Authors: Regina Kyle
He whistled his way down the hall and out the engine bay, waving to his paramedic buddies in C Company as he went. He was just about to grab his keys out of his duffel when his cell rang. He pulled it out and swiped the screen without bothering to see who the call was from.
“Hey, butthead,” Gabe greeted him. If you could call “butthead” a greeting. “Ready for me to kick your ass?”
Dammit.
“What took you so long?” Cade fumbled for his keys with his free hand and unlocked his SUV. This wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have out in the parking lot.
“I was in Paris with Devin. She wanted to see the Louvre, and Noelle was performing there. But I’m here now. At the Half Pint, in fact. Waiting for you so I can kick your ass.”
“You want me to voluntarily show up to my own ass kicking?” Cade slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.
“The easier you make it for me, the easier I’ll be on you.”
“Fair enough.” Cade put the key in the ignition and started the engine. “Be there in ten.”
Why not? Gabe wasn’t literally going to kick his ass, and there wasn’t anything he could say that Cade hadn’t already told himself.
He arrived eight minutes later. “He’s over there.” The blond who was behind the bar the last time he and Gabe had words at the Half Pint pointed Cade to a booth in the corner. “Said you wouldn’t want an audience for the world of hurt he was going to lay on you.”
Great.
Maybe Gabe was planning on literally kicking his ass. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He’d promised not to fuck with Ivy, yet that was exactly what he’d done, cutting her loose in the most chickenshit way possible. In a goddamn note.
Cade slipped into the booth opposite his soon-to-be-former best friend. Gabe pushed a mug of beer across the table to him. “Here. You’re gonna need it.”
“Thanks.” Cade took a long, slow, fortifying drink.
“I saw Ivy in Paris,” Gabe said, jumping right into the enormous, metaphorical pile of shit between them.
“How is she?” Cade asked.
“How do you think she is?” Gabe finished his beer and signaled the waitress for another. “Not that it’s any of your business anymore.”
“I still care about her.”
“If you cared about her, you wouldn’t have packed up all your stuff and moved out without a word.”
What the hell? Was nothing secret in the Nelson family?
“I left a note,” Cade said, sounding lame even to his own ears.
“Big man.” Gabe paused to let the waitress set down his beer, nodding his thanks. “Three whole lines to kiss off the woman you sat in this bar and professed to love.”
“I couldn’t do it face-to-face.” Cade stared into his beer.
“Then why do it at all?”
“Because she deserves better than this one-horse town. Better than me.”
“That bullshit again?” Gabe reached across the table and smacked Cade on the back of the head. “You really are a moron.”
“Ouch.” Cade rubbed the nape of his neck. “That hurt.”
“You’re gonna hurt a lot more if you don’t wise up.”
“And do what? Drag her back here?”
“I don’t think you’ll need to resort to dragging,” Gabe said. “She’ll be here in a few days for that big calendar thing.”
Crap.
The Labor Day benefit. He’d forgotten about that. Even tossed the invitation when it had come in the mail. That stupid calendar had been the beginning of the end for him. The last place he wanted to be was a gala celebrating its release. He’d make a generous donation to salve his conscience and be done with it.
“I’m not going.”
“Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Ivy’s a hot mess, thanks to you. Almost blew that big celebrity wedding.”
Cade scratched his jaw. “That can’t be true. I saw the pictures all over the internet. They looked fantastic.”
“Her partner had to fly in last minute to pull her together.”
“Andre?”
“That’s him.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
The sat in silence for a few minutes, Gabe drinking his beer, Cade still staring into his. Gabe was the one to finally break it.
“She doesn’t want that life anymore. Endless hotels and zero sleep. The models and the celebrity hissy fits. The stress. She’s done with it.”
“She says that now. But what about in...”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Two years or three years or ten. But let me ask you this.” Gabe pushed aside his mug and leaned in to pin his best courtroom stare on Cade. “You’ve known Ivy a long time. Have you ever known her to change her mind once she’s decided on something?”
“No.” He hadn’t. He smiled, remembering Ivy at her most fearless, accepting every crazy dare they threw her way, never backing down, never giving up.
“Well, for some stupid-ass reason I don’t even want to begin to understand, her mind’s set on you.” Gabe’s prosecutor glare got even darker. “What are you going to do about that?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Cade chugged his beer, thumped the empty stein down on the table and stood. “But I’m going to start by digging my invitation to the calendar benefit out of the garbage.”
