By Hook or By Crook

by Linda Morris

  She lingered over the drink, and Joe found himself fascinated with the sheen of her lips on the rim. She never wore heavy makeup, but he could see a faint trace of pink lip gloss on the edge. How would it taste if he kissed her? He had to shift in his seat when his body responded. Whatever the flavor, it couldn’t be as sweet as Ivy’s natural taste.

  “Uh, Pock, why don’t you and I do the dishes?” Daisy said with a smirk, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “Ivy worked so hard to make dinner. You take it easy, sweetie.”

  Pock stood, jostling the table as he rose. As they disappeared into the kitchen, Pock complained, “Why do I have to do dishes? Joe didn’t cook anything either.” Daisy’s answer was lost as they moved out of earshot.

  That left Ivy and Joe sitting together. “I’ll help clear the table,” she said, seeming shy. Joe helped her, keeping back only their wine glasses, which he refilled.

  “I’ll light a fire in the living room if you want,” he offered.

  “That would be nice.”

  Did she ever think about the last time they’d been in front of a fireplace together, when they’d come together in a sleep-fogged moment as electrifying as it was brief? The difficulty she had meeting his eyes, and her sudden shyness, suggested she did.

  He filled the fireplace with logs and kindling and then lit a twist of old newspaper he found at the bottom of the kindling box. He wedged it into the stack and nursed the fire for a few minutes, poking and blowing on it until the blaze caught. He replaced the poker and turned to find Ivy watching him. She sat in the middle of the sofa, her body arranged in a way that practically begged him to move in close.

  He claimed the spot next to her, letting his thigh brush against hers. She tensed, but didn’t move away, which he took as a promising sign. He should be tired—it had been one hell of a few days. With a good meal in his stomach, he should be ready to doze. Instead, sitting next to Ivy, taking in the undercurrents that swirled between them, made him feel like a live wire.

  Ivy reached up and rubbed her neck, wincing at the movement.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My neck.” She stretched it, graceful as a swan, a look of pain flashing across her face. “It always tightens up when I’m stressed. I didn’t notice it much when everything was going on, but now it’s catching up to me,” she confessed.

  “Turn around,” he said, shifting to face her. “I’ll rub it.”

  She demurred for a moment, but he didn’t have to work very hard to talk her into it. Maybe she wanted his hands on her as much as he did. The thought made his pulse thump.

  “Maybe you’d better take your shirt off,” he said, hopefully, but Ivy answered with a slight snort.

  “Forget it.”

  “I can try, can’t I?” he said with a smile. “Here, lay down.” He slid off the couch onto his knees as she complied.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, feeling the well-toned muscle beneath the cotton of her shirt. He squeezed, gripping the tops of her shoulders, moving down to the tops of her arms, and back up to the base of her neck. He switched to making tiny circles with the tips of his fingers, pressing hard along the column of her spine. Ivy lay in perfect silence, the only sign of life from her an occasional huffing breath or deep inhalation.

  “Is this okay?”

  In a way, giving a woman a backrub had a lot in common with sex. You tried one thing and paid attention to the signals she gave you in response. If the signals weren’t good, you switched to something else until you found something that made her moan. So far, Ivy was giving him zero read-out on this.

  “Mmm,” she said finally, on a sigh.

  Joe grinned. The inarticulate mutter seemed like a good sign.

  “Would you like me to go down?” he teased.

  “Yes, definitely.” Her voice had taken on a husky, slumberous quality that made him hard instantly.

  Unbelievably, Ivy didn’t respond to his innuendo. He’d never seen her defenses so low. If he were unscrupulous where women were concerned...wait a minute. He was unscrupulous where women were concerned.

  He moved his hands to the small of her back. He pulled her shirt up to expose a band of bare skin. He rubbed it, letting the tips of his fingers slide under the waistband of her jeans, feeling the warm rise of her bottom. She stiffened slightly, but said nothing.

  Not wanting to push her too fast, he withdrew his hand and moved back up her back with both hands, moving to her ribs, working his way up, until they hovered dangerously close to the sides of her breasts. Her breasts were a nice size. Not the bodacious kind he normally favored, but curvy and feminine, all the same. Maybe he was developing an appreciation for subtlety in his thirties.

