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She was ready to bolt. Ford saw the sudden urge to flee in her eyes, in her posture, and he thought he knew what brought it on. She was falling in love with him, with Cory, and it scared the hell out of her. His cock throbbed. The release his body wanted continued to be a present and distracting need, but he forced himself to concentrate around it. What he needed most was to convince Rayne she was okay, that her feelings were okay, that he, oh, hell, that he was in love with her.

  "I missed the conversational portion of our program this morning in the kitchen." He rested his weight on one arm and reached for her with the other, splaying his hand on her belly. He loved her softly rounded belly, loved touching her even in the most casual, totally nonsexual ways. Damn it, he loved her!

  He'd known it. He was pretty sure somewhere inside, he'd realized it days ago, but he realized it when he walked through the door and found her curled on the sofa, her hair pulled back, her curvaceous body clad in lounge clothes. Love had all but slapped him across the freaking face! Who would've thought this woman, this plane Jane-one-minute-and-sex-goddess-the-next woman, could find the key to his heart and twist inside the rusted lock in a little over two week's time? She'd done it, though, and no amount of fleeing or fear was going to keep him from keeping her.

  Keep them from keeping her, he amended, shooting Cory a furtive glance. Yeah, his best friend was a goner, too, and it felt great, right. He wanted to dance with them both. Okay, maybe not dance, but he had to fight not to grin like an idiot. He looked back at Rayne.

  How could she not see she had them both wrapped around her pinky? He and Cory had kissed for her, for crying out loud. If that wasn't evidence of how badly they were pu—No, he couldn't even think of being pussy whipped—gone on her. That was a better thought. In love with her sounded even better. If the kiss the three of them shared wasn't evidence of how badly they loved her, then he didn't know what would be.

  "You really want to talk?" Rayne asked, skepticism lacing the words. "About what?"

  Ford shrugged. "Anything."

  "Consider it his five minutes." Cory joined them on the floor, stretching out on the opposite side of Rayne in a pose that almost mirrored Ford's. He grinned. "Ford jumped first, but you know."

  Rayne giggled. It was such a girlishly sweet sound, Ford smiled. "Did I miss something?"

  "Only me attempting to keep up the conversation to prevent, well, what happened from happening so quickly after I got here."

  "We were doing pretty good, too," Cory chimed in.

  "Until you walked in."

  "Trying to say I was supposed to keep my hands off you for at least five minutes?" Ford shook his head and caressed her belly. "Not going to happen, babe."

  She stared at him. He could almost see the wheels turning in her beautiful little head as she attempted to compute it all. She struggled with her feelings, with what she hoped were their feelings, with what she knew to be right as opposed to what she believed was wrong. He saw it all plainly written on her lovely face and it gripped at him. Let yourself feel, baby. Just let it happen.

  "What do you want to talk about?" she asked slow, suspiciously.

  He hated that suspicion in her voice. Did she not trust him? No, it wasn't that she didn't trust him. She didn't trust what she saw in his eyes, what she felt in her heart. That's what she didn't trust.

  "Ask me something. Anything you want to know. Ask me something you've been wondering about." There was so much he wanted to know about her. What really happened to her marriage to the Jacobs guy? The synopsis she’d given him and Cory had been short and emotionless. There had to be more to it, didn’t there? Had the guy hurt her? Ooo, if Ford found out anyone ever laid a finger on his woman, he’d go completely bullshit!

  Why hadn't Ford or Cory met her before last week when they'd been living across the hall from her brother for well over a year? That was another question that tipped the iceberg of things he wanted to know, but something about her guarded expression told him not to ask any of that. Better to let her steer the conversation for now.

  She stared at him for a full three seconds then took a deep breath as if gaining the courage for whatever it was she'd decided to ask. "Okay, I've been wondering about your sister. Tell me about Sicily."

  Ford's blood turned to ice in his veins. His hands wanted to grip hard on the steering wheel, to turn the conversational car in a different direction, but he'd let her set the track. Maybe not much better after all. He looked away. He had to. He hadn't thought about Sicily in, well, he'd managed to go a few days at least without thinking of her.

