Page 62 of Tate
“I mean, when I got up this morning, he was gone. And Sly assigned me to your detail.”
She turned away from him, her throat tightening.
Gone.
Because she’d made him suffer in silence.
Brilliant plan, Glo. Just brilliant.
Operation Angry Tate: mission accomplished.
Ford wasn’t leaving. Not the baseball game, despite the hot sun, and clearly not her life.
Or at least he hadn’t left yet, and going on day five, with him cheering for Gunnar as her brother squinted into the sun in the outfield, Scarlett was starting to get the message.
One she should have spotted on the horizon when thirty seconds after they pulled up, as she’d been retrieving her gear from the back seat, Ford got out.
Then he’d walked around the truck to intercept her mother’s burly boyfriend with a hand out, all gentlemanly, introducing himself as Petty Officer First Class Ford Marshall. With the US Navy SEALs. And yes, he was a teammate of Scarlett.
Sort of like a throwdown, right in her mother’s grassless front yard.
Axel shook his hand, tight-lipped, trying to turn Ford to ash, and although he stood about an inch taller than Ford, maybe six-one, and had the shoulders of a small buffalo, he didn’t possess Ford’s confidence, the buzz under his skin that tremored the very air around him that said: Be. Careful.
Not that Ford emanated that on purpose, but it simply oozed out of him, a product of thousands of hours jumping out of planes and swimming through dark waters and scaling rough terrain and surviving active shooters, people who wanted to kill him.
So no, Axel Montrose hadn’t a prayer of intimidating Ford.
Ford had let him go then and turned to help her with her duffel bag.
That was a first.
Mostly because she was usually the one helping them with gear, thanks to her job as a supply officer and communications liaison.
He took her big bag from her, not meeting her eyes, and walked it to the front porch, setting it there. And that might have been the end—he might have gotten into his truck and driven away—if her mother hadn’t come outside to greet them.
She still looked like a California beach song. Sure, she had a few years on Scarlett, but Sammy-Jo Hathaway had a body made for sunshine and bikinis. Scarlett had long ago realized she’dgotten her curves, including the hips she couldn’t quite get rid of, from the father she couldn’t remember, because Sammy-Jo still sported a size four frame, legs that didn’t quit, and a bustline that most twenty-year-olds would be jealous of. She came out wearing a sports bra, a pair of leggings, and an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, as if she might be caught in the eighties. Her blonde hair was up in a high ponytail and frankly, her mother looked about twenty-five.
Not forty-three.
And maybe not even high.
Her eyes had lit up. “Scarlett?” She came down the stairs in her flip-flops and threw her arms around her daughter.
Scarlett couldn’t move, just holding on, painfully aware that maybe she’d dreamed up her panic. Sorry, Ford.
But he stood back, his hands in his pockets, smiling.
Her mother backed away, caught Scarlett’s face in her hands. “You’re so beautiful!”
Huh.
Then she turned and looked at Ford. “And this must be that boyfriend you told me about.”
Oh. No. No—uh, her mother was clearly remembering back to the brief romance she’d had almost five years ago. She glanced at Ford, not sure what to say, but he simply held out his hand.
“Yes, ma’am. My name is Ford.”
Then he leaned forward and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek.
