Shock - Marie Johnston Page 0,8

for. The shoes add to her already considerable height, and even that’s satisfying. No breaking my back just to steel a kiss.

She lifts a hand to push the ladies’ room door open. A clutch drops from under her other arm. The soft curse she utters is vaguely familiar but I’m stuck on a cloud of anticipation. She’s bending to grab it.

I don’t have time to be chivalrous and get it for her. That’s what I tell myself. Because the show is going to be spectacular.

My steps slow. I don’t want to bump around her while she’s bent over. Also a good excuse to keep leering like a perv.

As she reaches the lowest point of her descent, she kicks her left foot to the side.

Air gusts out of my mouth.

“Wescott?”

Lia

My fingers curl around my clutch and I whip around. “Ford?”

Of all the coincidences. Of all the witnesses to my own personal embarrassment and the way I can’t seem to stop catering to Samuel Barnaby.

Ford’s expression is not one I’ve seen before and I thought I knew him pretty well. His face is screwed up in equal parts incredulous and horrified. He rears back when I turn around, his gaze drifting down my Anthropologie cocktail dress, confusion clouding out his other emotions.

“What?” My cheeks are burning. “Surprised I clean up well?”

“Wescott?” he repeats. He looks at me like he can’t believe my voice is coming out of this body.

My Sunnyville EMT uniform must make me boxier than I thought. “Present and accounted for.” I tighten my grip on my clutch. If the damn thing hadn’t dropped, I would be safely locked away in the ladies’ room, away from Samuel. I just want two minutes to be weak instead of the strong woman I moved to Sunnyville to be.

Ford’s expression is steeped in disbelief, but I guess he got a faceful of my ass in the air. “I didn’t see you here.”

He falls back into stunned silence and I don’t know what else to do. When his gaze drifts down to my dress, I do a little curtsy. “Didn’t recognize me?”

He closes his eyes, shaking his head. When he opens them, he’s back to devil-may-care Ford. “Not until your giraffe move.”

“My what?”

“When you bend over, you kick a foot out.”

I do? Since we’re back to being Ford and Wescott, I lean against the wall by the bathroom door, happy to take longer than expected. Samuel’s getting under my skin and I had to give myself space. Seeing Ford helps me remember I’m Lia, competent paramedic, and that I worked hard for that title.

He waves his hand up and down. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your dude clothes.”

I whack him with my clutch. “They are not dude clothes. They’re comfortable and what a lot of women actually wear when they’re not out trying to get laid.”

His grin is slow, a gotcha gleam in his eyes. “Wescott, are you telling me that you dressed up like this hoping to get laid?”

I suck in a breath.

He grins, his eyes twinkling, but he leans closer like he’s hanging on the answer.

“I wanted to show him what he’s missing,” I hiss.

His grin fades. “You shouldn’t have to show him. It should be easy to see exactly how badly he fucked-up.”

My lips part. He’s so earnest and I’m so floored. I never thought of it that way. And the way it makes me feel sends up a red flag. Warm flushes and flutters in my belly aren’t supposed to happen around Ford. “So…meal with your mom going okay?”

His lips thin. “It’s good. It’s…fine.” Before I can ask what’s really going on, he continues, “You?”

“Same.” I sigh and rest my head on the cool stucco wall. “It’s fine, but the message is clear. He wants me back, we were good together, we worked so well, of course my parents love him…”

Ford’s forehead crinkles. “But he dipped his wick in some other woman’s candle.”

“Coated it good from what I could hear. Anyway, he can try all he wants but…” I hug my arms around myself, grateful to have escaped Samuel’s orbit for a few minutes. It’s too hard not to be drawn in.

Proving that he knows me better than anyone, Ford says, “You don’t have to see him again. It doesn’t matter what your parents want.”

I nod, dropping my gaze from Ford’s dark blue eyes. My parents. More my mother. She adores Samuel. He reminds her of herself, and his indiscretion is only a blip on the radar as far