  "Sicily." He repeated the name slowly, his voice tight and sounding like someone else's. He wished this story could be someone else's, too. "Wow. Okay, what do you want to know about my sister?"

  "Was she older or younger? Younger, right? Didn't you tell me she was younger?"

  He nodded. "By three years."

  "What happened to her? How did she die?"

  He glanced back and found himself looking at Cory instead. The other man sat still on Rayne's other side. Was he even breathing? Ford hoped so because he wasn't sure he was breathing himself. Their gazes met and Cory nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of his head. It was enough, coupled with the swirl of compassion and understanding in his eyes, for Ford to know his friend thought they should tell Rayne. Everything.

  Cory was right. She needed to know. She deserved to know. He met Rayne's gaze. "Sicily got killed in a car accident five years ago. Another car on the highway, a speeder, hit her and she was ki-killed almost instantly."

  The color drained from Rayne's face and her hand flew over her mouth. "Oh, my, God. Ford, I'm sorry." Tears welled in her gorgeous eyes and he knew exactly what she was thinking. She'd been speeding the morning they met. "No wonder you…"

  "Gave you a ticket for speeding," he finished and forced a smile. "Yeah, I'm an asshole when it comes to speed limits." He sighed and shook his head, knowing he had to tell her everything. "There's more to it. A lot more. Do you want to hear it?"

  Rayne nodded. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up something this painful, but well, I—"

  "You don't have to explain," he cut her off. He touched her cheek. Her skin felt warm, soothing. He let his hand fall back to her belly and for the briefest of flashes, he caught an image of her belly rounded with his child. What a time to think of something like that, Harris.

  "You don't have to tell me now," she said quickly. "It can wait. Let it wait." She covered his hand with hers and squeezed.

  "No. Now is best. Now is, well, at one time there were three of us. The clichéd Three Stooges, as everyone called us. Cory, Stewart "Stewie" Whitener, and myself. We grew up together. Stewart's parents were a lot like mine. You know, all attorney and judges, legal beagles. Anyway, Stewie and I decided we would break ranks, so to speak, and become officers. The law was in our blood, but we were too much of a hard ass to follow in the family footsteps."

  "You, a hard ass? I can't imagine." She gave him a watery chuckle and he smiled, knowing she only wanted to lighten the mood.

  "He hasn't always been the sweet, sensitive guy he is now," Cory added.

  Rayne reached with her other hand to hold Cory's, obviously knowing this story was as hard for him to hear as it was for Ford to tell. Sensitive to the situation, she truly had no idea how fucking torturous it was for both of them.

  "We weren’t much more than rookie cops, Stewie and I, still green behind the ears even though we’d been in the department for a couple of years. They assigned us to traffic duty. The brass learned early on we were practically inseparable. They partnered us with each other." He paused, staring at a spot over Rayne's head as a clear picture of Highway 90 swam into his vision. "Stewie was in the driver's seat. We sat parked on the side of the road when this red Corvette came flying past us. I clocked it doing ninety. Slowed down as soon as the driver spotted us, but Stewie chased it down anyway and pulled it over. I didn't get a good look at the driver, but I saw enough to know it was a female, young
, and blond. Just Stewie's type." He smiled, remembering.

  "Why am I getting an image of the blonde in the leather jumpsuit from Cannonball Run?" Rayne asked.

  Ford chuckled. "Pretty damn close. That was Stewie for you. He liked 'em fast, blond, and hot."

  Rayne's smile faded. "What happened to Stewie? Why haven't I met him yet?"

  "He's getting to that, sweetheart," Cory whispered.

  "Oh, dear God." Rayne gasped, her eyes horrified, already guessing what she might hear.

  Ford looked away again and went on. "He let her off with a warning. Came back to the squad car babbling about how he couldn't give such a sexy broad a ticket. I shrugged it off. We were both young. Anyway, not forty-five minutes later, a call came through the radio, a TA with possible fatalities about ten miles up the road from where we were parked. We pulled up on the scene and…"

  He'd known. He remembered glancing at Stewart before hopping out of the squad car. His friend's face had been whiter than a sheet. The red Corvette had been so badly mangled, he was certain the blonde was dead.

