Ivy and the Cop (Power Play) (3 page)

“Good thing the dash cam wasn’t on, huh?” she teased.

He grinned, putting his handcuffs back on his belt. “How do you know it wasn’t?”

The tow truck’s tires crunched the gravel as it pulled up, situating itself in front of her car. Patrick went to talk to the driver, and she was glad, because she was still too flushed and breathless to try to have a normal conversation. By the time the tow truck driver—he was about her age, wearing a backwards baseball cap, but she didn’t know him—came over to check her road service card, she was recovered enough to fetch it out of her purse.

“Do you need a ride home?” the guy in the baseball cap asked after he’d hooked up her car, giving Ivy an appreciative look in the light of the headlights.

“I got it.” Patrick stepped between them, waving the tow truck driver toward his vehicle. “I’m taking her home.”

She smiled to herself as she got back into the front seat of the cruiser, buckling up at Patrick’s insistence.

“Do you remember the way?”
she asked, wondering what they were going to do now. Could they go back, turn back the clock? Was that possible?

He snorted. “I could get there with my eyes closed.”

They drove in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. Things had settled easily into a familiar thing between them, as if no time had lapsed. She was the same Ivy, unable to keep her hands off pushing buttons, whether it was the radio in his Dodge Shadow in high school or his cruiser now, and he was the same Patrick, chastising her and swatting her hands away, both of them laughing.

“What does this button do?” she inquired, leaning over the gearshift toward him. Patrick rolled his eyes.

“That rolls the lights and siren. I really don’t think you want to show up at home with those running.”

Ivy sighed, anticipating the lecture she was going to get. “True dat.”

“Hey girl…” He turned toward her when he cut the engine in her driveway. She saw someone peek out the window, probably her father. What would they think, seeing a police car in the driveway, even if it didn’t have the lights and sirens blaring? Nothing good, that was for sure.

“Patrick.” She shook her head, hating herself for what
she was about to say, but what else could she do? In spite of what they had together, what they’d always had, it wasn’t going to work. One night didn’t change that. It couldn’t possibly. “No.”

“No?” The hurt on his face was unbearable. Ivy looked away, closing her eyes, but his words washed over her anyway. “I thought you’d changed your mind about… about… my being a cop…”

“Fantasy, remember?” she reminded him softly. He made a sound, like she’d punched him. Well, she kind of had, hadn’t she? Still, his hand fell over hers, squeezing gently.

“Don’t do this.” It was as close as Patrick ever came to begging her. She’d heard him use the tone one other time—when she’d broken it off with him
two years ago. “Just… let’s see each other in the light of day tomorrow. Have coffee. Talk.”

“I can’t,” she whispered, the words reflexive, in spite of her feelings. The truth was she wanted him, had always
wanted him, but she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. She’d rather make the choice to let him go than get a call in the middle of the night telling her that her husband was dead.

He reached for her, pulling her
close, and she let him kiss her.
One last time
, she told herself. His mouth was soft, pleading, urgent, even desperate, and she clung to him, wanting what he did too, but the gap between reality and fantasy was, for her, an unbridgeable one.

“Please,” he whispered into her hair, but he let her go when she shook her head, her throat too thick with tears to speak. Grabbing her purse from the floor, she opened the door, preparing to flee.

“Ivy.” He touched her arm and she stopped, but didn’t look back at him. “Let me call you. Tomorrow.”

“No,” she whispered, willing her tears not to fall, not yet. “No, please, don’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

She stumbled up the driveway toward the house, feeling as if she had just ripped out her own heart and left it behind. Inside, her father was waiting, ready with a lecture—the tow truck driver had called to ask which mechanic they wanted him to drop it off to—but she was barely listening. Instead, she watched out the window, waiting, and when Patrick pulled out a few moments later, she wondered if he knew that he’d just driven away with her heart.

