Chapter 8
One container housed enough food to feed a small army.
Ivy filled two plates before placing the lid back on the container.
The smell of eggs, bacon, and breakfast hash filled the air.
Her stomach growled as she set the plates on the table and then retrieved forks after being pointed in the right direction.
By the time she joined Chloe and Beau at the table, Kade walked back into the room.
“Can I join everyone, or am I still banished to the office?” he asked.
“Come sit,” Chloe said as Beau nodded. Then, she pointed to the plate in front of Beau. “You need to eat. If your skin turns any whiter, I’ll start wondering who bit your neck.”
A warm blush crawled up Ivy’s neck because she’d thought about kissing Beau’s neck more than once. She hoped no one could see the telltale crimson. How many times had her father told her that her face gave away her thoughts?
“Hudson texted that he’d be here later once they returned from Oklahoma,” Kade said as he studied the screen on his phone.
“Conrad has to stay with Nikki,” Beau said firmly.
Ivy made a mental note to ask him about that later.
Heads nodded. Kade’s glance shifted to Chloe’s stomach. What was that all about?
Beau didn’t notice. He was already taking another bite, eating like he hadn’t for days. How long had it been since they’d had a meal? She couldn’t recall when she’d had one as good as this. Why did food taste so much better when you were starving?
“This is amazing,” she murmured.
Chloe practically beamed. “I made that.”
“Hats off to you,” Ivy said with a smile.
“It feeds a lot of people and it saves well.” Chloe’s pride in her cooking was the cutest thing.
“This is about all my sister cooks,” Kade said, teasing.
Ivy’s heart squeezed. Despite Eric’s special needs, the two of them had shared many wonderful moments. Maybe not like this, but they’d had their own special language, and she’d been making progress with improving his communication skills.
Missing her brother was an ache that could never be soothed.
Being with Beau had made her feel like she might actually be able to move on from her grief at some point.
Maybe not now, but someday. Maybe she could open her heart again somewhere down the road.
The seed of possibility planted deep inside her that she might not hurt this much every time she remembered what her family had once been.
A growing piece of her reminded her that her mother wouldn’t have wanted Ivy to be estranged from her father, especially when he was the only family she had left.
But how was that possible when she didn’t even know him anymore?
Not really. They never talked about anything important.
She didn’t know what was on his mind the times they got together for dinner or coffee.
They only spoke about surface-level topics, such as how hot it was in Austin or whether electric vehicles were the answer to gas-powered ones.
In that moment, she realized just how much she missed her family and how often she felt alone. A crushing weight sat on her chest as she finished eating and then cleared the table.
“I let Conrad know that he should stay with Nikki,” Kade said.
“Is there something wrong with her?” Ivy asked quietly as she sat next to Beau.
“She’s pregnant,” Beau said. “And could have lost the baby recently.”
“Everything turned out okay, though,” Chloe quickly added. “Nikki is healthy and early in her pregnancy. The abduction was brief, and she came home fine.”
“It could’ve turned out very differently,” Beau said.
“There are no guarantees in life,” Chloe said. “As much as we all wish there was a crystal ball that could tell us if we were in danger or about to be slammed into by a car, there isn’t. We’re all living on a wing and a prayer.”
“Excuse me,” Ivy said as hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She needed to get to the bathroom before she broke down in front of strangers.
“What did I say wrong?” Chloe’s face twisted with concern.
“She lost her mother and brother to a boating accident,” Beau said. “But you didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just been on her mind, I’m sure, with everything going on with her father.”
He brought his sister up to speed as Archer and Owen walked through the back door. Hudson followed a step behind, shook his head. “We had to reschedule. Cassie is disappointed but remains hopeful she meet her son soon.”
“Sorry to hear that, man,” Beau said. He had enough strength to stand up this time. That was a positive. “I know how much meeting him means to her.”
“It’ll happen,” Hudson said. “We just have to stay positive.”
Beau nodded. “I’ll go check on Ivy while you fill the guys in.”
Thankfully, the bathroom wasn’t far. He stood at the door and knocked. “Everything okay, Ivy?”
A few sniffles broke the silence.
“I will be,” she said. The shakiness in her voice said she was barely holding it together. The hesitation meant she was holding on by a thread.
“I’m just going to stand out here and wait for you in case you want to talk,” he said. He hoped the reassurance would be well received.
A long, quiet pause followed.
Since she didn’t tell him to get lost or go to hell, he took it as a good sign to stay.
A minute passed. Then, two.
The handle jiggled before the door cracked open. A sliver of her face was all he could see and was better than nothing. Red-rimmed eyes framed those violet irises. If anything, she was even more beautiful.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb.
“I hope your family doesn’t think I’m crazy,” she said. “The way I took off like that.”
“Everyone needs space every once in a while.” They wouldn’t judge her for that. “Believe me when I say they understand.”
She bit down on her bottom lip. “How did you make it all the way here without falling on your backside?”
“I have many talents,” he quipped.
“Good to know.” She opened the door all the way. “You can’t be comfortable standing here. Let’s go back.”
He caught her hand in his before bringing her exposed wrist to his lips. He feathered a kiss there, and one on her palm.
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt with her free hand and tugged him closer until their lips crashed into each other. A bomb detonated in his chest like he’d never experienced before, threatening to shatter him the second their mouths parted. He wanted more.
Beau looped his arms around her waist and hauled her against him. The rise and fall of her chest matched the rhythm of his own pulse—a pulse that was rapidly rising. Her hands shifted to his chest, where her fingernails dug in. More of that live voltage pulsed through him, seeking an outlet.
His breath came out in gasps, and his heart rate jumped.
