The Accidental Engagement (22 page)

But she loved him. She told him so in his room the night before. He could salvage this, he knew he could. He would tell Brunelli everything and cancel this sham of a wedding. He would drop down on his knees and beg, if that’s what it took to get her forgiveness.

The villa was unusually quiet when he entered. He couldn’t even hear the usual patter of children’s feet that seemed to constantly fill the home. He went from room to room looking for Ivy—looking for
anyone
.

When finally he reached the back veranda, he found Brunelli and Jack sipping on wine, deep in conversation. They both looked up in mild surprise when he burst in on them.

“I’m calling off the wedding.”

The two men looked at one another and burst out laughing. Daniel fumed. He had just put an end to the deal they’d been negotiating for weeks and they were laughing? “Did you hear me? The wedding is off. If that means you want to take your business elsewhere, than that’s what you’ll have to do.”

Brunelli threw his hands up in mock surrender while Jack struggled to stop laughing.

“The wedding is already off, Danny, you can stop yelling.”

“And the merger has been signed. Come, join us for a celebratory drink,” Brunelli said.

Daniel gaped at them, his brain trying to keep up with the sudden turn of events. “But where—how?”

Jack patted the seat beside him while Brunelli poured another glass. “Have a seat, old man, and we’ll tell you everything.”

He shook his head. First thing’s first. “Where’s Ivy? I need to talk to her.”

At that, Jack and Brunelli stopped laughing. Jack gave his friend a look of pity. “She’s gone, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean she’s gone?”

“I mean, she’s flying over the Atlantic as we speak. Once we canceled the wedding, she decided she didn’t want to stick around. I think she needed to be with family for a while. She booked the next flight out of here.”

There was a heavy silence as both men glared up at Daniel in undisguised judgment. Goddammit. They knew about him and Ivy.

He dropped down into the seat beside Jack and dropped his head into his hands. “Is she all right?” his voice came out muffled from behind his hands.

“She is young and she is strong,” Brunelli said. “She will recover.”

Daniel felt a stab of pain. He had hurt her. He had done what he’d sworn not to do—he’d hurt the one he loved. He was an idiot.

“I’m an idiot.” There was a silence that screamed of agreement amongst the other two men.

Brunelli allowed Daniel approximately one minute to wallow in his guilt and then he banged on the table with a makeshift gavel. “All right, gentleman, time to get down to business. How is Daniel going to win her back?”

Daniel sat up straight, with new purpose. If there was one thing he was good at it was coming up with a plan. He had ruined the best thing that ever happened to him with a plan, he could sure as hell fix it with one, too.

And so the three men, newly minted partners, spent the rest of the evening plotting and planning to pull off the comeback of the century.

The flight home felt like an eternity. Trapped in a public setting with nothing to do but obsess over every ugly word or every tender kiss, it was a miracle she arrived in Ohio with her sanity intact.

Ivy showed up on her parents’ doorstep with tears streaming down her cheeks and a suitcase in her hand. Despite the fact that she was jet lagged and travel weary, she told them everything the moment she arrived. They were angry, as she’d expected. But it was the hurt in their eyes when they realized the depth of the lies she’d told that made her heart ache. She never wanted to see that look again. She’d destroyed their trust and now it was up to her to rebuild it.

Her parents had put all that aside out of concern. They knew their daughter well—she didn’t have to tell them that she was heartbroken, it was written all over her face. Her mother had made her a cup of tea as she sobbed her way through the whole messy story.

The next morning, Ivy burrowed under the quilt that her grandmother made in the bed where she’d slept for most of her life. She could hear her parents bustling about in the kitchen, making coffee, and getting breakfast started. She should go down and help, but the coward that she was, she didn’t want to go down and face them.

There was a knock on her bedroom door. “Ivy? Are you awake?”

“Go away, Holly.”

The door opened a crack as Holly ignored her. She poked her head into the room. “I come bearing tea and chocolate.”

Ivy threw down the covers so she could see her sister. She was in fact, holding a tray filled with teacups and what looked to be chocolate muffins. She scowled. “Fine, but I don’t want to talk, I just want the chocolate.”