  “What are you laughing at?” Ivy asked.

  “Nothing.” His fingers caught on her bra strap, so he slipped his hands beneath the back of her shirt to unfasten it.

  “What are you doing?” She pushed up from the sofa, alarmed, but he pushed her back down gently.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “Don’t be so jumpy.” He moved his hands down her sides, splaying his fingers across her ribs and savoring the softness of her skin.

  “It’s hard not to be jumpy around you when you keep getting under my clothes somehow,” she said with asperity.

  “Don’t worry. Nothing on the agenda tonight except a backrub,” he assured her.

  He said it mostly to allay her fears—he usually said that kind of thing to a woman just before he made his move—but he realized that he meant it. He needed to move slowly with a woman like Ivy. He needed to test the waters, let her get accustomed to what was between them. Tonight, he wanted to break down a few more barriers between them.

  Ivy wasn’t the kind of girl he normally picked up in a bar. That kind of woman wanted uncomplicated sex, like he did. Ivy wanted...something else. Something more, likely something he couldn’t give. Maybe he should leave her alone, but damn it, they were both adults. If she decided she wanted to spread her wings a bit and have a fling with him, who was he to tell her no? If that was a weak rationalization, so be it. He wanted Ivy Smithson plenty enough to rationalize.

  “Oh, uh, sorry, I didn’t realize.” From the doorway, Pock’s voice carried more than a trace of embarrassment.

  “Come on, Pock. Let’s leave them alone,” Daisy urged, but the damage had been done.

  Ivy sat bolt upright, no longer slumberous, looking alert and chastened. She turned to face him, tugging her twisted shirt back into place. Something weird seemed to be going on with her chest. He grinned when he realized that her unfastened bra drooped, revealed by her clinging top. Ivy shifted, clearly realizing something was wrong, but unwilling to draw more attention to her disarray by fastening it.

  “Let me help you out,” he offered. Before she could react, he reached around in a loose embrace, lifting her shirt in the back and fastening her bra. He carefully smoothed the shirt back into place. “There you go. All better.”

  The look Ivy shot him could have melted iron, but her rumpled appearance and rosy cheeks tempered her fury. She was adorable, and if he’d had any doubt, he knew right then he would make her his before they left this house. Here in the land of corner-store slots, where you could lay a wager anywhere, anytime, on anything, he would bet on it.

  Chapter 12

  The powerful hands of the masseuse kneaded Phil Cantor’s flabby shoulders with a grip that would have made a lesser man cry. Funny, but ever since he’d spent a few hours unconscious by the side of the road he’d been damn tense. Daily massage sessions barely helped. He needed to catch the bastards who’d done this to him, and Pock too.

  Cantor winced as the masseuse’s thick fingers dug hard into his trapezius muscle.

  Some of the biggest figures in the Vegas underworld had lost money on that fight. Not more than they could afford, God knew, but that hardly mattered. Guys like Mike Malley and Harry Winsted hated losing, on principle, especially when they’d been personally guaranteed a win by Cant
or. Now they were on his ass to make sure they got their money back, or that Pock got what he had coming to him.

  Preferably both.

  “You’re so tense,” the masseuse commented.

  “Yeah, so fix it,” he grumbled. “That’s what you’re getting paid for.” From his pants pocket behind the screen in the corner, his cell phone rang. He rose to answer it, struggling to keep the tiny white towel around his waist.

  “I’m sorry, but I asked you to silence your cell phone before the session began,” the masseuse said.

  “You’re still getting paid. What the hell do you care?” Cantor glared at him. The prissy little queen. He made a mental note to ask for a female masseuse next time. He didn’t like a guy touching him intimately. “Yeah, Cantor here.”

  What he heard nearly made him drop his towel. He’d spread the word to everybody he knew to be on the lookout for this bunch. Now somebody thought they’d seen them in a grocery store north of the lake. They’d gotten away, but the spotter got a description of the rental SUV they were driving.

