Chapter 15
Why the hell did I agree to this?
Nerves danced a jig in Ivy’s belly at the sight of all the people packed into Parthenon Books. A banner hung at the front proclaiming “First Ever Appearance of Blake Iverson, Author of Best-Selling Sloan Maddox Series.”
Her publisher had agreed to the expanded production timeline, but in exchange they’d wanted to do something to wow the public and rev them up. With her new protagonist being a woman, Wally had strongly pressed for Ivy to break her streak of no public appearances and let the world know she was a woman. So she’d agreed to this signing and an extremely limited tour after the book was published.
She was already regretting it.
In the center of the store, rows of folding chairs were set in front of a podium. Every one was filled and the crowd standing at the fringes was three deep. Each person she saw held one of her books in their hands, mostly the latest one, Hollow Point Ridge. The sight made her queasy.
“Can I have your attention please.” At the podium, Peter, the bookstore manager, cleared his throat. As the crowd quieted, he smiled. “Thank you. Today is a momentous day, not only for Parthenon Books, but for publishing in general. We have with us the notoriously reclusive author of the Sloan Maddox series for her first-ever public appearance.”
At the “her” a murmur ran through the crowd. The mutant butterflies in Ivy’s stomach grew five sizes.
“She is a six-time New York Times best-selling author and the winner of numerous awards, and she’s chosen us do a special reveal of her brand-new series, coming out this fall. Please give a warm, Nashville welcome to Blake Iverson.” He led the applause as Ivy stepped from between two aisles of books and took the podium.
She curved her manicured fingers around the edge and looked out over the audience without really seeing them.
I will not faint. I will not faint. Blake Freaking Iverson does not faint.
Ivy sucked in a breath and tried for a smile. “Good afternoon. So, I imagine I am a bit of a surprise. My publisher has been very careful over the past few years to hide the fact that I’m a woman. But with the launch of this upcoming series, which features an absolutely kickass female protagonist, we felt it was a good time to come forward. You can consider yourselves part of the inner circle now.” A faint wave of laughter rippled through the assembly.
“I’m not much one for public speaking, so how about we just get straight to the reading?”
With a deep breath, she smoothed her hands over the printed pages of the first chapter and began to read.
“To my grumpy lumberjack, thanks for both rescues.” She didn’t know why she’d started with the dedication. She didn’t know why she’d dedicated it to Harrison, except that, regardless of how things had ended, she wouldn’t have finished the book without him.
“This is Enemy of Silence.”
Her voice wobbled at first, but gained strength with every word as she lost herself in Annika’s story. By the end, the store was so silent, she could’ve heard a pin drop. Ivy didn’t dare lift her head.
Oh God. Oh God, they hate it. They hate me. They?—
The silence was eclipsed by thunderous applause.
The band around her chest loosened and suddenly she could breathe again. Heat flushed her cheeks as she waited for the noise to die down again. The worst was nearly over.
“We’ll do a little Q and A before I move over to the signing table.” She fixed her gaze on a middle-aged man in glasses. “Yes, you in the second row?”
“What made you decide to write a woman as a protagonist for this follow-up series?”
“I didn’t start out with Annika, actually. My editor was pushing hard for Michael, but the book just wasn’t gelling. At least not for him alone. Then someone suggested that he could be made that much more compelling if he was paired with someone who could make him peel back his armor. I realized that was absolutely true. It was Annika’s story I really wanted to tell. She was interesting and compelling, and I wanted to know more about her past and how it was going to inform her present. I wrote the first draft of the book in a week.”
Her gaze shifted to a thirty-something woman standing at the edge. “Yes?”
“So are you saying this particular book has more of a romance thread than your previous work? Are you planning on branching out into romantic suspense?”
Ivy considered the question. She’d loved that aspect of the story, and Wally wanted to play it up in revisions. But going back to that, after the disappointment of things in Eden’s Ridge, was more pain than she was ready to cope with. She couldn’t imagine chasing that on a regular basis. “As an author, I’ve learned never to say never. I don’t presently have aspirations of shifting to romantic suspense, but I do intend to explore the relationship between Annika and Michael over the next several books. Their history is complex and interesting, and watching them overcome it will make for some pretty compelling fiction.”
Someone spoke up from the back, “Who’s the lumberjack in the dedication?”
Ivy froze. It couldn’t be. “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?”
The crowd shifted and there he was. Harrison Wilkes, in all his big, badass Ranger glory, dressed up in a sport coat and tie. “Who were you referring to in the dedication?”
Her breath clogged as her heart leapt into her throat. Relief and joy that he’d come, that he’d found her, had her knees going weak. Then reality crashed in. He’d walked away without a word. So what the hell was he doing here now?
Realizing her silence had gone on too long, Ivy swallowed. “He’s someone I thought I knew better than I did.”
The rest of the Q and A passed in a blur. Once Peter called the questions to a close, Ivy thought she’d be able to sneak away for just a few minutes to say, “Hey, how are you? And oh hey, you wanna tell me why you ran away from me?” but Peter herded her toward the signing table like a border collie with a recalcitrant sheep. She lost sight of Harrison.
