Fevered Hearts (14 page)

A tremble spread through her limbs, growing stronger as she realized what Tony could do to her. Cause her to lose her job by claiming she came on to him or initiated a liaison. He’d already spread those rumors about her and she might be growing numb to the whispers, but if he did anything to harm her relationship with Liam or Ward…

Before she could take one step, Tony had her by the arm. Shielding her body from the view of the patrons, he rushed her out the door. Her mind spun as he pulled her into a small alley between buildings.

Shoving her against the brick wall, he braced his forearms around her, trapping her.

Panic welled. She opened her mouth to scream.

“No, baby. I don’t advise you do that.” His eyes were dark and close, the cinnamon of his breath turning her stomach.

“Let me go!”

“I’ll caution you with this, Ivy. What you say and do right now can be used against you.”

She despised him for twisting the legal system and entrapping her. “Fuck off.”

“Your husband might need your help.”

She fell still, quaking so hard her teeth were on the verge of chattering
.
“What are you talking about?”

“He’s been having some trouble with an activist group, right?”

Her blood ran cold. It felt as if someone had wrung an icy cloth over her head.

Tony pulled open his suit jacket and pulled out a folded yellow paper with the logo of the activist group.

Her eyes widened and she tried to shrink into the wall. “What are you playing at?”

He chuckled and brought his hips firmly against hers. His erection pressed into her belly. Hard.

Bile rose. Was this happening in broad daylight? Anyone could walk by that alley and see him assaulting her.

“Don’t forget I can take down your husband’s company. I tried. Figured it would break him altogether to see the family business ruined. Then you started seeing that other bastard—that other low-life
logger—
and now I can take down his business too.”

Defiance rose up in the pit of her belly. She shoved against him, moving him enough to draw a deep breath. “I’ll never love any man who doesn’t break his back for the logging industry. Bring it on, Tony. Do your damnedest. But I will not sleep with you to stop you from destroying property or deals—”

“Or men?” His lip curled, and she wanted to claw it off his face.

“My men are strong enough to withstand any storm.”

A catcall sounded from the sidewalk, obviously from someone who thought they were witnessing a romantic interlude. But it was all she needed.

Tony moved away a fraction and she slipped from under his arm. Running to the head of the alley, she glared back at him. She raised a trembling finger and stabbed it in his direction. “You can’t get away with this.”

He barked a laugh. “I already have. You don’t have a clue.”

Tearing her gaze away from the evil lines of his face, she shot off down the sidewalk as fast as she could. Fumbling in her purse for her cell, she kept looking over her shoulder. But Tony wasn’t following.

Relief nearly made her knees fold.

She hurried to the courthouse and stood right next to a police cruiser parked in the lot. The officer it belonged to wasn’t behind the building, but she still felt safer. She dialed her boss’s number and extension. Then she did the hardest thing she had done yet that day. She told him she wasn’t returning to court that day. She would use her vacation time and all her sick leave until she figured out what she wanted to do with her life.

By the time she got off the phone, she was a fucking mess.

Falling apart.

Just when she got ready to call Ward to come get her, a call from Liam came in.

“Liam.” She melted against the wall, sagging and allowing the brick to support her. She would have to tell him about all of it—Tony and the activists and even his come-ons.

“No, this is Ed.” Liam’s father’s deep voice, an aged version of her husband’s, made her knees buckle. She sat down hard on the pavement.

“What’s happened?”

“Calm down, dear. Liam’s going to be all right. He injured himself in therapy.”

“Injured!” Panic made her head feel like a balloon floating a hundred feet above her body.

“Yes, now be calm, Ivy. It’s just a pulled ligament. They only suggested bringing him to the hospital to make sure the ligament isn’t torn.”

She plastered her hand to her face, aware of the hot tears spurting between her fingers. She dragged a searing breath into her lungs. “I can’t get there. I’m stuck here with no car.”

“I know. Liam wants you to stay at work—”

“I can’t! I just took a leave.”

A beat of silence. “Okay, Ivy. I’m coming for you right now. I’ll pick you up in front of the courthouse in fifteen minutes.”

