By Hook or By Crook (29 page)

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his words had the air of a forced confession. “It’s better if I don’t. She’s better off without me. I don’t want to screw up her life like I’ve done my own.”

The raw words shocked her. “Screw up your own? What do you mean?”

“Let’s see, I screwed up my career, for one thing. Ever since I got my first job in security during college, all I wanted to do was be a cop. And once I got on the CPD, all I wanted to do was to be on the tactical unit. I knew I’d be great at it. I
know
I would be.”

Ivy didn’t miss the shift to the present tense. Somewhere inside, he hadn’t totally let go of that dream.

“My dad always said I’d amount to nothing. When I got kicked off the force, I guess I proved him right.”

“I think you can quit worrying about your father’s opinion. We’ve established he wasn’t much of a father.”

“You’re one to give advice on that topic.”

The blunt charge hurt, but Ivy’s gaze never left his. She knew he spoke the truth. But this wasn’t about her, it was about him. “I get that your father has you convinced—
wrongly
convinced, I might add—that you’re a failure. But you shouldn’t let it keep you from a sister who really cares for you.”
Or anyone else who really cares for you. Like me.

“She doesn’t need me anymore. Sure, I took care of her back then. And yes, I took better care of her than our father did, but that’s an extremely low bar.”

“Of course she doesn’t need you to take care of her anymore.” Ivy rolled her eyes. God, for a smart man, he could be dense sometimes. “She’s an adult. She’s got her own life and family. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love or need you.”

He shook his head, vehement. “No. I could only screw things up for her. I screwed my career up. I’ve screwed up my personal life, too. For all the grief I’ve given you, I haven’t exactly had a long string of successful relationships myself. I never even wanted to, until I met you.”

He spat the words out so forcefully, it took a moment for the last part to sink in. Was he saying... She hardly dared to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing. After a beat, she summoned her nerve. “And you want a relationship now?”

The hard anger in his eyes faded. “Maybe.”

“Since you consider yourself a failure at relationships, let me give you a pointer. Saying that ‘maybe’ you’re interested in a relationship with me isn’t enough. You’ll have to be more explicit.”

“Explicit? I can do explicit.” He advanced on her, steering her toward a low wall at one end of the stable. Her back came to rest against the wall. She stopped, daring him to come get her.

The smell of hay and horses clung to his shirt in the frosty air, and Ivy burrowed her face into his warmth, relishing the soft brush of fabric against her face and the heat of his body. She fit nicely under his chin.

When she felt his hand sliding under her sweater, she smiled. Under her sweater and camisole, she didn’t wear a bra. He cursed softly when he encountered only bare skin. Her eyes drifted closed in a sensual haze as he toyed with her nipple. The electricity seemed to arc right down to the apex of her legs and she felt her body heat and soften, dampening with a desire more urgent than any she’d ever felt.

She sighed softly when she came into contact with the hard swell beneath his zipper. In one motion, he lifted her against him and she ceded ground gladly, wrapping her thighs around his hips. He took her lips in a hard kiss. She didn’t mind his roughness, so eager to claim him and to be claimed by him in return. Summoning all her nerve, she slid her hand between them to grip his erection, and squeezed until she wrung a groan from him.

“If you want me to quit, say so now,” he said, pulling his mouth from hers reluctantly.

“I don’t want you to quit,” she said, feeling set aglow from the intensity of her desire.

His green eyes narrowed. “You sure about that?”

“I am.”

He glanced around and then carried her past the low wall to a more private area. It didn’t have a door that could close, but at least if someone came in they’d hear it in time, hopefully. Behind the wall was a low shelf cluttered with jars, hoof picks, and other junk that made a satisfying clatter when he swept it all to the floor.

He claimed her mouth again in a slow, fiery kiss that only inflamed the urgent need she felt to be possessed by him. She reached between them again, unbuttoning his jeans and sliding her hand inside his boxers to grip him. Pushing aside the shyness that so often claimed her in sexual situations, she squeezed him, savoring the sighs she wrung from him.

“I can’t take it slow when you do that,” he said, his voice tight.

“I don’t want you to,” she purred.

She lifted her hips helpfully as he lowered her zipper and pulled her pants down, exposing her to the chilly winter air. He whipped them off in a second and tossed them aside, then tugged the thin fabric of her panties out of the way, working his thumb across her wetness, gathering moisture and sliding it up, over, and across her nub and back down again to penetrate her in a tease that only ratcheted her desire higher and higher.

He ignored her begging and evaded her hand as she tried to get a firmer hold. Finally he entered her with one finger, then another, and tears leapt to her eyes from the unbearable sweetness of it. But after a moment, it wasn’t enough. She ground her hips and writhed, trying to force him deeper, higher, anything that would take her from frustrated torment to satisfaction.

She jerked his boxers down past his hips, grabbed his penis, and tried to steer it inside her, but he evaded her. “Not yet, honey.”

“What are you waiting for?” she challenged.

He sank to his knees, an erotic promise glowing in his eyes. He nudged her with his splayed fingers, tipping her gently back until she leaned against the wall. He placed her legs over his shoulders and moved in for an erotic kiss a hundred times hotter than the one he’d placed on her lips.

“Oh, God,” she groaned, nearly panicked from the intensity of the pleasure he gave her. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms in a bid to silence the cries on the verge of bursting from her throat. How did he make her crazy so easily, like he didn’t even have to try?

Desperate to have him inside her, to seal the connection between them at the deepest level, she shifted her legs, seized his shoulders, and pulled him upward. She didn’t need to explain what she wanted. He entered her with a thrust that startled a gasp from her, and then settled into an uncomplicated driving rhythm that soon had her gripping the edge of the counter for leverage.

