No Commitment (Capital Kingsmen #1) - Lisa Suzanne Page 0,37

or that my stomach flips and butterflies take flight and my legs feel weak and an ache pulses between my legs even just thinking about Tyler.

I’ve never felt emotions that intense for the even-keel Ford. I’m grateful to him. I love him. I want him in my life.

But I don’t know if I want to be married to him.

And just as I think that, I can’t help but wonder if the grass is just greener, if it’s just the attraction I’m feeling to Tyler, that fire and intensity that’ll flicker out eventually like my mom said. And on top of that, there’s someone else I need to think about...someone else who needs to come first, far and above whatever I’m feeling.

“I just want what’s best for Luna.” And I still don’t really know what that is. The stable home I’ve given her so far? Or the unknown truth?

She presses her lips together. She takes a tiny sip of the hot tea. And then she says, “Then you need to tell Tyler.”

I nod. I suppose I figured that out the minute Ford told me that Tyler showed up at my former office even though my brain keeps trying to recalibrate as I decide between stability and uncertainty.

How, exactly, do you tell a man a secret of this magnitude that’s been kept from him for over two years? And how do I prepare my husband and my daughter for the fallout of that?

CHAPTER 19

DANIELLE

“Did you see him while you were there?”

He asks me point-blank, so I don’t have much choice but to admit the truth. And while I’m at it, I think Ford deserves the whole truth.

Luna is asleep and I’m sitting on the couch with my husband beside me just like every night. But this night’s different, and not just because we haven’t flipped on the television to watch some house flipping show yet.

My heart aches tonight.

Luna and I have been home for a couple hours. I was only in California for three days, and now it’s Sunday night and it feels like years since I stalked out of Tyler’s house even though it was just two nights ago.

She was good on the plane—for the most part. She kicked the seat in front of her a few times, and I did what I could to prevent it from happening. Thank God for tablets and baby games.

I press my lips together and nod. “Not with Luna.”

He gives me a pleading look. “Are you going to tell him?”

“I think he deserves to know.”

Ford averts his eyes to the ground, and it’s the first time I really think in all of this that while he’s suffering...so is everybody else. I can’t help but think that I’ve sort of given him a pass because I feel bad for even thinking about another man, and yet he’s just as guilty as I am with this lie. He agreed to it, and I don’t really know why, but I never bothered to ask since my particular needs were being met.

But what we’re doing...it’s wrong.

I know he loves Luna, and that doesn’t have to change. I don’t know if anything has to change, really. Tyler’s reaction to the news is anybody’s guess. I don’t really expect that things will just work out with him and I’ll tell him and then we’ll be a family. I don’t even know if I want that. As I told him, there’s a reason things ended between us in the first place.

Except I don’t think it’s fair to keep up the emotional affair I’ve clearly been having without clueing Ford into it.

He looks a little nervous when he asks, “Are you in love with him?”

I press my lips together, and I reach over and take Ford’s hand. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I think so. And I don’t know what to do.”

He pulls his hand back like my hand is the fire that just burned him.

“Are you in love with me?” he asks.

My head whips in his direction at the question. “I love you so much, Ford.”

“Then how come I’m not enough for you?” he asks.

Because there’s a very nuanced difference in what he asked and in what I said.

Are you in love with me?

I love you so much.

Of course I love him. He’s not just my constant and my rock and my best friend. He’s so good to me and to Luna. But I don’t know if I’m in love with him. The love I feel for him is very different