“Ford Vincent!” Nicola was so excited that she didn’t notice the way all the blood drained out of Mia’s face. “I’m such a huge fan that I always get a little giddy every time I listen to him sing, and he’s also really nice.”

Ford made other big stars like Nicola giddy. But Mia was anything but giddy right now.

More like sick to her stomach.

Of course Ford and Nicola would know each other. They were in the same business, for God’s sake. Now that she thought about it, hadn’t the two of them played some shows together before Nicola had met Marcus?

“Ford is coming here?” Mia’s voice sounded hollow to her own ears. “To the winery? For your wedding?”

One dumb question after another kept falling from her lips, but she couldn’t stop any of them. Not when she felt like she was barely keeping it together. If not for the baby on her lap, she might have jumped up off the couch to go running like little Emma through the vineyard.

Nicola was giving Mia a strange look when Sophie’s ears finally picked up on Ford’s name. “Wait a minute,” she said, echoing Mia’s questions for everyone to hear, “are you telling us that Ford Vincent is coming here for the wedding? How did I not know that?”

“He couldn’t come at first because of a scheduling conflict,” Nicola explained. “He called my cell yesterday afternoon out of the blue and asked if the invitation was still open.”

“Yesterday afternoon. Of course that’s when he would have called,” Mia said, almost to herself. There was no way that call could have been a coincidence. He hadn’t come after her in Miami five years ago, but now he wouldn’t take get the hell out of my life for an answer. Clearly, everything always had to be on his terms, and if he wasn’t the one to say goodbye, then those words didn’t count.

Again, Nicola frowned in Mia’s direction, but Sophie’s twin, Lori, had walked over to the group by then. Nicknamed Naughty to Sophie’s Nice, Lori was wearing a cowboy hat and the cutest red cowboy boots with her short, strapless red dress. The women in the group were beautiful, but of them all, Lori was the most immediately striking. Whether she was dancing on stage or getting dirty with the pigs on the farm she shared with her husband, Grayson, people simply couldn’t take their eyes off her.

“You’re not going to believe who’s coming to the wedding,” Sophie told her twin. “Ford Vincent!”

Mia was shocked when Lori gasped. Actually gasped. “Don’t mess with me, Soph.” She turned to Nicola with big eyes. “Is this for real? Is he really going to be here?”

Nicola was nodding and about to say something more about it when Mia simply couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m just not getting what the big deal is about him. So he has some pretty good songs, but all of you have totally great men already.”

“You’re joking, right?” Lori said. “I love my husband to pieces, but I’m not dead.”

“It’s true,” Megan murmured. “Ford is pretty darn gorgeous.”

Mia watched with shock as one after the other, each woman, including the level-headed Valentina, agreed that Ford was a special exclusion to their usual rule of not noticing other men. Of course, her tension passed through to the baby in her arms, because right then Jackie abruptly woke up, looked into eyes that weren’t her mother’s, and her face scrunched up into a pre-wail.

“Uh-oh,” Sophie said, quickly standing and lifting her little girl onto her hip, “looks like someone’s hungry. Which means her brother is probably about to give the boys trouble, too. I’ll be back soon.”

With no bundle of joy on her lap, Mia felt stripped naked in front of her family, with all of her stupid emotions out in the open. Which was the very last place she wanted them.

Lori turned to Brooke as she walked up to the group. “You’re a Ford Vincent fan, aren’t you?”

Brooke immediately made an angry face. “No. I hate him.”

Everyone’s eyes got huge, and Mia realized she needed to do some major damage control—and fast. “What Brooke means is that she hates how hot he is when she’s only supposed to be thinking about my brother now.”

Brooke gave her a confused look before it suddenly dawned on her that she’d very nearly given something away to the group.

“He’s coming to the wedding this weekend,” Mia told Brooke.

She tried really hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but when Brooke grabbed her arm and said, “Could you help me with my dress inside? There’s something weird going on with the zipper,” Mia knew she hadn’t succeeded.

No doubt everyone was wondering what was wrong with the two of them, but both Mia and Brooke continued to act like nothing was amiss until they were back inside the house and behind the locked door of Marcus’s home office.

“How can he even think of intruding on Nicola’s wedding like this? I don’t care if he was invited, he should know better than to ruin this weekend for you.” Brooke, who was one of the sweetest, gentlest souls Mia had ever known, looked like a general preparing to go to war. “I simply cannot wait to tear that man to pieces and then sic all of your brothers and cousins on him.”

“No, please don’t do that. If anyone finds out what happened between us, it will become a whole huge thing. And I’ll never forgive myself if I let him ruin Marcus and Nicola’s wedding.”

But Brooke was right. Showing up at the open house was one thing, but coming to a family wedding was another entirely.

“I’ve had enough of his little surprises. As soon as Ford gets here, he and I are going to have a rational, adult discussion about things in private. And by the time we’re done, I’ll make damn sure he understands that everything that was once between us will be firmly, and totally, in the past.”

Chapter Ten

Though Ford was desperate to make up for lost time with Mia, he didn’t want to ruin Nicola’s big day, which was why he planned to slip in just before the ceremony started. Not that he thought he was all that anymore, but he’d been in enough similar situations to know that people tended to go a little crazy around musicians, even at the most inappropriate times.

He wasn’t much for suits, but Nicola deserved his taking the time to scrub up and throw on a tie. He knew Mia would think he’d deliberately changed his schedule this weekend so that he could continue to be in her face, but while that was an awesome cosmic bonus, he truly had been hoping he could shift his packed schedule by just a few hours so that he could witness his friend make her vows.