Now and Then Read Free

half of it.
    Grinning into her beer, Brynn shook her head and, after a swallow, set the bottle back on the table. “See, this is why I don’t lead with the job thing.”
    No shit.
If word got out she was behind the camera, shooting the Bulls games from under the net, there’d be a line a mile long of guys throwing themselves at her feet.
    “The freaking
Bulls,
” he said again, sounding like a tool even to himself, because
she knew.
But the
Bulls
!
    “Just the home games, though,” she added with a shrug.
    Just the home games.
    “Right. No big deal, then.” And neither were the NBA on TNT East Coast games she traveled for. Or the White Sox games she covered during baseball season.
Not at all.
    Another one of those half-shy laughs and Ford was wondering, even with the population at large
not
knowing she had the coolest job on the planet, how she was sitting across from him and still single? But that’s what she’d said when he finally gave in to the question that had been burning on his tongue since he’d gotten his first look at her.
    Not married, divorced, dating, recovering from a breakup or even anyone’s mom.
    Brynn was
available.
    Sort of. Since in her next breath she’d clarified the part about not being in the right place for a relationship with all the travel and crazy work hours and focusing on her job. He figured there was more to it than that, because in his experience, there always was. But whatever the reason, he was fully behind anything that had kept her single up until that very minute.
    Yeah, things had ended badly between them. Abruptly and in a way he hadn’t been able to wrap his head around for nearly a year after. But they’d been
kids.
Not anymore, though. They’d grown up. Taken the lessons life doled out and learned from them. He sure as hell had, and behind the smiles and laughter there was something in Brynn’s eyes that made him think maybe she had, too. That maybe their paths crossing again could be a good thing. This time, a real thing.
    Brynn rested her elbows on the table in front of her, her smile sitting a little crooked on her mouth. “What’s that laugh about?”
    Me getting ahead of myself, that’s what.
    “Nothing,” he said instead. “Just still can’t believe I’m sitting across from you, is all. Can’t believe how much the same it is talking with you.”
    Because as different as their lives were now from when they’d met, it had been like this the first time, too. From the first words between them, it had been like everything was suddenly falling into place.
    Those deep green eyes held with his a beat, and then she looked away as another blush washed over her cheeks. The girl could swear like a sailor, though she desperately tried not to, and trash-talk like—well, like Maggie, now that he thought about it—but there was still that shyness about her. Still the sweetness. Still the fun.
    Her gaze drifted back to his again, her lips curving into the smile she’d given him that first day in the quad—the one that got his inner caveman thumping his chest. And like that he was back at the beginning, in too deep before he’d even realized he was sinking.
    “Um, excuse me?”
    Ford looked up from the notebook he’d been roughing out a new game in, frustrated at the interruption because he’d left the dorm to get away from Ava’s phone stalking so he could concentrate.
    “Yeah,” he replied, trying to keep it polite because, well, hell, there were enough shitheads in this world and he wasn’t interested in being another one. Half glancing up from his notebook, he’d only barely registered the girl in front of him when the fog of deep focus cleared and his attention snapped back in what had to be a pitifully obvious double take.
    Red hair shining in the August sun.
    Irish eyes.
    Freckles peppering the neat line of her nose.
    Gorgeous, with a tentative smile on lips so pink and full—yeah, there were ideas already stewing in the shady regions of his mind