by Kait Nolan
Abandoning the laptop, she curled up in the chair by the fireplace, staring into the flames and brooding. What if whatever the hell was going on with her head couldn’t be fixed? What if she was permanently broken? What if her career was over? The idea of it left a sick feeling in her gut. She loved her job. Or she had before it started to feel like opening her manuscript was tantamount to making a gallows walk.
The bathroom door opened. Ivy lifted her head in reflex, then blinked in confusion at the stranger who emerged, clad in a darker pair of jeans and yet another flannel shirt.
Holy shit.
He’d shaved the beard. Not all the way off, but he’d definitely attacked it with trimmers, knocking off several inches of ZZ Top wannabe and leaving him with a close-cropped beard that highlighted his strong jaw. It made him more approachable and...well, incredibly hot. Turned out the face that he’d been hiding underneath all that hair was as gorgeous as the well-toned body.
Perilously close to drooling, Ivy realized he’d said something to her. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I asked if you were getting any work done.”
She couldn’t stop the snort of disgust. “No. Not really.”
He dumped his dirty clothes into a bag and padded into the kitchen. “You wanna talk about it?”
Her first instinct was a resounding no. Because what good would talking about it do? But watching him at the stove, she reconsidered. What little inspiration she’d cobbled together had been because of him. She wanted to know more about him. Sharing something of herself might get him to let down his walls again. And maybe, just maybe, she’d find the piece she’d been missing for her plot.
“I used to love my job.”
There was so much longing in her tone, Harrison had to fight the urge to hug her. And what the hell was up with that? But he understood what it felt like—to have that high of being blessed enough to do the thing you felt like you’d been born to do, and the corresponding low when it all fell apart. He’d loved being a Ranger. Until he hadn’t.
“You said you’re a writer.” Better to get his brain back on her and her issues.
“That’s what it says on my résumé. I’m not feeling much like one lately.” She accepted the bowl of soup he passed her and went to sit at the little dinette table.
He followed with his own bowl and a sleeve of crackers. “Written anything I’d have heard of?” Probably not. She looked young. Not jailbait young, but definitely not over thirty, like he was. He pegged her for a romance writer or maybe young adult.
“Maybe.” She restlessly stirred her soup, as if that would make it cool faster, and didn’t meet his eyes.
Harrison waited for her to elaborate, but she said nothing. He wasn’t used to having someone wait him out, and her reticence had his curiosity piqued. “Are you embarrassed or worried this is gonna turn into a Misery kind of situation?” As soon as the words were out, he winced. “Sorry, bringing up a writer who gets kidnapped and tied to a bed is probably in poor taste under the circumstances.”
But it got her to look at him again. For just a moment, those silver-green eyes held an unmistakable glint of lust and intrigue that had Harrison’s brain scrambling down an entirely different path than the one he’d been joking about. Shit, he hadn’t had any intention of going there and now they were both thinking about the sofa and skin and…
Ivy pointed her spoon at him, her expression shifting to amusement. “You are no Annie Wilkes.”
What would she say if he told her they shared a last name? Before he could ask, she continued.
“And I’m not embarrassed.” The pretty flush of her cheeks belied her words, but that was probably about the inadvertent naked thoughts. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.
“What?” he teased. “Is it some of that Fifty Shades kind of sh—stuff?” What the hell was wrong with him, pursuing this line of questioning? When had he decided it was a good idea to flirt with this woman?
She made a disgusted face and shook her head with vehemence as she dug into the soup. “It is definitely not erotica. It’s not even romance, although there are some romantic elements that have cropped up in the series. It’s just that nice girls aren’t supposed to write about gruesome things like serial murder.”
Harrison didn’t bother to mask his surprise. “You don’t look like someone who’d write about something that dark.”
One dark brow arched up. “And what does someone who writes about the ultimate darkness of the human heart look like? There are some who would say I’m extremely well-adjusted because I exorcise my less-acceptable impulses through fiction.”
“So you’re saying you have recurrent thoughts of homicide?”
She pointed her spoon at him. “Don’t piss off the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you. As it happens I’ve gotten fictional revenge on a looooot of people.”
Beyond mildly curious now, he ripped open the crackers and pulled out a few. “What series?”
“The Sloan Maddox series.”
The crackers fell out of numb fingers and into his soup as Harrison stared. “You’re Blake Iverson?”
She gave a little shrug and a half smile. “Guilty.”
Hollow Point Ridge, the final book in the series, was on his e-reader right now. “But everybody assumes you’re a dude.” Certainly the dark, gritty thrillers that were driving Jack Reacher fans wild did not in any way give hints of this tiny, gentle-looking woman.
“It’s ridiculous, but there’s wider marketability that way. Men are more likely to pick up a book by a guy than they are something by Ivy Blake. And since I refuse public appearances, nobody is any the wiser.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. So this book you’re late on is the next Sloan Maddox? I thought book six was the end of the series.”