  “There’s a ten-thousand-dollar reward for anybody who brings them to me alive. Alive, you hear me? I want to take care of them myself.” He ended the call and glanced at the masseuse, who backed away, wide-eyed. He stammered until Cantor finally took pity on him.

  “Aw, get lost. I don’t need a massage anymore anyway. I’m feeling a lot more relaxed.”

  The man took the hundred-dollar bill Cantor gave him and beat a hasty retreat. Cantor didn’t mind. He hadn’t been kidding. Getting a bead on Pock and his friends did wonders for his stress level.

  ****

  After two days in the chalet, Ivy didn’t know what to do. Her cautious attempts to talk to Daisy about her marriage went nowhere, with Daisy merely promising to think about it. Ivy recognized stonewalling when she saw it but didn’t know how to break through. She consoled herself that every day that passed without a wedding taking place meant a victory, but she had no idea how long she’d be able to stall them.

  Still, when Daisy suggested approaching Joe for his permission to go on an outing, Ivy hesitated.

  “Joe won’t like it. He thought that guy was following us at the supermarket in town.”

  “Who cares? It’s totally safe. We put hours between us and Zephyr Cove! We’ve been locked up in this fortress for days and haven’t seen a sign of those two. Obviously we lost them.”

  Ivy allowed herself to be convinced, but when they approached Joe, he had his doubts. “If you’re so desperate to get out of here, maybe we should go back to Chicago.”

  “No!” Both girls chimed in at once. Joe’s eyes went from one to the other.

  “You can’t hide from your father forever, you know.” The words could have been aimed at either one of them, but Ivy knew he meant them mostly for her.

  “We’re not hiding from him,” Daisy said. “We need a little time to...get ready to face him.”

  And I need a little more time to talk Daisy out of this misbegotten marriage.

  “In the meantime, we’re going crazy cooped up in this place. Ivy’s been wearing the same clothes for days now. They’re going to stick to her.”

  “I’ve been washing them at night!” Ivy protested.

  Daisy ignored her. “Don’t you think Cantor and Ramirez have given up by now? We’ve lost them,” she said. “We can go into Stateline. It’s got some restaurants and shops. We can get something to eat, hang out a little bit, and get Ivy some decent clothes. And you too,” she amended, looking askance at Joe’s rumpled gear.

  “I don’t care much about my clothes, you may have noticed.”

  Ivy had noticed, but it didn’t seem to matter. Even in a beat-up flannel shirt and old jeans he could make her mouth water.

  “Still, Ivy does. And she’s used to the best of everything, you know. She can’t be happy wearing a souvenir T-shirt and the same jeans every day.”

  “Daisy! I can make do. I’m not some...spoiled princess, you know,” she said, eyes darting to Joe to gauge his reaction. If he dared argue with that, she’d jump all over him.

  His brows rose, but he said nothing. Finally, he sighed. “I suppose a short trip to town won’t do any harm.” At Daisy’s exclamation of delight, he warned her, “But we do it only if Pock and I go with you. I could use a change of clothes myself. Any sign of trouble, we’re out of there.”

  ****

  Ivy reluctantly donned her sweater one last time for their excursion, vowing to give it to a thrift shop as soon as she got back to Chicago. As they approached Stateline, Ivy leaned forward, spotting a bustling strip mall off the main road. At her request, Joe pulled in and let the women out.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Ivy asked when Joe didn’t get out, and then hoped Joe hadn’t heard the plaintive note. She had sounded like a disappointed teenager.

  “I’ll be there,” he said, nodding at a coffee shop on the other side of the parking lot. “I can keep an eye out for trouble and not be subjected to shopping.”

  “Me, too,” Pock agreed with fervor.

  She soon forgot Joe and Pock as Daisy steered her into a small boutique.

  As Ivy browsed the racks, selecting practical day-to-day clothes, the friendly Asian boutique owner approached her with a slip of colorful fabric in her hands. “You like this one? It would look very nice with your skin tone. You have the figure to carry it off.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not looking for a dress. I need some things for everyday.”

