He kissed her neck, and she hummed softly, but it was a dreamy hum, one that assured him she was still asleep. Still, it couldn’t hurt to check.
“Ivy,” he whispered. “You awake?”
She didn’t stir.
He knew this was right—that she was right. So why deny it any longer.
“Maybe this is too soon, but I’m a man of certainty, and I’m certain that I’m not falling for you, darlin’. I’m not falling because I already fell.” He kissed the softball-shaped bruise on her shoulder. “I love you, Ivy.”
He wasn’t ready to say it to her face, not when a tiny part of him kept whispering that eventually his job would spook her and this would be over. It was better like this, not knowing what she’d say in return. Because if the other shoe dropped, he wanted to be prepared. He could handle her walking away if he never knew that she loved him, too. But if he knew and she still left, that might downright ruin him.
Maybe he risked his life doing what he did for a living, but he realized now that the one thing scarier than walking into a burning building was risking his heart.
Chapter Nine
Ivy closed the store at four, since business had been slow. Plus, happy hour at Midtown started at five on Thursdays, and most folks went early to claim their preferred seats, especially those who liked to sit closest to the free appetizers.
“Ow!” Casey said when Ivy accidentally poked her with her hemming pin.
“Sorry,” Ivy said with her lips pressed tight around the blunt ends of the remaining pins, so it sounded more like Srry.
“I get that you’re nervous and all about putting this design on display, but if you poke your very human mannequin one more time, she’s quitting. She didn’t sign up for acupuncture, and she has to get her butt behind the bar soon.”
Ivy spit the pins into her palm and sighed.
“Sorry. This is—it’s more than the design. It’s symbolic, you know? If I can look at the dress in the store—on an actual mannequin who doesn’t complain—it’ll mean I’m okay. It’ll mean that I can remember the good things about Charlie, about growing up here, and be happy instead of—” She trailed off before finishing. Because she would be a horrible person if she said what came next.
“I know,” Casey said with more understanding in her voice. She held out a hand, and Ivy grabbed it, letting her friend give her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay to be angry.”
Leave it to her best friend to know exactly what Ivy was thinking.
“He should have known better,” Ivy said softly, the tears pooling in her eyes. “They train to know when the building is safe to enter and when they need to get out. He should have gotten out. He should have thought about his wife and his baby and his family and…”
Ivy hiccupped and sobbed. She’d never said any of this aloud, not to her parents or Charlie’s wife. She’d grieved as best she could, but she’d never admitted the ugly part of it, the irrational blame she placed on the brother she’d lost.
“I’m the worst,” she said. “You don’t need to tell me because I already know.”
Casey sat down carefully in Ivy’s office chair and patted the top of the desk, for her friend to sit. Ivy nodded and complied.
“Hey,” Casey said, taking both of Ivy’s hands now. “You know this is normal, right? The anger part? I know you’ve accepted that Charlie’s gone, but I think you skipped right over this part. I should have stayed longer in Boston after the funeral. You kept it together for your parents and Allison, but you didn’t get to fall apart with your best friend like you should have.”
Ivy choked out a tearful laugh. “You mean like now?” She grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk and blew her nose. Then she grabbed two more to try to dry her tearstained face. “You had a business to run. I never expected you to stay. I never expected me to stay as long as I did, but I couldn’t leave until I knew they were all okay…” She paused for a long moment. “Or until I could come back here, knowing home would never be the same.” She blew out a long breath. “So, I’m really not the worst?”
Casey smiled sadly and shook her head. “Do you really blame your brother for doing a job not many are cut out to do?”
Ivy shook her head.
“See?” Casey said. “Not the worst. This is actually a really good step, Ives. I think you’re finally starting to move past the worst of it.”
Ivy worried her bottom lip between her teeth, and Casey’s brows furrowed.
Once she said what she was about to say out loud, it would be real. Like really real. And real with Carter Bowen still scared her half to death.
