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some benign PG alternative. Damn, he’d missed that conflicted mouth of hers.
    There were a lot of ways the next minutes could go, some more predictable than others, but in the end Ford opted for the path Brynn would be least expecting.
    “Want to see a picture of the baby?” he asked, holding out his phone in offering.
    Maybe it wasn’t playing fair, tripping her up with Penelope’s wrinkled little mug, but then maybe fair wasn’t Ford’s highest priority.
    “Oh my God,” she cooed in that reverent way females did when confronted with a tiny fresh one. “She’s adorable.”
    His shoulder brushed against hers as he admired the one-day-old darling he was shamelessly using for personal gain. “She is. There are a bunch of pictures—scroll through if you want.”
    Brynn glanced up at him, her eyes anxious and guilty. Not the look he wanted to see in them at all, so he leaned closer and, sweeping his finger over the screen, flipped to the next snap.
    “Precious!”
    Then she was flipping through herself, admiring a little puckered kiss in one, the shock of monkey hair in the next, what she called a Cheerio mouth, and—his personal favorite—the snap he’d caught of Penelope double-fisting her parents’ fingers. One in each hand, banded across the smallest belly he’d ever seen.
    But then his attention shifted from the pictures he’d already looked at a dozen times that day to the woman he’d been hoping to find in his bed when he’d returned in the early hours of the morning. The woman he needed to understand better if he wanted a shot with her.
    And he did. There was something primal about the way he felt with her. It was unreasonable. Irrational. And he didn’t fucking care, because that feeling was so good, the only thing that mattered was making sure he got more.
    But instead of giving in to the instinct to make
more
happen by backing her into the closest corner and working that sweet spot beneath her ear until she pleaded with him to take her right there, or just as tempting but with fewer law enforcement ramifications, throwing her over his shoulder and carting her back to his bed where he’d start with the aforementioned sweet spot and work his way south until her fingers were knotted in his hair, he had the taste of her on his tongue, and she was begging him not to stop, ever—he was going to play it differently.
    “You have anything real in here?” he asked, riffling through crackers, popcorn, and chips, finding nothing he’d even remotely associate with an actual meal. “It’s all snack stuff.”
    Brynn raised a single shoulder in response, showing him the phone like he’d never seen the pictures on it. “She’s so itty-bitty in your arms!”
    Yeah, she was. Light, too. And in truth, he hadn’t taken a steady breath until she’d been back in Tyler’s hold.
    “You picking up anything for dinner?” he asked, starting to push the cart and smiling to himself as Brynn followed him into the next aisle.
    “Maybe some pasta stuff—look at you guys with your Santa hats on. Love that Maggie wore the red stretch suit with that big belly.”
    So she’d kept going past the baby pictures, which meant, mistake or not, she’d still been curious about him. “Yeah, she’s a lot of fun. Loved being pregnant, especially once she started getting really round.” Then, pulling over at the pasta section, he selected a jar from the shelf and added it to the cart. He added noodles. Moved to the next aisle and threw in a spring salad.
    Brynn walked beside him, her focus no longer on the phone.
    “I’m sorry about last night,” she offered, quietly, her eyes meeting his for only the briefest contact.
    Stopping the cart, he turned to her. Tried not to get caught up in her eyes or distracted by her mouth—which was parted the slightest bit, teasing him with a hint of wetness where she’d moistened her lip.
Christ.
What he said now and how he said it would mean the difference between seeing Brynn again