“Fair enough.”

Ivy nibbled at the muffin but her stomach churned in protest. If she couldn’t even muster up a proper appetite for chocolate, the situation was dire indeed.

“I suppose Mom and Dad filled you in?”

“To the fact that you’re a big fat liar? Yeah, they filled me in.”

Ivy breathed a sigh of relief. If her sister could joke about it, then they would be okay.

Holly pointed an accusatory finger in her face. “Oh no you don’t. Don’t go thinking you’re off the hook just because you’re all pitiful and sad. Once you cheer up a bit, you’re going to have a lot of groveling to do.”

“Understood.”

“Okay then.” Holly watched her picking at the muffin and sighed. “You really are pitiful, do you know that?”

Ivy’s lower lip jutted out as she fought back a heaving sob. “I know.”

Holly joined her on the bed and wrapped her arms around her like she used to do doing thunderstorms. “I really am sorry that I lied to you, Holly,” Ivy said between hiccupping sobs.

Holly patted her back. “I know, sis. You can start to make it up to me by telling me everything—I mean the unedited story. I want to hear all the stuff you left out in the parental version.”

And so Ivy let it all out, starting from the very beginning when Jack had chosen to hide from an angry husband behind her hostess stand and ending with Angelo dropping her off at the airport.

“I’m pretty sure I scared the kid off of women for life,” Ivy said while wiping her nose. “Poor Angelo looked like a deer in headlights when I started sobbing in the car.”

“Oh, honey.” Holly pulled her in for a hug and rested her chin on Ivy’s head. “Sounds like you fell hard for this guy.”

“I thought—I thought I
loved
him.” She pushed herself away so she could look at her sister. “I thought I knew him. I thought he felt the same way. I thought—I thought...” She trailed off and fell back against the pillows. “Oh, how could I have gotten it so wrong? I feel like an idiot.”

“You are not the idiot. He is. Or else he’s a damn good actor.”

Ivy shrugged. She didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Holly persisted, “You’ve always been a good judge of character. And you’re the last person in the world who would fall for some guy just because you’ve got the hots for him.”

Ivy sniffed. “I guess.”

“Well, I know it for a fact.” She faced Ivy with folded arms and a grim stare. “I am giving you approximately five more minutes to wallow in your little pity party and then I am dragging you out of bed and into the sunshine. Got it?”

Ivy knew better than to argue with her sister when she got that look. She nodded meekly. “Got it.”

Ten minutes later, Ivy dug out weeds in her parents’ garden. It was one of many chores her mother had lined up as punishment for the lies.

It actually felt good to be doing manual labor. Getting her hands dirty and working up a sweat at least managed to distract her from memories of Daniel and the decisions she couldn’t avoid much longer. Sooner or later she would have to decide what to do next. She couldn’t live with her parents forever but the thought of returning to New York was more than she could handle. She focused on the dirt and weeds in front of her and for a brief moment, everything else fell to the wayside.

Her time in Italy almost seemed like a bad dream when her hands were firmly planted in her family’s land. She tried not to dwell on the fact that the land would almost certainly have to be sold off now that she’d failed her parents—now that she’d failed
everyone
. Her parents were too proud to accept charity from Jack, even if he was nice enough to offer. And if she couldn’t go back to her old job, she would have to move back in with them and be an even bigger burden. Good Lord, she’d made a mess of every area of her life.
That’s what happens when you make a deal with the devil
.

Ivy jabbed at the dirt with a spade. At this rate she would probably kill as many flowers as weeds. More guilt gnawed at her as she now ruined her mother’s garden as well as her life. She sat back and wiped a hand across her sweaty brow.

What she needed was a plan. A strategy. That was what Daniel would do, wasn’t it? It’s probably what he’s doing right now, she thought. Her lips compressed and her eyes narrowed into a glare as she clawed at the earth with her bare hands. Daniel and his strategies, she fumed. She could just see him plotting away in his room at the villa. He was his generation’s Machiavelli.

