Page 97 of Knocked Up in Alaska

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Then he tells me, basically, that this is all for my own good.” Lilah clenched the rim of the hot tub while she peppered Bridget and Izzy with the scattershot account of her argument with Ford. Despite the physical effort, she didn’t completely succeed in keeping her cadence calm or her volume low. Shayla picked up on her mommy’s agitation and fussed from the comfort of Izzy’s lap.

“Sorry.” She let out a breath. “Sorry. I can take her, get her settled again.”

“I’ve got her,” Izzy assured from her perch at the side of the tub and transferred the baby from lap to shoulder before gently patting her little back. “Tonight’s about settling yourself.”

“Exactly,” Bridget agreed from where she soaked on the opposite side of the hot tub.

“It’s been two days. I can’t believe I’m still so upset.”

“Of course you’re upset.” Bridget paused for a swallow of wine, then went on. “In his ridiculous attempt to be the good guy, he completely disregarded your intentions, your goals and, most importantly, your feelings—not to mention his own—in favor of some fucked-up notion of protecting poor, young, inexperienced you from a terrible mistake. It’s flashing me back to what Archer did to us five years ago and pissing me off all over again, so, you know, cut yourself some slack on not recalibrating after two measly days.”

“Don’t get mad at Archer again. His heart was in the right place. While I hate to say it, I guess Ford’s is, too, if I look at things from his perspective, but his perspective is just so wrong.”

“Agreed,” Izzy said and slid the now content baby into her bouncy chair before slipping her bare legs into the bubbling water. “How do you plan to show him the error of his viewpoint?”

“I don’t know.” Helpless frustration crept back into her voice. Unwilling to get Shayla as worked up as her sad, angry mommy, she turned and smiled at her girl. Continuing in a sing-song voice, she admitted, “I really don’t. He thinks I’m too young and inexperienced to know my own heart, and I can’t do anything about my age or my experience, can I?” Still smiling, still using the silly voice, she shook her head. “No, I can’t. I’m old enough to have had a baby—and I’d like to see him try that for experience—but, apparently, that doesn’t count in his book. Noooo.”

“Oooooh!” Shayla cooed, reverting to one of her favorite noises. The patio lights turned her little owl eyes midnight blue.

“I know. It’s so rude, isn’t it?”

“Well, fuck it…shit. Dammit.” Bridget stopped and drew in a breath. “I mean…what the heck? How old do you need to be? How much experience do you need to accrue in order to have trustworthy feelings for the hardheaded man?”

“Don’t know.” She leaned over and kissed Shayla’s forehead before turning to Bridget. “I should have asked. I should have asked for specifics…how many men, what types of experiences…”

Izzy laughed. “Lilah, you are evil.”

She shook her head. “I wish. I’m a genius at thinking up with the right comeback two days too late. I can’t win a debate in real time, even one so stupid as getting him to admit that me flying off to see the world and kissing…or whatever-ing…a bunch of other guys isn’t going to magically make me more qualified to know my own heart and mind.”

“Totally won’t,” Bridget agreed, “though you could have plenty of fun proving it.”

She lifted her brows at her friend. “Did you have fun, Bridget?”

“Revenge-fucking any guy I could get my hands on? Initially, yes, but…” She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Ultimately, no. I don’t recommend it. And Ford wouldn’t want that, either, if he’d climb down from his high and noble horse long enough to think it through.”

“He won’t, though.” She shut her eyes and envisioned him as he’d been during their last conversation. “He just stood there with his ‘Ford knows best’ face on, and that was that.”

“You win the Iron Restraint award for not slapping the ‘Ford knows best’ look right off his handsome face,” Izzy said. “You know what you’re going to have to do now, right?”

“I have no idea what to do, now,” she admitted. “I know he loves me, even though he has a screwed-up way of showing it. I know he loves Shayla. But until he’s ready to reach for what he wants, and hold onto it, we’re stuck. I can’t fight for us by myself.” With that hopeless stalemate out in the open, she stared up at the starlit sky, where each and every one of those tiny, bright diamonds seemed to be winking at her in some cosmic joke she didn’t get. Didn’t get it at all.

“You’re going to wait him out,” Izzy said firmly.

She lifted her head and looked over at Izzy, convinced she’d heard wrong. “Wait him out? Ford Langley?” A knot of anxiety tightened in her gut as Izzy merely nodded. “There is no waiting him out. Ford’s the master of letting go.”

“Not really, no,” Bridget opined, staring at her fingernails.

“Are we talking about the same man? He let go of high school and his home because he decided letting go was best for everyone. He let go of his own daughter because he believed letting go was best for her—which maybe it was, I can’t second guess what I wasn’t a part of—and okay yes,” she admitted when Bridget raised a brow, “he has her back, now, but that took fourteen years and a whole lot of persistence on Mia’s part. ‘Waiting him out’ is not how I want to spend the next fourteen years.”

“You’re not going to have to wait fourteen years.” Bridget dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “He’s not going to last fourteen days. Not even four days, if you resort to sexual torture again.”

“I can’t. Not after what he said. Besides, I can’t seduce him into being with me. I shouldn’t have to resort to setting a…a…sex trap.”

“You shouldn’t,” Izzy agreed. “There’s no need. You’re not going to have to hold out long.”

“How do you figure?”

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