“Here it comes, woman,” he yelled and pounded hard as he exploded into her. He rolled off her sweaty body, panting and spent. “Damn, you suck the cum right out of me the way you clench that thing up on my cock.” He ran his hand through her sweat-damp brunette waves.
Ivy lay next to him with an arm raised over her head on the pillow, smiling. “You fuck nice.” He didn’t respond, and Ivy heard him begin to snore softly beside her. She snatched tissues from the box beside the bed and wiped him from between her legs. Ivy rose and went into the bathroom to relieve herself. The warm afterglow of pleasurable sex radiated through her body. She took a quick shower to wash away the sweat and residue from the night before then dressed quickly and quietly in jeans and a tank top.
She peeked at the bed to see Dan wrapped in the sheet and curled on his side, sleeping soundly. After their night of bedroom Olympics, Ivy thought he’d probably sleep for a good while longer. Her phone read eight forty-five. She grabbed her purse, locked the door to the cabin, and drove into town to find the IGA.
The grocery store’s parking lot only had a few cars parked near the entrance, and the store’s aisles were all but empty. Ivy noted the aromas of freshly baked bread coming from the bakery, ground coffee from the deli, the sickly sweet scent of over-ripe produce, and harsh detergents. They were the familiar scents assaulting the nose in every small grocery store Ivy could remember entering.
Her cart filled in no time at all. With her house empty of everything for her basic everyday needs, Ivy found herself taking things from every aisle she traveled down. When finished, she had enough bags to fill the empty trunk of the Lexus.
As she drove home, Ivy passed an Ace Hardware with a dazzling display of patio furniture out in front. She stopped and found new cushions for the wicker set and her porch swing. The cushions, bright red and printed with yellow tropical flowers and green foliage, grabbed Ivy’s attention immediately. While not exactly fitting her country motif, they did fit the Victorian period with those folks’ love of all things tropical.
More elegant Victorian homes would have had a solarium with tropical plants, birds, and wicker displayed throughout. Ivy stuffed the cushions and a few other purchases into the back seat of the car and drove home.
As she turned the Lexus into the gravel drive, Ivy saw Dan sitting in the porch swing. He had one big hand wrapped around the chain, holding the swing with his head resting upon his arm. The swing moved slowly back and forth, but Ivy thought he must be dozing. His head popped up, and he rose when Ivy shut the door and walked around to begin dragging plastic grocery bags from the trunk of the car.
“Did you get coffee?” he asked as he joined her, two big hands picking up the loaded bags.
“Yes, and I got a Mr. Coffee, too. It’s in the back seat with the new cushions for the patio furniture.” Ivy smiled and carried her load into the kitchen. She filled the refrigerator with sundries like grapefruit juice, milk, mayo, mustard, pickles, and butter.
Quick meals like pot pies went into the freezer along with some cuts of meat, a large bag of frozen fruit for smoothies, and a quart of butter pecan ice cream for those late nights when she needed something cold and sweet that wasn’t necessarily healthy.
Ivy would collect her rugged Ninja blender when she returned to retrieve Cheshire, but she bought a Mr. Coffee because she needed her coffee every day. She couldn’t go without that until the trip back to Arizona. Dan carried in the box with the coffee maker and ripped it open while Ivy continued to put groceries into the tall pantry next to the refrigerator.
At Humphry’s, Ivy had purchased several different sizes of clear and blue-green tinted glass jars with clamping crock lids to use as canisters for flour, sugar, and coffee. She would fill those later. Ivy knew she could perfectly repurpose the old jars in her country kitchen.
She handed Dan the plastic tub of Folger’s and watched him set up the coffee maker on the counter by the sink and fill it with water, a paper filter, and the pungent ground beans. Soon the pot filled, and the aroma of brewing coffee inundated the rustic cabin.
“Shall we take our coffee on the veranda, ma’am?” he asked gallantly in an exaggerated Southern accent.
“Why, that would be most lovely, good sir,” she replied, smiling. “Do y’all need sugar or cream?”
“No, ma’am, I take mine straight.”