  “She’ll try it on,” Daisy said, reaching past Ivy to take the hanger from the older woman.

  “Daisy! I said no.”

  “So what? It never hurts to try it on. Besides, it’s gorgeous.” She held the dress up and Ivy’s breath caught. The geranium-colored fabric left one shoulder bare, with a ruffle cascading across the front in a silky torrent. A fabric rosette perched atop the angled shoulder strap. What would she look like in such a dress? Tempted, she let the luscious fabric slide through her fingers.

  Daisy laughed. “Quit trying to fight it. Come on, girl! Just try it on.” She steered Ivy toward the dressing room with the dress and a pile of other blouses, sweaters, and pants they’d amassed. She found a vacant room at the end of the corridor.

  She let the dress hang on a hook in the corner, ignoring it as she tried on everything else. Her choices reflected her usual taste—earth tones, natural fabrics, and modest cuts. Except for a couple of items that didn’t fit quite right, she would purchase everything. She knew what she wanted and seldom needed to try anything on to know if it was for her.

  The colorful dress hung there in the corner, taunting her.

  Try me, you’ll like me, it seemed to whisper.

  She didn’t need to try it on. It wasn’t her style. She would explain that to Daisy and—

  “You can’t avoid it forever. Try it on already!” Daisy bellowed.

  Daisy knew her well.

  Ivy stripped down and donned the dress, letting the wispy fabric settle around her hips like a cloud. For a moment, she hardly breathed. The boutique owner knew her job. The cut and color flattered her immensely, she had to admit. She didn’t quite recognize the woman looking back at her, and the feeling intrigued her even as it unsettled her.

  The dress made the most of her figure, highlighting curves where she barely had them, and setting off her slenderness. It even flattered the rear end that she’d always thought a bit big for her frame. For the first time ever, she looked...sexy. Oh, people had always told her she was pretty. And true, she had her strong points: clear skin, fine bone structure, a slender figure, and silky blonde hair. But those traits had always added up to a package that was...pretty. Not sensual. Not earthly and womanly, like her sister. Not sexy. But now...

  She opened the door and did a little pirouette, twirling the skirt up to her mid-thigh. Glee percolated inside her at the astounded look on Daisy’s face. She felt like a different woman, a reinvented one. Would Joe see her that way too? She couldn’t resist the opportunity
to find out.

  She had to have the dress.

  She selected a pair of gray pumps and a pair of flats to replace the ones ruined by their trek through the snow. She also picked up a few pairs of silky underwear and new bras, including a strapless one for the geranium dress.

  Daisy’s eyes widened when she saw Ivy had bypassed her usual cotton briefs in favor of an assortment of sexy colorful boy shorts, but she said nothing. Good thing, too, because Ivy wouldn’t have admitted the truth. The realization that Joe might see them had weighed heavily on her choice of underwear.

  After she’d paid for her purchases, the smiling boutique owner snipped the tags off a slim pair of cuffed ankle pants and a cream fine-knit sweater. Ivy donned them in the fitting room, eager to get out of her jeans and sweater. When she emerged, Daisy looked nonplussed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You look like, well, you again.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh, don’t make that pissed-off prissy face. I didn’t mean anything by it.” On the heels of her denial, Daisy propped one hand on her hip and scanned Ivy’s frame. “You’re always trying to hide behind such boring clothes. I thought that dress meant you were going to become a little more adventurous. Why didn’t you put it on?”

  “We’re going shopping. Don’t you think that outfit’s a little impractical for that?”

  “We’re going out later,” Daisy reminded her. “Joe said we’d get some dinner and hang out before we went back to the chalet. It’s the perfect opportunity to try your new look.”

  Ivy loved the way the dress fit her, and she couldn’t deny that a part of her really wanted Joe to see how she looked in it. “Are you sure I won’t look ridiculous?” she temporized.

  “Ivy! Just do it! No guy has ever thought a hot woman was ridiculous. The sight of bare skin short-circuits their brains or something. They lose the ability to think critically.”

  As Ivy disappeared into the dressing room again, she wondered when her little sister had figured out so many things when she never had.