Harper was in the kitchen when Ivy came back from Olde Tahoe Tap. The teen’s eyes were red-rimmed, but she was visibly relaxed. “How did it go?”
Ivy smiled, and Harper felt her chest cavity fill with relief.
“Okay if we don’t talk about it right now?” Ivy asked.
“Of course. Do you want to work the front for me?”
Ivy’s face creased in happy surprise. “Really? You trust me with that?”
“Completely.” It was the utter truth. Plus, it was their quiet hours, but even if it hadn’t been, Harper knew Ivy could handle things.
And she did, right up to closing time. After, she went to the lake with Ham to meet up with Jessie and James.
And Harper went to the bookstore. As she entered, the chime went off—still the Addams Family theme song.
Shay was humming along with it as she looked up from her perch and eyed Harper. But unlike always, she didn’t immediately frown.
Progress.
She did, however, look exhausted. “Hey,” Harper said. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. Except I’m twenty-nine and completely burned-out.” Shay tossed up her hands. “Like, what am I supposed to do for fifty more years? Get cats? Bitch about summer lake traffic? Keep buying veggies by the ton and watching them die? Get oil changes?”
“Well, cats are great. And yeah, okay, traffic sucks. But you don’t have to buy veggies by the ton. I won’t tell a soul, I swear.”
Shay thought about that. “Sage advice. Which reminds me, I need you to come to yoga with me tomorrow and pretend to be my friend.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s bring-a-friend week, and if I do, I get twenty percent off next month’s fees, so . . . you’re up.”
“You run out of friends already?”
“You’re the first and only person I’ve asked,” Shay said.
“Oh.” Harper didn’t know what to say to that. “So we are friends.”
“More like pretend friends.”
Harper laughed. “I’m not going until you admit you like me and that we’re real friends.”
Shay narrowed her eyes.
“Twenty percent is a lot . . .”
Shay sighed. “Fine. We’re real friends. Happy?”
Harper smiled. “Very. Oh, and I thought of something genius that could help us both. To the left of my register, I’ve got an empty bookshelf.”
“Fascinating,” Shay said, and yawned. “But I’ve got bills to worry about, so—”
“I think you should use the shelf to sell books. Like cookbooks, or whatever you’d like, really.”
Shay paused. Blinked. “I’m sorry. Did you just offer to help me sell some books?”
“I did. Why, is that weird?”
“Yes.” Shay shut her laptop. “What’s the catch? What percentage do you want?”
“Zero. I just want some cute books on that shelf and thought you might like the idea.”
“I do.” Shay looked wary. “Have you always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Too good to be true.”
Harper laughed. She laughed so hard she nearly had to sit down.
“I don’t see what’s so damn funny,” Shay muttered.
“It’s just that I thought I was the most screwed-up person I knew, that’s all.”
“Hmph,” Shay said, but looked like this made her feel better.
The front door opened, and the Addams Family theme song went off again.
“Shay Rylie Anna Ramirez,” Abuela yelled from the other room. “What did I tell you about changing the chime to suit your moods?”
Shay sighed. “I hate when she uses all my names.”
“It’s a lot of names,” Harper said.
Shay shrugged. “My mom’s Irish, my dad’s Mexican. Each wanted their stamp on me. Then of course they divorced after one week of marriage and gave me to Abuela, so . . .” She shrugged again.
Harper sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. My place is here, driving Abuela loca.” Which she said loud enough for Abuela to hear her, and they heard the woman’s cackle. Shay was smiling a little too, but it faded when she realized her next customer was Mace.
He strolled up to the counter with the same loose-limbed, easy grace his brother had and smiled at Shay.
Who did not smile back.
“I’m looking for a book,” he said.
“You haven’t read a book in years,” Shay said. “Well, other than Serena’s copy of Fifty Shades.”
“Hey, that was for curiosity’s sake.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I have so read other books,” he said. “There was that time in our college English class.”
“I took that class for you.” Shay pointed at him. “You read zero books in that class.”
“I’m going to enroll you both in an English as a second language class!” Abuela yelled from the back.
Harper laughed, but pretended it was a cough instead when both Shay and Mace sent her a look. “I’m just going to . . .” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder and let herself out.
She ended up back in her kitchen, baking to her heart’s content. Ivy came home at some point near 10:00 p.m. and went to bed.
Harper stayed in the kitchen. She’d have to be up before dawn, but baking was like putting gasoline in her car. It filled up her tank. Her soul tank.
A soft knock sounded on her kitchen door. Through the window, she could see a tall, leanly built shadow in a sweatshirt and open leather jacket, hoodie up.
Bodie.
Her heart skipped a beat. She’d steered clear today, not wanting to intrude. This was about family, his, and she was very aware that she wasn’t a part of it. She opened the door, but her smile quickly died because his mouth was grim, his eyes intense.
He looked past her. “You alone?”
“Ivy’s upstairs sleeping.” She stepped back. “Come in.”
He shook his head. “Can we go somewhere? Maybe for a drive?”