An unexpected sound on the other side of the wall froze them both. Shuffling footsteps and a low whistle identified the source as Pock. He had returned from the vet.

Ivy froze, eyes wide. No door separated them from the outer area of the barn. If Pock stuck his head around the wall to find a brush or a hoof pick, he’d get an eyeful. Ivy would never be able to face him again. Joe lifted one hand to cover her lips, a reminder for silence that she hardly needed.

When his hips resumed a slow thrusting, she nearly cried out in surprise. He dropped one hand down to where their bodies met, tenderly exploring the sensitive skin there, and dropped his other hand from her mouth to claim her lips with his own.

Helplessly she responded to him. If Pock didn’t look around the wall, he would never know they were there, provided she could keep her silence, no easy task considering what Joe was doing to her.

Better to be hanged for a wolf instead of a lamb, she decided with a slow smile, and slowly began working her hips in a circle to heighten the delicious friction. She felt Joe’s lips curve against hers. After a moment, the sounds on the other side of the wall stopped. A door closed in the distance a moment later.

Ivy’s shoulders slumped in relief, but the sensual tension Joe had created with his movements remained.

She pulled her lips away. “I can’t believe you did that.” She tried to scold him, but with her voice husky with pleasure, her ire sounded unconvincing even to her.

“I can’t believe you helped,” he said with a grin, and then settled into a fierce rhythm that sent her flying over the moon, only to join her a few moments later.

He stood for a moment between her thighs, his head resting on her shoulders as she caressed his back with her fingertips. A shiver ran through his half-clad body.

“One of these days, we’ll have to try doing it in a bed,” he joked as he straightened his clothes. She sighed in regret as his beautifully muscled body disappeared from view.

“Promise?” Ivy asked with a wicked smile.

He leaned forward to place another soft kiss on her lips as he helped her right her appearance. “You can bet on it.”

****

For Ivy, the next days passed in a happy whirl. Each day, she rose and fixed breakfast for the group, delivering Erin’s breakfast to her on a tray. While Daisy did the dishes, she made the beds and tidied the house. In the late morning, she fed and fetched clean water for the cats that lived in the foal barn, and usually spent a few minutes hanging over the fence, watching the young foals with their mothers. At night, Joe initially put up a pretense of continuing to sleep on the couch. As soon as the house settled down for the night, though, he slipped into Ivy’s bed. He left her with a full heart every time.

If there had been any doubt in Ivy’s mind, the sweet nights they shared together in his sister’s little house erased them.

She loved Joe Dunham. She couldn’t tell him yet, and she didn’t dare dwell on whether he loved her, but she could at least be honest and admit the truth to herself. She took comfort in the obvious reluctance he showed when he had to leave each morning. Joe slipped away before the house rose, but one morning pre-dawn as he’d edged out of Ivy’s room he encountered Anthony. His brother-in-law had greeted him with a grin.

“Why are you pretending to sleep on the couch? You’re not fooling anybody.”

Ivy, still curled up in bed, had wanted to hug Anthony for that. From then on, Joe never bothered with the couch. He came with her to the little room down the hall and thrilled her all night long. During the day, she struggled to keep her mind on her tasks and not waste the day away in replays of the nights they shared. Luckily, she had plenty to do.

Totally unlike the pampered princess Joe once thought her, she cooked, cleaned, and ran to town for groceries. She dodged phone calls from her father when she could, and put him off with vague explanations when she couldn’t. He wasn’t happy, but he seemed to sense she’d moved out from under his thumb, whether he liked it or not. In the afternoons, she kept Erin company for a couple of hours, knowing how lonely and bored Joe’s sister got sitting propped up in bed all day. Erin hated the long hours in bed, chafing at the inactivity forced on her by her pregnancy complications. Even the video games Anthony bought for her only went so far toward alleviating her boredom.

Erin’s face always lit up when Ivy arrived for her visit, which made Ivy feel useful and wanted. After a few days, however, they had exhausted the obvious conversational topics of the coming baby, the ranch, and what a wonderful guy Joe was. Not knowing what else to talk about, Ivy told Erin about her dissertation. She began hesitantly at first, but gained confidence at Erin’s interest.

“The colors in the illuminated manuscripts are incredibly vibrant. We can’t reproduce them even today. Research indicates that the artists sometimes ground up tiles from ancient mosaics to pigment their paints,” Ivy explained.

“Really? Isn’t that destructive?”

“Yes. That part always makes me sad. The colors in these ancient manuscripts are phenomenal, but a part of me weeps for the lost mosaics.” She hesitated. “You probably think I’m a complete dork for caring so much about this.” Erin demurred. “In any case, you’ll know more about medieval art than any other rancher in California,” she said with a laugh, but Erin smiled.

“You make it really interesting. Have you ever thought of becoming a teacher?”

Ivy shook her head almost reflexively. “No, I’m not good in front of crowds of people. I want to be a researcher. I like to work with the original source materials.”

You like to hide in a library or museum, away from people and conflict
.

“But you’re so good at explaining things! Your love for it really shows. And if you became a professor, you could research
and
teach, right?” Erin persisted. “I don’t see how you could make a living as a researcher, anyway. I thought most researchers did that part-time and taught to pay the bills.”

Apparently Joe hadn’t told his sister that she belonged to
that
Smithson family. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Did Joe think it didn’t matter? Did he mind being involved—if that was the word for what they were—with a woman so much wealthier than he was? Or had he simply respected her privacy?

Ivy decided it must be the latter. For years, she had been suspicious and distrustful of men where money was concerned. Maybe it was time for her to expect the best from someone.

“I don’t really need to earn a living,” she confided. “My family is, um...financially well-off.” The tightness in her chest whenever she thought of her father’s money eased a little bit. Telling the truth felt good, even if she was understating it by, oh, tens of millions of dollars.