Author: Bella Andre

“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 naked 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 breasts 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 breasts 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 breasts 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 climax 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.

Epilogue

“I’m so, so happy,” Mia said to Ian. “But I’d be even happier if you were here with all of us tonight.”

Through their Skype connection on his tablet, Ian could see that Mia was glowing. Everyone was at their parents’ house to celebrate her engagement, but since he hadn’t been able to get from London to Seattle in time for the party, his sister was now sitting in front of their father’s laptop in the den to try to include him in the party.