Baby, It's Cold Outside

by Kait Nolan

  Please don’t leave.

  Stupid. Leaving was apparently what he did best. The intensity of her bitterness surprised her. She thought she’d put that behind her, but she’d really just shoved it under the sofa cushion. She remembered what she’d said to him at the cabin weeks ago.

  “Some hurts can be packed away and forgotten about, and they’ll fade with time. And some become caged animals that do more damage, become more feral, the longer they’re ignored.”

  Evidently her issues with Harrison fell into the latter category.

  The line of fans snaked through the store, seemingly endless. The author in her was giddy that so many people had turned out to support her and the new series. The woman wanted nothing more than for all of them to go away so she could satisfy the curiosity that had nagged her for the past two weeks. What that would look like, Ivy had no idea. In an ideal world—or a romance novel—they’d run toward each other in the crowded store, and he’d sweep her into his arms for a passionate kiss that put the ones from last month to shame. Preferably with a swell of orchestral strings in the background.

  She was not in an ideal world. She was in one of the city’s top, independent bookstores for her first public appearance, with what felt like half the city wanting a moment or five of her time. So she did her job, smiling and chatting with readers, signing their books, thanking them for coming. Peter kept a fresh bottle of water at her elbow and a bouquet of her favorite pens. And the readers kept coming.

  When familiar, rough hands thrust a copy of Hollow Point Ridge in front of her, Ivy almost didn’t want to look up.

  “Grumpy lumberjack, huh?” The rumble of his voice sounded above her.

  Ivy’s chest constricted with a bitter mix of longing and fury. He’d left her. Why should she still want him? Why should the sound of his voice make her ache with the desire for him to circle the table, haul her out of the chair, and pull her into his arms?

  Because she knew without a doubt that if he did, once those strong arms anchored her against his hardness, his warmth, she’d be home. For all her years moving from place to place, she’d never felt so adrift and dissatisfied as she had since she came back to Nashville. Nothing made it go away. But he could. If he’d just close that last bit of distance between them, put his arms around her and draw her close, she’d be able to breathe again.

  Except she wouldn’t. Because the whole notion that he was home, that they’d actually built something between them had been pure artistic fantasy on her part. Not something real. Whatever she’d felt happening between them had been entirely on her side. It had to have been because he’d just walked away without a word. And after she’d spent the last two weeks struggling to put that behind her, to reclaim some sense of normalcy, he had the damned nerve to show up here and make her feel all this stuff again.

  Shoving all that down deep to deal with later, Ivy lifted her gaze to his.

  God, he looked good. His dark hair was streaked from the sun and he’d shaved for real this time. No more hiding? Looking into those eyes she’d dreamed of so often, Ivy still felt the spark.

  But what the hell did sparks matter? Attraction hadn’t been their problem. He’d still walked away.

  “Not so grumpy underneath it all. And not so lumberjack, either. You clean up well, Harrison.”

  The sport coat only accentuated his broad shoulders. His shirt collar was unbuttoned, and the tie he’d worn earlier was stuffed into a pocket.

  “Less of a place for flannel and a mountain man beard in the real world.”

  “What is your real world?” It was a question that had haunted her these past weeks. One of many she’d kicked herself for not asking.

  “That’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Now? He chose now to want to talk? Ivy gestured to the line behind him that snaked all through the store. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll wait.”

  Opening his book to the dedication page, she muttered “Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” and scrawled an inscription. Forcing a smile, she handed the book over. “Thanks for reading.”

  They stayed linked by the book for long seconds before Peter cleared his throat again and hurried Harrison along. Ivy watched as he wove through the crowd and sat in one of the cushy chairs scattered throughout the store. They’d see what kind of patience he had.

  The line seemed to multiply every time Ivy looked up. But she did her job, smiled her smile, made conversation, signed books until her hand cramped, even as she made herself a promise to never do this again. By the time it was over, hours later, she expected Harrison to be long gone. But he was still perched in his chair, reading.

  It was foolish to feel hope at that. He was probably just here to say hi.

  He didn’t just wait two more hours to say hi.

  So maybe he was here to clear the air. Or something. Just because he’d waited didn’t mean he wanted anything more.

  She thanked Peter profusely for all the hard work he and his staff had put into making the signing a raging success. And then she was finally free.

  Bracing herself, she crossed over to the man she couldn’t forget.

  You owe me ten questions, but I only have one. Why?

  If he’d needed any further evidence that he’d hurt her, this was it.

  Waiting for today had been hell. Being away from her had been hard enough without knowing she thought he was an asshole. Having to sit, day after day, while she concocted who knew what false explanations for his absence, always casting him as the bad guy because he’d hurt her, was intolerable. And he knew exactly how good she was at concocting villains. Getting here today, seeing her again—it had taken every shred of control he had not to just grab her up in the middle of everything and start babbling, “I’m sorry.”

