The Value of Vulnerability (47 page)

“Erin.” His hands covered hers. “Most of my avoidance of relationships lay in the surety that every trust is eventually broken. But I know you now. You would never deliberately harm anyone, especially one you love. I’ll always trust you, trust in your love.
Even
,” he smiled wryly, “if someone sends me compromising photos of you.”

That assurance was all she needed. She cuddled against him with a sigh.

He nipped her ear. “Do not for a moment suppose that is
carte blanche
to misbehave, however,” he warned severely.

He finally had to kiss her to shut her up, as she laughed until tears ran down her face.

He still looks like a predator
, she thought with amusement as she spotted her boyfriend
.

Standing out from the crowd as always, he came through the doors with passengers deplaning from another flight. She ran to him, colliding deliberately with his hard body.

“Hello,” Ford grinned, giving her a kiss. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”

“Barton phoned to let me know your flight was coming in early, and sent the car to get me. I almost missed you—I was expecting you to come through Customs.”

“I got clearance by phone. And I’m back early because I rearranged my meetings to be in time for the Inaugural Spielmann-Russell Barbecue.” A hand in the small of her back making little massaging circles on her spine, he guided her out of the terminal where the limo waited in the morning light.

“Now,” he said once they were cosily ensconced in the car, “tell me everything about your week since I’ve been away.”

It was a difficult task, as he was kissing her throat and his hands were sliding under her t-shirt. But she gave a breathless rendition of the holiday weekend just past and the shortened work week, leaving out how she had been worried sick the entire time he was flying. This was his second trip away since the crash, and she knew she had to get over it. And as he pointed out reasonably, it was statistically unlikely that BHG would lose another jet.

“I missed you,” he breathed heatedly against the breast he had just exposed. “Do we have time to catch up before we go to the Spielmanns’?”

“Absolutely,” she agreed, drawing him back up for her kiss. There was always time for being alone with Ford.

In e
verything she did, she considered him—in her experience, that was how love worked. It was what Ford (not too mockingly) referred to as
Erin’s Logical Love Formula
: you love someone, so you thought about his needs and wants, and he would think about your needs and wants in return. It was a calculation designed to build trust because, really, Erin explained to him, how could you have any faith in a person who didn’t care whether you’d had a bad day at work, or if a seemingly innocent turn of phrase was hurtful, or what you wanted on your pizza? It didn’t always work out, but it was the only way it
could
work out, and with luck, you got back what you put in.

With Ford, the payback was enormous—and they always ordered pizza with completely different halves without wrinkling their noses at each other’s choices.

For though he teased her, he took the Formula very seriously. And if he sometimes treated all the mutual consideration stuff as a business contract with codicils and subsections (amusing her to no end), the expression of amazed stillness of his features whenever his new situation struck him was worth it.

We will never approach life in the same way,
she thought later while watching him dress for the barbecue. He would always look at things with a degree of cynical, analytical doubt, as she would always be overly optimistic. He would always seek to mete out a degree of revenge on people who thwarted him, and she would always seek a way to forgive. But they struck a fair balance, getting another point of view from each other’s trusted voices.

He still radiated darkness and she, sunniness. They were foil to each other, complementary halves of a partnership where one did not diminish the other.

“Ford, honey, you can’t wear a tie to the barbecue,” she said from where she sprawled on his bed, for once ready before he was. Partly it was her eagerness to go, and partly his slight resistance to going. “What will people say?”

“Knowing your family, they
will ask how much it cost, where it was purchased, and who designed it.” He tossed the tie aside and selected a more casual shirt.

“Uncle Aaron is wild about cars. He asked about the Ferrari out of exuberance, not nosiness.”

He rolled his eyes. “I know they’re harmless. But they have utterly no qualms about asking shockingly intimate questions. ‘So, Ford, how much do you make an hour? What did your condo run you? What was your favourite childhood trauma? Ever get a girl in trouble? Ever have an unexplained rash?’”

Unfortunately, it was no exaggeration. “They do lack subtlety. But I love how you deflect them.”

He buttoned the white cotton shirt and tucked it into the waistband of faded jeans. “Lots of experience deflecting intrusiveness.” He winked at her.

“You’re not fond of the big gatherings.”

“Not really. But you enjoy them, and that’s ample return for some minor effort and inconvenience on my part.” He bent to kiss her en route to collecting his watch from the bedside table. “Watching you being happy makes
me
happy.”

“I guess I just imagined a big movie moment, where you would embrace the whole boisterous family lifestyle, wondering how you’d survived without it.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, touching the black-and-gold
maneki-neko
that sat on the bedside table, setting the paw swinging.

“Hey, don’t be. It’d freak me out if you morphed into some warm and fuzzy person who mouths platitudes.”

He laughed at that.

“Thanks, though. For tolerating them.”

“I’m not tolerating
them
. I’m tolerating some circumstances in which I obliged to meet them. I do like them, sweetheart. Just in smaller doses. I never have liked crowds. Crowds are . . . claustrophobic.”

“Ah! I hear that,” she said with a chagrined laugh.

“In a crowd, I keep expecting a stampede to break out. Besides, my time with you is curtailed at those things, since you are dragged off the moment we arrive. But the occasional Sunday dinner with the Parents Russell and Li, and even when Gina and her brood are there—I really do enjoy those. Almost look forward to them.”

“Almost?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “They’re growing on you
, but slowly.”

