Chapter 13
QUINN
Well, evidently I was a married woman now, and I hadn’t yet completely lost it. Okay, so I’d had a minor freak-out when Ford had handed me a key outside town hall and said he’d see me at home because… what ?
Home ?
A home we’d now, apparently, share…
Somehow during all of this, I hadn’t stopped to think about the details. Like the fact that husbands and wives generally lived together, and we certainly weren’t going to do that in Mabel’s extra bedroom down the hall from where she hosted sex toy parties.
Which was how I found myself sitting in my car outside Ford’s cottage, in the dark, and unable to move.
My moving in here made the most sense, even if his place looked small enough that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t accidentally smother him in his sleep in the first week, not to mention the weeks after while we kept up this farce.
What the hell was I doing ? What were we doing?
It was one thing to dive into this when I knew there was nothing between us but simmering animosity, but after that kiss last night…
after our first kiss as a technically married couple?
I knew I wasn’t the only one who had felt those sparks.
The feel of exactly what those kisses had done to Ford had been proof enough of that.
The front door opened, and there he stood. “Are you waiting for an invitation, Mrs. McKenzie?” he asked, backlit by the porch light as he strolled down the front steps of his cottage toward me.
“It’s Cartwright,” I snapped, angry at myself more than him but unable to curb my snippiness.
He was close enough now that I could see him clearly, even in the dark of night, as he eyed me. “You’re not taking my last name?”
“Uh…no,” I said, gathering my purse and the bag I had in the passenger seat.
“This is going to be a blink of a marriage, so I’m not going through all that.
Changing names is a giant pain in the ass.
If this were forever, it would be a different story, but we’re not talking about forever. We’re talking about for now.”
It was the same thing I’d been repeating to myself since we’d said I do, but it hadn’t seemed to lessen this giant boulder filling up the entirety of my stomach.
After a deep breath, I stepped out of the car and finally allowed myself to take him in.
He’d changed out of his wedding attire—thank God—but this wasn’t any better.
He wore a fitted SCFD T-shirt that molded to his chest and biceps and a pair of gray sweatpants that left very little to the imagination and showcased a whole lot of him.
A whole fucking lot. Sweet fancy Moses riding a bicycle, there didn’t appear to be anything little about that .
He chuckled under his breath and snapped his fingers in front of his crotch. “Man, Beck really is onto something…”
I shot my gaze up to his. “What?”
“He and Everly read romance books together. He swears they’re like manuals and more men should take note. And your ogling proves romances are basically law—gray sweatpants really are like lingerie for men, aren’t they?”
I refused to take his bait about the sweatpants—but he was absolutely right, because sweet Lord in heaven, they should’ve been illegal on Ford and his not-so-little friend—and admit he’d caught me drooling over him. So instead, I asked, “You read romance?”
“Hell yeah, I do,” he said, taking my bag from my hand and shouldering it. Then, with a wink, he added, “The filthy ones are my favorite.”
Romances ranked right up there with cozy mysteries for me, so I’d read my fair share of them—had a well-worn copy of Being His Good Girl stuffed in my bag, in fact—so I could only imagine what constituted filthy in Ford’s mind.
“You got any more?” he asked.
I snapped my gaze to his, wondering if I’d mentioned the dog-eared copy of one of my favorite books out loud.
“Bags,” he clarified. “Is it just this sad little thing, or do you have more?”
“One more in the back seat.”
“ Two sad little bags.” He opened the back door and grabbed it. “You travel light.”
That was true. I’d sold most of my possessions before the move to Starlight Cove since I didn’t know where I’d be staying or how long I’d be staying there.
I shrugged, following him up the stairs to his cottage.
“I still have a few things at Mabel’s place, but I didn’t want to chance being there any longer than I had to be in case I ran into her.
But you and I both know that only buys us a couple hours, max, and she’s going to be on this.
I hope you’re prepared to tell everybody tomorrow. ”
“I’ll never be ready to have my ass handed to me by my baby sister.”
“Addison will be mad?”