  Over the past two weeks, he’d considered and rejected more than a dozen grand gestures, wanting to make it clear to her in no uncertain terms how he felt. Those always went over well in the movies. But given how much she already hated public speaking and the fact that she’d looked about ready to jump out of her skin at all the people packed into the bookstore, drawing even more attention to her seemed like a bad idea. It was one thing to know that Ivy was a big freaking deal. It was a whole other to actually see it. The sheer number of people who’d turned out for the signing was overwhelming and had him wishing for their cabin in the woods, and the focus wasn’t even on him.

  So he’d waited, trying to read the book he’d had her sign and being entirely unable to focus.

  To my grumpy lumberjack, thanks for both rescues.

  He chewed on that. No matter what she thought, no matter how pissed and hurt she was, surely she wouldn’t have dedicated the book to him if she didn’t feel something for him.

  “Sorry that took so long.”

  At the sound of her cool voice, Harrison’s heart kicked into high gear. He rose to his feet, taking in her stiff posture and the wary look in those pretty, silver-green eyes. Everything he’d planned to say spilled out of his head. “Christ, it’s good to see you.”

  Ivy’s brows furrowed at that. “Forgive me for not really believing that, Harrison.”

  The sound of his name on her lips, even in that irritated tone, thrummed something deep in his chest. That helped him get started.

  “I deserve that. But it’s not what you think.”

  She crossed her arms, looking unimpressed. “Really? You didn’t just totally ghost on me?”

  “No. At least not on purpose. It was a life-or-death situation.”

  “A life-or-death situation. Because we have a lot of those as writers. Or are you even really a writer? Because I couldn’t find your stuff.”

  Jesus, had he told her so little? “Nothing I ever said to you was a lie. I use a pen name, same as you. John Patrick Russell.”

  A reluctant curiosity stole over her face. “Why?”

  He sucked in a slow breath to brace himself. This hadn’t been on
his list of things to talk about today. “John Laraway, Patrick Conroy, Russell Jennings. They’re the men I lost. It was…a small way to honor them.”

  Ivy’s expression softened. “I’m sorry.”

  Harrison just shook his head. “No, stop. I’m here to apologize to you. Not for leaving, because I had to go, but for the fact that I didn’t manage to get a message to you first, to let you know what was going on.”

  “And that was?”

  “One of my best friends tried to commit suicide.”

  All the color drained out of her face and so did whatever fight she had. “Oh God. Is he…”

  “He’s okay. Now. Or, at least, he’s working to be. There were several of us on rotation for a suicide watch. I have the most flexibility of schedule, so I took the lion’s share. And I just…lost track of days. By the time I realized I’d missed picking you up, you’d already left for home.”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head. “God. I’m so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. What are you apologizing for?”

  “For all the awful things I thought. I thought you’d ghosted me. I thought the whole damned week had been a lie and that everything between us was—” She cut herself off, as if she’d said too much.

  But it was enough. It was maybe everything.

  He stepped into her as he’d wanted, curving his hands around her shoulders and drawing her in so she looked up at him with glimmering eyes. “Nothing about that week was a lie. It was maybe the most real and honest I’ve been with myself and anybody else in years. So I hope you believe the unvarnished truth when I tell you that I’m completely and utterly crazy about you. Not because you’re a distraction or were convenient or any other craziness you might have convinced yourself of the last few weeks. Because you see me. You see straight into the scarred, battered heart of me. And maybe it’s not the greatest package in the world, but it’s yours—I’m yours—if you want me.”

  His heart beat thick in his throat as he waited for a response. He couldn’t read anything on her face beyond total stupefaction. Beneath his hands, she trembled, and he wanted to draw her in, wrap his arms around her until she softened against him. But he needed something, some sign that they were on the same page with this.

  “Harrison.” Her voice was choked and a tear leaked out to trail down one cheek.

  Shit, he’d made her cry. Were those good tears? Tears of regret because she’d realized she didn’t want this with him?

  “There is nothing in this world I want more.”

  He barely had time to register the relief and joy before she was dragging him down by his lapels and he was pulling her to her toes, and he didn’t know who had started it but his mouth was on hers and—oh God—he’d missed this, missed her. As the chaos of his emotions swirled around him, he tightened his hold because she was his anchor. She opened for him and the taste of her flooded his senses, washing over every raw nerve and soothing. She was every bit as sweet as he remembered, and he needed so much more than just this taste in the middle of a busy bookstore.

  Apparently coming to the same conclusion, she broke the kiss, easing back far enough to look into his face. “Give me your phone.”

  It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “What?”

  She dropped back to her feet. “Your phone. Give it to me.”

  As his brain slowly came back online, he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over. Her fingers lingered over his as she took it, even though he still had one hand around her waist, holding her firmly against him.

  Her fingers flew furiously. “We aren’t doing this again. This is every stinking number I have and my email address, and I just texted myself so I have your number.” She gave it back. “I’m not taking any chances on losing you again.”

  This was the Ivy he knew, the one he’d fallen for, who could find the humor to ease over the rough patches. “What about your address?”

  “That, too. Although I’m not trusting GPS navigation. I’m taking you there myself. Now, if you don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  Lips curving into a grin, Harrison cupped her face. “There is nowhere I’d rather be than home with you. There’s so much I want to tell you.”

