Had he lied about golf? Had he hidden somewhere and waited for her to leave, then followed her? Would he be that devious?
Dumb question. Of course he would.
What had she done to deserve this?
She could play this two ways. She could act as though she didn’t care, or she could bluntly tell him to leave her the hell alone. But she knew Dillon. Admitting he was annoying her would only fuel his determination. The best way to possibly get rid of him, the only way, was to pretend she didn’t care either way. Eventually he would get bored and find someone else to torture. She hoped.
Either way she would be stuck with him for the rest of the afternoon. May be longer.
Yahoo. She could hardly wait.
She cast him a sideways glance. He walked beside her, thumbs hooked loosely in the front pockets of his jeans, casual as you please, and for an instant she felt a tiny bit breathless. He wore a pair of faded Levi’s, polished cowboy boots and a white tank top that accentuated the golden tan of his shoulders, the lean definition in his biceps. His hair had that casual, slightly mussed look, as if he’d just rolled out of bed and run his fingers through it. Which is what he used to do ten years ago.
But when a person looked at him, really looked, it was clear there was more to him than just a pretty face. You could see the breeding, the auspicious roots.
He wore his status well. It complemented, but didn’t define him.
“So, you’re a hotshot author now,” he said.
“If you say so.” She tried to keep it light and brief. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and give him a new round of ammunition to fire her way.
“I heard you’re writing a followup to that little book of yours.”
“Did you?” He could condescend all he liked, but that “little” book had made more money than she and the coauthor, Miranda Reed, had ever imagined possible.
Having both endured grueling, nasty divorces, the project had been more therapeutic than financially motivated. They hadn’t even been sure anyone would want to publish it. In fact, they had been fairly certain the manuscript would sit untouched on some apathetic editor’s desk, yellowing at the edges and gathering dust.
Not only did it sell, it became ensnared in a bidding war between several publishing houses. Since its release it had been topping the bestseller lists. It was a pure fluke that it had struck a chord with so many readers. And disturbing to discover the staggering number of women who had endured, or were presently experiencing, painful divorces.
It had solidified Ivy’s belief that happy, successful marriages were a rare anomaly not experienced by the majority of the population. And with very few exceptions, women were better off staying single.
“I would think you’d have run out of material by now,” Dillon said.
Was the hotshot billionaire afraid he would be seeing his checkered past in print again?
Well, well. This was interesting.
“Do I detect a note of concern?” she asked.
“The truth is, I was thinkin’ May be I’ll write a book, too.”
If he was trying to scare her, he would have to do better. “Good luck with that.”
“A tell-all with every intimate detail of our marriage.” He grinned and nodded his head, as if he was really warming to the idea. “Yeah. Or better yet, May be I should send a letter or two to Penthouse Forum.”
“Sex with you was not that exciting,” she said, knowing as well as he did that it was a big fat lie. Near the end, their sex life had been as volatile as their tempers, as if they had been taking out all their frustrations in bed.
“Are you forgetting the time we got creative with that bottle of hot fudge and you let me lick it off your—”
“I remember,” she interjected, fighting the blush that had begun to creep up from her collar. Hot fudge hadn’t been the only food they’d experimented with. She had fond memories of a can of whipped cream and a bottle of maraschino cherries.
“And if memory serves, you had a particularly sensitive spot, right here…” He reached up and brushed the tip of his index finger against the spot just below her ear.
She instinctively batted his hand away, but not before a ripple of erotic sensation whispered across her skin, making her feel warm and shivery at the same time. She shot him a warning look.
His victory triggered a triumphant, smug grin. “Yes, ma’am, it’s still there.”
“Try it again and you’ll lose that finger.” Verbal torment was one thing. Touching was off limits.
“I think I just figured out your problem.”
So had she. He was walking right beside her.
But she had to ask, “Which problem would that be?”
“Sex.”
Sex? Oh, she couldn’t wait to see where he was going with this. “My problem is sex?”
“I’ll bet you haven’t had it in a long time.”
She thought back to Deidre’s comment about Ivy’s less than active sex life. The truth was, she hadn’t been with a man, hadn’t had time for a relationship, much less a one-night stand, in so long she wasn’t sure she remembered how. But as she told Deidre, she didn’t need a man to complete her. And if she was looking for sexual release, she didn’t need a man for that, either.
“And you’re basing this assumption on what exactly?” she asked Dillon.
“Though you try to repress it, you’re a very passionate person. Passionate people need sex regularly or they get cranky. And darlin’, you are about as cranky as they come.”
Did it ever occur to him that he was the one making her cranky?
“It can’t be just any sex, either,” he went on. “It has to be damned good, preferably with someone who knows exactly what it takes to light their fire.”
And she was pretty sure he was offering to do the job. Did he honestly think he could charm his way back into her bed? Could he possibly be that arrogant?
Of course he could.
The real question was, what did she plan to do about it? How would she put him in his place and teach him a lesson he should have learned a long time ago?