Again with the head shake. “My publisher wants me to branch out. It’s supposed to be the start of a new series featuring another character from the core series, but it’s just not gelling.”
“Which character?”
Her brow winged up. “You’ve read one of them?”
“I’ve read all of them. Well, I haven’t finished the latest one yet. I had to set it aside just after they found the second body.” Because he’d had to go bury another one. But he didn’t want to bring that up right now. “I had intended to finish it tonight when I got here.”
There went the blush again. Damn, she was cute. How did a woman like this turn out books that made his skin crawl?
“You have a dark and twisted mind.” Too late, it occurred to him that she might be offended by that observation.
But Ivy just grinned. “Thanks. I might as well get some use out my graduate degree.”
“Which is in what?”
“Forensic psychology.”
Harrison blinked, surprised yet again. “Seriously?”
She inclined her head and shrugged, as if to say “Guilty.”
“What were you originally gonna do with that?”
“I had a notion of eventually going into the FBI and the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I’m fascinated by the criminal mind. But I’m way less okay with going out in the field, which I discovered during a very brief relationship with a homicide detective while I was in grad school. He got called to a scene while we were out, and I was a dumbass who didn’t follow orders and stay in the car. I knew when I saw my first—and only—homicide victim, I’d never hack it as an actual member of law enforcement. It takes a special kind of tough to do those jobs, and I don’t have it.”
“You’d never know it from your books. Some of your serial killers have given me nightmares.” And he’d been relieved when her characters’ darkness had choked out his own.
Ivy beamed. “Thanks.”
“I, for one, am glad you took a different path.” He hated the idea of her losing her softness. Though given the sort of books she wrote, maybe that was an illusion. How could someone understand darkness that well and still remain any kind of innocent?
“You and my parents both. They always hated the idea of me being FBI.”
“Dangerous job. It’s a parent’s prerogative to hope their kid doesn’t do something that’s liable to get them shot.” His mom certainly hadn’t been keen on him going into the Army. She’d been proud of his service but terrified the whole time. She’d thrown a huge party when he decided not to re-up.
“Why did you want to do it?” He couldn’t imagine this petite woman in the soft sweater and well-worn jeans with the formal bearing and bland suit of a federal agent.
“I’m good at reading people. I guess that came from moving around a lot, always being the new kid in class.”
“Were you a military brat?”
“Preacher’s kid. The Methodist Church likes to move its ministers every few years within the jurisdiction. So I’ve lived all over the southeastern US. When you’re always the new kid, it’s handy to be able to size people up in a hurry. Figure out where you might best fit in.”
“True enough, but it’s a long way from new kid in school to FBI.” There had to be some bigger reason than simply curiosity.
Ivy flashed a self-deprecatory smile. “You’re wondering if I have some kind of trauma or something that prompted me to want to go out and get all the bad guys.”
He should not play poker with this woman. “It seems the logical conclusion.”
“Profiling isn’t always about logic. Whether you’re talking serial killers or regular people. I like the puzzle of trying to figure out what makes someone tick, and it turned out I had an aptitude for it.”
Harrison thought of her earlier observation. Nobody comes to a place like this if they want company. No matter what she’d said about logic, that one wasn’t difficult to puzzle out. But he wondered what else she’d uncover during their time together and wasn’t at all sure he’d be comfortable with her insights.
Shrugging off his unease, he turned his attention back to their conversation. “So why not regular psychology? Why the criminal stuff?”
“For one thing, I have zero tolerance for everyday problems. A lot of therapy involves just listening to people bitch and never actually wanting to change. I’d have been miserable inside a year. But the bigger reason? Well, you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Try me.”
“I saw reruns of this show from the late nineties. Profiler. The heroine was this forensic psychologist who worked for some fictional government division that partnered with assorted other agencies to bring down the perpetrators of violent crimes. I loved the crap out of that show. It fascinated me, and I thought what a great job. Taking down the bad guys by basically outsmarting them. After that I was hooked.”
“You decided to join the FBI because of a TV show?”
“I told you you’d think it was stupid.” The hunch in her shoulders suggested she’d gotten that reaction before.
“Not stupid. Just surprising.”
“I don’t have some noble reason for doing it. And, as it happened, I didn’t have the stomach to do more than write about it.”
“You’re damned good at the writing of it, so there’s hardly any shame in that. Not everything has to be done for some noble cause.”
“Did you have some noble reason for going into the military?”
Harrison shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d been sitting here talking about having studied to be a profiler. But the question sat him back in his chair. “That obvious?”
“That you were in the military? Yes. You rappelled down the side of a mountain in a Tennessee blizzard, by yourself, to help a perfect stranger and didn’t even break a sweat.”
Well, she’d been wrong about that part. Nice to know it hadn’t shown. “It was a baby mountain and not anywhere approaching a real blizzard.”
