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shopping for some “actual food” while Ford did the same somewhere else in the micro store. Grabbing dolmades and baba ganoush, she decided that was as much as she could manage and pushed up to the checkout, where Ford had already paid for his bottle of organic juice and apple.
    Organic juice?
    The only reason she’d picked this market was its assortment of healthier fare and her vivid memory of Ford devouring a bag of Funyuns while ranting about the horrors of some tofu burger his sister had tricked him into eating once. But obviously there were more than a few things about him that had changed in the past ten years.
    “Got everything?” he asked, stuffing a few bills into the front pocket of his jeans and again stepping in closer than strictly necessary, providing her with another hit of the clean laundry and yummy guy smell that had scrambled her senses back in the refrigerated section.
    She wasn’t going to lean into it. No matter how appealing it might be to burrow beneath his wool peacoat and find out where that scent was the strongest…whether the twill of his caramel-colored shirt would be as soft as it looked against her cheek, or if her arms would feel as right around his waist as they had last night.
    “Looks good,” Ford commented casually, as he buttoned up for the cold.
    Casual. Super casual.
    Crazy casual.
    This guy was completely taking the events of the night before in stride.
    Like maybe she’d overestimated the connection between them and, really, Ford had so many girls tumbling into his apartment that a few getting away was no big deal at all?
    She took in the broad shoulders and towering height. The boyishly thick, dark fringe of his lashes and all-man square of his jaw. The confident slant of his firm lips. Yes, it was totally possible.
    Ooh and hello, new, unwelcome sensation settling like a jagged stone in her belly. That would be jealousy. Of the totally unjustified and completely irrational kind.
    What the heck?
    Brynn’s eyes narrowed on Ford as he took his bag of groceries and all four of hers in hand, cocking his head toward the exit. No. Not after what he’d said the night before about their connection, about her feeling it the same as he was. Unless that was just talk and—and Ford was propping the door open with a foot, holding it so she could walk through.
    She followed him out to the street, where he grinned down at her and asked, “Which way?”
    —
    Back in her apartment, Ford set the bags on the pass-through between the kitchen and dining area.
    “Thanks for the help with all this,” she offered, about to say something more when he shrugged out of his coat and her mind went blank. One broad shoulder rolled free and then the next, the muscles between flexing visibly through the pull of his shirt. His biceps bulging just enough to ensure the only thoughts left in her betraying mind were of the show-me-more variety.
    He folded the coat over a chair and then circled back into the kitchen, where—yep, where she was staring, probably with her mouth hanging open and her ovaries doing some kind of exploding fireworks show.
    This was crazy.
    In her line of work, Brynn was surrounded by guys. Almost constantly. The production crew, the hotshots able to score seats in her zone, and the athletes—men who by all rights were at the pinnacle of physical perfection. But never, not once in all her years on the job, had she reacted to a single one of them the way she was reacting to Ford. Not even close.
    And it wasn’t just that she considered the men at work off-limits. She’d never reacted to
anyone
this way.
    Never with the kind of hot pull capable of melting away the rational parts of her that knew better. The parts in charge of saying “no.”
    Sure, she’d dated some. A little over the years. There had been boyfriends in high school who’d been clumsy and oblivious. A couple of guys after Ford when she moved back to Milwaukee. And Carl.
    She shook her head, wanting to clear