“Oh, she’s going to lose her shit, for sure. But she won’t be the only one. I’m sure your landlord will have something to say about it. I’m surprised you managed to keep this from her in the first place.”
I shrugged. “I left while George was sleeping and Mabel was hosting a Pleasure Party.”
“A Pleasure Party, huh? You ever go to one of those?”
“Nice try, but I’m not talking to you about my sex toy collection.”
“You have a whole collection?” he asked, not hiding the interest in his tone. “Not gonna lie, I love a good assist.”
I forced myself to ignore the images those words conjured up, knowing I needed to keep myself in check, now more than ever. Rather than answer him, I just pinned him with a glare before glancing around at what would be my home for the foreseeable future.
It was bigger than I’d thought it would be but smaller than I’d hoped.
Directly off the front door, a small seating area housed two oversized chairs that faced the wood-burning fireplace bracketed by floor-to-ceiling mostly bare white bookshelves.
A small galley kitchen sat on the opposite side of the room.
Through glass-paned French doors was the bedroom, and from my vantage point, I could just make out a sliver of the en-suite bathroom.
It was cozy and quaint, if a bit impersonal.
And it was a bonus that I was only steps from the beach.
Even now, I could hear the crash of the waves against the shore, and I knew when it was light enough outside to see, I’d have an unobstructed view of the ocean from the front porch.
All things considered, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
There was just one problem…
“Why is there only one bed?”
Carrying my bags, Ford strode toward the bedroom and shot me a raised brow over his shoulder. “Not sure if you noticed this, kitten, but this isn’t exactly a mansion. I’ve done my best to fix it up over the years, but I can’t add square footage. Were you hoping for two twins?”
“It’d be better than this,” I said, gesturing to his king-sized bed.
While it wasn’t anything fancy, it was, surprisingly, made. A light gray duvet covered it, and four huge pillows were stacked at the head of the bed, a piece of paper resting on top of the pillows on the left. Right next to where Ford was placing my bags.
I walked toward him, glancing down at the paper, my brows lifting when I realized what it was. “Did you need help reading your test results? I know data isn’t your strong suit.”
I’d had to carry both our asses in statistics when we’d been paired together for group projects, and I wasn’t above reminding him of that.
After setting down my bags, Ford shifted so he could lean against the wall, his arms crossed as he stared at me with amusement. “Those are for you, kitten. I thought you might be curious.”
“Why would I be curious about your test results?”
He lifted a single shoulder. “I figured my wife had a right to know her husband has a clear bill of health. You know, in case you can’t keep your hands off me tonight.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop the sudden flash that came to me thanks to his words, Ford pinning me beneath him as he took my mouth, slipped between my thighs, and—
“Oh my God, I’m not sleeping with you.”
“I don’t know, wife, it looks to me like you’ve got yourself all set up on that side of the bed. Which is, obviously, directly next to my side of that very same bed.”
I opened and closed my mouth several times, but I was at a loss for words. Which was never a good thing in this man’s company.
“ And …” he said, clearly waiting for something from me.
“What?” I snapped.
“Do you have anything to tell me?” He gestured to the paper on my side of the bed.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not getting mine because they’re three years old, and I didn’t bother keeping them when they were clear and I wasn’t having sex.”
“What about birth control?”
My God, this man was irritating. “I already told you, I’m not sleeping with you, so you don’t need to worry about it.”
He hummed low in his throat and shook his head. “Don’t you think our birth control method is something a husband would know? What do I say if one of my siblings asks?”
“You think one of your siblings is going to ask about birth control,” I said flatly.
“Who knows. I’m just trying to be prepared here.” He shrugged. “But if you want to allow people to poke more holes in our story, then…”
Goddammit. I hated that he was right.
“Fine,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. “I have an IUD.”
His brows hit his hairline, and I rolled my eyes, reading his surprise over the fact that I had one when I hadn’t had sex in so long as clearly as if it were written across his forehead.
“IUDs are used for more than just birth control.” I scrubbed a hand over my forehead, letting it drop as I exhaled a deep sigh.
