Harlequin Desire June 2020 - Box Set 2 of 2

by Karen Booth

  She stood her ground a moment longer, to prove to herself that she could, and then she fled with a muttered goodbye.

  Down the hall. Out the door. Into the crisp chill of a New England autumn night. Dolly was sleepy by now. She burrowed into her mother’s shoulder, not even protesting the cool air after the warmth of Farrell’s kitchen.

  Ivy paused in the clearing and looked up at the sky. No moon. In fact, she’d had to pick her way carefully from the house to make sure she stayed on the path. The stars dotted the sky by the billions. Impossibly beautiful. Remote, though. Making Ivy feel small.

  She yearned for peace. For happiness. Her dreams were nothing out of the ordinary. Over her life, she had learned valuable lessons. About herself. About the world.

  At last, when her skin was chilled, she moved on into the trees and opened the cabin door, then locked it behind her. Though it was childish, perhaps, she checked every room and closet, making sure she and Dolly were alone.

  Some people thought the bogeyman was a fictional character. Ivy knew differently.

  It had been too long a day to worry about bathing Dolly. Instead, Ivy undressed her and put her in one-piece pajamas and an overnight diaper. Then she fixed a bottle and walked through to the bedroom that would serve as a nursery.

  The baby-bed sheet was covered in a tiny circus-animal print. In the drawers she found more bedding and all sorts of infant paraphernalia, including a medium-sized, glossy purple shopping bag on its side. The raffia handles were tied with silver ribbon.

  Ivy bent and slid out the gift one-handed. Dolly was getting grumpy, but Ivy wanted to see what was in the fancy sack. Tied to the handle was a note—I don’t have any kids of my own yet, so please let me spoil precious Dolly. Your friend, Katie.

  “Oh, dear,” Ivy said aloud, even though Dolly wouldn’t understand the words. “What has she done?”

  When the contents of the lovely shopping bag were spread out on the bed, Ivy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. No one had hosted a baby shower for her. There had been no work friends to drop by with gifts and food when Dolly was born. The contrast between then and now was stark. Katie’s thoughtful generosity was overwhelming.

  Katie had bought Dolly a dozen outfits, half in the size Dolly wore now and half that were the next larger size. The baby clothes were high-end and adorable. Though there were a few pink things, Katie had chosen teal and bright yellow and other vivid colors. Even a miniature designer cardigan that was completely impractical but too cute not to wear.

  Ivy took a deep breath. This largesse felt like charity. She hated it when people felt sorry for her. Yet Katie knew none of the specifics of Ivy’s life. She merely knew that Dolly was a baby who would grow out of clothes quickly and would need new outfits to wear.

  Not only that, but Katie was married to one of the wildly wealthy Stone brothers. This purchase would have been no more than a blip on Katie’s platinum credit card.

  Before Ivy could overthink it, she picked up her cell phone and pecked out a note, still with one hand. I found the clothes! You are too kind. Dolly and I thank you so much…

  By this time, Dolly was no longer willing to wait for her meal any longer. Ivy settled into the rocker. One of Ivy’s favorite moments at the end of the day was watching Dolly’s beautiful eyelashes settle on her plump, downy cheeks.

  The pediatrician recommended putting the baby to bed awake and letting her soothe herself to sleep. But Ivy couldn’t give up these precious minutes.

  When she climbed into bed later and turned out the lights, the room filled with unfamiliar shadows. The house settled for the night with creaks and muted pops.

  Nothing sinister. Only new surroundings.

  As she drifted between waking and sleeping, one image filled her imagination. Farrell Stone. A man she had known literally since childhood. But those words were deceptive. Who knew what kind of human he had become in the intervening years? She remembered a quiet boy. A good student.

  Already, those hazy memories were being replaced with new data. Her boss was a full-grown man. Large. Strong. Impressive.

  He made her heart beat faster.

  God help her…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Farrell dreamed about Sasha. About wandering the hospital halls, unable to find her room. And the doctor who confronted him with sad eyes and said, “She’s gone.”