Ivy took delicate porcelain cups and saucers from the cabinet and placed them upon a wicker tray. When the Mr. Coffee sputtered its last, Dan added the pot to the tray and switched off the machine. He picked up the tray and carried it out onto the porch and sat it upon the glass top of the wicker table between the two peacock-backed chairs.
Ivy was surprised to see the bright new cushions on the wicker settee and swing as well. The vibrant cushions looked perfect against the natural color of the wicker furniture. Ivy was glad it hadn’t been painted white like so many pieces she’d seen.
They settled into the cushioned seats to enjoy their coffee. As they took their first sips, Peggy and her husband drove by in their pickup, glaring. Dan, sitting bare-chested, smiled and waved boldly at the passing truck.
“Dan Wingate, you’re a troublemaker,” Ivy said, laughing as she watched Peggy throw gravel with her tires as she fishtailed away down the side of the road.
“She’s a busy-body old bitch,” Dan said as he poured another cup of coffee for himself and topped Ivy’s off. “By Monday morning, after she flaps her mouth down at that church of hers, the whole town will know we’ve been keepin’ company. Lord only knows how she’ll blow it out of proportion.”
“How much more could she blow it? You spent the whole day here yesterday and then the night. You’re half-dressed and sitting on my porch drinking coffee. What’s she supposed to think?” Ivy said with a giggle as she sipped her coffee and enjoyed the quiet morning.
“She’s supposed to mind her own damned business and keep her big mouth shut.” Dan drained his cup. “You have anything special you want to do today?”
“I planned to get groceries today, and that’s done. I don’t have anything else in particular planned. How about you? When do you have to be back on the road?”
Dan stretched his muscular body, scratched his head, and yawned. “I’m having the truck serviced. They won’t be finished with it for a couple of days, and then I need to head back to Victorville and see what’s up. You planning to head back to Arizona anytime soon?”
“I need to go pick up my cat and some personal items I don’t want put into storage, then I’m coming back here for a while to finish the final book in the series.”
“You’re planning to stay here full time then?” he asked as he emptied the pot into their cups.
“I think so.” Ivy stared out at the green field and the trees waving in the gentle late-morning breeze. The scent of the hedge roses wafted across the porch, and she took a deep breath. “I love it here. I’m a Midwestern girl and miss the green. I miss the changing of the seasons. Winters should be cold. I mean really cold, not just fifty degrees at night.”
“Yeah,” Dan said and laughed, “isn’t it freaky how desert people get all bundled up in heavy coats when it drops below seventy? I laughed my ass off at my brother and his wife when they turned the furnace on because it was supposed to drop down into the sixties one night. I was walkin’ around in shorts and flip-flops while they wore sweaters and heavy socks. I couldn’t believe it.”
Ivy huffed. “And I think it gets colder up in Victorville than it does in Phoenix, but people there are the same,” she said. “I’ve never owned anything heavier than a tweed jacket the whole time I’ve lived out there and only wear shoes when I’m going out.”
“You want to go with me in the truck to pick up your stuff?” Dan asked.
Ivy shook her head. “I have to get my cat. He doesn’t like to travel and would probably really freak out in your big, loud truck. I’m not bringing back too much, so it should fit into the back of my car easily enough. I just have some kitch
en stuff, some pictures, a few clothes, and Cheshire. My sister is really upset with me, so I need to spend a little time with her before I come back.”
“She’s not happy about the move?” Dan reached over and gave her arm a gentle caress.
Ivy rolled her blue eyes and smiled. “That would be putting it mildly.” Ivy took his hand and held it in hers. Having Dan nearby to touch was comforting and gave her a sense of well-being she’d never felt with Carl. He’d always made her feel self-conscious and unsure of herself. With Dan, she felt at ease. She didn’t know him at all, really, but it felt as though they’d known one another for years when they were together.
“My brother probably won’t like it when I tell him I’ve decided to come back here either.”
“Are you thinking about it?” Ivy asked with surprise.
He tightened the grip on her hand. “I am now.”
“Oh my.” Ivy gulped. “I had no idea. Are you regretting selling me the house now?”
“Not at all,” he exclaimed. “You’re the reason I’m thinking about coming back. I’ve got nothing holding me in California, and I can run the truck from here … well not,” he pointed at the cabin, “here, here, but here in Branson somewhere.” He grinned. “I heard there were going to be some nice condos on the lake for rent soon.”