Please don’t leave.
Stupid. Leaving was apparently what he did best. The intensity of her bitterness surprised her. She thought she’d put that behind her, but she’d really just shoved it under the sofa cushion. She remembered what she’d said to him at the cabin weeks ago.
“Some hurts can be packed away and forgotten about, and they’ll fade with time. And some become caged animals that do more damage, become more feral, the longer they’re ignored.”
Evidently her issues with Harrison fell into the latter category.
The line of fans snaked through the store, seemingly endless. The author in her was giddy that so many people had turned out to support her and the new series. The woman wanted nothing more than for all of them to go away so she could satisfy the curiosity that had nagged her for the past two weeks. What that would look like, Ivy had no idea. In an ideal world—or a romance novel—they’d run toward each other in the crowded store, and he’d sweep her into his arms for a passionate kiss that put the ones from last month to shame. Preferably with a swell of orchestral strings in the background.
She was not in an ideal world. She was in one of the city’s top, independent bookstores for her first public appearance, with what felt like half the city wanting a moment or five of her time. So she did her job, smiling and chatting with readers, signing their books, thanking them for coming. Peter kept a fresh bottle of water at her elbow and a bouquet of her favorite pens. And the readers kept coming.
When familiar, rough hands thrust a copy of Hollow Point Ridge in front of her, Ivy almost didn’t want to look up.
“Grumpy lumberjack, huh?” The rumble of his voice sounded above her.
Ivy’s chest constricted with a bitter mix of longing and fury. He’d left her. Why should she still want him? Why should the sound of his voice make her ache with the desire for him to circle the table, haul her out of the chair, and pull her into his arms?
Because she knew without a doubt that if he did, once those strong arms anchored her against his hardness, his warmth, she’d be home. For all her years moving from place to place, she’d never felt so adrift and dissatisfied as she had since she came back to Nashville. Nothing made it go away. But he could. If he’d just close that last bit of distance between them, put his arms around her and draw her close, she’d be able to breathe again.
Except she wouldn’t. Because the whole notion that he was home, that they’d actually built something between them had been pure artistic fantasy on her part. Not something real. Whatever she’d felt happening between them had been entirely on her side. It had to have been because he’d just walked away without a word. And after she’d spent the last two weeks struggling to put that behind her, to reclaim some sense of normalcy, he had the damned nerve to show up here and make her feel all this stuff again.
Shoving all that down deep to deal with later, Ivy lifted her gaze to his.
God, he looked good. His dark hair was streaked from the sun and he’d shaved for real this time. No more hiding? Looking into those eyes she’d dreamed of so often, Ivy still felt the spark.
But what the hell did sparks matter? Attraction hadn’t been their problem. He’d still walked away.
“Not so grumpy underneath it all. And not so lumberjack, either. You clean up well, Harrison.”
The sport coat only accentuated his broad shoulders. His shirt collar was unbuttoned, and the tie he’d worn earlier was stuffed into a pocket.
“Less of a place for flannel and a mountain man beard in the real world.”
“What is your real world?” It was a question that had haunted her these past weeks. One of many she’d kicked herself for not asking.
“That’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Now? He chose now to want to talk?Ivy gestured to the line behind him that snaked all through the store. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“That’s fine. I’ll wait.”
Opening his book to the dedication page, she muttered “Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” and scrawled an inscription. Forcing a smile, she handed the book over. “Thanks for reading.”
They stayed linked by the book for long seconds before Peter cleared his throat again and hurried Harrison along. Ivy watched as he wove through the crowd and sat in one of the cushy chairs scattered throughout the store. They’d see what kind of patience he had.
The line seemed to multiply every time Ivy looked up. But she did her job, smiled her smile, made conversation, signed books until her hand cramped, even as she made herself a promise to never do this again. By the time it was over, hours later, she expected Harrison to be long gone. But he was still perched in his chair, reading.
It was foolish to feel hope at that. He was probably just here to say hi.
He didn’t just wait two more hours to say hi.
So maybe he was here to clear the air. Or something. Just because he’d waited didn’t mean he wanted anything more.
She thanked Peter profusely for all the hard work he and his staff had put into making the signing a raging success. And then she was finally free.
Bracing herself, she crossed over to the man she couldn’t forget.
* * *
You owe me ten questions, but I only have one. Why?
If he’d needed any further evidence that he’d hurt her, this was it.
Waiting for today had been hell. Being away from her had been hard enough without knowing she thought he was an asshole. Having to sit, day after day, while she concocted who knew what false explanations for his absence, always casting him as the bad guy because he’d hurt her, was intolerable. And he knew exactly how good she was at concocting villains. Getting here today, seeing her again—it had taken every shred of control he had not to just grab her up in the middle of everything and start babbling, “I’m sorry.”
Over the past two weeks, he’d considered and rejected more than a dozen grand gestures, wanting to make it clear to her in no uncertain terms how he felt. Those always went over well in the movies. But given how much she already hated public speaking and the fact that she’d looked about ready to jump out of her skin at all the people packed into the bookstore, drawing even more attention to her seemed like a bad idea. It was one thing to know that Ivy was a big freaking deal. It was a whole other to actually see it. The sheer number of people who’d turned out for the signing was overwhelming and had him wishing for their cabin in the woods, and the focus wasn’t even on him.
