IVY WAS TREMBLING. Legit trembling. She kept her palms on the steering wheel and splayed her fingers, watching as they shook from nerves.
This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman. A mother. She could face one man. It was like karma was smirking at her, because although Ivy had vowed never to owe anything to a man again, she sure owed a hell of a lot to Brent. She owed him for rescuing her daughter.
So it was really imperative she get out of her damn car and walk into the garage and face him. Thank him properly. Enough with this cowardly sending-hot-meals crap. Alex said it was fine, that Brent didn’t expect anything more. But Ivy couldn’t deal with that, not when Violet still talked about Brent. Not when she drew pictures of him.
Alex had worked that Saturday so now she had off and was home with Violet. Ivy had told her she was running errands, not wanting her to know she was actually visiting Payton and Sons to talk to Brent.
So she’d lied to her sister already. This was starting out great.
Ivy stepped out of her car and walked toward the garage office. She didn’t think about what it meant that she’d spent way too much time picking out the perfect skirt (a pink flower print) or shirt (sleeveless and cream-colored) or the perfect shoes (bargain-priced gladiators). And she definitely didn’t think about what it meant that she’d curled her hair and fretted over what color eye shadow went with her outfit or what gloss accentuated the fullness of her lips.
Nope, that all meant nothing. It certainly didn’t have to do with wanting to impress a certain steel-eyed mechanic with thighs she wanted to bite.
Okay, so maybe it did.
Just a little.
She smoothed her skirt and opened the door. An older man stood behind the register. He glanced up at her sharply, blue-gray eyes measuring her up quickly. And she figured out pretty quick this must be Jack Payton.
“Can I help ya?” he asked gruffly.
“Is Brent here?”
He scowled at her. Or maybe that was just his natural expression. Resting scowl-face.
“Brent?” she queried again.
“Why do you look like Alex, but you’re not Alex?” he asked.
She smiled at that. “I’m her sister. Ivy.”
“Ivy?”
“That’s my name.”
“Ivy,” he repeated, this time without the question mark.
“Yes.”
He scowled at her for another minute and then jerked his thumb toward the back of the garage. “He’s in the back room. You know where that is?”
She nodded.
“Well then, go on.”
She didn’t want to admit she scurried, but she kind of scurried. Jack had that kind of voice, that demeanor that made her want to listen to him for fear of the consequences.
When she reached the back room, Brent was there, sitting at the small table, eating the leftover chicken Marsala she’d sent yesterday. She stepped inside, her heels clicking on the floor.
Brent’s head went up, and his eyes quickly registered surprise before he covered it with a blank look.
He didn’t talk.
So they stared at each other in silence. Ivy had expected him to talk. That’s what Brent did, Alex had said. He talked. But he wasn’t now. He was sitting there, with her chicken Marsala in front of him and a small dot of sauce at the corner of his mouth that was so incredibly endearing she wanted to lick it off.
No. Bad Ivy.
She scratched her arm. “Um, hi, Brent.”
His expression remained impassive. “Hey, Ivy.”
She pointed to his food. “You like it?”
His lips tilted up then, just a fraction. “It’s great. You sure can cook.”
“You have a favorite?”
He thought about that for a minute. “I really liked that cheesy chicken thing.”
“Chicken spaghetti casserole.”
“Yeah, sure, that was fucking delicious.”
She smiled and stepped forward. “You got some, uh . . . ” She fluttered her hands toward her chin and nodded toward his plate of food.
He didn’t blush or look the least bit embarrassed. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
He grinned then and parted his lips, and then his tongue snaked out, lapping up the sauce in a way that was completely suggestive.
It’d been a while, but Ivy wasn’t dead, and the sight did something weird to her insides.
He knew what he was doing too, because his eyes sparkled. And she wanted to smack him and kiss him at the same time. Like a smackiss. Brent was the perfect example of a man who needed an excellent smackiss.