“There’s something else you’re not telling me.” Casey narrowed her eyes. “This is about more than Charlie, isn’t it? Spill,” she added. “You have ten more minutes before I turn into a pumpkin and this badass dress changes back to jeans and a T-shirt.”
Ivy laughed. Casey always could make her feel better about any situation. Venting her anger was cathartic, as far as taking a productive step past her grief, but it wasn’t the only thing she’d been thinking about.
“Did I mention that Carter said he loved me?” she asked softly.
“What?” Casey threw her arms in the air. Then she yelped as a bodice pin scraped along her skin. “Ow!”
“Sorry!” Ivy cried, fumbling to fix the pin.
“Screw the apologies!” Casey said with a grin. “Tell. Me. Everything.”
Her pulse quickened at having said what he’d said out loud. She’d sat on the information all week, not sure what to do with it. Hearing those words from him had been everything—shooting stars, fireworks, and a lifetime supply of fried pickles. She’d wound up exactly where she never wanted to be, except for one minor detail…Ivy loved Carter, too. And the realization solidified how much she had to lose if anything ever happened to him.
Ivy cleared her throat. “I spent the night at the inn with him after the game last week,” she started.
“Bow-chica-bow-bow,” Casey sang.
She rolled her eyes even though she was grateful for a moment of levity. “Yes. I’m a woman in my mid-twenties who has sex.”
Casey waggled her brows. “Yes, but unless you stopped telling your best friend everything, you’re a woman in her mid-twenties who up until meeting Lieutenant Dreamboat had not had sex in quite some time and who was taking things slowly with said Dreamboat.”
“Nine months,” Ivy admitted. “But who’s counting? Anyway. If you want your best friend to tell you everything, you’re going to need to stop interrupting.” She paused, brows raised, and waited. Casey made a motion of zipping her lips, so Ivy went on.
“It was the next morning,” she continued. “I was sort of asleep, sort of not. So I’m ninety-nine percent sure I didn’t dream it. But he said something along the lines of knowing it was probably too early to say it but that he was a man of certainty and that he was certain he loved me.”
Casey stared at her, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
“You can talk now,” Ivy said.
“Phew! Okay, first things first. I think it’s reasonable to fall in love with someone in a few weeks. Plus, we’re talking you, and you’re pretty damn lovable.”
“Thank you very much,” Ivy said with a grin.
“But the part of the story that’s missing is what you said back to him.”
Ivy winced.
Casey’s eyes narrowed. “Oh my God, Ivy Serrano. Did you pretend you were still sleeping?”
If it was possible for her wince to get bigger, Ivy’s did.
“What if I dreamed it?” she asked.
Casey sighed. “You didn’t dream it.”
“Well, what if he only told me because he thought I was sleeping and didn’t really want to tell me for real for real.”
Casey shook her head. “I don’t even know what you just said so why don’t you tell me this—do you love him?”
Ivy sucked in a steadying breath.
“Maybe?”
“Serrano
…”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been in love before. So how would I know?”
“Ivy,” Casey said this time, her patience definitely growing thin.
“What if you’re wrong and I’m not past the worst of what happened to Charlie? What if I have fallen for him and he—?” She couldn’t say it. It was one thing for Casey to tell her she was moving past Charlie’s death. It was a whole other to be brave enough to risk her heart in an entirely new and terrifying way.
Casey crossed her arms. “You can be scared, Ives. But you have to be able to answer the question. So riddle me this, Batgirl. When you think of your life without him, how do you feel?”
Ivy’s eyes burned with the threat of fresh tears.
Casey laughed. “Oh, honey. It’s worse than I thought. You fell hard, didn’t you?”
Ivy nodded as the truth took hold. “I love him, Case. I love Carter Bowen.”
“Carter Bowen—who is a firefighter.” Casey placed a hand on Ivy’s leg and gave her a soft squeeze. “Can you handle that?”
