“You think this is easy for me? You being here?”
She glanced up at me with ancient resentment in her icy stare, and I was quite positive she was fighting off the urge to sock me in the mouth. Despite all that, all I could think about was touching her. Running my fingers through her hair. Feeling her lips on mine. Pressing her body against me.
“Must be. You arranged this. You asked for me. You wanted me to come here for damn near an entire week – which is unheard of in this industry, you know.” She crossed her arms, squinting toward me and wiping a rogue tear from her cheek as fast as she could.
Heaven forbid she shows an ounce of vulnerability.
“I didn’t trust anyone else to tell my story.” My argument was weak, I knew that. And only half-true. “You know me better than anyone.”
“God, you’re so stuck in the past,” she said, spitting her words at me and losing her professional cool. A defiant strand of windblown hair fell into her face. “Get over it, Beau. Get over us.”
I stepped into her space, placing my hands on her hips and pulling her into me. “Why should I get over you when you’re not over me?”
Her head whipped to the side as her eyes focused on the barn in the distance. “I am over you.”
“Then why don’t I believe you?” My hand lifted to her jaw, stroking my thumb across her full bottom lip just before I crushed her soft lips with mine. She hadn’t invited me to kiss her, but I had it in me to take what was mine. Her lips froze upon contact, but I wasn’t giving up that easy. I kissed her unhurriedly, deliberately pressing my body against hers and drawing her in tight.
Man, did she put up a fight.
The taste of her soft cinnamon mouth warmed my lips as warm sunlight kissed the tops of our heads, but the crunch of gravel under tires a few seconds later peeled her away. A gradient blush spread across her cheeks as her round blue eyes held a state of shock. Thirty feet away, a car horn honked repeatedly, ushering in little Ivy’s arrival.
“Beau!” Ivy flew out of her new Ford, blonde curls blowing every which way, and ran straight toward me. She punched my arm hard as a smile wider than a cornfield claimed her freckled face. “I told you not to buy me a car! I’m sitting there at work, and all of a sudden they tell me I have a delivery.” Ivy’s hand whipped to her hip as her eyes danced back and forth from me to her candy apple red Explorer. “You’re somethin’ else, brother.”
I shrugged. I had more money than my children’s children could ever spend in their entire lives. I’d been blessed, and it was time to do good. Life had been unkind to my sweet sis, robbing her of the love of her life and stealing the father of her kids when she least expected it. All the man ever wanted was to provide a good life for his family and support his country. In the end, he paid the ultimate price. Someone had to take care of them. I planned to buy them a big house in the near future too, though it’d be a surprise because she’d never let me do it if she knew.
“Oh my God!” Ivy turned her attention toward Dakota, who’d been standing back the entire time. “Dakota?”
“Hi, Ivy.” Dakota offered a polite smile, though she still seemed to be in a daze from when I’d kissed her.
“What are you doing here? Where’s Addison? Oh, sweet Jesus. You look amazing!” Ivy rambled on and on, gushing left and right and hurling more compliments and kind words at Dakota than she knew what to do with.
“Ivy, calm down,” I chuckled. “Don’t you need to get back to work?”
She stopped yammering and glanced at her phone. “I took an early lunch, but yeah.” She sighed, beaming at Dakota with a wistful look in her bright copper eyes. “I should head back. Do you guys want to go get drinks tomorrow night? It’ll be a Monday, so the bars will be dead. I can get a sitter. We can catch up?”
“Oh,” Dakota said, staring my way. “Um.”
“I’m up for it.” I shrugged, staring back at Dakota. “I think we need to remind our old friend here that we still know how to have fun in Darlington.”
“She forget, did she?” Ivy did a little hop-step as she hurried back to her car. The girl was like a bottle of fizzy orange soda and had been all her life. How a woman could lose so much and be so damn resilient was beyond me, though I suppose with the little ones, she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Gravel dust trailed behind her as she sped down the long drive and turned back toward the highway.
Dakota stood back a ways from me, eyeing me carefully as if she was still trying to figure out if she was okay with me kissing her. Judging by the half-scowl on her lips and the burn of her stare, things weren’t looking to be in my favor.