She swallowed and gathered her nerves because she’d come here for a reason, and that wasn’t to flirt with Brent. At least, she was pretty sure. “I wanted to say thank you.”
His smirk faded quickly, and now there was a little bit of wariness to his eyes. “You already thanked me.” She shook her head, but he talked over her. “Yes, you did. You said it that day on the side of the road, and you’ve sent me food all week. You thanked me, Ivy. And even if you hadn’t thanked me, I would do it all over again the exact same way.”
See, that was why she owed him. Because of that.
“Please,” she whispered, because this was hard—oh, so hard. “Please let me do something for you to thank you properly for what you did. Do you want . . . sports tickets for you and your brother? Like NASCAR . . . or—”
“A date.” He said his words quick. Whip sharp.
And it took a moment for her brain to register. “Excuse me?”
There. Right there in his eyes, there was a vulnerability she hadn’t seen on Brent yet. He was putting himself out there just as much as she was. “A date. With you. Just . . . just a date. I don’t expect . . . ” A bit of red crept over his skin. “You know. I don’t expect that. Just a date, Ivy. Time with you.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She’d expected him to jump at NASCAR tickets—drinking beer with his brother while cars raced around in a loop. Didn’t guys like Brent love that? It would have been tough for her to afford it, but she would have scrimped and saved and paid for those tickets with blood if she’d had to. But no, he wanted a date. With her.
This was unexpected.
Alex would be pissed. They’d said no men. They’d both meant it. But this . . . this was important to Ivy. And just when Brent opened his mouth, looking like he was going to take back his request, she blurted out one word that she knew she couldn’t take back. “Okay.”
Brent’s chin lifted in a jerk, and he locked gazes with her, those steel eyes the most dangerous she’d ever seen them. He was studying her, and she wondered what he was looking for. “Can I ask you one question?” he said softly.
“Sure.”
“If I asked you on a date before all this happened, would you have said okay then?”
She’d already lied to Alex today; she didn’t want to lie again. She inhaled sharply. “No, I wouldn’t have. I would have said no.” As his face fell, she kept speaking. “But not for the reasons you probably think.” And even though he cocked his head, clearly wanting to ask more questions, she was done. “Now may I please have your number so I can inform you about our date?”
He rattled off the digits as she typed them into her phone. And then with a toss of her hair, while pretending to be confident and under control when she was anything but, she turned around and left Brent sitting at the table, staring after her.
Chapter Six
BRENT HADN’T ANALYZED a woman’s words like this since his mother left the family when he was five.
But not for the reasons you probably think.
This wasn’t normal, to sit in his house, a now-lukewarm beer in his hand, staring at the blank TV while he mulled Ivy’s words over and over in his head. He could be watching baseball or playing fetch with Honeybear. But no, he was lost in his thoughts.
When Ivy said she would have turned him down before, he’d been disappointed, sure, but not surprised. She’d let
him know in black and white when he first met her that she didn’t need his help.
But now he analyzed these reasons, and he was intrigued. Why would she have said no if it wasn’t because she thought Brent was an asshole? What other reasons were there?
Honeybear snuffled in her sleep beside him on the couch, and he reached out a hand, burying it in the thick scruff at her neck.
He hadn’t meant to ask Ivy out on a date. Not ever. He wasn’t in the business of asking when he knew he’d get shot down. But she looked so pretty standing there in that skirt¸ her tan skin so damn touchable. She looked at him like he mattered, and he wanted to matter. Fuck, he wanted to matter.
He wanted to matter to her.
Dating wasn’t usual for him. The whole dressing up, picking her up, taking her out. Sure, he’d done it, but it wasn’t really his preference. It was easier to pick a woman up in a bar where they both knew the score upfront.
But Ivy . . . yeah, he wanted to talk to her, to see if there was anything there between them, anything of substance. He felt a little like a shit for using her daughter’s rescue to get Ivy out on a date, but he was determined to show her that the rescue wasn’t a one-time thing. He could be depended on when it mattered.
