AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe I missed you a little bit,” I conceded.
“Maybe I did too,” Ian said. “Now where are we going?”
I pulled my phone up and saw a text with the address, even though I knew where the house was, not stopping to read the paragraph’s worth of information Greer included after it. “Fucking hell, why are her texts so long?” I mumbled. “That would take me a month to type up.”
I set my phone in the console and pulled down the dirt road, winding through the towering fir trees. My parents had a bit over fifteen acres, and it wasn’t just my house on the land, but we passed the small house where our oldest brother Erik used to live, and where he and Lydia stayed when they were in town.
“You moving in there?” I asked Ian.
He shrugged. “Don’t care much where I sleep,” he said. “But Sheila said she could put some food in the fridge at Erik’s if I wanted privacy.”
I nodded.
“I think I’ll stay with them as long as she doesn’t mind,” he added quietly. “I like the thought of being close. For whatever.”
There was nothing for me to say to that because we both knew why he was saying it.
Our gazes held for a minute, and then he looked away.
The short drive to the property was quiet, the traffic was light since it was still early, and I glanced in the back seat to make sure I had extra client contracts if she was ready to sign one today.
“If you’re up for it,” I told Ian, “I’ll likely have you be the site manager for this job. I’ll help, of course, especially on the front end when we’re finalizing plans, but I’d rather keep myself freed up in case we can still book a new build.”
Ian nodded. “Sounds good. Jax won’t mind?” he asked, referencing my best friend, who’d worked with us for years.
“Nah, when we had to lay everyone off last week, he decided to go hide in the mountains or something. He’ll be out there in a tent for a month, if I had to guess.”
Ian exhaled a short laugh. “Ten years ago I would’ve said that sounds great. I think I lived in a big city for too long.”
“I’m too old to sleep in a tent for that long.”
“And too ugly,” he added.
I punched him in the arm.
“What’s her name?” Ian asked, still rubbing his arm as I turned the corner onto the driveway.
“I didn’t read Greer’s text. She sent me an entire novel.”
Ian sighed and snagged my phone. “No wonder she always takes the meetings.”
The house came into view, and I studied the lines of the roof, the large windows, and the porch—which sagged a bit to the left. I’d always loved this house. It was huge, set on a generous piece of property, not quite as large as my parents’, but easily held about five acres, with a barn set back from the house. They must have owned horses at one time because rotted-out fencing lined an overgrown field.
“Ivy,” Ian said.
My gaze snapped over to him. “What’d you say?”
He gave me a strange look. “Her name. It’s Ivy Lynch.”
My heart thudded uncomfortably.
It was impossible.
There had to be hundreds of Ivys in Oregon.
In the wide concrete driveway next to the house was a low-slung black Mercedes coupe, and I pulled my truck around, parking to face the front of her vehicle.
There was movement inside the car, and as the door opened, my breath snagged in my throat.