She would do the one thing he would never expect. The only thing that would knock him completely off balance.
She stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the street, in front of God and everyone, and turned to face him. Before he could get his bearings, or she had a second of clarity to talk herself out of it, she reached up and curled her fingers into the front of his shirt. She wrapped her other hand around the back of his neck and tugged him down to her level.
He smelled of soap and shampoo and his hair was soft around her fingers. His wide-eyed surprise was the last thing she saw as she planted a kiss right on his damp and slightly parted lips.
Just when Dillon thought he had Ivy pegged, she did something completely off the wall and totally out of character. He’d expected some sort of reaction from her. One of those cool, deadly stares or a snippy remark. The last thing he’d expected was a kiss.
And he sure as hell hadn’t expected to enjoy it.
One brush of her full, soft lips, one taste of her sweet mouth, and the memory of the fighting, the bitter, angry words they had flung at each other like daggers, misted like the ocean spray, then evaporated in the hot, dry Mexican air.
It came on swift and sudden, like a sniper attack, and before his brain had a chance to catch up with his body to process the acute physical response, it was over.
In a flash he was back on the noisy, crowded street. Ivy stood with her hands propped on her hips, looking up at him. Her eyes cold. In that instant he understood exactly what she was doing and what she meant to accomplish. And for reasons he didn’t understand—or didn’t want to admit—he felt cheated.
No one had looked at him with the same genuine and honest admiration as Ivy had. As long as he could remember, his family name had afforded him certain privileges. With little more than a snap of his fingers he could have had any woman he desired.
Ivy had been
the only one he’d ever needed.
She saw through him, to the real man inside. She understood him in a way no one else had. Or May be she had been the only one who bothered to try.
She studied him for a good thirty seconds, looking almost bored, then shrugged. “Nothing.”
Ouch. She’d scored one on him, no doubt, and it had been a direct hit.
“I guess you just don’t do it for me anymore,” she said apologetically. “But I appreciate the offer.”
She spun away, skirt swishing around her legs. Only then did it register; the slight tremble in her voice, her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat and the smudge of color riding the arch of her cheeks.
A man didn’t spend a year of marriage without learning a woman’s signals. And he could read hers loud and clear. He wasn’t the only one turned on by that kiss. She wanted him, too.
This called for a slight change of plans. There was only one thing that could possibly be more fun than annoying Ivy, and that would be getting back into her panties. That would be the ultimate payback.
He was smiling as he set off after her. It looked as if they would be taking this competition to an all new level.
Six
Divorce recovery typically takes two full years. Take it day by day. Trust me, the time will soon come when you’ll look back and wonder what you ever saw in him.
—excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)
Kiss your ex-husband. Brilliant idea.
As fast as her wobbly legs would carry her, Ivy headed blindly in what she hoped was the general direction of the villa, praying that Dillon didn’t follow her.
Weathered stucco buildings, brightly colored canopies and an ocean of moving bodies blurred together like smudged oil paint on a three-dimensional canvas. Voices and sounds echoed through her ears and jumbled around inside her head, disorienting her. Her hands were trembling and her heart beat hard and fast in her chest.
One stupid kiss and she was a walking disaster area.
What had she been thinking?
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to be proving how over him she was. She wasn’t supposed to enjoy kissing him.
She wasn’t supposed to feel anything.
And if she had to feel something, why couldn’t it have been hate? Disgust would have been a good one, too. Or good old-fashioned anger.
And what if by some remote chance someone recognized them? Someone who had read her book? What if word got out that she was messing around with her ex? What would people think of her? How could her readers, not to mention her patients, trust her if she couldn’t even follow her own edict?
This was bad.
Really, really bad.
Although she had to admit that seeing the stunned look on his face, knowing that for once she had flustered him, had almost been worth it. In a sadistic sort of way. Like cutting off her nose to spite her face.
“You sure move fast when you have something to run from,” Dillon said from behind her, and Ivy cursed under her breath.
Oh, crud.
She needed a minute to pull herself together. She couldn’t let him see her thrown so far off-kilter.
This was just a fluke. She’d been too immersed in her career, too swamped promoting her first book and writing the second to even think about sex, so, yeah, she’d overreacted a little.
Okay, she’d overreacted a lot. But she would have gotten the same result from kissing any number of men.
She tried to conjure up a name, an appealing, eligible man in her life. May be one in the office building where she worked, or at the club where she used the pool. Or even at the grocery store. There had to be someone.
Yet not a single one came to mind.
Oh, hell, who was she kidding? She could continue to blame her busy schedule, but deep down she knew that was bunk. The reason she hadn’t slept with anyone in…well, longer than she wanted to admit, was because she hadn’t met anyone she wanted to sleep with. Up until today.
Oh, no. She did not just think that. She didn’t want to sleep with Dillon. Not now, not ever.
“And what is it exactly that I’m running from?” she asked. She even managed to keep her voice steady and vaguely disinterested.
