Chapter Eight
FORD DIDN’T LAUNCH his campaign until Natalie had finished breakfast. Smart man, but he should’ve waited until she had more coffee.
Their early morning chat session had set her confused brain buzzing.
She’d stared at the ceiling until Henri began making noise in the kitchen two hours later, so despite sipping at her second cup of joe, her mind still felt sluggish.
“If you agree to disguise yourself, you can come with me to Marseille to buy a computer,” Ford said, breaking through her brain fog.
Her head snapped up. Finally. “So if I submit,” she asked, making her voice husky, “you’ll let me get in touch with Emma?”
He coughed, choking on his own drink. “Jesus. Natalie.”
“What?” she asked, all innocence, trying to ignore how much she liked his reaction.
That earned her an eye roll and a little head shake, and her mood picked up. Four years ago, he’d been—or tried to be—a walking statue, giving away nothing. Now, his responses were as conspicuous as a neon sign.
To her right, Henri hid a tiny smile behind his mug of tea.
Ford sighed, but it smacked of exaggeration rather than exasperation. Was she growing on him?
A girl could dream.
“Yes. If you let me have my way with you,” he said, holding eye contact, “I’ll help you get in touch with your friend.”
Oh, my. She knew he was only playing her game, but her body shivered in anticipation all the same. She beamed at him. “Do your worst.”
He gave her a stern look that made her belly flutter. How did men just get hotter as they got older? “If at any time, I judge that we can’t make a secure connection—or that it’s unsafe in any way—you will cease your efforts without argument. Clear?”
Cease your efforts? Who talked like that? “You sound like a stuffy old lawyer.” Half of her wanted to glare at him for being so pedantic, and the other half wanted to slide into his lap and kiss the words right out of his mouth. Instead, she huffed. “Yes, Dad. All clear.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if summoning patience, and she rolled her lips between her teeth to keep her smile at bay.
Deep down, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she knew he was just being careful.
Watching out for her and Henri. It wasn’t that she didn’t plan to be cautious, she just chafed at being told things she already knew.
But it was entirely her fault that he didn’t realize how accustomed she was to communicating securely online and watching her own back.
And she couldn’t tell him. Not unless he had a need to know. Right now, he didn’t.
“So, what’d you have in mind?” she asked, finishing the last bite of her baguette with jam.
Which was how she found herself in the bathroom at nine a.m. with a towel around her neck, as Ford snipped and trimmed her wet curls.
She closed her eyes and tried not to moan at the feel of his fingers combing across her scalp.
He could give her a buzz cut, for all she cared, as long as he didn’t stop touching her.
“Where did you learn to cut hair?” she asked, trying to stay grounded.
His low chuckle hit her right in the chest. “Nowhere. The only other time I’ve done this is when I was five and gave Amber—my sister—bangs. Very uneven ones.”
Nat’s eyes snapped open, partly out of horror that he’d never done this before, but also shocked that he was sharing. “Oh, no. I’ll bet your parents were pissed.” She watched him in the mirror, greedy for every expression, every word.
“Mom was livid,” he said, smiling to himself. “Mainly because it was Amber’s first haircut, and she considered that a milestone. She’d had the event all planned out in her mind, and the hipster short bangs my sister ended up with were definitely not what she wanted for her baby’s first hair style.”
Natalie laughed, devouring every morsel of his life he deigned to share.
“That’s practically a rite of passage for a kid.
I did the same thing to my brother when I was seven.
Had to miss my best friend’s birthday party.
” At the time it had felt like a fate worse than death. “Did you get in trouble?”
His smile faded, and his hands stopped moving, resting lightly at the base of her neck. “Yeah. I confessed, and Connor did too, even though he only watched me do it. We both lost TV and Game Boy privileges for a week.”
She wanted to smile at the image of him as a little boy, happily—maybe even proudly—clipping his sister’s hair, but his mood had shifted. “Connor’s your brother?”
Ford glanced at her then, seeming to shake himself out of his reverie as he straightened and refocused on her hair. The Stolid Ford mask slipped back into place as he said, “He was my twin. He died when we were twenty-six.”
“Oh.” Oh, God. “I’m so sorry.” Words were inadequate, but what else could she offer?
Ford’s jaw tightened, and he tugged gently on her tresses, clipping crisply at her neckline. “Me too.”