  He came awake with a start, his heart pounding, his stomach clenched. Hell. He thought he was long past this crap. Seven years was plenty of time to grieve, wasn’t it?

  He rubbed his hands over his face. The alarm would go off in fifteen minutes. Might as well face the day.

  The two cups of coffee he swallowed—hot and strong—jump-started his brain. The third serving, in a larger insulated carafe, went with him to the lab. Overhead, birdsong and the sound of the wind in the trees soothed his unease. He walked slowly, feeling his limbs stretch and loosen.

  He had to admit, even though he had always been happy working in Portland, this new arrangement had much to commend it. After his father died, he and his brothers had been forced to go from part-time employees to full-time owners in Stone River Outdoors. Little opportunity to stop and smell the roses, or in Farrell’s case, the scent of evergreens.

  Their father had been a harsh man, but generally fair. He had raised his sons on his own after his wife’s death. When the three boys were in their twenties, he hadn’t blinked or protested when they wandered the globe sowing their wild oats.

  Of course, Farrell had sown fewer oats than the other two. He had married his beloved Sasha young. Been widowed young. After that, he’d been happy to pour most of his energy into research and development for SRO. The company his great-grandfather founded had grown beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

  Now Quin was running things, and Zachary had the brains to keep their finances in order. Which left Farrell free to create.

  He hadn’t realized until this move how much of a routine he had for getting started on his work. Sharpen a few pencils. Straighten his desk. Stare into space, summon the memory of where he had left off.

  Now the setting was different. The office layout not the same. But in the end, his methodical approach served him well. In half an hour, he was deep into his latest project.

  The next time he surfaced, he glanced at his watch and groaned. Nearly eleven. He’d asked Ivy to have his breakfast ready at eight. She was probably either frustrated or pissed, or both.

  He knew he was a hard person to live with. But he didn’t want to starve. Or eat peanut butter 24/7. He would assure her he’d do better. Respect her time and effort.

  When he rushed into the kitchen, Ivy and Dolly were seated at the island. Ivy wore a simple white cotton button-up top and the same jeans. He knew they were the same, because he’d memorized the rip at one knee.

  Ivy had found a set of colorful miniature bowls in his cabinets. The kind of small containers that were good for dipping sauces or individual servings of queso. Dolly had a blue one in her left hand and a green one in her right. The rest were scattered in front of her.

  “I’m so sorry,” Farrell said. “I promise I’ll be on time tomorrow. Maybe set an alarm.”

  Ivy’s expression was noncommittal. “It’s your house and your food. You have a right to eat whenever it’s good for you.”

  Something about her careful speech bothered him. “I didn’t mean to inconvenience you.”

  An odd something flashed through her eyes. “My job is to have your meal ready when you want it. I’ve been scrambling eggs every half hour, so they would be warm. The bacon has held up okay.” She stood with the baby. “I’ll do eggs one more time.”

  He walked over to the trash can, lifted the lid and stared at the contents. Good God. He turned around to find his new employee watching him warily. He cocked his head. “Weren’t you afraid I’d be mad about the wasted food?
” He said it jokingly.

  Ivy went white. Her mouth opened and closed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll order more eggs. You can take it out of my check.”

  She had backed away from him until she was at the farthest point of the kitchen. For one stunned moment, he felt as if he was in a play and didn’t know his lines. He’d been hungry before. Starving, actually. But now his appetite fled. “We need to talk,” he said slowly. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  She shrugged half-heartedly, clutching the baby as a shield. “I don’t know you at all,” she said.

  He sighed. “I’m the kind of man who won’t shout at you if I’m late and the eggs are cold. Are we clear on that?”

  A bit of color returned to her face, though her body language still telegraphed her distress. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You won’t shout. Got it.” She paused. “So do I scramble the eggs or not?”