* * * *

“Don’t forget to feed the horses!” That was the last thing her father said before he left, like she hadn’t heard it a hundred times already. Her parents were going to some sort of college reunion thing down in Detroit and would spend the night in a hotel. She’d gotten the rundown a dozen times on fire escape routes, where the flashlights, batteries, candles and matches were in case the power went out—never mind the clear, cloudless skies—and even had to endure a lecture about how to call 911.

“Dad, I think I know how to work a phone!” Ivy had protested with much eye-rolling and sighing, but he’d gone on to remind her about the escaped prisoner—his picture had been all over the local news—who had yet to be located. Long gone, Patrick had said, and he was probably right. Who in their right mind would hang around this
tiny little town?

A thousand reminders, and of course, she forgot to feed the horses.

It wasn’t her fault, she reasoned as she glared, bleary-eyed, at the clock over the mantle. It was after midnight! The TV was still on, Letterman interviewing someone Ivy didn’t recognize with his unmistakable nod and gap-toothed grin. She blinked in disbelief at the remains of her comfort-food feast strewn on the coffee table in front of the sofa she was sprawled across. It was PMS. That’s what she’d told herself while she mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to go with her mother’s macaroni and cheese. So it was comfort food—but what did she need comfort for?

It wasn’t like she’d been moping around the house for days since Patrick dropped her off at home that night. It was just that she didn’t have a car. Patrick, of course, had been right. It was the alternator. Not that it mattered to her father, who lectured her about the Honda’s low oil level anyway. No, she wasn’t mopin
g or depressed. So she had spent the entire day in her pajamas and had finished off her carb-fest with popcorn and Mountain Dew and a
Buffy
marathon. That didn’t mean anything.

It had to be PMS.

It was most definitely not Patrick. Thinking about Patrick. Remembering the way he touched her, the way he kissed her, the feel of his hands on her. Oh god. Oh no, definitely not that.

“Horses,” she muttered, shivering in the transition from sleep to awake, looking at the blackness of the night. No moon. Her parents owned half a dozen horses, all of them show-quality, most of them winners at some point or another, and she was going to be accused of starving them to death if she didn’t trudge out to the barn at midnight to feed them.

“Okay, okay.” She gave in to her guilty conscience, which sounded suspiciously like a cross between her father and Patrick, one on each shoulder, lecturing her about the right thing to do. She slipped on a pair of her mother’s gardening Crocs—pink with white fur—and her father’s big Carhartt coat, stopping at the junk drawer to get a flashlight. Her father had, of course, put all new batteries in before they left.

The night was dark and quiet, starless, moonless. It was a little chilly, but no worse than it had been the other night, when she’d b
een stuck out on Hobbes Road. She remembered the heat of Patrick behind her, entering her, filling her. Oh god, she couldn’t think about that. It made her knees weak and her belly clench. Just thinking about him made her want him. That was no good.

The barn was out back, the path well-worn, and she followed the bounce of the flashlight’s circle of light even though she probably could have made it in the dark from memory. How many times had she snuck out of her room, creeping out onto the eaves and down the drainpipe, heading out to the barn to meet Patrick in the loft? A hundred times? A thousand? Her memories of him were warm and melancholy, and she didn’t want to admit it, but she’d missed him. She’d missed him a lot. And since their little reunion over the hood of his cruiser the other night, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

But he hadn’t called. Of course, she’d told him not to, but still. Didn’t he understand a woman’s logic? Don’t call me meant don’t call me—except when it didn’t. Why couldn’t men ever discern the difference? It wasn’t so difficult.              
So call him.
She shoved the thought away with a scowl, following the path beside the barn now. She’d been ignoring that little voice for days. She couldn’t possibly call him, go crawling back, admit she’d been wrong, that she never should have broken things off.
I was just a kid. I was scared. Scared of losing him.