“Yeah, right,” Ivy said and chuckled. She glanced back through the window into the homey cabin. “Why not here?” she asked him, nervous he might think her bold for suggesting. “You know the place. That would be a big help to me, and it would certainly give Peggy something to talk about.”
Dan stared back at her open-mouthed. “Seriously? You’d consider having me live here with you? You don’t even know me that well yet. I might be a psychotic serial killer or something.”
Ivy giggled, remembering how she’d thought precisely that about him when they’d met at the truck stop. “We know one another well enough to sleep together. I don’t know about you, but I certainly enjoyed it.” Ivy began putting the coffee cups back onto the tray. “Anyhow, it’s not like you’d be here with me all the time. You’ll be gone with your truck for weeks at a time.” She stood and picked up the tray. “This would be more like a pit-stop along the way between runs.”
“It certainly would be something to stick in that old bitch Peggy’s craw.” Dan leaned his head back and belly-laughed.
“Yes, it would.” Ivy chuckled and carried the tray back into her house.
17
Ivy made her trip back to Arizona to collect Cheshire two weeks before the Labor Day weekend. Vacation traffic on the highways had eased, and gas prices had fallen. She hoped to be on her way back before they went up again for the busy travel weekend.
Her sister scolded her harshly for being impetuous and making expensive decisions without giving them careful thought. Ivy knew what Carrie really meant was Ivy’s making expensive decisions without consulting her first. She grumbled about having to deal with Cheshire and packing up Ivy’s things and cleaning up her apartment. She loved her sister, but the constant nagging and complaining finally hit Ivy’s last nerve, and she loaded up her suitcases, boxes, and cat into the Lexus to get back out onto the road to Branson. Ivy kissed her weeping sister goodbye and took off only four days after arriving back in Phoenix.
Ivy unlocked the door and walked back into her cabin with Cheshire yowling in the kitty-crate three days before the big holiday weekend. The summer heat had not subsided, and people continued to throng to Lake of the Ozarks’ cool waters. It would be the last big hurrah before children returned to school and the summer tourist season officially ended.
After their first night together, Dan had all but taken up residence in the cabin with Ivy. When he began parking his big rig next to the cabin, Peggy stopped and demanded to know what was going on between them.
Ivy and Dan had been planting fall tulip bulbs along the stone walkway in front of the cabin one afternoon when Peggy’s pickup skidded into the drive and the woman, wearing overalls and a sweaty t-shirt, stormed out.
“Dan Wingate,” Peggy stormed, “what do you think you’re doing cavorting about with this horrible, godless woman,” she pointed an accusatory finger at Ivy, who knelt with her hands full of soil and bulbs, “and living with her in sin under your sweet dead wife’s very own roof. People in town are talking. You should be ashamed of making such a fool of poor Cindy this way.”
“People in town,” Dan admonished, “wouldn’t know or care a damned thing about it if you didn’t go runnin’ off at the mouth about it at that damned church.” He dropped the nylon mesh bag of bulbs but hung onto the trowel he’d been digging with and rose to face the scornful Peggy. “Now you get one thing straight, Peggy Sue Martin,” he pointed the digging tool at his former cousin-in-law, “I love Cindy, and I always will, but she’s dead and gone now. I promised my wife on her deathbed that I’d go on with my life and find somebody else to love.” He bent and lifted Ivy to her feet.
“Ivy Chandler is me getting on with my life. We’re good together, and we want to be together.” Dan brushed Ivy’s hair aside and kissed her mouth passionately before turning back to a red-faced Peggy. “We don’t give a good goddamn about what you or anybody else in this town thinks about it.” Dan pitched the trowel, and it landed spade-tip down in the yard at Peggy’s feet. “Now, do us all a favor and get your lard-ass back in your damned truck and stop bothering us with your holier-than-thou bullshit.”
“You’re gonna burn in Hell, Dan Wingate, along with your filthy, godless slut.” Peggy stomped on the trowel, bending its blade in the hard soil of the yard, before storming back to her pickup, throwing gravel as she spun her tires backing out.
