head. “No,” she whispers. “I’m not making this decision lightly. This is what I want. Something has been missing all these years, and it’s been you, Ford. It’s been the life that we planned. The simple life. I didn’t realize what I needed, why I have never been truly happy with all the success I’ve had.”
“Yeah? You sure about all that? I can’t give you anything you had in that life, Stephanie.”
She reaches across the table, wrapping her fingers around my hand and squeezing. “Haven’t you been listening to me? I don’t want the life I had, Ford. I want the one that you can give me.”
“Even if it don’t come with fancy parties, diamonds, and expensive vacations, or any vacations?”
Her hand slides up to my wrist, her fingers curling around as she smiles at me. It’s a genuine one, her lips are wide and she’s even showing me a bit of her teeth. Fuck. How is this woman, this beautiful woman, even sitting across from me? Let alone fighting for me, for us?
“I had all those things, Ford. I wasn’t happy, not truly. But with you…”
“I’m not the same boy I was at eighteen.”
“I’m not the same girl,” she says. “I like the man that you are. You’re grumpy, you’re hard on the outside, but you’re still that soft sweet boy on the inside and I’m not even going to mention how it is in bed.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. “Yeah, that parts good, huh?”
“The best,” she whispers.
“You’re movin’ to the farmhouse, then.”
STEPHANIE
My eyes widen at his words. “What?” I exhale.
He chuckles, his face softening as it warms all at the same time. “You want to do this, we’re doin’ it all the way and I want you in my house and in my bed. There’s no time to fuck around, honey.”
“It’s too soon, what if—”
He lifts his hand, cutting me off in an instant. “I don’t give much of a fuck about what-ifs. I’m thirty-five, I’m ready to start my life. If you want the same, then why not start now?”
I press my lips together, rolling them as I shift my gaze from his to the wall behind him then back again.
“I’m scared,” I admit.
He smirks. “Yeah, got that, honey. It’s a scary thing. But this is what I want. If you’re all in, you gotta show that to me.”
“So, I have to prove myself to you?” I quip.
He shrugs a shoulder, reaching for a piece of bread. “Don’t know what you’d call it, but I gotta know you’re in this, all in.”
“I have a bad track record, I get that,” I murmur. “But I don’t want to screw this up by moving too fast either.”
Ford brings another piece of bread to his lips and tears off a chunk. I watch, oddly mesmerized by the action and the way that his strong jaw moves as he chews his food.
Pressing my thighs together, I wonder why him eating turns me on, but it does, at least right now. It’s downright distracting, is what it is.
“It ain’t too fast, Stephanie. It’s been a lifetime in the making. Known you my whole fuckin’ life,” he points out. “Granted, we have plenty new to learn from one another, but I’m not going to court you again, we aren’t kids anymore.”
“If I say no?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Would be really fuckin’ awful, because I work a hell of a lot of hours and we wouldn’t see one another much.”
Dropping my chin, I look down at my lap, then slowly lift my gaze back to meet his. “I’m all in, Ford. If you think moving in right now isn’t too fast, then I’m in.”
He doesn’t show any kind of reaction to my words. I wait for him to speak, to smile or something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he watches me for a moment. Then he wets his bottom lip, the move erotically sexy which distracts me all over again.
“Compromise?”
I can’t help but smile. Compromise. For an in-charge kind of alpha, I love this part about him. He always sees the wisdom in a good compromise and it’s one of the reasons I’ve loved him and have compared every man to him.
No other has ever come close to being anything like him. To being the perfect amount of soft and hard all at the same time. Only Ford can pull that off and make me want him every time.
“You can live in the main house, I’ll live in the little house. That way we’re close,