  On a sigh, Ivy pressed her cheek into his hand, the last of the tension draining out of her. “Home.”

  As he looked into her smiling eyes, he was pretty sure he’d found his.

  Epilogue

  Ivy set down the obscenely heavy box with a gasp. “Remind me again why we thought moving the week after finishing a book tour was a good idea.”

  Harrison set down two identical boxes labeled Books in the opposite corner of the room that would become her office. “I believe there was some plan for hitting up the spa once we actually got everything off the truck. Also something about wanting to get as far away from cities as fast as humanly possible because you couldn’t with all the people anymore.”

  “Okay, yeah, I did say that.” She’d known she’d be stressed to the max after the book tour launching Enemy of Silence, so going more or less straight to their new mountain hideaway had been the obvious choice when choosing a closing date for the house. She’d had visions of unpacking fast, then luxuriating in the quiet. But she’d underestimated the chaos of combining households and moving four hours away from Nashville. “But where the hell did all this stuff come from? I swear, it multiplied like tribbles in the truck.”

  “Perhaps a better question is how it is we all ended up being your manual labor? You could totally have sprung for movers, Miss Seven-Time New York Times Best Seller,” Sebastian griped.

  Ivy blew him a wink and a kiss. “But then I wouldn’t get to see your pretty face.” In the nine months since she and Harrison officially got together, she’d gotten to know his friends well and enjoyed razzing them at every opportunity.

  “Besides, you’re getting beer and pizza,” Harrison reminded him. “What more does a man need?”

  “I’m not sure there’s enough beer in the Ridge to make up for all these boxes of books,” Porter groused. “How many are there?”

  “Forty. Ish,” Ivy admitted. Maybe closer to fifty, but who was counting?

  “Who the hell needs forty boxes of books?” Ty asked, adding two more to the stack.

  “Two cohabitating writers.” When he just sent her a flat stare, she hunched her shoulders. “What? Don’t look at me like that. They’re research.”

  “I’m looking at you like that because I’m pretty sure the entire forty-ish are all yours.”

  She looked to Harrison for some backup but he just crossed those massive arms and grinned. “He’s not wrong. Almost all mine are digital.”

  On a huff, she folded her own aching arms. “I’m a writer. Therefore, I do not have a book problem.”

  “Would the same apply if you were a liquor store owner with half the contents of the store in your house?” Sebastian asked.

  “Books are not a controlled substance.”

  “Maybe they should be.” He easily evaded the throw pillow she snatched up from the loveseat.

  “Troglodyte!”

  His laughter echoed all the way down the hall.

  Shaking her head with a reluctant smile, Ivy flopped down on the loveseat, glancing around at the three full walls of built-in bookcases and imagining them filled with colorful spines. It would be glorious. Perhaps not quite on the scale of the Beauty and the Beast library she’d lusted after since she was a child, but it would be hers. Theirs. Part of the home they’d chosen to build together.

  The other half of that home joined her on the loveseat, tugging her in close. “We’re nearly done.”

  Ivy eyed the mountains of stuff. “Your definition of done and mine are vastly different.”

  “Well, the truck’s nearly empty, meaning we can feed and water the help and kick them out, the better to christen our new house.”

  With a hum of anticipation, she snuggled in. “We should establish an incentive for unpacking.”

 
“Like a naked incentive? Miss Blake, I do like the way you think.” He leaned in to kiss her.

  “Hey, the last boxes on the truck aren’t going to move themselves.” Sebastian let the ones he carried land with a thud on the pile next to the loveseat and shot them a meaningful look.

  Harrison cheerfully flipped him off and took Ivy’s mouth in a smacking kiss.

  “Get a room.”

  “We bought several, thanks.”

  Sebastian shot his own middle finger over one shoulder on his way out of the room.

  Ivy watched him go. “We really need to get him a woman.”

  “Pretty sure Deanna would volunteer for that position. She was eying him pretty hard while we were loading the truck.”

  “She’s absolutely in a Look-Don’t-Touch phase, and definitely not into the idea of long-distance.”

  “Her loss. But they’d probably kill each other anyway.” Harrison hefted himself up. “We’d best get back to it.”

  “I’ll be along in a minute.” Ivy slipped her phone from her pocket and opened up the browser, refreshing the page she’d been checking all day.

  “Are you looking at the USA Today Best-Seller list again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know why you keep doing that. My book is not gonna be on it.”

  In the months since Snowmageddon, he’d finished up the quartet about Coop’s military service and begun a new series about life away from war, as a peacekeeper out on one of the far-flung frontier planets. Their release dates had been only a week apart, and Ivy simply couldn’t get over how hands-off he’d been. Once he’d published the book, let his mailing list know, he was done, mentally moving on to the next book as he traveled with her on the two-week book tour her publisher had arranged. But after he’d been outed as the grumpy lumberjack in her dedication and dragged on stage for one of the morning shows she’d been interviewed on—to the absolute delight of the audience—Ivy had gotten an idea.

  The page loaded and she began to scroll. “You never know.”

  And there it was. Number ninety-seven. The Remains of Yesterday. Ivy shrieked and began to dance. “I was right! See? See?”