“Still. That’s not a thing the average civilian is capable of or inclined to do. Plus, there’s the way you move—with this total economy of motion, nothing wasted. And even if you hadn’t broken out your badass search and rescue skills, there was your response to the raccoon. You thought I was in danger and you reacted with the kind of speed that only someone with considerable training can manage. So I’m betting you weren’t just military, you were special forces.”
Harrison’s mouth went dry. If that was her takeaway from the raccoon incident, then maybe she wasn’t quite as observant as she seemed. Or maybe he hadn’t been as obvious as he’d thought. “How do you know I’m not still active?”
“Unless you were coming off of some posting where relaxed grooming standards were the norm, you had way too much beard for active military and your hair isn’t military cut. I’d guess you’ve been out two or three years.”
He wished he’d cracked open one of the beers in the fridge, but he wasn’t about to betray himself by doing it now. He’d been trained to withstand torture. He could tolerate some discomfort from one incredibly intuitive woman.
Chapter 6
Harrison’s expression didn’t change from that blank, neutral mask as he relaxed back in his chair, but Ivy didn’t miss the faint tightening of his hand, as if he wished he were holding something.
“Well, I bet you’re fun at parties.”
His tone was dry but she knew she’d gone too far, treading at the edge of territory he clearly didn’t want to discuss. So she swallowed down her speculation about why he might have left the military and reminded herself that this wasn’t a character whose head she could crawl around in endlessly in the name of the story. This was a real-life man, who had the right to privacy. He’d confirmed enough of her suspicions.
Wanting to put him at ease again, she flashed a rueful smile and shifted the conversation back to herself. “I can’t remember the last time I went to one. I’m something of a workaholic.”
The subtle tightening around his mouth eased. “You said you used to love your work. You don’t anymore?”
Ivy hesitated before answering. She didn’t talk about this. Not with anyone. Certainly not a fan. Fan questions, in general, usually made her uncomfortable. But she had a feeling that Harrison’s wouldn’t be the simple, surface stuff that people so often asked. And probably she owed him this after trying to get into his head.
“I wrote my first book in grad school. It was something I did to blow off steam in between writing my master’s thesis. I did it for fun because almost every time we discussed a profile in class, my brain spit out so much more than just the facts of an unknown subject. Building a story around it was instinctive and drove some of my professors crazy. But my classmates enjoyed it. I had kind of a little mailing list, I guess. I’d send out new chapters as I wrote them. It was a way for us all to be entertained in the middle of all the stress that goes along with grad school. And after I had my epiphany that I would not, in fact, be joining the ranks of the FBI, a friend suggested I polish up the book and try to get it published.”
She spooned up some soup, more to have something to do with her hands than because she was still hungry. “I didn’t hold out much hope that I’d get far with it, but I ended up landing an agent out of the first batch of query letters I sent. And six weeks after I signed, I found myself in the middle of a bidding war between three different publishers.”
He shifted forward and began to eat again. “That must’ve been a helluva charge.”
“It was. It was exciting. Everything my professors busted my chops over, editors loved. I accepted a three-book deal. They rushed the first book to market because it was more or less done, other than some minor revisions, and Wally—that’s my editor—ordered me to get started on the second. I had it and the third book finished by the time the first one hit the New York Times best seller list. Those books poured out of me, like they’d just been waiting for an outlet. I’ve never had so much fun in my life. I was getting to tell the kind of stories I’d been making up for years and getting paid for it.” Her lips curved at the memory.
“So what changed?”
The remembered excitement faded. “Books two and three pr
emiered on the Times list. My publisher asked for another three books in the series. And because I’d ripped out two and three at such a fast pace, they gave me pretty short deadlines, wanting to maximize on the momentum we’d started. It was a brutal, ruthless pace. But I was with it. I delivered. And I did all the things they asked of me. The social media and fan stuff. The blog tours. If my publicist told me to do something, I said yes ma’am. Literally the only line I drew was public appearances. I’m petrified of public speaking, and since they’d published me as Blake Iverson, they were cool with that. Maintaining the mystery, as it were.
“But book six was hard. Finding the balancing act between doing the research, getting the book written, keeping fans happy, doing all the social media crap so I wasn’t forgotten in between releases…all that took a toll. The subject matter of Hollow Point Ridge was pretty dark, even for me, and took a lot out of me. I figured I’d be fine after a little break. And I was. For little while. Then my publisher came back with launch numbers and wanted a spinoff series focused on Michael. Being wise enough not to bite the hand that feeds me, I said yes. But this book is…” She trailed off, not knowing what to say about it.
“Is what?” Harrison prompted.
“It’s…not.”
His brows drew down. “Not hard?”
“No, it’s not a book. I haven’t been able to write it.” Just thinking about it had additional tension knotting in her neck. Closing her eyes, she reached up to rub at it with both hands. “I’ve tried. I’ve come at it from every direction I can think of. But it’s just not working. Nothing’s working. And Marianne and Wally are breathing down my neck because I’ve already blown one deadline, and I keep putting them off because I can’t admit the truth.”