Chapter 5
IVY
After the kiss in the trophy room, all the trouble in my head went poof. I was trying to put my mind away from the matter—being forced into a marriage, having no choice in my life—and I ended up with the hugest crush in history.
Ace is so handsome it makes my head spin, but I’ve seen handsome people before.
They never looked my way twice. It’s the first time someone I desire is attracted to me, too.
He did the right thing, stepping away, respecting my engaged status, my brother...
And I wanted him to do me wrong. God, I never wanted someone to touch me more than at that moment.
There’s something about his kiss that makes me feel alive. And I want more of it. I want his hands on me. I want to feel everything.
Ace gives me space—even when I don’t ask for it.
He calls for his cook and disappears. The cook keeps me well-fed.
I have an amazing lunch, sitting at the small table on the balcony, then there’s dessert, and, later in the afternoon, tea.
Ace is still not back by the time I’m done with dinner and the cook leaves.
I could go away. Damn, I could steal some of his stuff to sell, use his absence to escape. But it’s not Ace I want to escape. It’s my family. With Ace, I want more. I just don’t know what.
He comes home late at night, only after I’m underneath the soft duvet. I don’t go after him. I wouldn’t know what to say. Instead, I let myself dream about his body against mine, then wake up in the morning with renewed purpose.
There’s something about Ace, something that calls straight to my heart. I want to know him better, even when we have so little time together. Even when he’s obviously keeping his distance, trying to be respectful.
I shower and get dressed, then rush into the kitchen while it’s still early. Not early enough, it seems. He’s already gone.
A dark-haired lady scrubs a plate when I enter the kitchen. She turns the water off and smiles at me. “You must be Ms. Ivy Cooper. I’m Celia.”
“Nice to meet you, Celia,” I reply, unable to hide how disappointed I am. Where is he? How can he be so quick to avoid me?
“I baked a cake,” Celia says, pointing with her wet hand at a beautiful cake resting in the middle of the kitchen island. “Mr. Alvarez loves them, so he asked me to bake you one. I can brew you some coffee if you’d like.”
I shake my head, approaching the counter. “No, I can do that. I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”
She chuckles. “Bother? Nonsense. I’ll finish up the plates and brew you some coffee. Nothing better than coffee and cake.”
I swallow, watching her. She seems to be in her fifties, and though she hums to herself as she works, I can only wonder at the hardships of her life.
My parents raised me to be a bride and a mother to the children of some rich man.
They never taught me to do chores and the sort.
I never had a day of work in my life, and I honestly miss it.
Making my way to the coffeemaker, I turn it on. “Would you show me how to do it, Celia?”
She gets surprised, then goes into denial, telling me I shouldn’t do that and how I don’t need to do that. It takes me some five minutes to convince her I want to learn. All I want is to feel like I can be useful outside serving as a breeding cow.
Celia sits with me when I ask, and we share coffee and cake. She tells me about her kids and how her eldest son is pregnant with her first grandson. There’s an adoring look on her face when she tells me he’s going to be called Tomaz like her father.
“What about you, Ivy?” she asks. “When are you and Mr. Alvarez having kids? I can’t wait to see this place filled with them. Running up and down the halls.”
“Oh, we... We aren’t...” My cheeks are on fire as I dart my gaze everywhere but at her. How am I going to tell her I’m not here because we’re dating? She could think he kidnapped me, which is not all wrong, but not right either.
“Oh, we’ll have to hide those trophies away. The children will climb the shelves and break them, risking falling, too!”
I clamp my mouth shut. Yeah, that would happen because that’s exactly what I did. “Mm, Ace and I are not together,” I say, because she’s a good woman and deserves the closest to the truth I can give her.
She arches an eyebrow, and her lips curl into an all-knowing smile.
“Well, whatever it is you call it nowadays. What I know,” and she gets to her feet, picking up our plates and cups, “is that Mr. Alvarez is smitten. I have never seen him smiling like that. And the way his eyes shone when he told me about you?” She smacks her lips.
“He’s a man in love if I have ever seen one. ”
Ace? In love with me? Impossible. No, there’s no way that... “Do you know where he could have gone, anyway?” I burst, gripping the edge of the seat.
She nods. “Training. At the stadium today, with his teammates. He’ll be back for lunch, he told me.”
I could wait for lunch. Or... I could stalk him, find out about the stadium, and go watch him training.
No warm-blooded, hetero woman would pass the chance of seeing Ace sweat again.
Damn it, I think I might have developed a sweat kink with him.
I thank Celia, shoot to my feet, and go back into the bedroom to fetch my phone.
A quick Google search teaches me everything I need to know.
Somehow, my brother made friends with one of the best-paid soccer players in the country.
After bidding Celia goodbye, I make my way to the stadium.
The place is next to the diner we met. Talk about destiny.
I follow the entrance signs to a spot where a group of people waits.
Several of them wear jerseys, so I stick around for some twenty minutes until the security guards wave us in.
I tag along because I have no idea what to do.
All I know is that I want to get to the stadium, and I want to see Ace playing.
There’s a bit of obsession at play; I won’t deny it.
Since we met, I was attracted to him, but getting to know him and then feeling his lips on mine...
It set off something inside me, a burning need, a longing I never knew I could feel.
My entire life I wanted freedom. I was too worried about running from my parents and their gilded cage, and I never pictured myself doing anything else.
I never pictured the after, and spending time with Ace is a nice way to learn about it.
We make it into the stadium, but not up the bleachers.
No, the way ahead is fenced off, forcing us to follow a predetermined path.
We do that, and I glance, for the first time, at a soccer field.
The grass is so green it’s almost technicolor, neon under the harsh sunlight of Miami.