Shit. He hadn’t just lost a brother, but a twin. And only a couple years before he started working as her bodyguard. No wonder he’d been so serious. She’d been desperate to make him smile—or show any kind of emotion—and had only succeeded in making his life worse.
Her throat tightened.
But it wasn’t good to wallow in grief. Or to wall off your emotions, even though she was an expert at it. And when it came to the people she loved who’d died, she wanted to talk about them, even if it made her sad. Not talking about them—forgetting about them—would be worse. “What was he like?”
Ford’s lips pressed flat, but he answered. “We were identical twins.” Snip. Snip.
“Wow.” Two of him in the same room would be overwhelming. “But that’s just your genes. You didn’t have the same brain.”
“Sometimes it felt like we did.” He scowled and gave a particularly vicious snip.
Her hair might not survive this conversation, but it would be worth it.
“Like we shared a brain, but I got the more introspective half, while Con got the action half. My parents called him ‘Bulldozer’ because he ran headfirst into every situation, went after whatever he wanted, and he was very physical. He knocked things off tables and climbed the furniture. We were both athletic, but he was more…aggressive, more inclined to jump without looking.”
“What did your parents call you?”
Ford’s cheeks turned pink, but he met her gaze in the mirror. “Professor.”
She laughed. “Studious, curious, deep thinker?”
He nodded, and set the scissors on the counter, giving her hair a little fluff to reveal the layers he’d somehow added. “Yep. I’ve always been an uptight asshole.”
Is that how he thought she saw him? “Except when you cut Amber’s hair.”
“Yeah.” One side of his mouth almost crooked. “Except then.”
“Did you and Connor get along?”
He paused and stared at his hands in her hair. “Mostly. We were inseparable, even in college. I tried to keep him out of trouble, and he made sure I left the apartment. We were like two sides of the same coin. Now…it’s like half of me is missing.”
Natalie’s heart broke for him as the thought of Erik at her funeral came to mind.
Her once bratty little brother who’d dragged his sand-laden surfboard through the house, left his dirty clothes on their shared bathroom floor, and played his music too loud.
Who’d convinced her to buy him a pack of cigarettes and then puked on her favorite shoes after smoking too many.
Who’d bought her ice cream after a boy broke up with her, pranked other family members with her, and was sweet as honey to his black lab.
Erik was three years younger and six inches taller and one of her favorite people in the world. She knew without a doubt that he’d be there for her if she needed him, no hesitation. Hopefully, he understood she’d do the same.
Except he thought she was dead.
She swallowed against the vise on her throat.
“My brother and I aren’t as close as we were as kids, but I can’t even bear the thought of anything happening him.
” Sadly, thanks to her job and whoever wanted her dead—and Ford’s quick thinking—her brother understood exactly how it felt.
Maybe someday he’d even forgive her for putting him through it.
Heart aching for Ford, she reached up and squeezed his forearm. “I’m so sorry that you lost yours.”
He blinked and took a step back, dropping his hands to his sides. “I’m fine. It was six years ago.” He turned away and opened a cloth shopping bag he’d set on the counter when they entered the bathroom.
“How did it happen?” she asked softly, knowing she was pushing her luck, but unable to resist the question.
“He died,” Ford snapped. “And it was my fault.” Before she could fully process that revelation, he held up three bottles of brown hair dye, his hard gaze warning her the subject of Connor had closed. “Now, which shade do you want?”
Standing in front of Natalie, a fresh wave of grief washed through Ford at the thought of his brother. He’d been a wreck for months—maybe years—after Con died. Hell, maybe he still was.
They hadn’t just been brothers, they’d been twins, with their own language and the ability to sense the other’s thoughts, to feel when something was wrong, even from afar.
The day Connor died, Ford had felt their connection sever like a knife to the chest. Their link was like a phantom limb, gone but still causing him pain.
A void he didn’t know how to fill except with guilt.
Why he’d dredged all that up for Natalie now, he had no idea, but it left him with the need to hit something, or maybe run ten miles. He felt antsy and hollow.
But somehow, it had also been nice to talk about Connor. He avoided the subject with Amber and his parents, and there’d been no one else to share his memories with. But Natalie had no stake in Con’s death. She felt…safe.
Everything in him recoiled. She was not safe, in any sense of the word. And she hadn’t earned his story, no matter how much he’d enjoyed running his fingers through her hair, goddammit.