Read Online Now and Then by Mira Lyn Kelly - Free Book Online

feel of Ford’s hand closing around her wrist. He pushed up to his full height and turned his body so he was speaking only to her.
    “Sounds like this Fred is some kind of catch,” he said, his eyes locking with hers. “Shame you’re about to break up with him.”
    —
    Brynn was gone the second he released her wrist. Pointing to her phone with an exaggerated smile no one seemed to notice but him and then practically running toward a lounge at the far end of the VIP section.
    He hung back and asked the chattier one if she’d seriously been with this Fred for that long.
    “Yeah, we give her a hard time,” he chuckled, “ribbing her about the guy, because mostly she’s pretty tight-lipped about him. But pour a few drinks in her and she’ll start to spill.”
    Ford looked around at a couple of the players who’d fallen into their own conversation. “So these guys. The guys on the team. She’s never—”
    He hadn’t even finished the question when he was cut off by a burst of laughter. After a breath, the trainer shook his head. “Not even close, man. Sure, every time we get new blood without a ring on his finger, there’s the usual hot pursuit you’d expect. Brynn’s sexy as all get-out, smart as a whip, doesn’t fuck up, and she can sure as shit hang with the big boys. But no mixed signals with that one. No lead-ons. And hell, half the team thinks of her like a little sister—so she doesn’t get hassled.”
    Yeah, he could see how that worked. Why being available might compromise a dynamic she didn’t want to risk. So maybe fabricating a relationship made sense. But the part about using him as the template for this made-up man? Well, all it did was confirm he hadn’t entirely made it out of her head. Like she’d never made it out of his.
    And his plan to give her time to get used to the idea of them being together, to wait until she acted on the attraction herself? Not after this. No way.

Chapter 8
    She’d known Ford would come after her. That he’d give her a couple of minutes’ head start, and then follow.
    Which meant if Brynn had been serious at all about getting away from him, she could have.
    She could have headed for the front exit instead of the rear lounge. She could have stayed in the ladies’ room instead of pacing back and forth across the communal space waiting—well, yeah. Waiting. For Ford to come for her. To round the corner with his deceptively casual stride, sexily satisfied and totally irritating smirk, and deep-focused eyes that were most definitely the richest, meltiest chocolate brown she’d ever seen…locked on her.
    The glowing green butterflies were back, threatening to smash the last of her pathetic defenses to rubble, and again she heard that same whisper sounding from somewhere deep inside her.
    Give in.
    Ford took another step toward her and, panic flaring, she rebelled.
    “I’m not breaking up with Fred,” she announced weakly, matching him with a step back because every irrational part of her was begging her to fling herself into his arms and it terrified her.
    Ford cocked his head, continuing his advance. That too confident grin firmly in place.
    “It’s time, Brynn. Him in Milwaukee, you here. The long-distance thing is killer. I’m surprised you made it all these years.”
    She shook her head, not wanting to laugh. Not wanting to give in to the pull that was growing with every step he closed between them. “What we have works.”
    “What you have,” he corrected in that crazy-deep voice of his, “is a handful of memories about what it was like once upon a time.”
    Her back hit the wall and her breath caught as Ford took that final step into her space, stopping only when his body was within an inch of her own. When she could feel the heat coming off him, and that pull was so strong it pulsed like an ache through her veins.
    “What if that’s all I want? What if it’s all I need?”
    His brows drew together, darkening an already dark stare. “Is