Chapter 14
Fourteen
Ivy spent the trip back to the inn in a state of disbelief, trying to generate some alternative explanation where Harrison hadn’t just walked away from her without a word.
But all she could remember was the distance he put between them the last night they were together.
He’d declined to stay, citing her need to work.
And then he’d made it even longer until she’d see him again. Had he planned to leave even then?
No. She couldn’t have been so wrong. Could she?
There had to be some explanation. Right?
Somehow, some way, there was an alternate reason for the fact he wasn’t there.
But good as her imagination was, she couldn’t find a rational way to dismiss the fact that he’d checked out.
He’d checked out. Himself. So it wasn’t like he’d been in an accident and couldn’t call.
He’d left, like the proverbial thief in the night, and hadn’t even had the decency to write a note or leave a message at the inn or even send up a freaking smoke signal to say, “Hey, it’s been great, but I’m out. Sorry.”
Apparently, she wasn’t worth that courtesy.
“That son of a bitch.” Her snarl of anger came out more like a wail. As the road began to blur, she realized she was crying. Damn it.
Had this whole affair been a lie? A way to get some tail before he went on to wherever he next had to go?
Had he laughed at how easy a mark she was?
The lonely writer who was so desperate for human connection, she’d throw herself at a veritable stranger.
She’d been honest with him, vulnerable with him.
And this was how he repaid her? Was he even a writer?
There’d been no books listed under Harrison Wilkes when she’d searched online. Was anything he’d told her real?
She took a corner wrong and jolted as the two right wheels bumped up over the curb, eyes burning so badly, she could hardly see.
Somehow, she made it back to the inn without wrecking the borrowed car.
Pru looked up, startled, as she came through the door. “What—”
But Ivy just passed her the keys and went upstairs.
As soon as she saw that big, comfy bed, she knew she couldn’t stay here.
Not here in this room and not here in this town, where everything would make her think of him.
So she packed her bags, hauled them downstairs, and went to seek out her hostess.
Pru was in the office with Ari. The pair of them were practically bristling with questions, but neither said a word.
Ivy swallowed and forced the words out of a throat that felt like broken glass.
“Is there any possible way someone could drive me to Johnson City to pick up a rental?” She should have done it earlier in the week, but she hadn’t thought she’d need transportation just yet.
She should have known better. Hadn’t her life taught her to always have an escape plan?
“Flynn can drive you. But Ivy are you sure?” Pru looked like she wanted to say something else, but stopped herself.
“I’m sure.” Maybe she owed them some kind of an explanation, but she just couldn’t. She only wanted to be gone from here as fast as possible. Let them take in her tear-stained face and draw what conclusions they would. They’d be close enough to whatever constituted the truth.
Flynn, bless him, didn’t ask. And once she’d secured the rental, he quietly squeezed her hand. “Be careful.”
Unable to speak, she just nodded and squeezed back.
On the four-and-a-half hour drive back to Nashville, she cycled between crying and fury—at him for leading her on, at herself for not seeing what was happening.
She’d always prided herself on being such a good judge of character.
Failing so spectacularly was an insult to her pride as much as his actions were an insult to her heart. Both made her feel stupid.
She wanted the comfort of home, where she could lick her wounds in private.
But when she pulled into her garage going on eleven-thirty that night, she didn’t feel any relief.
The little house she’d proudly bought with royalties from her first book just felt empty.
Unable to face that, she fell face-first into bed and went straight to sleep, barely remembering to take off her shoes.
That night, her dreams were full of Harrison—or rather, his back, as she kept arriving places, only to find him walking away.
She woke with gritty, puffy eyes and wet cheeks sometime around eight.
Her body ached like the flu. The idea of facing the unpacking and the laundry and the grocery shopping and all the things that went along with coming home from a long stint away was too much.
She dragged the comforter she’d cocooned herself in during the night over her head and vowed to go back to sleep.
But a sound from somewhere in the house had her eyes popping open.
Someone’s in the house.
She quietly untangled herself from the blankets and grabbed her phone from the nightstand to call 911.
Dead. She hadn’t plugged it in to charge last night.
Tossing the phone, she looked around for some kind of weapon.