“Good.” Gabe sat back, the harsh lines around his eyes and mouth disappearing as his expression relaxed. “Because I haven’t ruled out kicking your ass.”
B
ELIZE
WAS
BEAUTIFUL
, even in the rainy season. The deep, rich blue of the Caribbean, the bright colors and exotic sea life on the barrier reef, the easygoing charm of the beachside towns—Ivy loved it all.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh salt air. Reclining in her beach chair, she stretched her arms over her head and dug her toes in the warm, fine sand.
It might be the rainy season, but in keeping with their charmed celebrity lives, the bride and groom had had sunshine for their nuptials, and the good weather stuck around for the remainder of the week. Lucky for Ivy, since the happy pair had offered her the run of the estate guesthouse for the remainder of their seven-day rental while they jetted off to honeymoon in an undisclosed location. It was more than she deserved, given her meltdown.
She took another long, deep breath, relishing the smells and sounds of the ocean—the rhythmic pounding of the waves against the shore and the calls of the seabirds flying overhead. The breeze ruffled the palm fronds, and she sighed. She was going to miss this place. But she couldn’t run forever. Sooner than she’d like—tomorrow morning, when her flight left Belize City—she’d have to face the music.
The music being the uncertain mess she’d made of her life.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come home with you,
ma mie
? You know how I love a good gala.” Andre, her savior when she’d hit rock bottom, took up residence in the chair beside her and handed her another one of his fruity, alcoholic concoctions. She didn’t ask, just drank. Whatever it was, it was bound to be delicious. Andre’s creations always were.
“I appreciate the sentiment.” She reached over and patted his arm with her free hand. “But you’ve done enough already, coming all the way here to rescue me. This is something I have to do myself.”
Even if seeing Cade again would be the equivalent of ripping her heart out, stomping it to smithereens and putting it back in, just to rip it out and start the process all over again.
“Yes, it was a real hardship, traveling to an island paradise and snapping a few photographs.” Andre gave her a bemused smile and sipped his own drink. “Not to mention waiting out the week here with nothing to do but imbibe, ingest and unwind.”
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said for what must have been the thousandth time. “I don’t know what came over me. One minute I was scouting locations for the best backdrops, the next I was bawling like a baby.”
Unfortunately for her, that minute was two days before the wedding. On the plus side, there had been enough time—barely—for Andre to hop a commercial flight, and the couple had agreed to the last-minute substitution.
“I’ll tell you what came over you.” He sat up, put his drink in a cup holder on the arm of his beach chair and took her hand between his. “
L’amour
. The thought of photographing a romantic destination wedding, with all the trimmings, was simply too much for you to bear with your recent
déchirement
.”
“Déchirement?”
“Heartbreak.”
“My heart is not broken.” She sipped her drink. He’d mixed cranberry juice and grapefruit juice with some sort of alcohol. Rum, maybe. Or triple sec. She wasn’t much of a drinker.
“Menteuse.”
He gave her hand a quick squeeze before releasing it to reclaim his glass. “Liar.”
Yeah, she was a big, fat liar, all right. If she was Pinocchio, her nose would be ten feet long.
Ivy lay back, closed her eyes and covered them with her forearm, hoping Andre would get the hint and end the conversation.
“Will your Prince Charming be at the ball?”
So much for subtlety.
Picking up cues had never been Andre’s strong suit. Or more likely he just chose to ignore them.
She sighed. “I assume so. He’s one of the models.”
“Aha!” Andre put his cup back in the holder and rubbed his hands together. “We must devise a plan.”
“A plan?” She risked a glance at him from under her arm. “To do what?”
“Why, to win him back,
naturellement.
”
“Who said anything about wanting to win him back?” Ivy abandoned the pretense of relaxing and sat up. “You forget, he dumped me. Via note. He didn’t even have the courtesy to do it in person.”
“Or the courage,” Andre countered, sitting up beside her. “Have you considered that your Lothario might have thought he was doing what was best for you? And that writing a note was the only way he could do it without getting cold feet?”
“I don’t understand.” Ivy scrunched up her forehead. “In what possible world is getting dumped best for me?”
“If he hadn’t broken up with you, would you have taken this job?”