  "She walked away, fucking walked away, with bruises on her face from the airbag and a broken nose. That was it." He'd wanted to break the bitch's legs. Until he'd seen what her reckless driving had done to the other car, to Sicily's car. Then he'd wanted to kill her. "Cory pulled up on scene less than a minute after Stewart and I got there."

  "You were there, too?" Rayne asked Cory.

  "I'd just been hired for the rescue squad at the station. I was a rookie, riding shotgun on my third traffic accident."

  "A few bystanders saw the accident. They started giving their report to Stewart while the other EMT began checking out the driver of the 'Vette. One of them kept pointing toward the woods, to the skid marks on the highway and the trees. Cory grabbed his medical kit and we went after the other car. It was—" His voice wobbled and he had to stop. He swallowed, blinked back tears he hadn't shed in so long as the image in his memory changed from the highway to the car, to the dark brown hair behind the wheel and the flaming red head in the passenger’s seat.

  "The witnesses said the Corvette clipped the rear bumper of Sicily's car," he went on, doing his damnedest to push the images back to the dark recesses of his mind where he'd kept them these last few years. "Apparently, the blonde tried to pass, but didn't get over soon enough. She was speeding. The contact sent Sicily's car spinning and then skidding off the highway and into the woods. It went a good ten feet through the brush before it smashed head-on into a tree. She was killed almost instantly."

  They both were. He met Cory's gaze again and this time, his friend shook his head. That was enough for now. Rayne couldn't take hearing the rest. Cory couldn't take to heart the rest. Hell, Ford couldn't take telling the rest.

  He looked at Rayne. She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. It ripped at him seeing her cry, and he couldn't help but reach for her. She came to him, folding herself in his arms, holding him too, and giving him as much comfort by her closeness as she took from him.

  "What happened to Stewie?" she finally asked again. No, the story wasn't over. He couldn't tell her the complete horror now, but he could tell her this. He had to.

  "He blamed himself for what happened." For Sicily's death and…. Ford cut off the thought and went on. "If he hadn't let the blonde go with just a warning, if he'd given her a ticket, the accident wouldn't have happened."

  "He couldn't know that," Rayne said. "People get tickets all the time. It doesn't stop half of them from speeding."

  "No, it doesn't. We never could get him to see that. He and Sicily weren't lovers, but they'd been dancing around one another for several years. He felt like he'd killed her. He couldn’t forgive himself."

  Rayne lifted her head, but her eyes were closed. "He killed himself. Didn't he?"

  Ford nodded, and then realizing she couldn't see it with her eyes closed, he answered, "Yeah. A few months after we buried th-her, a neighbor called the station, reported a gun shot in our apartment. The three of us had an apartment downtown at the time. Cory and I got there at about the same time. We found…" He shook his head, unable to go on. She could guess what they'd found, their best friend, their Stooge, dead from a bullet to the head in the middle of their living room floor.

  * * * *

  Rayne closed her eyes and let the tears leak down her cheeks. Oh, Ford. She hurt for him, in her mind, in her heart, in her very soul. What would it be like to not only lose a sister, but a best friend too in such a short time? She couldn't imagine it, didn't want to. How would she live without Max? She'd actually asked herself that very question many times. Max was a firefighter, more, he dealt not only with fires but chemicals too, most of them highly explosive. Every day on the job could be a day of danger and risks for him.

  As it was for Ford and Cory, she realized, and her blood chilled. Ford was a cop, a homicide detective. He carried a gun for Pete's sake, and went up against other men who carried one, too, bad men. And Cory, his job as an EMT/firefighter was no less risky, no less dangerous than Max's or Ford's.

  Yet, didn't the loss of Ford's sister prove that anyone could die at any time? One didn't need to be in a dangerous career. Every day of life was simply a risk of death. It was all the more reason to live every minute to its fullest, all the more reason for her to stop fighting her heart. She'd been about to leave, on the verge of running from a love she'd found. For what? What would running give her? A life destined to be alone? That was the last thing she wanted.