Well, that had worked out well, hadn’t it? She couldn’t lose him if they weren’t
together.
Go ahead and cut your nose off to spite your face, Ivy!
That was her mother’s voice, joining tonight’s chorus in her head. And so she had. Too afraid to risk losing the man she loved that she had to reject him. Like cutting off her own limb. I won’t miss it once it’s gone, she’d reasoned.

How very wrong she’d been.

Ivy hesitated at the barn door, cocking her head and frowning. Something was wrong. Missing? What was it? She traced the flashlight’s circle over the barn door’s edge, down its center, where the wood should have been locking it closed. That’s what was missing. The doors were closed, but the piece of wood that kept them that way was gone.

She used the flashlight to look around, finding it on the ground a few feet away. It wasn’t like her father to forget to lock up the barn, but maybe he’d left it open for her?
She reminded herself to lock up when she left and smiled to herself as she reached for the light switch, relishing the thought of admonishing her hypervigilant father about leaving the barn door unlocked.

The horses pawed and nickered at the sound of the door and Ivy switched on the light, blinking at the brightness as she made her way over to the trough to fill the feed bags. Her father was very picky about what he fed the horses. They ate in the pasture of course, but they were supplemented with a mix of f
lax seed, beet pulp, oatmeal and other vitamins and minerals. Ivy filled the bags and went to each stall, strapping them on the horses.

They were all beautiful animals, well cared for, spoiled really. Sometimes Ivy believed her father treated the horses better than he treated most people. But maybe they deserved it. The horses were magnificent, and probably far more friendly and amicable than most of the humans in the world. They just asked to be fed and loved. What else was there really, in the end?

The horse in the first stall had finished his meal, a big black thoroughbred she called Nightmare, although he had a long purebred, thoroughbred name she couldn’t remember. She took a moment to pet him, and the horse nuzzled her shoulder when she took off the feed bag, affectionate and loving. For some reason, this reminded her of Patrick, and that made her feel warm, as if her limbs were filled with thick sweetness, dripping honey. She wished he was here, wished she could turn the clock back, wished she was that teenager again sneaking out to the barn to meet him high up in the loft.

She went down the line, collecting feed bags, loving up and nuzzling each horse, getting her fill of affection for the night. Standing next to each powerful animal was exciting somehow, because there was always a potential for danger with horses. Her father had taught her that from the beginning. And this, too, reminded her of Patrick. How could something make her feel afraid and safe at the same time?

She hung the feed bags up, still thinking about Patrick, when something tickled her nose. She rubbed at it, glancing upward, blinking at the soft rain of hay from the loft. It was just a handful of straw drifting through the air around her, but it made her heart lurch in her chest and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her intuition was instant and spot-on, but her reaction far slower.

She squinted up into the shadows of the loft, assuming a rat or squirrel or maybe even a raccoon had found its way up there and had nudged a pile of hay, knocking some loose.. She’d have to tell her father.
Hay always made her sneeze—she’d had hay fever since she was young—and she rubbed her nose again, willing the itch away as she made her way to the door. She had her hand on the light switch when the urge overtook her, a huge sneeze erupting, scaring the horses in their stalls, and apparently whatever had found its way into the loft too.

Something heavy fell over up there—a rake, a shovel, maybe? But it sounded bigger, heavier than that. And then Ivy heard a sound that made her skin turn to ice. It wasn’t a loud sound, but it was distinct. It was a grunt—a decidedly
human
grunt. That was no animal up in the loft, she was sure of it. The goose bumps on her arms rose up, and she stood, immobile, breath caught in her throat, the only thought in her head not really a thought at all, but an image—her parents finding her mangled, violated body on the barn floor upon their return.

It was that image that got her moving. She flipped the light off, the pounding of her heart so loud in her ears she could barely think, swinging the barn doors quickly closed. She grabbed the piece of wood that locked the door, breaking two of her nails down to the quick as she shoved it
down into place, but not feeling it at all as she wrapped her father’s coat around her shoulders and took off running in the dark toward the house.