She choked back a cry. “See you then.”

Huddling against the building, she kept her phone clutched in her hand. She had a crazy man pursuing her—one who was willing to call in his activist group to destroy property and slander the Mattson Hardwoods name in order to bring her husband lower than he already was.

Now Liam was obviously going to have a set-back with his recovery. That could send him spiraling into the pit of despair once more. She could lose him this time, and even Ward’s hard grip on Liam might not be enough to pull him out of the hole of depression.

A thousand thoughts raced through her mind—for her job, whether or not she’d ever go back, the encounter with Tony and all the things he’d told her.

But her thoughts kept returning to two things in her life—Liam and Ward. If she had them, was allowed to love them on her own terms, Tony could tear her job and the businesses away from them and leave them with nothing.

Nothing but each other, and that was everything.

Liam glared at the binding keeping his upper thigh and knee immobile. If he could roar his frustration without drawing so much attention to himself here in the hospital, he would.

He bit back the growl that threatened to escape and trained his stare on the curtain between examination spaces. His father had gone to call Ivy because Liam was too pissed to trust himself not to snap at her.

Though it wasn’t her fault he’d gotten hurt—never was—he knew in the past that he’d hurt her more than once by exploding at the situation and directing it at her.

Shame coursed through him and he closed his eyes. The nurse was coming back in a few minutes with his discharge papers and instructions to care for the stretched ligament. Heat, most likely.

And the only heat Liam wanted would be created between three people in his king-sized bed.

“Goddammit.”

His dad poked his head around the curtain. “Got those papers yet?”

“No.” He barely contained his voice. His dad didn’t deserve Liam’s wrath either.

“I called Ivy.” The look on his father’s face said a lot.

“She’s panicking, isn’t she?”

“Yes, and there’s more than that, but I’ll leave it to her to tell you. I told her I’m coming for her. Once you’re discharged, you’ll be all right, won’t you? I’ll pick you up out front.”

“I can get myself outside.” The acid in his tone made his father recoil. Remorse welled within Liam.

Damn it, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Last night he’d had a breakthrough. Everything had worked almost as if the accident had never occurred. Now he was miles away from walking again—laid up with an injury that would have to heal before he could attempt it.

“I’ll be back, son.” He vanished before Liam could apologize for sounding so short. Not that he was able to plumb the depths of his soul for the words right now, anyway. He only hoped a later apology would be accepted.

His mind wandered to his father’s cryptic reference to Ivy. What the hell was going on?

The old sensation of being on the outside looking in slammed Liam. For so long, he hadn’t been part of Ivy’s world. Then Ward arrived, and he’d finally seen she was drifting away from him—from their marriage. Somehow, having Ward around had brought Liam to his senses and he’d seen that he’d pushed Ivy away for so long, she had no idea how to get back.

But he’d done it. Dragged her back, laid her out, spread her legs and got back into her heart. He’d seen her beautiful eyes hazed with delight. Heard his name from her lips again as he twisted her nipples as hard as she liked or pulled her hair.

I’m not going back to the outside of the glass and looking in.

Half an hour later, he waited outside the hospital. The air was warming, summer on its way. This morning Ward hadn’t even bothered to pull on his customary flannel before leaving.

Liam’s blood pulsed faster at the thought of Ward in flannel or out of flannel. That broad chest with the worn cotton pulled across it always invited Liam’s touch.

His father drove up. Through the window, Liam met Ivy’s gaze. She’d been crying.

Rolling forward, Liam caught the door handle and yanked it open. She fell into his arms.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” he said softly. “It’s nothing. A pulled muscle.”

“I know. Your dad told me. Thank goodness you’re okay.”

“Well, not okay. I’m back to my old self—the rotten son-of-a-bitch self that can’t do anything for you.”

She yanked free of his hold, fear slicing through her eyes. “Liam—”

“No, it’s true. One step forward, ten steps back. At this rate, I’ll never get there.”

Ivy stared at him for a long heartbeat, her lips parted as if to speak. But in the end, she didn’t say anything and just got out of the passenger’s side. She climbed into the backseat while Liam slid into the seat that was easier for him to maneuver in and out of. Then Liam’s father stowed away the wheelchair.