So he’d take this date seriously, and he’d be a gentleman, and he’d show Ivy he was more than the joker asshole her sister worked with. He just hoped he could pull it off.
He rubbed Honeybear behind the ears. She opened one eye at him. “I’m a little rusty at the good-guy thing, girl.”
She closed her eye.
He scrunched his lips to the side; then he turned on the TV and settled in to watch a baseball game. After checking his phone¸ of course.
Ivy hadn’t called. Yet.
HE LASTED FIFTEEN minutes before he ushered Honeybear in the car and drove to his brother’s.
The front door at Cal’s was unlocked, as it normally was. Brent walked in as Honeybear trotted ahead of him, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor. When he walked into the kitchen, Jenna was at the sink, washing dishes.
“Don’t you make dinner too?” Brent asked. “Get Cal to wash the dishes.”
She didn’t even turn around, like she wasn’t surprised at all that Brent had shown up. “He’s doing laundry. We have our system, Brent. We’re both happy with it.”
He grunted in response as he grabbed a beer from the fridge. Honeybear sat beside Jenna and wagged her tail, staring up at her.
Jenna turned off the faucet and dried her hands. “What’s up?”
“I’m bored.”
A deep voice answered instead of Jenna. “That’s why we got you a dog.” Cal walked into the kitchen and handed Honeybear a Milk-Bone out of the jar on the counter. “So you’d stay at your own damn place.”
“Aw, come on. I can’t spend time with my brother?”
“You see me every damn day.”
Brent turned to Jenna. “I thought you were supposed to make Cal less grumpy.”
She laughed and waved him off.
“So where’s Asher?” Brent asked.
“At Julian’s,” Cal answered.
Brent nodded. He should have guessed. Ever since Asher and Julian began dating over the summer, they’d been inseparable. What a summer it had been. After leaving their family when Brent was five, Jill Payton had married Andrew Weyland, and together they had a son, Asher. She neglected to tell her other three sons this information, so none of them knew until Asher, scared of his drunk father, showed up on Cal’s doorstep months ago.
Asher lived with Cal and Jenna now, having fallen for the town—and Julian. Jill left her husband and now lived in an apartment across town. Brent couldn’t say she was in their lives again. She was there, in the background, but it’d been too long for them to welcome her back with open arms.
But Asher? Everyone loved that kid. Even if he liked to dye his hair crazy colors.
“I heard about what happened with the bus.” Jenna was watching him thoughtfully and he tried to maintain a neutral expression as he drank his beer.
“Oh yeah? How?”
“Ivy told Delilah. Delilah told me.”
“I don’t know if I like this little whisper-down-the-lane thing you ladies have going on.”
She ignored him. “That was a good thing you did.”
“Who wouldn’t have done the same thing?” he asked.
Jenna didn’t roll her eyes or laugh. “Lots of people wouldn’t have done that, Brent.”
He shrugged and looked away.
Honeybear whined, and Cal called to her. “I’ll take her out.” They walked out the back door, and Brent thought that was just great, because now he was stuck with Jenna, who was still staring at him like this conversation was far from over.
“You ever thought about doing volunteering or anything? You might like it.”
He loved Jenna, but she was Cal’s girl. And what he told her would make it to Cal’s ears and then Jack’s ears. Brent never told her anything and expected her to keep it from Cal. So he wasn’t going to tell her that of course he’d thought about volunteering. A fucking lot, actually. “It was no big thing, Jenna. I helped Violet, and now Ivy has been sending in delicious lunches and treats for me. So I did it all for the cookie.”
She stared at him like he was an idiot and then threw a kitchen towel at him. “God, you’re an idiot.”
See? This role was easier. No hard questions, no awkward conversations.
When Cal came back inside, they sat down and watched some baseball, drank beer, and raided the snack drawer that Asher kept fully stocked.
It wasn’t until Brent got to his truck later and looked at his center console that he realized he’d left his phone there.
He had a text message from Ivy. All it said was, I’ll pick you up Friday at 6:30.
