She picked up the new drink she’d ordered after James left and downed it in one gulp, though she already knew it wouldn’t do a darn thing to help her forget Ford...or the fact that she could still feel his lips on hers.

“When I got to the first house this morning, Ford Vincent was waiting for me.”

“Oh. My. God.” Brooke’s eyes were huge. “You’re working with Ford Vincent?”

“He is so sexy,” Colbie said, fanning herself. “Back before I met Noah, I actually used to fantasize that—”

“We slept together five years ago.”

The way both Brooke’s and Colbie’s mouths fell open would have been comical if Mia had been anywhere close to laughing.

“You slept with Ford Vincent?” Colbie asked in a shocked whisper.

“Oh. My. God,” was all Brooke could manage again. Until she had to find out, “How was it?”

Mia put her drink to her lips before realizing with dismay that she’d already emptied it. Slamming the glass down on the table so hard the stem likely got a hairline crack, she admitted, “Amazing.”

Oh hell, now that she’d started, she might as well tell them everything.

“Sleeping with Ford was the best sex you can possibly imagine. Being with him was so good it should have taken me hours to recover from each round, but before I could he’d start in on me all over again, and the next thing I knew a week had passed and I’d barely done anything but Ford the whole time.”

“I knew it would be like that with him,” Colbie said, but her elation at so accurately predicting Ford’s sexual prowess from a distance was short-lived as she realized something. “Why the heck didn’t you tell me?”

Mia felt terrible about it. Clearly, sleeping with one of the biggest rock stars in the world was a whopper of an omission between best friends. Colbie and Mia had been inseparable since they were in kindergarten. Colbie had told Mia about every guy she’d ever been with before her friend had fallen in love with Noah Bryant earlier that year, and Mia had told Colbie about every guy she’d been with, too...except for the one who had mattered most.

But before Mia could begin to explain why she’d kept it to herself, Brooke asked, “And why did you stop sleeping with him?”

Thank God, the cocktail waitress automatically brought over their regular drink orders just then. Needing to get another fortifying sip under her belt before answering, she put her new glass down more carefully. “At first, I didn’t tell you because it all happened so fast. We met at one of his shows, and it seemed like he was the guy I’d been waiting for my whole life. You should have heard the poetry he spouted between our sex sessions, the way he swore I was everything he wanted, too. He had a week off between gigs, and I called in to the office to claim some last-second vacation time I’d accrued so that I could spend every single second of it with him. I should have called you, Colbie, because then you would have had a chance to call me on my crazy.” Mia shook her head. “Which is exactly why I think I didn’t say anything to you or anyone in my family—because I didn’t want anyone to pop the fantasy bubble I was living in. God, I was so stupid!”

Colbie put her hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “What happened at the end of the week?”

“He asked me to come with him, out on the road. I’d known him one week, and he wanted me to give up everything in my life to follow him on buses and planes all over the world. And the thing is, even though I loved my work, loved my family and you guys, and the life I had in Seattle, I was so tempted—more tempted than I should have been. But I guess I paused just a little too long, and when I didn’t immediately jump up and down screaming YES as if I were the luckiest girl in the world to be wanted by him, Ford shut down. Completely. He said if I really loved him, I wouldn’t have to think about it. He said he couldn’t believe that he’d let me fool him into believing I actually loved him. Just that fast, he was gone.”

“Couldn’t he see that he was asking you to change your whole life for him—while he got to do exactly what he wanted?” Brooke protested.

“No, he obviously didn’t see that. And when I looked back on that week, I realized that while I’d shared everything with him, he really hadn’t shared anything more than his body with me. I didn’t know anything about his family or his past or his fears or dreams besides how he felt about his music. But, do you want to know the worst thing? Even though I should have felt like I’d dodged a bullet, I can’t even begin to explain how much I missed him. So badly that I decided I’d made a huge mistake by not immediately dropping everything for him. I decided I could figure out a way to have a career on the road, maybe not real estate, but something I could do while always on the move, and that I would just call you guys and my family all the time to make sure we didn’t lose touch. I decided to surprise him at a show in Miami.”

She closed her eyes at the wave of pain that hit her as she relived that horrible night. “The guys on his crew who had brought me backstage that first night in Seattle didn’t want to let me through to the back in Miami. I tried to tell myself it was because I had hurt him by needing some extra time to make my decision, but—” Her voice started to break, but damn it, she wasn’t going to cry over him again.

“You don’t have to relive any more of it,” Brooke said, squeezing her hand.

But Mia knew it was better if she did. If she reminded not only herself, but the people who loved her most, of exactly why she needed to stay away from Ford. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the picture of that girl on his lap out of my head. She was half-naked, and he had his hands on—” Oh God, maybe the full replay wasn’t such a good idea, after all. “For a few seconds I was frozen in the doorway and the girl was busy making all her fake  p**n -star moans, but he looked straight at me.” The breath she tried to take shook her lungs. “I picked up some drum sticks that had been left on a table by the door and threw them at him. And then I got the hell out of there.”

“The bastard didn’t even go running after you?” Brooke asked.

“No.” And that was how she’d known for sure that everything he’d said to her during their one week together had been a lie. Every sweet and sexy word of which she’d been stupid enough to believe.

“I hate his guts,” Colbie snarled. “I’m more sorry than you know that I ever had one single fantasy about that piece of dirt, and I’m pledging to you now that I’ll never listen to one of his songs again.”