“Sure.”
At the word drive, Ham woke from his bed on the floor. He began tap-dancing at the door, panting with happiness because no one had ever told him he wasn’t automatically welcome everywhere.
Bodie crouched down so he was eye to eye with Ham. “You want to come?”
Ham tipped his head back and “woo-woo”ed.
Harper grabbed a sweater and texted Ivy so if she woke up, she wouldn’t worry. They walked out to Bodie’s truck and loaded up.
“You’re going to want to roll down all the windows,” she said.
“You sure? It’s chilly.”
“He gets carsick unless all the windows are down.”
Bodie turned in his seat and looked at Ham.
Ham leaned forward and licked his chin.
“He says he won’t get sick in my car,” Bodie said.
“He’s lying.”
So Bodie rolled all the windows down. Luckily it wasn’t cold, not like it’d been her first week. In fact, the night was warm and gorgeous. “Where are we going?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Some place with a view?”
“My property in Hidden Hills has a view.” He glanced over at her as if to gauge her response. “Only if you’d like.”
“I would like. Very much.”
He nodded. There was a solemnness to him she hadn’t seen before, and something else that she couldn’t quite place.
As they drove along the lake, she was moved both by the glow of the moon dancing on the choppy waters and the man next to her, silent but in easy, calm control, handling the narrow, curvy highway like he’d been born to it, shifting smoothly, his body moving with the vehicle. After a few miles, he made a turn from the lake, and they went up. And up. The road went from paved to dirt, and she glanced over at him.
“Almost there.”
It was a thrilling ride, and all too soon he made a turn into a clearing with a small cabin in the center of it, backdropped by a semicircle of towering pines behind it.
“I bought this land and the cabin years ago from an old friend who’s gone now,” he said. “When I’m done with the boat, I’m going to renovate here too.”
She could picture him doing just that. “It’s beautiful. I bet the inside is too.” She tried to remember if she had pretty undies on.
He looked at her face, then closed his eyes and groaned.
“What?”
“We’re not going inside.”
“We’re not?” she asked in surprise.
“I brought you up here to talk. I’m not going to be the guy who lured you up here under false pretenses. And if I bring you inside, I won’t be able to resist you.”
Well, if that wasn’t something to think about . . .
He turned off the engine. “Come on.”
Ham hopped out of the back seat and pranced around like he’d been taken to Disneyland, lifting his leg at every tree and bush he could find in the dark. They walked past the cabin to where the clearing ended at a cliff, and thanks to a glowing moon and a myriad of stars, she could see the lake hundreds of feet below.
“Wow,” she whispered.
They sat on a bench made from the trunk of a huge tree, which she knew he’d made. Ham was still very busy sniffing . . . everything. Harper didn’t speak, because there was clearly something on his mind, and she had no doubt it was Ivy.
He turned to her. “Did you know?” He took one look at her face and swore softly, closing his eyes for a beat, jaw tight, eyes and mouth grim. “How long? Please tell me it wasn’t before we kissed.”
“No. No,” she repeated firmly. “I didn’t know before that. But . . .” When she hesitated, he surged to his feet and paced.
“That’s why you ran off last night outside the bar,” he said. “It’s why you avoided me today.” His body was tense, eyes remote and nowhere near the warmth she was used to. “You agreed to give this thing between us a fair chance. But then you kept a huge secret from me, one that affects my life.”
That he was right made this all the harder. “I promised Ivy I wouldn’t tell you before she did.”
“You told me you couldn’t tell me about her because it was her story to tell.”
“I didn’t know then,” she said. “All I knew was that she was looking for her dad. It never occurred to me that you were that dad.”
“You figured it out somehow. On your own. How?”
She could tell he was devastated that he hadn’t figured it out on his own. “Last night. I was looking up at you . . .” She shook her head. “And it just hit me. I wasn’t certain, but Ivy confirmed it. She’s got your eyes, and—”
“My cheekbones,” he said with a single nod. “It’s like I gave her my face.”
Harper smiled even as her eyes burned with unshed tears. “Yeah.”
Bodie turned away, facing the black night, hands in his pockets, quiet.
“So . . . are we . . . over?” she asked quietly.
He turned to face her, surprise on his face. “Why would you think that?”
She hesitated, but now wasn’t the time to hide in plain sight. “People are always afraid to lose things that mean a lot to them.”
He dropped to his knees at her side and met her gaze. “I mean a lot to you.”
“More than I wanted you to,” she admitted.
He gave a soft laugh, then kissed her gently.
“Are you okay with all this?” she asked.
“With Ivy being mine? I couldn’t be more okay. But it’s bothering me that I didn’t see it. All this time I had a kid out there in the world who needed me, and I had no idea. I don’t even know why it was kept hidden from me.”
“My mom used to say the only thing you should ever hide is presents.”
He snorted and stood. “Yeah.”
Getting up, she moved to him. “She’s a pretty good kid.”
That got her a ghost of a smile. “Yeah.”
