ manners,” he said, slurring slightly. “I want you to know that if I could be your superhero, I totally would. But there’s no way my ass is gonna wear a pair of tights, not even for you.” He paused thoughtfully. “I could do sex slave, though. That seems like a fair trade, right?”
Tara laughed and covered her mouth in utter surprise. The man was clearly drunk and uncharacteristically out of control, and yet he could still make her laugh. And if the truth was known, in the bedroom Ford had never failed to command anything less than her full attention. Which meant he had it backward. She was a slave to him. To his hands, his mouth…