“My preference is—and will always be—us alone, or with a few friends.”

“Okay by me. But that reminds me: we’re doing a going-away-again thing for Riel on Thursday night at Zuzu’s. Presupposing you’d like to be there, do you think the guys would like to join us?”

“I can guarantee that
.” He grinned widely.

“You tell Conor to stay away from Riel! Thank god she’s leaving the country again!”

“I’m hurt that you would doubt my friend’s intentions.”

“All that charming lecherousness is hiding honourable intentions? That’s good to know.”

Shoving his wallet into his back pocket, he tried to stifle a grin. “Hate to tell you this, kiddo, but it’s a done deal. Too late to save anyone’s honour.”

She sat up, eyes wide, lips parted in astonished anticipation. “When?”

“The night of my birthday. I think she has broken his heart a little. Leaving and all.”

“That wench! She didn’t breathe a word to me. Though,” she recollected, “she has been smiling a lot lately. I thought it was just the job.”

“Maybe just the blow—” He stopped. “You probably don’t want the details I received.”

“Men.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I want every detail!”

“Well, despite your rather shocking salaciousness, it was mere highlights for which Nick and I pressed him since he had gone gaga over it all.”

“I can’t believe
you
just said ‘gaga.’”

“There is no better word. Equally apt, I could say she put him back on his ass. He could barely form syllables let alone sentences.”

“Good. Well, tell him to stop poaching my friends. Especially to keep away from my sister.”

Grabbing her hand, he tugged her to her feet. “It would be waving a red flag. He would take it as a challenge. Ready to go?”

“Yep.” She kissed him and he kissed her back, and they were off.

The Spielmanns and Russells, as predicted, swept Erin away from Ford almost the moment they arrived. He watched her go, smiling into her eyes as she sent him a resigned look.

As the party wound down into the early evening, Erin and her sisters stood with Stephanie in the backyard, catching up while watching the antics of their loved ones. Her gaze moved to where Ford lounged on a high-backed bench, with Jordan—filthy cape askew as usual—sitting on the grass at his feet, while they stared at each other in silence.

“Ford’s the first person who can outstare
Jordy,” Gina laughed. “They can do that for hours.”

Erin glanced ironically at her watch
. Ford’s clinical revelation of his dislike of crowds lacked even a breath of real complaint, but she suffered no illusions about his discomfort. He would have been dying to leave since about ten minutes into the party. He compromised by coming to the events, and she compromised by leaving earlier than was habit.

“I’d better break it up.” She crossed the lawn to take a seat beside him.

Jordy’s mouth twitched slyly at her arrival.

“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” Ford asked him.

Jordy nodded soberly.

“You’re right,” and he pulled Erin into a breathless embrace, drawing her across his thighs to kiss her with suppressed passion.

Jordy watched this action with a look far exceeding his years. “Are you going to marry her?” he asked bluntly, in the way only a child can.

“
Jordy!” she gasped.

They had not discussed anything of the sort. Even the question of living together had not been revisited in the weeks since the crash.

“Do you think I should?” Ford asked.

The boy nodded again, still sober.

Ford’s mouth compressed into a thoughtful line. “Thanks for your input.”

“You’re welcome.”

Ford flicked an amused glance at her, registering her embarrassment. “May we escape for the evening?” he murmured, and she nodded agreement.

She had no expectations concerning the formality of their relationship. No timeline was in her head, and she was more than willing to let their love take its own path. Insecurity and lack of trust was what made people push for those accoutrements, and she suffered from neither with him now.

Now that the subject had been raised, however—well, she was only human. If he wanted to marry her, she was more than ready to agree. Perhaps he would ask, in the future. She would be ready then, too.

Extracting themselves from the party was an arduous and amusing task, but at last they were back at Erin’s, tearing into the care packages that Mrs. Spielmann had insisted on sending with them, sitting in the middle of the living room floor with a bottle of wine and the last rays of the late-spring sun bathing them.

“You know,” he said at last, licking a bit of barbecue sauce from her fingers, “you’d make a great administrator for a charity.”

“Thanks. But that takes so much time and dedication. Between work and my real life, I only have a few hours a week to commit. And I like being a purely hands-on volunteer. No admin or organisation. Work satisfies all that just fine.”

“Too bad you couldn’t put everything under one banner.”

“What do you mean?”

“Collect all your charities together, like a, hm, foundation.”

She sighed noisily, raising her eyebrows. “
That
sounds even more time-consuming. A full-time job. Brooke does tons of work for the Carter Foundation, so I know how crazy it can be.”

“You could quit Xcess and run the foundation.”

Her nose wrinkled. “What foundation?”

A casual shrug. “Something of your own. Your own creation. Set up scholarships for those basketball kids you teach. Things like that. Really dig in.” He took a sip of wine. “
The Erin Howard Foundation
.”

Her breath caught.

His amber eyes glowed through the veil of his thick black lashes. “What do you think?”

“I think you’ve been paying attention to the wishes of a seven-year-old.”

“And the wishes of a thirty-four-year-old,” he smiled. Reaching into his jeans’ pocket, he withdrew a small black jewellery box, holding it out to her on the flat of his palm. “What do you think?” he asked again.

“I can’t think,” she laughed helplessly, pressing her palms to her temples.

He flicked the box open and she gasped softly at the enormous square-cut diamond in platinum, with channel-set diamonds in the band.