“Probably not.” She dragged a toe in the sand. “Definitely not.”
“There you have it.” Andre snapped his fingers decisively.
“But I didn’t want this job.” She wanted Cade. She cast an apologetic glance at Andre. “No offense.”
“None taken.” He nodded his acceptance of her apology. “But what if your young man...
comment s’appelle-t-il?
”
“Cade,” she said.
“What if this Cade didn’t want you sacrificing the career you worked so hard to build for him? So he made sure that wouldn’t happen by ending things. A preemptive strike, if you will. A noble gesture.”
“What sort of twisted logic is that?”
“Male logic.” Andre chuckled.
“How do I combat that?”
“With feminine wiles.”
“I don’t think I remember what they are.” Her chin trembled. “If I ever even had them.”
“Fortunately for you, I’m an expert when it comes to wiles, male and female.” With a flick of his wrist, Andre stood, bowed dramatically and held out his hand to her. “Come,
ma mie
. Let us scheme together.”
She hesitated, biting her lip. “It sounds so...underhanded.”
He dropped his hand. “Do you love him?”
This time she didn’t have to think twice about her answer. “Yes. I’ve loved him forever.”
“Do you think he loves you?”
Snapshots flicked through her brain. Cade, sweating in his turnouts for the sake of a few extra dollars for charity. Laughing as he patiently showed her how to play a game on his Xbox. Smiling down at her in the morning, his cornflower eyes dark with desire, touching her, tasting her, making her feel like she was the most beautiful woman in the world despite her morning breath and uncontrollable bedhead.
“I don’t know.” She nudged a stray hair behind her ear. “What if you’re right, and he pushed me away because of some misguided sense of nobility?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Feminine wiles?”
“Non.”
He shook his head. “I have changed my mind. For you, we must employ a simpler tactic.”
“What’s that?”
He held out his hand to her again. This time she took it and stood, wiggling her toes in the sand.
“You must seek him out at this calendar celebration. You must tell him how you feel. And you must ask him if he reciprocates those feelings.”
Ivy suppressed a smile at Andre’s formality. “You know you’ll lose me if he says yes.”
“C’est la vie.”
With a shrug, he put his arm around her and steered her toward the palatial estate’s guest house. “Life goes on.”
“What will you do without me?” She rested her head on his shoulder as they walked.
“I shall weep. I shall mourn. I shall gnash my teeth and beat my breast.” He kissed the top of her head. “And then I shall photograph your wedding,
bien sûr
.”
* * *
“M
Y
DEAR
.” M
RS
. T
HORPE
, president of the local chapter of the Humane Society and chairwoman of the shelter benefit, hurried over to Ivy the minute she stepped into the gym at Stockton High School. “We’re so glad you could join us. The calendar turned out beautifully.”
“I wouldn’t miss it, Mrs. Thorpe. And thank you.” Ivy smiled and kissed the older woman’s cheek, admiring her classic Diane von Furstenberg sheath dress and matching pumps. It was nice to see a familiar face straight off. Hopefully a sign things would go smoothly and the evening would turn out the way she wanted. “You look lovely tonight. How’s Paco?”
“He’s fine, the little scamp. Loves the rubber stick you gave him. So much safer than the real ones. No nasty splinters.” She shuddered at the thought of her precious Chihuahua injured by a rogue piece of wood. “And if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, dear, call me Susan.”
“I’m sorry. Susan.”
“Come on.” The older woman hooked her arm through Ivy’s. “I’ve reserved a seat for you in the front row, next to me. The runway show is starting soon.”
“Runway show?”
For the first time since she entered the gym, Ivy took note of her surroundings. The event committee had done a bang-up job transforming it into something befitting New York Fashion Week. At one end—where Mrs. Thorpe was dragging her to now—they’d set up a platform in the shape of a
T
, backed by dark curtains that ran the length of the far wall. Along the leg of the
T
were rows of chairs, which were quickly filling with spectators. Half the town must be there, Ivy thought. She caught sight of her parents on the other side of the stage and waved.
“We’re featuring some of our calendar models, each with a pet that’s up for adoption,” Mrs. Thorpe explained as they made their way across the darkened gym to the stage. The usual harsh, fluorescent lights had been bypassed in favor of strobes and a disco ball. LEDs lined the edges of the runway. “We’re hoping to make some matches.”
