No Commitment (Capital Kingsmen #1) - Lisa Suzanne Page 0,24

what else to do. Dustin told me to come back home, and that was my plan. And then you texted me. You wanted to meet with me.”

Her eyes meet mine, and she glances away. But it was all there in that one connection. All the feelings, and not just the heat, lust, and want, but the friendship and the love rolled into one tiny little moment.

She nods. “I shouldn’t have.” Her words contradict the way she looks at me. She stands, abandoning her half-drunk cup of coffee and me along with it. “This was a mistake.”

She practically runs out the door. I turn to watch her as she gets into the mid-size SUV.

You’d think that would be it for me. Done and dusted. I’d be able to move forward now after she told me it was a mistake to see me, that she needs me to leave her alone, that she moved on with her life and there isn’t a place for me anymore.

But the way she just ran out of here...it’s clear that this meeting affected her.

She still has feelings for me, and maybe she just needs some time to get her shit together. Maybe she needs to figure out if she loves her husband as much as she loves me.

She was mine first, and she’ll be mine again. I just have to be patient.

I’m not giving up.

In fact, the battle is just beginning.

CHAPTER 13

DANIELLE

“I saw Tyler today.”

I’ve told so many lies and kept so many secrets over the last couple years that one more might break me. So I opt for the truth.

Ford glances up from where he stands at the kitchen counter flipping through the mail. He’s home early for a change, just a little after four. I’m on the floor less than ten feet away playing with Luna, and I say the words so casually, so flippantly, that I almost think he doesn’t hear me at first.

But then I realize he did hear me.

“You what?” The piece of mail he was holding flutters down to the counter when he drops it.

I nod but don’t repeat myself, and I chance a glance up at him. Terror is written across his face in the pinch of his brows and the wide eyes and the pursed lips.

“Did you take Luna?” he asks.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma,” Luna says.

I smile at her. “That’s right, Mama.” I glance up at Ford and shake my head. “Madelyn came by for an hour to watch her.”

“Did you tell him about her?”

“Da-da-da-da-da.”

“Dada,” I repeat to Luna. The irony isn’t lost on me that she says dada as I’m talking about her biological father to the man who raised her. I turn to Ford again. “No. I told him I don’t have room for him in my life anymore.”

“Wouldn’t keeping him blocked and not getting in touch have achieved the same goal?” he asks.

I was on my way home, Dani. Tyler’s words from earlier today find their way back to me.

Yeah. It would have. He was heading home when he rerouted because I told him I could see him. I opened that can of worms. I pulled at that loose thread.

My intention wasn’t to hurt him or to tell him I didn’t have a place for him anymore. It was a morbid sense of curiosity, to see if those feelings that sparked so brightly were still lit. And they were. Maybe even brighter than before since we share a child now—a child who I see so much of her father in. It’s not just in the physical resemblance of her eyes and her smile and her nose. It’s in the way she laughs so easily. It’s in the way she loves so hard. It’s in the way she’s stubborn and fights for what she wants. It’s all these little pieces to her little personality that are unveiling themselves with each new day as she slowly grows from an infant to a toddler.

Having those feelings fly right back to the surface with him just pushed an edge of guilt deeper into my heart, and my only defense mechanism became the hurtful words that spilled from my mouth.

It isn’t fair to Ford, but it’s not like he was ever in the dark about my feelings for Tyler. I may have downplayed them, but a connection like the one we shared doesn’t just disappear—even when you marry somebody else three months later.

“I guess we’ll never know,” I say instead of telling him that Tyler was on his way out of town when