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PERCI TICKLED IVY’S belly, making the little girl laugh. Pan was in the chair next to the bed, telling her all about what had happened between Rowland Bowles and his assistant. Perci listened to her sister with half an ear while she finished dressing Ivy.
“So tell me, you and Nate. All the details.”
“Like you shared with you and Levi?” Perci sent her sister a mild look. She’d barely known Levi and Pan had gotten together until a jealous neighbor had nearly killed Pan. “There are some things we are not going to talk about.”
“Uh-huh. You told me about your first time.”
“No. I told Pip. You were listening through the vent in the attic. Perv.” She’d been eighteen and so sure he was the greatest thing since chocolate. That had lasted about six months until he went away on a baseball scholarship and she hit the community college’s nursing program eighty miles away. She’d already known what she was going to do, and his plans had taken him far from Masterson County. She barely remembered what he looked like now.
Or the other men she’d dated since then, even though she’d not been serious enough about any of them to go to bed with them.
All she could see in her mind was green eyes and warm brown hair and a man intent on loving her well into the night.
“Hey, how else was I going to learn? You, Pip, and Phoebe barely told me anything good back then.”
“I spent the night with him. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
“He lured you to his underworld and kept you all night. You know what that means, right?”
“That it is none of your business?” She pulled Cat in the Hat pajamas over small feet, then slipped the shirt over Ivy’s head. “Nate and I...I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll have a front-row seat when I figure it out.”
She had figured it out. She just wasn’t about to tell her younger sister that before she told the man in question.
Perci had to also face the fact that Nate could feel completely different, too. There was nothing written in stone after what they had done. To him, it could be far more casual than it was to her.
Someone knocked on the door lightly. She turned.
There Nate was, his brother at his shoulder.
“I’m looking for my wife.” Levi held out a hand to Pan and pulled her from the chair. He whispered something in her ear that had Pan’s cheeks flushing. Then he grinned at Perci. “I’m taking her for a moonlight...stroll...around the backyard.”
“It’s getting cold out.” Perci felt obligated to point out. Truth was, she wanted them both gone.
“I’ll keep her warm. Be back in a bit.”
Then they were gone.
Nate settled onto the bed next to Ivy. Perci adjusted the covers. Nate read softly and evenly, Ivy snuggled against him. Within fifteen minutes, Ivy was out. Then it was just the two of them.