Ivy pulled back first, enough to break contact but still breathe in each other’s breath. Hers filled his senses with the scent of dark roast coffee and minty toothpaste. Her hair smelled like spring flowers after a rain. Her skin was citrusy and clean.
The world shifted, tilted. For the first time in Beau’s life, he felt like he stood exactly where he belonged.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen, okay?” Ivy needed a minute to regroup. She had no clue what had just happened when she’d kissed Beau, and she needed a second to figure it out or, at the very least, wait until her legs no longer felt like she was walking on rubber bands.
“Yeah,” he said, and his voice was gruff. Sexy. Everything about Beau Sturgess was walking sex. Being in the same room with him caused an almost overwhelming urge to kiss him to overtake her. And kiss him. And kiss him.
Those thick lips against her neck caused…
Ivy needed to recalibrate. She gave herself a mental headshake and refocused as he disappeared down the hallway.
The low hum of chatter in the kitchen reminded her that they weren’t alone.
That word almost brought more tears to her eyes.
She’d felt so alone for so long that she could scarcely remember all the happy Christmas mornings and New Year’s Eve PJ parties when it had been a family of three.
There’d been real happiness…board games and karaoke.
Ivy realized she’d forced all those happy memories down somewhere so deep that she couldn’t access them anymore. Remembering what her family had lost had always been a recipe for more pain, until now.
Remembering made her smile this time. Thinking about pink lemonade in plastic champagne flutes for midnight toasts to welcome in the New Year with her mom and dad made her happy.
It had taken years for her to realize that her family had celebrated East Coast time, meaning they’d welcomed the New Year at eleven p.m. in her time zone.
She’d been thirteen years old when she’d finally figured out that she’d been tricked.
At the time, she’d felt a sting of betrayal that her parents would lie to her for all those years.
Except, they’d been on to something. Now, she did the same so she could be in bed and asleep by midnight.
Looking back on it now made her smile. She’d never been the party-girl type anyway, and the best thing she figured she could give herself to welcome in a New Year was sleep. Did that make her boring? She couldn’t care less about what other people thought.
Maybe not Beau. His opinion was beginning to matter more than she cared to admit. The kiss had been bone-melting. It made her ache to feel his bare-naked skin against hers and to have their limbs in a tangle in the sheets.
As much as logic tried to chalk up her physical reaction to Beau as nothing more than survival instincts and biology kicking in, she knew better.
There was something special about him, something in the air when they were in the same room, and about the way her body told her this was something totally different.
Could she let herself trust that voice?
Ivy splashed cold water on her face in the sink, needing a slap of reality.
Their time together would be temporary. This was not a vacation.
This was not a date. They were in each other’s worlds for the sole purpose of saving their parents; her father and his mother.
Once they accomplished the task, they would go their separate ways.
Besides, Beau was figuring out life here in Saddle Junction at the ranch, and her life was back in Austin.
Excuses, a voice in the back of her mind pointed out. Maybe. Or maybe she was being realistic. They lived in different worlds, and their lives didn’t intersect. If they started a relationship, what next? Phone dates? Romantic texts?
They barely knew each other, and she needed someone present in her day-to-day life to build a relationship.
Excuses. She really hoped the annoying voice in the back of her head would choke on a grape.
Rather than stand there and debate herself for the next twenty minutes, she decided to do something more productive by joining the others so they could come up with a plan.
The drone idea had been gold as far as she was concerned.
It would offer a much-needed buffer between them and Clay and Royce.
Being parked somewhere down the road would give them plenty of time to escape if the drone were discovered.
She thought about the new location his phone tracker had revealed. Were those two goons with her father? If so, when had they moved him? Was this some kind of setup? A trap?
An involuntary shiver rocked her body at the memory of being abducted in broad daylight.
The move had signaled she was dealing with people who were good at abductions.
As far as she knew, no one had reported the crime.
Group dynamics could be strange. A group of people was far more likely to walk away while a crime was being committed than to intercede or report it.
She’d read that or seen it on a special once.
It had stuck with her because she lived in a crowded city that packed more people in every year.
Only recently had the population stalled rather than grown.
They were out of room in Austin. People were starting to get the message.
Had she ever dreamed of waking up to sunshine and endless sky like here at Rescue Ridge? Sure.
But her work and her life were in Austin. Speaking of which, she needed to inform her clients that she would be taking a longer break than originally planned. She was so close to a breakthrough with a handful of her clients that it pained her to risk losing ground.
Ivy recalled the joy in her mother’s eyes when Eric had experienced his first breakthrough. He’d been non-verbal until the age of five. Ivy had two years of college under her belt at the time and had been eager to apply everything she’d learned.
Eric’s first word had been mmmmma. But it had been clear to Ivy what he’d said—mama. Seeing their mother’s face light up had reinforced Ivy’s decision to stay the course. She loved helping people. She loved helping families. And she’d loved seeing a genuine smile on her mother’s face.
Ivy didn’t realize a few tears were sliding down her cheeks until she took one last look in the mirror. At least she’d been able to give her mother that before…
There’d been many other milestones to follow. At first, it had been just a sound, and then a word followed. After graduation, she’d gone into practice, creating a mobile business so her clients could be in a comfortable environment.
Her clients. How was she supposed to reach out to them now that her phone was gone?
The answer dawned on her. She might not be able to access her father’s phone records, but she could access her own.
Before they left the ranch, she needed to borrow a computer so she could log in to her account and see if there was some kind of communication from her father or the kidnappers.
From there, downloading her phone log would be simple.
A rare moment of hope sparked. She was smart. She was scrappy. She had help.
Surely, they could put their heads together and save her father and Beau’s mother.
Before she could leave the bathroom, Beau was back. One look at his face said something was seriously wrong.