But no, he had gotten what he’d wanted, she reminded herself. The merger was signed—no thanks to her. So everyone got what they wanted—Daniel, Jack, Brunelli—she was the only one who had walked away empty-handed. So maybe Daniel wasn’t the idiot here. Maybe
she
was the one who needed to have her brain checked.

“Ivy!” Her mom was calling from the back porch. When Ivy glanced up her mother waved the house phone above her head. “Phone for you, dear.”

Daniel.
Her heart leapt in her chest. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was making an attempt to be a little brighter these days. Of course it wasn’t Daniel. Why on earth would he call her? He’d gotten what he’d wanted and now she was neatly out of his life, without a payout and without a job. He could move on to his next victim scot-free.

Ivy made her way to the house slowly. Her heart was still racing. Despite all the logic that her brain was spewing there was a little part of her—okay, a big part of her—that was praying fervently that it was Daniel on the line. Ivy groaned aloud. She really
was
an idiot. And a glutton for punishment to boot. Her mother gave her an encouraging smile when she handed her the phone.

“Hello?”

“Ivy, thank God. I’ve been trying to track you down all morning.”

“Hey Jack.”

“Why isn’t your cell on?”

She shrugged, momentarily forgetting he couldn’t see her. “I don’t know. I guess the battery died.” Some distant part of her brain was aware that her voice was unusually lethargic and was trying to snap her out of whatever depressed funk she’d slipped into but her heart and body were not up to the challenge. She let herself slide down against the kitchen wall and cradled the phone against her cheek.

“What do you want, Jack?”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”

“Well, I guess that’s why Brunelli never bought us as a couple, huh?”

“Nah, it wasn’t our acting that gave us away. It was you and Danny.”

Ivy’s chin snapped up at the mention of his name. There was a short silence as Ivy debated whether or not she should ask about him. No. She didn’t want to hear about him. She’d clearly developed some sort of strange obsession with the man. Cold turkey was best.

“So what’s up, Jack?”

“I wanted to let you know...” Jack trailed off and cleared his throat. Ivy was intrigued; she didn’t think she’d ever heard Jack at a loss for words.

“What is it?”

“I want you to know that you’ll always have a job with EverTech. Brunelli and I—we talked it over and you’ve been so valuable, such a team player. I just wanted you to know that.”

Ivy swallowed a thick lump at the unexpected kindness. “Thanks Jack, I appreciate it, I really do.”

“But?”

“But I can’t go to work for Daniel. I just can’t.”

“Ivy, he won’t be part of the day-to-day operations. He’s already moving on to his next investment—”

“Please, Jack....”

There was a heavy silence. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”

Ivy studied the dirt beneath her fingernails as she pondered what to say to this man who had become such a great friend in such a short period of time.

“Listen, Ivy, Brunelli and I want you to have the money you were promised.” She tried to cut him off but he barreled ahead. “You earned every penny. Without you, this deal would never have happened. Besides, it’s not for you, right? It’s for your family. Don’t make your family pay—”

“For my mistakes?” she finished. She knew he had a point but pride warred with practicality.

“I didn’t say that.”

She heaved a sigh. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

“I guess that’s all I can ask for. And Ivy, about Daniel...maybe you should—”

She cut him off, her heart hammering at the mention of his name. “I don’t want to talk about him, Jack. I mean it.”

She heard a familiar voice in the background and Jack stifled a laugh.

“Was that Brunelli?” she asked. “What did he say?”

“He said you’re welcome to use his villa for your wedding whenever you want.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. Those two certainly had a droll sense of humor. “Tell him thanks a lot. Maybe I’ll take him up on that in a decade or so.”

* * * *

Daniel drove through the winding back roads of Ivy’s hometown in a state of panic. For the first time in his life he hadn’t been able to come up with a plan. He needed to win over the woman he’d pushed away—the love of his life—and he had no idea how he was going to go about it.

What he needed was a grand gesture—something to prove that he was the man for her. That he deserved her. But that was the problem. He didn’t deserve her. They both knew it. He didn’t deserve her trust or her love.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he contemplated turning the car around and heading back to the airport for the millionth time since he set out that morning. Glancing down at the address written on an envelope, he cursed again. He felt like he’d been driving around in circles for hours.