He texted back. I’ll pick you up.
It’s my date.
I’m going to need your address, Ivy.
No response. His phone beeped an hour later when he was brushing his teeth. It was her address. He smiled at himself in the mirror.
“SO WHAT’D YOU do today?” Alex asked as she wiped down the countertops. Ivy had made lasagna, Alex’s favorite. She told herself it wasn’t because she was guilty for not telling Alex where she was going. Even though she knew it totally was.
Violet was in the living room, watching a movie, so Ivy took a deep breath and came clean. “I, uh, actually went to see Brent today.”
Alex paused, her fingers curving in where she gripped the sponge tightly. She blinked a couple of times and then resumed cleaning, although this time a little more aggressively. “Oh.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’re . . . something.”
Alex stopped again and then swiveled her head toward Ivy. “Yes, I’m something. You told me you were running errands, but you didn’t tell me you were going to my workplace. You left it out on purpose, unless you’re telling me you just happened to drive by and stopped in.”
Ivy shook her head. “No, I planned it.”
Alex didn’t look angry, now that Ivy studied her face, but she did look disappointed. “Look,” Ivy said, “I didn’t tell you because . . . I don’t know. But I wanted to thank Brent in person, okay? It was bothering me, and I guess I was worried that if I talked to you about it, you’d talk me out of it, and I didn’t want that to happen.”
“I wouldn’t have talked you out of it.”
“No, but you would have warned me or something, right? Or made a joke about Brent.”
Alex bit her lip as her gaze strayed to the ultra-clean counter in front of her. “I might have done that,” she said softly.
Ivy stood up and walked behind her sister, wrapping her arms around her waist and resting her face on Alex’s upper back. Ivy took a deep breath and felt Alex do the same in her arms. “I love you, Alex. And it’s the three of us all the way. You know that. We’re not going through what we went through in the past.”
Alex didn’t speak, but a shudder ran through her body. Ivy squeezed harder and then released her. “Turn around, will you?”
Alex did, her eyes a little wet.
Ivy gripped her forearm. “I went there, and I told Brent I wanted to do something to repay him, and he said he wanted a date with me.” Alex’s eyes widened, but Ivy shook her head before Alex could speak. “I told him I would. It’s just a date, Alex. A date with a man who you work with, who’s from a family we know, and who did something for our Violet. That matters to me.”
Alex’s lips shifted. “It matters to me too.”
“So it’s a date. In public. And he’s not so bad to look at.”
Alex smiled at that. “He is a cute bastard. He makes me laugh too, but I’ll never tell him that.” She held up a finger. “But I’m giving you a curfew.”
“It’ll be a good excuse to end the date short.”
Alex squinted at her. “Just one date?”
“Just one. I promise. Last thing I want to do is move again because of a guy.”
“No more men.”
Ivy nodded. “No more men.” But inside, she wished she felt it as emphatically as she spoke.
Instead, all she pictured were the serious steel eyes, his rain-soaked clothes. Her daughter in his arms.
And she wondered what she was getting into.
THE FRONT DOOR bell of Delilah’s Drawers rang, and Ivy set aside the bin of clothes she’d been organizing. “Lunch is here!” Delilah called amid the rustling of paper takeout bags.
Ivy stretched a kink out of her shoulder and walked out of the back room. Delilah was placing containers onto the front counter. Her straight black hair was down, framing her face. She was a petite Asian woman who always looked right out of a movie. Today, she wore an emerald long-sleeved dress with a gold necklace and earrings. Ivy felt downright frumpy around her. Delilah lifted her head as Ivy drew closer. “Hey, honey. What’s this drop-off look like?”
Ivy grabbed her chicken Caesar salad. A woman had left a storage container of clothes that morning for the shop to sell. “Really good. Mostly dresses but also some nice jewelry—statement pieces mostly.”
“All in good condition?”
“There’s a blouse that’s stained. It’s a really small stain, so I don’t think she even noticed.” They didn’t accept stained clothing.
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