  Somewhere, somebody must be laughing at Farrell. He wanted to say Forget about the damn breakfast, but he was afraid to upset her. Ivy Danby was fragile. Not in spirit. Not in determination. But she had survived something. The hints he was beginning to pick up ate at him.

  Should he probe for the truth, or leave her alone to heal on her own?

  While he debated how to handle the situation, Ivy cocked her head. “Eggs, Farrell?”

  He shrugged and scraped his hands through his hair. “No. I’ll grab a sandwich and eat an early lunch.” He hesitated. “I may not have been completely honest. I won’t shout at you about eggs, but I do sometimes get frustrated. If I were to yell, it wouldn’t be because I’m upset with you.”

  This time she stared at him so intently he felt the back of his neck prickle. That steady female gaze got under his skin. Was she always so serious, so focused?

  “Do you mean that you have a temper?” she asked.

  In another situation, it might have seemed an innocuous question. But to Ivy, it wasn’t. He knew that in his gut.

  “Doesn’t everyone from time to time?” he said lightly, trying to defuse the fraught conversation with humor.

  She gnawed her lower lip, a lip that was soft and pink but bore no makeup, not even lip gloss. “No. Not me,” she said. “But most people do, I guess.”

  “There are different kinds of temper,” he said gently. “Some people let off steam by being loud. But they don’t mean anything by it. They aren’t evil or dangerous.”

  She jerked when he said the word dangerous. He saw the slight physical reaction. And he also saw the way she tried to cover up her response.

  Too late, Ivy.

  “I understand,” she said.

  Those two words were the biggest lie she had told him. He would have to handle her with care. He was good at caring for people. Sasha told him once it was his love language. But only for her, his wife. Not for any other woman. Sasha had been strong and independent until cancer beat her down.

  He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you take a look around the house? Make yourself at home. Nothing is off-limits. I’ll throw a sandwich together and get back to the lab.”

  For the first time, a hint of humor blossomed on Ivy’s heart-shaped face. With the short haircut and the big eyes, she looked far younger than he knew her to be. She shook her head slowly. “If I let you fix the sandwich, that will be three meals I haven’t fed you. Hold Dolly. I’ll make the sandwich.”

  Before he could protest, the baby was in his arms, smelling sweetly of lotion and some indefinable infant smell. “How old is she?” he asked abruptly. He could hazard a guess, but suddenly, he wanted to know for sure. Ivy and her little daughter were a puzzle that obsessed him at the moment.

  That wary expression came back. Ivy turned to rummage in the fridge, her voice muffled as she took out a package of roast beef and another of Swiss cheese. “Seven months.”

  He stroked the baby’s chubby arm. “So her father got to know her before he passed?”

  Ivy straightened and whirled around. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t try to analyze me, or my life, or Dolly. I’m here to do a job. Nothing more. You and I aren’t friends, Farrell.”

  He chuckled, feeling better suddenly. “So you do have a temper, Ivy. Right? It’s not a crime.”

  Her face was the picture of astonishment. Was she really so lacking in self-awareness? Or had she battened down her natural responses for so long that she had forgotten what it felt like to experience true emotions, whether positive or negative?

  “I’m sorry I pried,” he said. “I’ll take Miss Dolly out to the front porch to look at the ocean while you handle things in here.”

  * * *

  Ivy fretted as she prepared Farrell’s lunch. How could she have been so rude to him? He was paying her a ridiculous amount of money to do a relatively modest amount of work. She should be catering to his every whim, not snapping at him.

  But maybe her days of tiptoeing around men were over. She was a grown woman with her own ideas, her own way of doing things. The novelty of that freedom was not something she took for granted.

  She added fresh tomato slices and a crisp leaf of lettuce to the thick sandwich and slapped the second piece of bread on top. Since she hadn’t actually cooked for the man yet, she’d better make sure this lunch was a work of art. After washing an apple and tucking it into one of the brown paper sacks she had found in the cabinet, she added napkins, packaged condiments and the cellophane-wrapped sandwich on top.