The silence and tension could only be cut with a 300-horsepower saw, and Liam didn’t have that much in him. He stared out the window and brooded over the dull throb in his leg.

He twisted around in his seat to fix Ivy in his stare. “You all right?”

Her voice was distant. “Yes.”

“Nothing happened today?”

She shot him a look that said hell, yes, it had. Something big.

His heart churned as if paddling in place. “Tell me, Ivy.”

She crumbled. Her features caved in and she burst into tears. The story that spilled out of her only increased Liam’s frustration, helplessness and fury. He clenched his fists and locked his jaw, unable to speak to even comfort her.

His father did that, damn him. But Liam wasn’t really mad at his dad. The anger was aimed right at himself, complete with barbed ends.

“We’ll keep you safe, Ivy. You aren’t returning to work for a while, if ever, but we’ll keep someone with you at all times,” his dad said.

Liam ground his teeth. Fuck, that’s exactly what they’d been doing—keeping Ward with her to protect her and the threat had been at work. That bastard had put his hands on Liam’s wife and he was going to pay.

What—as soon as I get out of this chair?

By the time his father pulled into the driveway of Liam and Ivy’s home, Liam was in a filthy mood. Fit to be around no one.

He felt Ivy watch him go into the house without a word, though from the quiet voices behind him, Liam knew his dad was hugging her, consoling her.

He went in through the garage to his haven. For months, he’d practically lived in here, tinkering sometimes, at other times doing nothing but thinking.

Ivy let him go and didn’t come to talk to him, though it was he who should have gone after her. If he wasn’t so locked in this dark place, he should be holding her on his lap and making her smile, making her gasp.

Lifting the hood of Ivy’s car, he gazed at the disconnected battery wires. He should come clean with her about all of it, just as Ward had suggested.

At that moment, he heard the low, guttural grind of Ward’s pickup engine. Ivy had called him about Liam being taken to the hospital. The noise filtered through the garage doors and then was cut off.

The strains of Ivy’s voice drifted to him, followed by Ward’s. When the door between the garage and house opened, Liam was waiting.

Ward’s gaze found him at once. “What’s going on?”

Liam swept a hand across his thigh, which bulged within his jeans from the thick support brace. “Fucking pulled ligament.”

“How long to heal?”

“Who the hell knows? This body doesn’t work the same way yours does, Bose,” he snapped.

“Well,
Mattson
, it seemed to work that way last night.”

“Things fucking change,” he screamed into the space. The notes echoed in the hollowness.

Ward came forward, boots thumping on the concrete floor. Ivy was right behind him, looking more tormented than Liam had seen her in a long time.

Damn it, he needed to get a grip. This wasn’t their faults.

“Shit happens, Liam. Get over yourself and get better so you can start again.” Ward stopped two feet before him.

“Fuck off.”

Ward huffed out a breath then pivoted to face Ivy. He held out an arm to invite her into his embrace. It should’ve sent Liam into paroxysms of anger to see another man giving Ivy the things she needed right now, but it didn’t. It just seemed perfectly right, even at the peak of his emotion.

Liam studied them together. Absolute perfection—the centers of Liam’s world.

He swallowed hard.

“Ivy filled me in about the Tony thing. Don’t you think it’s time to tell her everything, Liam?”

She went dead still. Her slender fingers splayed over Ward’s shirt against that navy cotton Liam had thought about earlier. “What?” Her voice was a ragged whisper.

Liam tore his gaze from hers. The utter betrayal he saw there tore him up. When he remained silent, Ward snapped.

“Jesus H. Christ, man, get your head outta your ass. The universe doesn’t revolve around you. Sure, you took a bad hit. You made improvements. Still can. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that branch bashed out all of your common sense. You should have told her from the start about the threats.”

“Fine, Bose! This is what you want?” Liam looked right at his wife. “The activists are threatening the workers, Ivy. You know about that. But there’s something you don’t know.”

She didn’t blink. He plowed on.