The deep baritone of laughter that followed rubbed across every one of her nerve endings until they felt raw and exposed.
He knew. He knew exactly what that kiss had done to her, and he would spend the rest of the week rubbing it in her face.
Would this nightmare never end?
She was about to turn, to face Dillon, still unsure of exactly what she wanted to do or say—and resigned to the fact that whatever it was it would probably only make things worse—when she spotted Deidre and Blake walking down the opposite side of the street like two angels of mercy.
“Deidre!” she called, waving frantically to get her attention. The instant Deidre looked her way Ivy knew something was wrong. Her skin looked pale, and the way she leaned into Blake gave the distinct impression he was holding her steady.
Forgetting Dillon and every other horrible thing that transpired that morning, she rushed across the street to her cousin. As she drew closer she noticed the bandage on Deidre’s forehead.
Her grotesquely swelled forehead.
Ivy’s horror and surprise must have shown, because the first thing out of Deidre’s mouth was, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Let me see.” Without waiting for permission, she lifted Deidre’s bangs to get a better look. The area over her left eye looked swollen and tender, and hints of purple peeked out from under the edge of the bandage. “Oh, my God, what happened to you?”
“An alleged golfing mishap,” Blake said bitterly.
Deidre ducked away from Ivy and shot him a look.
“It was an accident. And the doctor at the clinic said the swelling should be down in time for the wedding.”
“You had to see a doctor?”
Deidre nodded. “I needed three stitches.”
Why did it have to happen this week? It was just one more thing to put a damper on the most important day of Deidre’s life.
“Who did this to you?” Dillon asked, and Ivy jolted at the sound of his voice. She hadn’t even realized he’d followed her.
“Dale’s girlfriend,” Blake all but spat out. “She swung her club and lost her grip. It went flying and pegged Deidre in the head.”
“But it was an accident,” Deidre said with a forced cheeriness that wasn’t fooling anyone. “Believe me, her aim is not that good. She can barely hit a ball much less a person standing fifteen feet behind her.”
Dillon looked from Deidre to Blake. “Which one is Dale’s girlfriend? Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee?”
Blake shrugged. “Who knows. I can’t tell them apart. When it happened, I was more concerned with stopping the bleeding than figuring out who was at fault.”
The only thing concerning Ivy was Deidre’s pasty-white pallor and the dark circles under her eyes. The way she clung to Blake’s arm, as though without him there she might topple over.
Dillon’s eyes mirrored Ivy’s concern. “May be you should go back to the villa and lay down for a while.”
“No! I refuse to spend the week of my wedding in bed feeling sorry for myself.” Deidre sounded awfully close to tears, and Ivy had the distinct feeling there was more to this than she was admitting. “I don’t want to talk about my head anymore.”
Blake looked curiously between Ivy and Dillon. “So, what are you guys up to?”
What he really meant was, what were they doing together.
“We were shopping and we bumped into each other,” Ivy said, shooting Dillon a look that said she knew damn well their meeting had been no accident. And if he said one word about what had happened, he would die a very slow, agonizing death.
He just smiled. “That’s right, and I was just about to invite Ivy to lunch.”
“Perfect!” Deidre gushed, perkin
g up instantly. “We were looking for somewhere to eat.” She wove an arm through Ivy’s and clamped down. Hard. “We can all eat together.”
The death grip on Ivy’s arm said very clearly that this was not a matter of choice. Ivy was going, even if Deidre had to drag her there.
Seeing there was no way to get out of this without making a scene, and making matters worse in the process, Ivy plastered a smile on her face and said, “Great. Let’s eat.”
The second they were shown to a table inside the bustling, noisy café, Deidre said something about needing to freshen up, then dragged Ivy with her to the ladies’ room. Her grip on Ivy’s arm was so tight she was cutting off the circulation. When they were safely inside with the door shut Deidre finally let go.
Ivy shook the blood back into her tingling fingers. “All right, what’s going on?”
“I hate them,” Deidre spat with a ferocity that was completely unlike her. Angry tears pooled in her eyes.
“I hate the Tweedles and I hate Blake’s brothers.”
Deidre didn’t hate anybody. She was too sweet. But apparently even she had limits.
“What happened?”
“After I got hit, Blake went to go get the rental car. While he was gone, the four of them were—” Her voice broke and tears dribbled down her cheeks.
Ivy rubbed her shoulder. “They were what? What did they do?”
Deidre sniffled loudly and wiped the tears away with the heels of her palms. “They were…making fun of me. They were whispering and laughing.”
Was it possible that they could be that rude? That cruel? “Could you hear what they were saying? I mean, May be you misunderstood. May be they weren’t talking about you.” As she said the words she suspected they weren’t true.
“They were looking right at me, and I heard Dale say it was my own fault for standing too close while she putted.”
No, this was Ivy’s fault. She had been afraid that antagonizing the Tweedles at dinner last night would only make things worse. That they might retaliate. She never should have lowered herself to their level.
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