“Were you and Ivy’s mom . . . together?”
“No. Jenny and I were complete strangers.” He grimaced when she went brows up. “I’m not proud of this, but I went through a dumbass player stage. I was trying to somehow forget Austin’s death. Some friends and I were in Cabo on spring break and there was this party. We had a good time. Too good.” He paused and shook his head. “Jenny was gone when I woke up the next morning.”
“And she never tried to contact you?”
“Not a word. She knew my full name and that I was from Lake Tahoe. My parents wouldn’t have been hard to find.”
“I’m sorry, Bodie.”
“I’m not. We used a condom, so I don’t know what happened, but I’ll never be sorry about Ivy. I’m . . .” He lifted a hand, palm up, like he was searching for the right words. “Overwhelmed and amazed by her. What she did, coming here, finding me . . . that was so fucking brave.”
She smiled. “Sounds like she got some of that from her dad.”
He shook his head, seeming marveled by even the thought. “No, she is that all on her own. And I’m so grateful. I didn’t even know what I was missing in my life, but now I do. I’m hoping to make things right for her.”
“It’s never too late. What are you going to do?”
“As much as she’ll let me,” he said. “I spent the day trying to track Jenny down. I get she’s out of the country, but how did Ivy manage to leave her stepsister’s house and get all the way across the country with no one noticing? She’s sixteen. What the hell was Jenny thinking?”
Harper stood and took his hand. “I wouldn’t lead with that question. Not if you want her cooperation for what you really want to ask.”
He studied her face, then let out a long breath. “Yeah. This is all up to Ivy, of course, but if she wants to visit me, I want the right to have her.”
“You’ll ask for shared custody.” She said this as a statement, not a question. Because she already knew the answer.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Whatever Ivy wants.”
She slid her hands up his chest to wrap around him and felt the knotted, tight line of his injured shoulder. She dug her fingers in a bit, massaging it.
Bodie let out a breath, relaxing under her touch, so she kept at it. “You’re hurting,” she said.
He shrugged, like he was used to it.
“You know, I can only imagine how scary it’d be to find yourself pregnant at seventeen,” she said softly, working at his tense muscles. “Knowing you’d have to share custody with someone you don’t know, who lived on the other side of the country . . .”
“I’d have moved. I would’ve helped her.” He shook his head. “I should’ve tried to find her the next morning instead of just shrugging it off when I woke up alone.” He looked Harper straight in the eyes. “I’d like to say that was my one and only time sleeping with someone I didn’t know and never saw again. Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure my shit out, to understand that all it ever did was leave me feeling . . . empty.” He paused. “I don’t, won’t, do another one-night stand. I want more. I need you to know that.”
She stared at him, her heart picking up speed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if we pursue this thing between us, I want more than one night.” He tilted her face up to his and lowered his head, brushing his mouth across hers in a warm and startlingly intimate kiss. Pulling back, he held her gaze. “Can you tell me what you want?”
Did she even know? On the one hand, this amazing, wonderful man was telling her he wanted something with her. On the other hand, she was terrified of opening her heart again, and no longer believed in the promise of love. But she couldn’t imagine walking away now. The thing was, she was settling into all the changes in her life, but he hadn’t settled into his yet, having just learned about Ivy. Harper would never expect to be a priority over Ivy, but neither did she want to be a distraction.
His thumb stroked her jaw. “You’ve gone through a lot of changes lately.”
“And I’m not the only one.”
He let out a half laugh and nodded.
She let her hands fall from him. He’d been so honest with her, she had to give him the same. “I’m just finding myself again, and everything’s mixed up inside me right now. But there’s one thing I know for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you.”
This got her a smile complete with dimple. “I like the sound of that.” His smile faded slowly, though his eyes remained warm and on hers. “I’m not going to rush you, Harper. I think maybe you’ve had enough of that in your life. I’m a patient man, and I’m not going anywhere. Take your time.”
She drew a deep breath. “That’s giving me a lot of power.”
“Yeah.” His smile was back. “Deal with it.” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip and her brain checked out and her body took over, moving closer. Cupping her face, he kissed her until warmth pooled in her belly and she couldn’t remember why she wanted to move slow with this thing between them.
Ham bounced back to them and flopped down, rolling over to raise all four legs in the air. “Do you want your tummy scratched, is that it?” she cooed, and laughed when Bodie silently raised his hand and nodded.
She was still smiling when he drove her and Ham home. He walked her to her door, kissed her again, unfortunately with a lot less tongue and heat, then whispered, “Sleep well,” and was gone, leaving her to her own thoughts and decisions that needed to be made. Was she where she wanted to be? Yes. Was she who she wanted to be? Yes.
Had she found someone worth taking a risk for? She sucked air in between her teeth because . . . maybe?
With a hopeful smile on her face, she checked on Ivy and found her fast asleep. Ham pushed past Harper and jumped up to cuddle next to Ivy.
Deserted by her own dog, she went to bed and fell asleep with that same hopeful smile on her face.