  Farrell could choose his own drink. The fridge was stocked with bottled sodas, tea and plenty of water. She didn’t know his preference.

  When the lunch was ready and the kitchen restored to its pristine condition, she made her way through the house to the front door. Pausing by a window, she observed Farrell Stone interacting with her daughter.

  He was talking to Dolly, pointing toward the ocean. Though Ivy couldn’t hear the exact words, she watched his body language. The infant was secure in his left arm. Her little face was tipped up to his, her smile happy. Contented. The expression on her daughter’s face filled Ivy with relief.

  Supposedly dogs and babies were good judges of character. If that was true, Farrell Stone was passing the test with ease. Ivy wasn’t so easily won over, though. She had learned the hard way that people could present a facade to the world that was entirely false.

  Even now, she cringed inwardly as she recalled how easily she had been deceived. Her many missteps and mistakes would haunt her for the rest of her life. More than anything, she wanted to protect Dolly from being as vulnerable as Ivy had been.

  Farrell laughed suddenly and kissed the baby on the top of her head. That unscripted bit of affection caught Ivy off guard and twisted her heart. He was so good with Dolly, so natural. Was he really the man he seemed?

  With his back to her, she was able to watch him unobserved. Broad shoulders, a powerful torso. The navy Henley shirt he wore revealed bone and muscle. Farrell Stone was intensely masculine. She shivered, caught in something she didn’t want to name.

  Sexual desire was like an endangered species. She recognized it. Was even drawn to it. But a smart woman would keep her distance.

  Farrell must have sensed he was being watched. He turned toward the window, waved and beckoned her to come outdoors. Reluctantly, she joined him. The day was warmer now, much warmer than when she and Dolly had walked over from the cabin.

  “Your lunch is ready,” she said quietly. Dolly made no move to reach for her mother. Apparently, she was fascinated with her new friend. Dolly’s whole world had centered around her mother up until now. It would be good for her to broaden her circle of relationships with adults.

  Farrell nodded. “Thanks,” he said, keeping his gaze focused on the sea. As they watched, a trio of sailboats danced across the waves on the open water, their sails pure white again
st the glistening azure water.

  “Do you sail?” Ivy asked.

  He shot her a sideways glance. “I do. Why? Are you interested in trying it? I’m happy to give you lessons.”

  She sighed, ignoring his offer. “I’m very sorry I said we weren’t friends. That wasn’t nice at all.”

  His smile was a flash of white teeth that sent her stomach into free fall. “I believe in second chances, Ivy Danby. Why don’t you and I start over? My name is Farrell, and I’m very happy you’re here with me in the Maine woods.”

  “You are?” She looked up at him, frowning slightly. “That day in your office I got the impression you were hiring me under duress.”

  His cheeks reddened as if her question had embarrassed him. But that was impossible. Men like Farrell Stone possessed unshakable confidence.

  He shrugged. “It’s true I prefer to be alone when I work. I’m sorry if I made you feel unwelcome.”

  She chuckled, almost stunned to feel the jolt of amusement. “I’m not a guest, Farrell. And you haven’t made me feel unwelcome. Not at all. You gave me a fabulous place to live, and you bought my daughter a baby bed. I’m in your debt.”

  “Absolutely not.” His frown was dark. “We’re even partners in this arrangement, Ivy. Your contributions to this setup are important. I want you to understand that.”

  “You mean it, don’t you?” Staring at him, she searched his brilliant green eyes, the amber bits catching the sun. Could she take him at face value? Did she dare?

  “Of course I do,” he said. “I have my failings, but I like to think I’m a man of my word.”

  They were standing so close she could see a tiny spot on the underside of his chin where he had nicked himself shaving. Did he normally shave here in his admittedly luxurious getaway home, or had he done it because Ivy and Dolly were with him?

  She held out her right hand. “Starting over is a good idea,” she said. “Let’s shake on it.” That last bit was a mistake. Did she really want to touch the man? Her subconscious said yes.