Ivy swallowed and placed her hand over her friend’s. “I worked it out in my head. We’re not a big city like Boston. My dad made it to retirement here without any major injuries. Meadow Valley is safe, which means Carter is safe, even if he’s a firefighter.”
“And you’ll support him if he has to do something you don’t deem safe?”
Ivy nodded. She could do this if she held on to her logic—no matter how convoluted—that she couldn’t lose Carter like she lost Charlie. Not here.
“I love him,” she said again.
“Then you better finish putting this dress together and tell him,” Casey said.
“I haven’t even seen him all week. I think he’s been avoiding me. I went looking for him at Pearl’s after his first shift since that night, and she said he’d decided to stay at the station for the week—iron some things out with his unit.” It could have been true. He could be working on the situation with Shane. Or he could be taking extra shifts to keep from running into her.
Casey raised a brow. “Honey, the man’s in love with you and has no idea if you feel the same way. Even the bravest of the brave get a little gun-shy when it comes to matters of the heart. Luckily, you can fix that.”
Ivy grinned. “Okay.” Then she grabbed her phone and hammered out a quick text to Carter.
Meet me at Midtown tonight?
The three dots appeared immediately, and she held her breath.
Sure. Off at six.
Great. Can’t wait to see you.
She waited several seconds, but there was no response after that. It didn’t matter. He was coming, and she was going to tell him what she should have said that morning.
Ivy shrugged. “Looks like I’m spilling my heart out at six o’clock. Wish me luck.”
Casey waved her off. “You got this, Ives. Home run. Or is it a slam dunk?”
Ivy snorted. “Let’s go with basketball for this one.”
She finished the final pinning and stitching in record time, fueled by the adrenaline of what she’d been afraid to admit to herself all week. When she was done, she and Casey headed to the tavern to celebrate with a drink and whatever was left of the appetizers while Ivy waited for Carter.
She tried not to look nervous when the clock hit 6:30 p.m. and he wasn’t there, nor had she heard from him. At 6:45, she started to worry. And at 7:00 she was near to panicking. Not that she thought anything had happened to him. She’d have heard sirens if there had been any sort of emergency. But the kind of panic that said even without telling him how she felt, she’d somehow spooked him. Or maybe he had realized she’d heard what he said and was furious she hadn’t reciprocated.
“Hey,” Casey said from the other side of the bar. “You can call him, you know.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, popping a fried pickle into her mouth. Because a stressed-out girl in love needed some comfort food. “Or I could eat my weight in pickles. I think I’m going with option number two.” Because wouldn’t that be just her luck—to realize she was in love with the guy exactly when he realized he’d made a huge mistake saying he loved her?
Casey snagged the basket of fried goodness before Ivy could grab another bite.
“Hey!” Ivy said, trying to swipe her prized possession back. But Casey held it over her head. The only way Ivy was getting it back was if she climbed onto the bar and stole it back.
She shrugged. She wasn’t above such a move.
Ivy was midclimb when Casey whisper-shouted, “He’s here!”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “I want my damn pickles!”
“Ivy?” she heard from behind her. “What are you doing?”
She winced but not before grabbing her food back. Then she slid not-so-gracefully back onto her stool.
She spun to see Carter still in uniform, brows furrowed.
“Just taking back what was stolen from me.” She held up her spoils. “Pickle?”
He shook his head, his jaw tight as his confusion morphed to something graver. She forgot her panic and grabbed his hand. “Hey, are you okay? I thought I’d see you at six and was starting to worry.”
He climbed onto the stool next to hers.
“Here,” Casey said, sliding a mug of beer his way. “No offense, but you look like you need this.”
He shook his head. “None taken.” And he took a sip.
“I spent the last hour in the chief’s office, trying to figure out how to fix things,” he said.
Ivy forgot about her fried pickles. “What’s broken?”
Carter blew out a breath. “Morale? My team’s faith in me? It turns out there have been several complaints turned in about me this week, all pertaining to me not knowing how the station runs and questioning the chief hiring someone based purely on nepotism.”