“For the models or the pets?” Ivy quipped, her palms starting to sweat as she thought about one particular blond, blue-eyed model.
“The pets, but I saw a few of the models getting ready backstage and I wouldn’t be surprised if they got more than their fair share of offers, too.” Mrs. Thorpe gave Ivy a saucy wink and directed her to two empty seats.
“Do you happen to know if Cade Hardesty is modeling this evening?” Ivy asked hesitantly as she sat down, crossing her legs and smoothing out the skirt of her dress—a black-and-white checked Betsey Johnson pinup number Andre had insisted she buy. If Cade was walking the runway, she’d be close enough to touch him. And although she’d planned on seeing him tonight, somehow she’d imagined their first encounter being a bit more...private.
“Which one is he?” Mrs. Thorpe asked a little too innocently. “They’re all so handsome. Like my Roger in his day.”
“Mr. December,” Ivy answered, figuring that was the quickest way to identify him.
“Oh, him.” Oh. My. God. Had Mrs. Thorpe actually licked her lips? “He’s our final attraction. The main event.”
The main event?
Ivy fingered her pearl choker, the perfect accessory for her fifties-inspired, cleavage-enhancing dress. “What does that—”
“Shh.” Mrs. Thorpe held a finger to her lips as the volume of the music increased and the mayor stepped out from the curtains onto the stage. “It’s starting.”
The mayor, who was acting as emcee for the evening, introduced each model and their canine or feline companion. Mr. January started things off with a bang in just his bunker pants, suspenders dangling from his waist, carrying a yippy Pomeranian called Lulu. Mr. April wore a tight SFD tank top with his turnouts and was accompanied by the ugliest cat Ivy had ever seen, a hairless thing the mayor said was hypoallergenic and appropriately named Kojak. As the pairs strutted their respective stuff, the pets were auctioned off to eager buyers for adoption.
“Sold to the Levensons for five hundred dollars.” The mayor nodded to Mr. November as he left the stage with his companion, an adorable German shepherd puppy that had commandeered the highest price of the night so far. Ivy recognized the model as one of Cade’s friends. Hansen, she thought. Or Sykes. She kept mixing them up. She probably should have paid better attention when the mayor was introducing him, but with Cade up next her brain was running a million miles a minute.
“Thank you, Mr. November and Axel,” the mayor continued. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy in your new home. Axel, that is. Not Mr. November.”
The audience chuckled at the mayor’s joke, and she acknowledged them with a mock bow. “Remember, all our models will be signing calendars after the show tonight. They’re only twenty-five dollars each, and they make a great gift. The calendars, that is. Not the models.”
The audience laughed again, and the mayor grinned. “And now for our final pair of the evening. I give you Mr. December and Piper.”
Ivy held her breath. The curtains parted and Cade appeared. A collective gasp echoed through the crowd as he strutted down the runway almost naked, in the Santa hat and G-string he’d worn at the photo shoot. He held a tabby kitten, which snuggled against his broad chest.
“Now that’s what I call a Christmas present,” Mrs. Thorpe observed with an appreciative whistle.
“You can say that again,” Ivy muttered.
“What’s that, dear?” Mrs. Thorpe asked.
“Never mind.” Ivy ducked her head, a hot flush creeping up her cheeks.
“Well, don’t look now,” Mrs. Thorpe said, nudging her, “but he’s coming your way.”
Ivy’s head jerked up. Mrs. Thorpe was right. Cade was headed straight for her, his impossibly blue eyes shining with determination.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
This was not how their big reunion was supposed to happen. She had it all planned out. She was going to get him alone, in some secluded corner, and then she’d...
“Hey, Ivy,” he said over the music playing in the background.
His voice was a sexy rumble that sent her pulse pounding. He crouched down on the runway so that those damned baby blues were almost on her eye level.
“Hey,” she croaked. An inauspicious beginning.
“This is Piper, and he’s got something to ask you.”
He held the kitten out to her. She took it, rubbing between its ears. “Piper?”
The crowd had started to stir, a discontented murmur rolling through it like thunder before a storm. Even the mayor, standing helplessly behind Cade on the runway, looked confused. Only Mrs. Thorpe, sitting calmly next to her, appeared suspiciously unconcerned about the strange turn of events.