Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

Looking back, he realized she was watching him.

“I can’t say it yet. I want to, but I can’t.” She smiled sweetly. “But I will say this—I owe the Bitches Book Club a huge thank-you.”

He smiled back. It was enough for now. “You call yourselves the Bitches Book Club?”

“Yes. To distinguish ourselves from soccer moms.”

That had him laughing. “I would say that would do it. That and the post-meeting stop off at a fetish club.”

“Well, you know, if you’re going to discuss a book, you might as well really dig into it. We coordinate food around the book themes, too.”

Why did that not surprise him? “What did you eat that night? Oysters and hot sauce?”

“Cupcakes with whips and cuffs on them. The fondant work was pretty stellar.”

And this was his wife. The sweet and sexy, all mixed together. Rhett raised his beer to her. “Well played, Shawn. Well played.”

SHAWN figured it was a toss-up who was more miserable—her, Rhett, or the photographer, who literally winced every time she glanced down at her screen to check the shots.

What could she say? Getting engagement shots taken for what was essentially a wedding for marketing purposes was not high on her list of fun things to do. She felt completely ridiculous, and it was clear that Rhett felt the same way because he was stiff beside her, his hand clammy as he clasped hers per the photographer’s instructions.

Sandy was watching them with a look of pure horror. “Oh, hell, no. This is not going to work.”

“What?” Rhett asked in annoyance.

“You look like you have gas!” was his mother’s opinion.

That made Shawn crack the first smile in the past thirty minutes.

“Momma,” Rhett growled, “I’m trying. But I’m getting blue balls out here. Can’t we do this in the house?”

“So people can see our shabby living room suite that your father has been promising to replace for me and never does? Absolutely not. It’s beautiful out here with the barn in the backdrop.”

“It’s February. We’re standing in mud with bare trees behind us. This is not nature at its finest.”

“Do we have a shot we can use?” Sandy asked the photographer, whose name was Erika. The poor woman probably wanted to give back the deposit and go home.

“Not really,” Erika said, scrolling through the digital shots. “I’m not getting any genuine emotion out of them.”

“The only genuine emotion I’m feeling right now is irritation,” Rhett said.

“It shows.”

Shawn snorted. She was glad he was as uncomfortable as she was. First she’d had to debate what to wear, then had settled on casual, then Erika had insisted they take their coats off, so she was freezing. A thin sweater was no match for forty degrees.

Jeannie was over with her kids for dinner—the door opened and the kids came tumbling out to play in the yard. “How’s it going?” Jeannie asked.

“It isn’t,” her mother told her. She turned to Erika. “You know what? Let’s give Shawn and Rhett a few minutes to regroup. Why don’t you snag some shots of the kids playing?”

“Thank God,” was Rhett’s opinion as he relaxed beside her. “My face hurts from forced smiling.”

Shawn turned and reached out to massage his cheeks. “Our lives are so hard, aren’t they?”

“They really are.” He grabbed her hand again, this time with a smirk on his face. “Come around the corner and make out with me.”

Laughing, Shawn let him drag her a few feet away. “You’re naughty.”

“That’s the rumor on the street.”

“Were you a bad little boy?” she asked him, smiling, curious as to what Rhett had been like as a child.

“I don’t think so. Though I was good at silent maneuvering when I did want something, or was where I wasn’t supposed to be. When you’re quiet, you can get away with murder.”

“Shoot, that’s what I did wrong.” Shawn figured he had a point. “I was always about as subtle as tie-dye. Fortunately for me, my mother didn’t believe in discipline.”

“What do you mean? How can you not believe in discipline? Is that even possible?”

“When your mom is a self-proclaimed hippie, it’s very possible. She didn’t want to stifle our moral growth with preconceived notions of right and wrong.” It sounded as cracked to her now at thirty-two as it had at ten. “I say she’s lucky we didn’t grow up to be hard-core criminals.”

“I guess you proved her theory, though. She probably takes credit, doesn’t she?” Rhett looked amused.

“She does. And it’s annoying. I’m sorry, every kid needs boundaries. There’s a big difference between enforcing a bedtime so they’re not nuts in school as compared to corporal punishment. My mom lumps them all together. But my grandparents saved us. They taught us not to burp in public and that bathing has its merits.”

“I’m very grateful for that. The bathing part, that is. You can burp all you want.” Rhett took both of her hands in his and rubbed them gently. “Damn, it’s cold out here. I bet all the other kids envied your freedom. When I think of all the hours I could have wasted watching Power Rangers if my parents hadn’t limited my TV time. I could be a superhero today.”

Shawn laughed. “What a tragedy. But while I didn’t have a curfew, TV was a no-no, and processed foods were not allowed in the house. Everyone else had a snack cake in their lunch, and I had raisins. It’s just not the same, trust me.”

The horrified look on his face confirmed this.

“So which Power Ranger did you want to be?” she asked him.

There was no hesitation whatsoever. “Red.”

Then he did something she wouldn’t have ever in a million years pictured him doing. He threw out his arms and went into a karate stance. “Go, go, Power Rangers!”

Shawn loved it. “Okay, that is the most awesome thing you’ve ever done.”

His eyebrows went up and down. “Ever?”

She laughed. “Okay, maybe not ever because you do rock my socks in bed. But that’s pretty awesome.”

Rhett stood back up and pulled her close against his chest. “Thanks. You cold?”

“Freezing.”

“Let me warm you up.” He pulled her even tighter into his arms and kissed her.

“Better than hot chocolate,” he said.

It was.

