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Because nothing about Ivy made sense. Not why I wanted her so badly or why I couldn’t just leave well enough alone when she acted as if she wanted nothing to do with any of us.
All morning, I felt edgy, like my fuse was about half its normal length, and the slightest bit of incorrect friction would set me off.
Of course, that was part of the problem. She’d set me off so easily. I could hardly believe it happened at all—if not for the presence of unusually sore muscles in my abs and my quads, and the visceral memory of how incredible she felt underneath me.
Not just how fiercely she kissed when her body was soft and pliant under my hands, or how tightly wound she was, seeming to fight the way the pleasure ripped through her impressive reserve. From start to end, it was the best—and most complicated—sexual experience of my life, and I didn’t know what the hell to do with that.
I spent my morning working on Mom’s chicken coop because I needed quiet and a place to clear my head, but it didn’t work. I caught a glimpse of the car leaving the guesthouse, the sleek black paint reflecting the sun, but never actually saw her, and somehow that made it worse.
I didn’t know where she was going, and I wanted to.
I wanted to fall asleep next to her, anchor my arms around the line of her ribs and feel her hands curl around mine while she let the tension ebb from her frame.
I wanted to know what she looked like in sleep and what she looked like when she woke up.
I wanted to know how she took her coffee. I wanted to see her laugh. Really laugh. Where her eyes crinkled up and her head tossed back and she clutched her belly, if she ever let herself laugh that way.
I wanted to know everything. And I didn’t know if she felt the same. If I thought too hard about it, I felt certain of only a few things when it came to Ivy:
She hid behind something, only allowing brief glimpses of who she was.
She wanted me.
She trusted me enough to let her guard down, even if it was only that once.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to drive me out of my fucking mind as I turned our encounter over and over and over in my mind.
By the time I got to the jobsite, I was restless, my muscles tense, my mind working overtime, and I didn’t know how to shut it the hell off.
The guys sensed it too, giving me a wide berth as I walked through the house and silently checked the progress. Wade barked out orders, and I noticed just how disconnected I felt to the quick progress on the house as I walked through the rooms.
In just a few days, a tremendous amount of progress had been made.
The walls were a fresh coat of white—something Greer obsessed over and looked exactly like every other shade of white I’d ever seen—and the trim was a creamy warm color that would set off nicely from the floors when they started installing them in the morning. Electricians were working around my crew to install light fixtures, and the kitchen counters were getting installed about a week later.
It wouldn’t take long.
She wouldn’t be here long.
My teeth clenched.
“Looks good, guys,” I told them.
“Greer told me she’s got a new build in the hopper,” Wade said.
I nodded absently. “Yeah, she mentioned something the other day. Unless my mom’s chicken coop gets a major upgrade, you might have a few more weeks laid off before we can start.”
His mouth flattened out. “I heard there were swings,” he muttered.
“Ian,” I yelled.
My brother’s head popped out of the kitchen. “What?”
“Why are you talking shit about my chicken coop?” I barked.
He jammed his measuring tape back into his tool belt and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you seen that thing? It’s nicer than my first flat in London.”
I rolled my eyes.