  Her throat tightened and she couldn't speak. What could she say in any case? No words seemed adequate comfort for the loss Ford had experienced. The loss they had experienced. Sicily might have been Ford's sister, but she'd surely been Cory's friend, too. Stewart definitely had been. Cory had lost as much as Ford and he no doubt hurt just as deeply.

  She opened her eyes. Cory was staring at the floor, his cheeks streaked with tears. Seeing his pain, seeing his tears tore another hole in her soul. How to comfort them? Words were only empty sympathy. She looked at Ford, his eyes swimming in memories and anguish. She knew of only one way to help a man over such a deep cavern of hurt. Reaching a hand for Cory to pull him close, she hooked her other hand behind Ford's neck and kissed him.

  His primal response, heated and instantaneous, confirmed it was the right move. He devoured her mouth as thoroughly and deliciously as he had her pussy, what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  His hands pushed beneath the material of her shirt, his shirt, and he gave a low growl as he peeled it from her body. She hadn't taken the time to button it so removal was easy. Still, she couldn't help but smile as she pulled back from him enough to speak.

  "I thought you liked me in your shirt."

  He gazed at her, his eyes boiling with needs, his lips twitching. The pain and sorrow of the moments before remained, but they were sinking fast, no doubt to whatever deep, dark place inside his mind where he buried them to make it possible to continue his life with the endless grief.

  "I like you better out of it." His hands moved over her now bare shoulders, down her arms, framing her sides.

  Rayne shifted and straddled his outstretched legs. Her head fell back as his calloused hands skimmed her flesh. His mouth touched her, a flame to her already heated skin. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, her chest. Cory moved in behind her, his body pressing to her back, his chest supporting her head. His hands moved beneath her arms and around to cup her breasts. He held them firm, lifting them and squeezing slightly as Ford's lips closed around the taut peak.

  He alternated nipping at her hardened nipple and then licking it to sooth, first one breast and then the other until her pussy flamed and she writhed against him and Cory. With his hands free thanks to Cory's hold on her breast positioning them as some sort of sexual offering, Ford delved a hand between her legs, finding her folds sopping and ready. He reached between her body and Cory's with his other hand, palming her ass.

  Ford moaned against her breast, his warm bre
ath fanning her highly sensitized nipple as his finger grazed the swollen bud of her clit. On her ass, his hand skimmed her cheeks then spread them, one finger slipping between.

  Rayne's body went rigid at the touch. She sucked in a breath, her head coming up fast, and her vision spun. When her sight steadied, she found Ford looking at her, one brow cocked and one corner of his mouth following suit.

  "I thought that might get your attention." His tone held amusement and pure heat, a sexual flow of intoxicating splendor and promise. Her vision gave another quick spin.

  "You already had my attention." She sounded breathless. Hell, she even felt a bit faint. He didn't relent. If anything, the promise in his eyes grew more intent as the finger between her cheeks slid lower and lower and lower. She sucked in another breath, held it, as that finger grazed over her most secret opening.

  "This bothers you." God, she was getting drunk on his voice! The husky and excited tone mesmerized her. The finger paralyzed her. "Question is does it bother you in a good way or bad?"

  She couldn't answer his question. Her heart raced, anticipation of his next action sending adrenaline surging to every pulse point in her body. Her nipples ached, her clit throbbed, and damn if her pussy didn’t give a spasm and release more juices every time the pad of his finger slid over her anus.

  "We'll find out." The promise in his eyes now sounded with his words.

  She wanted to shake her head, to tell him to stop that, to tell him no. What would he do if she told him no? He would stop of course and likely never try to touch her there again. He was that kind of man. She knew that. She was safe with him, with them. Neither he nor Cory would ever make her do anything she didn't want.

  But what if she said no to something she really did want and they knew it? The devious idea made her insides kick into an exciting routine of calisthenics. Strange, she'd never been one for the whole dominate and submit play in the past. But with Ford, she found all kinds of things she'd never considered to have a peakened appeal. "Ford!"