It Must Be Your Love (The Sullivans #11)(17)

Colbie put her hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “What happened at the end of the week?”

“He asked me to come with him, out on the road. I’d known him one week, and he wanted me to give up everything in my life to follow him on buses and planes all over the world. And the thing is, even though I loved my work, loved my family and you guys, and the life I had in Seattle, I was so tempted—more tempted than I should have been. But I guess I paused just a little too long, and when I didn’t immediately jump up and down screaming YES as if I were the luckiest girl in the world to be wanted by him, Ford shut down. Completely. He said if I really loved him, I wouldn’t have to think about it. He said he couldn’t believe that he’d let me fool him into believing I actually loved him. Just that fast, he was gone.”

“Couldn’t he see that he was asking you to change your whole life for him—while he got to do exactly what he wanted?” Brooke protested.

“No, he obviously didn’t see that. And when I looked back on that week, I realized that while I’d shared everything with him, he really hadn’t shared anything more than his body with me. I didn’t know anything about his family or his past or his fears or dreams besides how he felt about his music. But, do you want to know the worst thing? Even though I should have felt like I’d dodged a bullet, I can’t even begin to explain how much I missed him. So badly that I decided I’d made a huge mistake by not immediately dropping everything for him. I decided I could figure out a way to have a career on the road, maybe not real estate, but something I could do while always on the move, and that I would just call you guys and my family all the time to make sure we didn’t lose touch. I decided to surprise him at a show in Miami.”

She closed her eyes at the wave of pain that hit her as she relived that horrible night. “The guys on his crew who had brought me backstage that first night in Seattle didn’t want to let me through to the back in Miami. I tried to tell myself it was because I had hurt him by needing some extra time to make my decision, but—” Her voice started to break, but damn it, she wasn’t going to cry over him again.

“You don’t have to relive any more of it,” Brooke said, squeezing her hand.

But Mia knew it was better if she did. If she reminded not only herself, but the people who loved her most, of exactly why she needed to stay away from Ford. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the picture of that girl on his lap out of my head. She was half-naked, and he had his hands on—” Oh God, maybe the full replay wasn’t such a good idea, after all. “For a few seconds I was frozen in the doorway and the girl was busy making all her fake  p**n -star moans, but he looked straight at me.” The breath she tried to take shook her lungs. “I picked up some drum sticks that had been left on a table by the door and threw them at him. And then I got the hell out of there.”

“The bastard didn’t even go running after you?” Brooke asked.

“No.” And that was how she’d known for sure that everything he’d said to her during their one week together had been a lie. Every sweet and sexy word of which she’d been stupid enough to believe.

“I hate his guts,” Colbie snarled. “I’m more sorry than you know that I ever had one single fantasy about that piece of dirt, and I’m pledging to you now that I’ll never listen to one of his songs again.”

“Considering they’re constantly on the radio and TV and playing in every single bar—” Mia pointed to the speaker on the ceiling, where they could hear Ford singing yet another one of his huge hits. “—that’s going to be pretty hard to do. But I love you for offering.”

“Well,” Brooke said, “we might be stuck listening to them from time to time when we can’t avoid it, but we won’t enjoy any of them. Excuse me for a second.” She walked over to the bartender and said something to him. A few seconds later, Ford’s song stopped and the acoustic version of Nico’s One Moment began to play instead.

Mia appreciated her friends’ solidarity, even though she knew how hard it would be for any of them to avoid Ford’s presence, not just on the radio, but in the media, too, which had always had a love affair with him.

“Did he ever contact you again?” Colbie asked.

“Nope.” Not only had he not come running after her in Miami, but he hadn’t called, emailed, or written her so much as a text begging her to forgive him. “And I certainly never tried to contact him.”

“So he waits five years and then makes sure you’ll show up at the house by dangling a huge potential sale in your face while not disclosing who he really is.” Colbie’s snarl curled her lips even tighter. “What a jerk. I double hate him now.”

This was why Mia had texted her best friends tonight. They always knew how to make her smile, even when she was feeling at her very lowest. But her smile didn’t last long, because there was one more thing she needed to confess.

“I let him kiss me. This morning. In the house I was showing him.”

Her friends both looked at her like she’d lost her mind before Brooke all but yelled, “You let him kiss you today?”

A dozen heads swiveled around to see what the fuss was all about, and Mia could feel her face turning even redder. “The kiss was supposed to prove how completely over him I was. You might double hate him now,” she said to her friends, “but I’m the two-time idiot.”