In her haste to get out of their driveway and onto the road, Peggy miscalculated, and rather than turning out onto the narrow gravel lane, she went straight across it and backward into the deep ditch on the other side. They heard her scream as the rear end of the truck fell off into the deep drainage ditch, leaving the front end sticking straight up with the wheels spinning in mid-air.
Ivy and Dan both ran across the gravel road to see if the woman was injured but heard Peggy cursing into her cell phone at her husband on the other end, demanding that he come with the backhoe to get her and the pickup out of the ditch.
“She’s fine,” Dan said as he took Ivy’s hand, and they returned to their bulbs. Dan straightened the bent trowel, and while Peggy’s husband and son pulled her and her truck from the ditch, they finished burying the remainder of their tulip bulbs along the path. Ivy looked forward to seeing them bloom in the spring but knew every time she looked at them, she’d think of those pickup wheels spinning and laugh.
Ivy found that she and Dan made a good match. They’d both been raised on small farms and had four siblings. They’d both gone to junior colleges and married young. Dan’s marriage to Cindy had lasted thirty years while Ivy had been married for thirty-four years, but to three different husbands.
They enjoyed one another’s company both in and out of the bedroom. Dan told her about how Cindy had loved to garden and how he’d loved getting the ground ready for her to plant. He’d sold all his gardening equipment but assured Ivy they could get more in the spring. When Ivy had asked him about the chicken coop, he’d curled his lip in distaste.
“I hated those damned birds, but Cindy insisted on ‘em. When new ones hatched, she’d bring the little bastards into the house and baby ‘em for weeks until they were big enough to go out into the pullet cage where she warmed ‘em with a heat lamp if it was still cold at night.” He shook his head. “I used to ask her how she thought the mommas took care of ‘em before electricity, and she’d just snarl at me like I was an uncaring ass or something.” He stared at Ivy for reinforcement. “I mean, who brings nasty-assed chickens into their house?”
“My mom always did,” Ivy told him. “She said the snakes or rats would get them if she didn’t. If we didn’t have hens or they weren’t laying, we went without eggs.”
Ivy watch
ed Dan stare off into space for a minute. “Now that you mention it, neither did we. Mom made biscuits and gravy when we didn’t have eggs.” He smiled at Ivy. “But she never brought the damned chicks into the living room and kept ‘em in a box smellin’ the place up either. My old man would’ve had a flippin’ cow.”
She and Dan spent hours talking about their childhoods and young adulthoods. Ivy could not believe the difference between the way Dan made her feel compared to the way Carl had. There was no stress or self-doubt with Dan. He treated her like an equal, and Ivy finally realized the thing missing between her and Carl. He couldn’t see her as an equal. To Carl, Ivy would always be beneath him, and he made her feel that way. Perhaps he hadn’t intended to make her feel that way, but Ivy finally saw that he had.
Dan gave her an easy, contented feeling, and Ivy was completely comfortable with him. Giving it some consideration, Ivy found that contentment to be more important than anything Carl had ever had to offer. The sex had been great, but there was so much more to a relationship than great sex. She and Dan had really great sex, but they also had great conversations, laughter, and common interests.
Ivy carried the last of her boxes into the cabin, shut the door, and freed Cheshire from the confines of his crate. Cheshire had been an indoor cat since Ivy found him as a kitten. In the car, she’d kept him in the crate and put him on a leash to take him out to do his business as they traveled. Ivy had laughed at his confusion the first few times he’d realized he was supposed to do his thing in the grass and not in his cozy box of sand. He held it for a while but finally figured things out and resigned himself to going in the grass at rest areas. Ivy was glad he’d never messed inside the crate while they traveled in her new car.
When she filled his box with litter and put it in the utility room next to the washer, Cheshire jumped into it with joy and relieved himself in one long steady stream. Ivy could almost see the contentment on his broad orange face as he scratched at the sandy litter in the plastic box. After jumping from the box, he found his food and water dishes in the kitchen and ate heartily. Ivy was glad to have him here so he could get back on a regular schedule. She watched him explore his new surroundings, jumping up onto the furniture and sniffing everything.
Promises: Do You Know Where the Poison Toadstools Crow? Page 12