* * *

SANDY Ford watched her grandkids playing and jammed her hands into her coat pockets.

“Were they that bad?” Jeannie asked.

“Oh, they were worse,” Sandy assured her. “I know Rhett hates having his picture made, but good Lord. He looked like he did when he had the stomach flu.”

Jeannie laughed. “Maybe you should just let it go. You can’t force him into anything, you know that.”

Did she ever. He was by far the most stubborn of her kids. “I hate to accept defeat, but I may have to.”

“So what do you think of Shawn?” Jeannie asked.

“I like her.” Not that she knew her particularly well, but it was clear Rhett was happy with her, and that made Sandy happy. Glancing over at her son, she nudged Jeannie and murmured, “Look at him.”

He was doing some kind of role-playing thing, flinging his arms around and going into a crouch, while Shawn’s laughter rang in the yard.

“What the . . .” Jeannie sounded as stunned as Sandy felt. Given that Jeannie had been well into her teens when Rhett was born, she was more than aware that her brother was not the most animated Ford offspring.

Quick, before the moment was lost, Sandy reached out and snagged Erika, who had been taking shots of the kids. In a low voice, she murmured, so Rhett and Shawn wouldn’t hear her, “Five o’clock. Take the shot.”

It sounded like she was in a Jason Bourne movie, but hell, whatever it took. She wanted one decent picture of her son clearly in love.

Fortunately, Erika was a good enough photographer to understand this could be her one and only crack at going home with something for her portfolio, because she immediately swung around and started shooting. Rhett pulled Shawn into his arms and kissed her with a tenderness that brought a tear to a mother’s eye. Sandy was even willing to ignore the fact that Shawn was in her thirties if this was how her baby boy felt about her.

Erika gave a sound of triumph as she clicked through the pictures on her screen. “Look at this.”

It was a great shot. They were gazing into each other’s eyes. “I love it.”

“That’s beautiful,” Jeannie agreed.

“Rhett, come over here and see this,” Sandy called to her son. She was ready to go back in the house and drink some coffee to warm up. Mission accomplished.

* * *

RHETT had forgotten his mother was anywhere near them. He pulled back from Shawn and made a face, realizing they were still stuck doing the photo shoot. They wouldn’t be allowed to go back inside until his mother deemed a picture romantic enough. He was starting to think he’d go down on a knee in the damn mud if it got this business over with. He wanted to take his wife home and snuggle on the couch for a couple of hours until he could strip her naked and have his way with her. It was the way the last three days had gone, and he was digging it, he had to say. This marriage business was damn convenient.

The whole getting-to-know-you thing was sped up by them living in the same house. The majority of the time, when Rhett wasn’t at work or the gym, he was with Shawn, and already their days had taken on a predictable pattern of dinner, a little TV or a beer at the bar up the road, maybe some darts or pool, then a few delicious hours in bed together before they fell asleep. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could ask for anything more perfect.

And the more time he spent with Shawn, the more he realized that his initial attraction to her was growing into something more, deeper, truer.

Hell, he was falling in love with her.

When his mother called him over, and he and Shawn saw the image Erika had captured with her camera, it was there for him to clearly see. Oh, yeah. He was falling in love with her.

Given the way she gazed up at him with limpid eyes in the photo, Rhett was inclined to think he wasn’t the only one suffering from the affliction. Shawn looked . . . soft. Gushy. Wide-eyed. It made his heart swell all over again.

“What do you think?” his mother asked. “Isn’t this a great shot?”

“That was devious, Momma,” he told her, his throat tight. He didn’t trust himself to agree with her assessment, or he might get overly emotional.

“It’s candid, honest,” his mother protested. “This is way better than anything we could have gotten with you posing.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Shawn said.

Rhett glanced down at her. Her face was pale, nose red from the cold, and she looked thoughtful, teeth digging into her bottom lip.

“Well, let’s go in the house, then, before we lose our fingers.”

His mother was all smiles, promising coffee and cookies. Jeannie grinned at him. “You’ve made her day.”

“That was my goal,” he told her sarcastically. “What is she going to do with these pictures anyways?”

“Hang them on the wall with the pictures of the rest of us from our engagement shoots. And I have to tell you, I’m jealous. Photography is so artistic now. When I married Mark, we had those horrible canned shots with his hand on my shoulder, and we’re wearing matching sweaters. I mean, seriously?”

Rhett laughed. He had spent some time as a child studying his mother’s hall of marital fame photos marching along the beige wall to the bedrooms, and he had to admit he’d been entertained by some of the fashions. “Sammy’s picture was worse than yours. Bill’s holding the cat, for Chrissake. Shawn, you have to see these pictures, seriously. It’s like an alley of awful.”

“Hush,” his mother yelled back to him.

But that only made him laugh more, glad the mood had lifted. Shawn was smiling as they went into the house and kicked off their shoes. He led her over to the hall that started with his oldest sister Sammy and descended on down to Nolan, the last Ford to get married.

“I don’t think I realized how big your family really is until just now,” Shawn marveled as they strolled down the hall, checking out his sister Rachel’s underwater scuba engagement shot, to Dawn and her husband sitting on a horse fence holding hands.

Nolan was smiling in his picture, Eve tucked up against his chest. She wasn’t smiling, which was typical Eve, but the way she clasped his hands tightly against her rib cage spoke volumes if you knew her. There was an empty spot next to them on the wall, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore. Rhett knew that his picture with Shawn would be printed out, framed, and hung to fill the final spot in the Ford family puzzle. Only it wasn’t real. And in six months, he would be the first Ford to get divorced and break his mother’s heart.