Fuck. I didn’t want to tell Ford my medical history—especially because it made me feel vulnerable…
something I hated to be in his presence—but he had a good point about knowing these kinds of details about each other.
“Which I guess is something a husband would know about his wife. I have an IUD because I have PCOS, and it helps with my periods. Sometimes…” I muttered the last word under my breath.
He nodded, satisfied. “There. That wasn’t so hard, now was it? We’re both clear, you have an IUD, and we’re officially sleeping together…” Then, softer, as if he didn’t want to admit it, he said, “Even if it’s not the way I want.”
I studied him, my brow furrowed as I tried to get a read on him, but I couldn’t. And I was tired of his games. “And what way is that?”
From the second Ford’s eyes landed on me, his gaze a bit unfocused as if he was lost in a fantasy, his tongue making a slow path along his bottom lip, I knew I’d made a mistake by asking. Knew I’d fucked up as he walked slowly toward me.
“One thing you’ll come to learn about me, kitten, is that I’m not picky. I’d be happy with you under me. On top of me. In front of me while I take you from—”
I leaped toward him, closing the distance between us and clamping a hand over his mouth.
I wasn’t sure I could take it if he finished that sentence.
Holy shit, it was roasting in here, my cheeks flushed, thanks to the heat and definitely not because a matching fantasy had popped up in my mind after each scenario he’d stated.
“I’m not doing any of that,” I snapped before removing my hand from his mouth. “I can’t believe you don’t have a couch.”
“No couch, sorry. But I do have these fluffy barriers you can use to protect yourself,” he said, gesturing to the huge stack of pillows on the bed.
“If one of my hands or my dick should attempt to make contact with you at some point during the night, just shove them back on my side of the bed. They tend to have a mind of their own when you’re involved. ”
“The only thing I’d use a pillow for in the middle of the night is to smother you in your sleep.” I forced the words out, though they lacked their usual sharpness, because there was no stopping the thoughts now.
Imagining us lying together in the dark, working our way through each of the scenarios he’d presented…
My breath quickened with every thought that floated through my head, my nipples tightening in response and my cheeks flushing even more.
Whether because of curiosity or reflex, my gaze dropped to the front of Ford’s sweatpants, and there was no missing the prominent bulge there—definitely larger than it had been when I’d first shown up.
And I hated myself a little bit that I’d given in to temptation and Googled his piercing last night, which meant I could picture it…
Ford stepped closer to me, his hand going to the flare of my hip, his thumb slipping beneath the band of my sweatshirt to sweep against the soft curve of my stomach. “You’re thinking about it, too, aren’t you, kitten?”
Too ?
My gaze snapped to his as my lips parted, and I stared up at him, trying to gauge if I was reading too much into that single word.
But without my voicing the questions flitting through my head, Ford answered them anyway. “Yeah, I was thinking about it. But that’s not anything new. It’s basically all I do where you’re concerned.”
“You’ve…thought about me like that?”
He huffed out a humorless laugh. “More times than I can count.”
The heat pouring off his body sent shivers racing down my spine, and the side of my breast brushed against his arm with every breath I inhaled.
It wouldn’t take anything to have his lips on mine again. Just a few scant inches and then—
But no. We couldn’t do this. This marriage wasn’t supposed to be real, which meant I absolutely was not going to fuck my husband.
I turned away from him and busied myself by grabbing the test results to set them aside. My gaze snagged on the date at the top and rolled my eyes. “If you think an old test is going to reassure me of anything, you’re wrong.”
“Who said it was an old test?”
“Um, I did? I can read, and this says it’s from April.”
“And?”
“ And ? What do you mean, and?”
Ford just looked at me with raised brows as if the answer to this should be obvious.
My mind scanned through a dozen possibilities, but it kept coming back to the same one.
If what he was saying was true—that this wasn’t an old test, just the last one he’d needed to take—that meant Ford hadn’t been with anyone in months.
Not since I’d moved back to Starlight Cove.