I squint, but the sight of movement on the field forces me to look again.
The group around me rises in cheer as we find our way to a corner, barred off from the field but close enough to watch the players.
There are several of them, twice or thrice the number of a soccer team. They run back and forth, exercising in different ways, kicking the ball in circles or pairs. My heart races in my chest as I comb the people, looking for him, and the surprise of finding him makes me gasp.
It’s easy to find Ace because he’s looking straight at me.
He heaves, his shoulders moving as he gasps for air. His forehead glinting with sweat, his shirt glued to his chest... The sight of him makes me weak in the knees. How could he have seen me? He didn’t know I was coming. How could he find me so easily?
His hard gaze makes me fluster, so I look away.
My cheeks go warm and I have to catch my breath—and it isn’t I who’s exercising.
The players keep going, and I pretend I’m watching the others as Ace’s gaze fastens on me.
Some of the players end their time on the field and approach us.
The group around me cheers and begs for pictures or autographs, and I feel a lot like an alien right now.
“Did you see?” A girl next to me squeals. “Ace was looking at me!”
“Mm, I don’t think he was, though,” someone else replies. A weird sense of pride makes my heart swell. I grind my teeth together to keep myself from grinning. The silence stretches between the group for a moment.
The first girl hisses. “No way. You have to be crazy to think he was looking at her.”
I’m not even looking at them and I know she’s referring to me.
My throat clenches. This isn’t the first time someone has referred to me like this.
Like it’s a surprise someone finds me pretty or attractive.
Instead of defending my honor, I tilt my chin up and force myself to show some confidence—even when I feel none of it.
“Hey, gorgeous,” a male voice rasps close to me.
I glance up, expecting Ace, my heart thump-thumping when I hear the compliment. The blond man smiling at me is not Ace, though. I double-check to make sure he’s talking to me.
“Yes, you,” he says with a peal of laughter as he approaches me, fingers slipping through the holes in the fence. “Is it hard to believe a man finds you stunning?”
I laugh, tucking my hair behind an ear. “A bit, yeah.”
“Self-esteem is a bitch, isn’t it?” he says, then shrugs. “Never mind that. Are you looking for someone?” And he flashes me a toothpaste ad smile. “You sure it wasn’t me?”
I chuckle because this guy is the sort of jock who would never bat an eye in my direction in high school.
This is so damn weird. “Pretty sure,” I reply with a giggle because I can’t believe what’s happening right now.
Shooting a glance at the girl next to me, the one who was bad-mouthing me a moment ago, I savor the sight of her glaring at me. It’s the sweetest thing.
A shadow blocks the sun, making me blink and look away from the smiling blond. Ace stands behind him with a glower on his face, his brows low on the bridge of his nose, the tips of his lips curled downward. A gasp chokes in my throat. He reaches out and grips the fence so hard his knuckles bleach.
“Step away, man,” he hisses at the blond. It sends shivers down my spine. The girls behind me go back to calling out and asking for pictures, now focusing on Ace. He pays them no mind. His entire body is taut, and he takes a deep breath, growing in stature.
The blond widens his eyes and steps away. “Sorry, man, didn’t know she was yours.” And he whirls around and walks to the other side of the group, not even bidding me goodbye.
I shoot a surprised glance at Ace. “Come again?”
He curls his upper lip, still watching the blond guy go. “What?” he barks, then snaps his gaze at me. It burns like nothing I’ve ever seen. “What are you doing here?”
The roughness in his voice makes me stop. I glare right back at him, leaning forward and lowering my voice. “You don’t own me, Ace. I escaped because I want nothing to do with men who think they own the women in their lives.”
Ace clucks his tongue, then makes his way around the fence, shouldering the guards so he can pass.
The girls next to me push through to get close to him, but Ace is unstoppable.
He’s a man on a mission, and from the fire burning in his gaze, his mission is me.
He parts the crowd, steps up to me, then grabs my arm and manhandles me out of the field.
“What?” I stumble with my words and my feet, trying to keep up. “What the hell? Let me go!”
He lets me go, but not entirely. His hand presses into my lower back, keeping me moving.
Ace guides me into a hallway where there’s no one in sight.
He rushes me into a room. I whirl around and open my mouth to ask him about it, but he mutters “stay here” and closes the door.
A couple of minutes later, even before I had the time to study the small office, he’s back, with his car keys, wallet, and phone. Ace is in his uniform still.
“Let’s go,” he roars, eyes darting around the hallway.
I follow him out of the stadium to the private parking lot and into his car.
He plops down behind the wheel with that mad expression on his face, his chest still heaving.
There’s no way he’s still tired, is he? I stare at myself in the mirror, my cheeks red, my hair a bit disheveled.
Was he ashamed of being seen with me? If he was, why didn’t he pretend he didn’t know me?
Tears sting the back of my eyes. I gaze out the window, wondering if my entire life will be about people being ashamed of me.
“I’m so sorry,” Ace mutters as he drives us out of the stadium.
I snap my attention at him, disbelieving the words I hear.
“I’m so sorry I dragged you out of there.
But he was hitting on you, and I couldn’t...
I mean...” Ace shakes his head hard, then shoves a hand through his sweat-soaked hair.
“Shit. I know I was overreacting, and I know you’re not mine, but...
At that moment, all I wanted was to take you out of there.
Make sure none of them would dare touch you. ” He clucks his tongue. “Never mind.”
And I look out of the window again, but this time, it’s to hide my smile. Ace is jealous, and he’s jealous because of me. I press my thighs together, closing my hands in fists. A kind of giddiness I’ve never felt makes my heart pump.
This. This is what I’ve been looking for my entire life.