“Nepo-what?” Casey asked. When Ivy opened her mouth to answer, she held up her hand. “I know what the word means. I just don’t get how it relates, unless Lieutenant Dreamboat is the captain’s or chief’s long-lost son.”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “We’re calling him Lieutenant Dreamboat to his face now?”
Casey popped a piece of pickle into her mouth. “We are now!”
Ivy turned back to Carter. “Okay, so someone found out about you being Pearl’s nephew. I really don’t get how that’s nepotism. Pearl isn’t a high-ranking firefighter or anything like that. She put in a good word, and you got the job.”
Carter shook his head.
“Turns out I’m not the only one keeping a low profile as far as my Meadow Valley connections. Aunt Pearl is dating the chief.”
If Ivy had been sipping her beer, this would have been her first ever spit take, which wasn’t the kind of thing a girl wanted to do before she and her significant other officially declared those three little words to each other. Win him over and then start embarrassing yourself while eating and drinking.
“I didn’t know Pearl dated. Period,” Ivy said.
“Go Pearl,” Casey said. “Not only dating but a younger man, too. I want to be her when I grow up.”
Carter sighed. “She took it so hard when my uncle passed away. I don’t think any of us ever thought of her being with anyone else. Not that she doesn’t deserve to be happy. It was just sort of a shock. And of all people…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Ivy said. “Put a pin in the whole nepotism thing for a second. Pearl’s husband passed away a decade ago.”
Carter nodded.
“Does that mean you were here for the funeral? I mean—I’m retroactively sorry for your loss. But were you here?”
He nodded again, and the set of his jaw loosened as realization set in. “He was my mother’s favorite uncle. My brothers and I liked him, too. We drove out with my mom and my grandma for the funeral.”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “I was at that funeral. I mean, the whole town was, because that’s small town life for ya, but we were both there.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, the first hi
nt of a smile since he walked through the door. Something about it made Ivy’s breath catch in her throat.
“You didn’t wear black,” he said matter-of-factly, and she shook her head. “You had on a blue dress with a sunflower print. And I thought, What is up with this girl who doesn’t know anything about funeral etiquette?”
She laughed, and her cheeks filled with heat.
“It was the first dress I ever made,” she said. And the one that inspired her latest design, the one she hoped to actually finish and display in her shop window. “My mom loved planting flowers, and she taught Charlie and me. Our favorite was the sunflowers. Did you know that when they’re young, before they bloom, they actually follow the sun across the sky each day?”
“Heliotropism,” Carter said with a self-satisfied grin. “Solar tracking.” Her eyes widened, and he shrugged. “I had to take a lab science in college. Botany was the only one that fit my schedule.”
He knew about sunflowers. He saw her in her first dress.
Her stomach flipped. Every new thing she learned about Carter Bowen made it harder to resist the connection she felt with him.
She nodded. “I thought there was nothing more beautiful, and I wanted to wear something beautiful for Pearl. But it was more than that. I liked the idea of the new buds repositioning themselves each night so they faced east again. I admired their determination—their fierce sense of direction.” Direction Ivy wanted so badly now that she was home. She wanted to face the grief and move past it. She wanted to wake up in the morning with the sun shining on her face instead of under the cloud where she’d lived for more than two years. “Pearl loved it, by the way.” Ivy cleared her throat. “It’s where my thing for flowers comes from. Haven’t been able to bring myself to plant my own garden, but I add a rose here, a lily there—when it suits the design.”
“I have no doubt Aunt Pearl loved it,” Carter said. His brows drew together. “But I can’t believe that was you.”
Casey waved a hand between them. “Helloo. Before you two start talking about nonsense like meant to be or star-crossed lovers or whatever, can we get back to the real story so I can help actual paying customers? What the heck happened with the chief?”
First Kiss with a Cowboy: Includes a bonus novella Page 32
