It Must Be Your Love (The Sullivans #11)(18)

“The way he set you up this morning has made it way more than double hate now,” Colbie declared.

But instead of agreeing, Brooke said, “He’s obviously still hooked on you.”

Mia shook her head in denial. “Nothing is obvious with Ford. On the surface, he’s every girl’s sexy rock-god dream, but underneath—” She scowled into her drink, then took a long sip before finishing her sentence. “He never let me find out what was underneath. Every time we got close, he’d pull back. For a moment today, I actually thought maybe things had changed, but he wouldn’t even tell me why he hates being called Rutherford so much. And if he won’t tell me something little like that, I seriously doubt he’s going to spill anything else in his dark soul.”

Brooke held up her phone. “We could do a Google search on him to find out.”

Every one of the thousand times Mia had wanted to look up Ford’s past on the Internet, all she’d had to do was remind herself how pathetic it was to long for tidbits of his life from journalists and Twitter feeds.

“No.” She took Brooke’s phone from her hand and dropped it back into her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s purse. “Imagine how it would have felt for you to have to dig into Rafe’s past on Google. My brother cares so much about you that he dug deep and told you everything about his past and how much it had messed him up, even though it was really hard for him to do that.”

Brooke put her hand on Mia’s arm. “You’re right. And I’m sorry if I sounded like I was defending Ford when I said he’s still hooked on you. It’s just that—” Brooke shook her head. “No, never mind.”

“I’ve always hoped I could take the truth from my best friends as well as I can dish it out to them,” Mia said softly. “What were you going to say?”

Her friend sighed, as though she knew there was no getting away with a never mind this time. “We all know what Ford Vincent looks like, and I can imagine what poetry falling from his lips would sound like, especially if the sex really was as great as you said. Honestly, I don’t know how easy it would be for anyone to get over someone like him.”

Mia’s stomach twisted tight at Brooke’s words. She could always lie to herself. But to her friends? It was another one of the big reasons she’d never mentioned her week with Ford. Because she wouldn’t have been able to lie about what it had done to her.

“He’s the only man I’ve ever loved. And no matter how many times I look back and remind myself that I was young and foolish and still in a place where I believed that fantasies were possible, and that it was perfectly normal for me to lose myself entirely in him and his oversized life...” She sighed. “What I felt for him was still real, despite all of that other nonsense.”

“You know,” Colbie said slowly, “maybe there’s another reason why he was able to get past your defenses this morning. From everything you’ve just told us, it sounds like you never got a chance to give him a piece of your mind, not five years ago and not today either, because he made sure to take you by surprise. I, for one, would sure like to hear you rip him to shreds.”

Though Mia had already said what was supposed to be her final goodbye to Ford, she couldn’t help but feel that Colbie was on to something.

Brooke gave Mia a pointed look. “The only problem is, do you think you could give him a tongue-lashing without yours ending up in his mouth again?”

It was the same question Mia was already asking herself. Because she hadn’t yet figured out the honest answer to it, she said, “What has my brother done to you, Brooke? I never thought you’d talk about tongues lashing in any way.”

Her friend was flushing but grinning a wicked little grin as she said, “Don’t you mean, what have I done to him?”

Halfway through her friend’s sentence, Mia’s hands were over her ears. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that. Although it’s totally my fault since I keep forgetting how weird it is to think about my brother’s sex life. Especially when it’s with one of my best friends.” She made a show of scrunching her eyes up and shaking her head hard a couple of times as if to toss the vision away. Far, far away from her brain.

“Does that mean that it’s not weird for you to think about my sex life with Noah, since he’s not related to you?” Colbie teased.

“Are you kidding?” Mia replied, glad to feel like she was back in the normal world for a few seconds. “If you knew how many times I’ve thought about your fiancé naked...”

The three of them laughed, but all the while Brooke’s unanswered question hung in the air between them. Mia had never been a woman who wavered. She had neither the time nor the inclination to waffle back and forth on important decisions. She wouldn’t start now.

“We’ve got Marcus and Nicola’s wedding in Napa this weekend,” she said to Brooke, who would be attending with Rafe, “which should give me a little rational distance from Ford’s sudden reappearance this morning. Monday morning I’ll call him and finally get it all off my chest.” Having a plan made her feel better, back in control of her life, the way she should be. “I’ll even let him make whatever apologies he feels he needs to make and then I’ll forgive—and forget—him completely.” She met her friends’ gazes, one after the other, before adding, “And I promise there will be absolutely no instances of my tongue going into his mouth during any of it.”