Her foot kicked over a pair of her tall boots and she bit back a curse, as pain radiated up from her stubbed toe.
Bending down, she snatched up one of the empty wine bottles she used as boot forms and clutched it like a club.
Her heart leapt in a frantic tattoo as she edged open the door and eased down the hall toward the living room, where someone was moving around.
She had a moment to remember Harrison leaping to protect her when she’d screamed in the cabin kitchen and wished he was here now to do the same, because the bottle in her hands felt insubstantial and pitiful as a weapon.
Holding her breath, she peered around the doorframe to look into the living room. The woman had her back to the hallway and seemed to be doing something by the windows. Not seeing a gun, Ivy stepped into the room and flipped on a light.
The blonde shrieked and whirled, dropping the thing in her hand with a wet thunk.
Ivy lowered her makeshift weapon. “Deanna? What the hell are you doing here?”
Pressing a hand to hear chest, a wide-eyed Deanna gasped, “You asked me to water your plants while you were away. Crap on a cracker, Ivy, you scared me to death. When did you get home?”
“Last night.”
Deanna looked down at her feet to the watering can spilling its contents all over the carpet. “Oh hell.”
“I’ll get towels.”
Together they mopped up the mess.
“I’m gonna guess by the fact that you look like you’ve been hit by a truck, the book is either going really well or really badly.”
Ivy jerked a shoulder. “The draft is turned in.”
“That’s great!”
“Wonderful.” She knew she sounded like she’d just been told she needed a root canal. Without anesthesia.
Hands on hips, Deanna frowned. “Aren’t you happy to be home?”
At the word “home,” Ivy burst into tears.
Because it didn’t feel like home. It had before she went to Eden’s Ridge because she simply hadn’t known the difference.
All these years moving around, she’d chased an idealized picture of what home really meant.
She’d thought she’d built that for herself here, pouring in time and energy into painting walls and picking out furniture and hanging up art.
And she loved her house. But that’s all it was.
A house. Because now she knew what she’d been missing all these years.
And she wouldn’t get that back because home wasn’t the cabin or Eden’s Ridge.
It was him. Or who she’d thought he was.
Deanna pulled her into a hug. “Oh honey, tell me who he is and we’ll plot his demise.”
Ivy swiped at her face. “How do you know it’s a guy?”
“You were with me through my divorce. I know what crying over a man looks like. Come on. I’ll make you coffee.”
They retreated to the kitchen and over two cups of coffee, Ivy spilled the whole thing out.
“I just…I don’t know how I could have gotten things so wrong. I thought we were on the same page. Why would he make specific plans to meet me, to spend another weekend with me, if he was planning to leave all along?”
“Because men are cowards at heart,” Deanna declared. “They’ll do anything to avoid confrontation. And if you do catch them in a lie, they’ll turn it around and blame it all on you, saying you made them do it.”
Ivy wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with that assessment.
But the avoidance of confrontation? Yeah maybe that was a thing here.
Things between them had been intense. Maybe too intense for him, in the end.
There’d been a new vulnerability in him that last night.
She knew she hadn’t imagined that. So maybe this wasn’t about using her and leaving her high and dry.
Maybe this was about him not being able to handle things and running away.
And maybe you’re projecting because that’s what you do.
From back in the bedroom, her phone began to ring. Ivy didn’t realize she’d expected it to be Harrison with some kind of explanation until she saw Marianne’s name on the display and felt herself deflate.
“Hello?”
“Ivy, thank God. I was getting ready to send out the National Guard. I got your manuscript ”
Cringing, Ivy waited. “Yeah?”
“This isn’t what we discussed with Wally.”
Whatever lingering pleasure she’d had over finishing the book wilted. This was it. Her career was done. “No, it’s not. I couldn’t make it work. I’ve been trying for the last eight months. It just wouldn’t gel.”
“This was so worth the wait. It’s good, Ivy. Rough around the edges, but maybe the best thing you’ve ever done. Adding in that romantic thread is going to expand your readership. Where did that even come from? You’ve never done romance before.”
I’m not doing it now.
“It was just an idea I wanted to play with. I don’t know where it’s going yet for the series, but there’s a series there. If you think Wally will go for it.”