So he’d waited, trying to read the book he’d had her sign and being entirely unable to focus.
To my grumpy lumberjack, thanks for both rescues.
He chewed on that. No matter what she thought, no matter how pissed and hurt she was, surely she wouldn’t have dedicated the book to him if she didn’t feel something for him.
“Sorry that took so long.”
At the sound of her cool voice, Harrison’s heart kicked into high gear. He rose to his feet, taking in her stiff posture and the wary look in those pretty, silver-green eyes. Everything he’d planned to say spilled out of his head. “Christ, it’s good to see you.”
Ivy’s brows furrowed at that. “Forgive me for not really believing that, Harrison.”
The sound of his name on her lips, even in that irritated tone, thrummed something deep in his chest. That helped him get started.
“I deserve that. But it’s not what you think.”
She crossed her arms, looking unimpressed. “Really? You didn’t just totally ghost on me?”
“No. At least not on purpose. It was a life-or-death situation.”
“A life-or-death situation. Because we have a lot of those as writers. Or are you even really a writer? Because I couldn’t find your stuff.”
Jesus, had he told her so little? “Nothing I ever said to you was a lie. I use a pen name, same as you. John Patrick Russell.”
A reluctant curiosity stole over her face. “Why?”
He sucked in a slow breath to brace himself. This hadn’t been on his list of things to talk about today. “John Laraway, Patrick Conroy, Russell Jennings. They’re the men I lost. It was…a small way to honor them.”
Ivy’s expression softened. “I’m sorry.”
Harrison just shook his head. “No, stop. I’m here to apologize to you. Not for leaving, because I had to go, but for the fact that I didn’t manage to get a message to you first, to let you know what was going on.”
“And that was?”
“One of my best friends tried to commit suicide.”
All the color drained out of her face and so did whatever fight she had. “Oh God. Is he…”
“He’s okay. Now. Or, at least, he’s working to be. There were several of us on rotation for a suicide watch. I have the most flexibility of schedule, so I took the lion’s share. And I just…lost track of days. By the time I realized I’d missed picking you up, you’d already left for home.”
She closed her eyes, shook her head. “God. I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault. What are you apologizing for?”
“For all the awful things I thought. I thought you’d ghosted me. I thought the whole damned week had been a lie and that everything between us was—” She cut herself off, as if she’d said too much.
But it was enough. It was maybe everything.
He stepped into her as he’d wanted, curving his hands around her shoulders and drawing her in so she looked up at him with glimmering eyes. “Nothing about that week was a lie. It was maybe the most real and honest I’ve been with myself and anybody else in years. So I hope you believe the unvarnished truth when I tell you that I’m completely and utterly crazy about you. Not because you’re a distraction or were convenient or any other craziness you might have convinced yourself of the last few weeks. Because you see me. You see straight into the scarred, battered heart of me. And maybe it’s not the greatest package in the world, but it’s yours—I’m yours—if you want me.”
His heart beat thick in his throat as he waited for a response. He couldn’t read anything on her face beyond total stupefaction. Beneath his hands, she trembled, and he wanted to draw her in, wrap his arms around her until she softened against him. But he needed something, some sign that they were on the same page with this.
“Harrison.” Her voice was choked and a tear leaked out to trail down one cheek.
Shit, he’d made her cry. Were those good tears? Tears of regret because she’d realized she didn’t want this with him?
“There is nothing in this world I want more.”
He barely had time to register the relief and joy before she was dragging him down by his lapels and he was pulling her to her toes, and he didn’t know who had started it but his mouth was on hers and—oh God—he’d missed this, missed her. As the chaos of his emotions swirled around him, he tightened his hold because she was his anchor. She opened for him and the taste of her flooded his senses, washing over every raw nerve and soothing. She was every bit as sweet as he remembered, and he needed so much more than just this taste in the middle of a busy bookstore.
Apparently coming to the same conclusion, she broke the kiss, easing back far enough to look into his face. “Give me your phone.”
It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “What?”
She dropped back to her feet. “Your phone. Give it to me.”
As his brain slowly came back online, he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over. Her fingers lingered over his as she took it, even though he still had one hand around her waist, holding her firmly against him.
Her fingers flew furiously. “We aren’t doing this again. This is every stinking number I have and my email address, and I just texted myself so I have your number.” She gave it back. “I’m not taking any chances on losing you again.”
This was the Ivy he knew, the one he’d fallen for, who could find the humor to ease over the rough patches. “What about your address?”
“That, too. Although I’m not trusting GPS navigation. I’m taking you there myself. Now, if you don’t have anywhere else to be.”
Lips curving into a grin, Harrison cupped her face. “There is nowhere I’d rather be than home with you. There’s so much I want to tell you.”
On a sigh, Ivy pressed her cheek into his hand, the last of the tension draining out of her. “Home.”
As he looked into her smiling eyes, he was pretty sure he’d found his.