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“Because you’re strong?”
No. She wasn’t that strong. “Because I know what happens when a woman lets a man have power over her. I’ve done it before. My father. My husband. The results were disastrous, so I’m pretty much done with men.”
“Pretty much?”
She frowned. “I’m getting there. I want to be completely done, but I’m only human. I still feel desire.”
Noah groaned. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Why?”
His answer was to swoop in and kiss her. Just once…and once was not enough. Not nearly. Her lips stung, burned, ached. She barely resisted the urge to press against him and return the kiss. In fact, she was leaning into him when she caught herself. And saved herself by quickly picking up her oil wrench and slipping beneath the car.
Fiddling with the car, she fought to calm herself. “Now I’m done,” she said.
“With the oil change?”
“With men.”
“Good. I’m holding you to your word. I don’t trust myself not to touch you again, so I’m just going to have to trust you.”
Don’t trust me, Ivy thought. But hadn’t she just told him that she was strong?
Be strong. Be smart, she thought as she yanked on the wrench and removed the filter. I will, she promised. Because if she just stayed away from Noah, banked her paychecks and let the hourglass run out, nothing could happen. Right?
Chapter Five
NOAH WAS IN THE KITCHEN finishing breakfast with Lily when a car pulled up in front of the house. Mary Sue Morris, who ran the flower shop in town, emerged, wearing a slinky dress that this ranch had never seen the likes of before. Half a minute later she knocked on the door. Had she been one of the women who had criticized his parenting skills?
Marta opened it just as Noah moved away from the window and into the living room. “Mary Sue,” he said with a frown. “Problem?”
Her cheeks turned bright pink. “Oh. No. I’m just—I’m looking for Ivy. She was in town the other day, and…well, I need to get to know her better. Is she around?”
Yes. He’d seen her come out of her house a few minutes ago wearing those jeans that fit her long legs and curves perfectly, a white shirt, and a pale blue scarf at her throat that made him want to untie it with his teeth and kiss the tender skin that lay beneath. Darn it, he could not be this way about a woman who would leave, a woman who hated ranching and a woman who was afraid of his child. And yet he was aware of her. Constantly. The sensation of her in his arms, his lips on hers drove him crazy. Constantly.
He glared. Mary Sue smiled at him brightly. What in hell was that about?
“Ivy’s working.” His voice was gruff.
The woman shrugged. “That’s perfectly okay, Noah. It’s been so long since you and I talked, anyway.”
They had never really talked. And he certainly didn’t want to talk now, especially if she was going to bring the conversation around to Lily and his deficiencies as a father.
“It’s probably time for Ivy’s break,” he grumbled. “I’ll find her.”
“Oh…okay. I’ll walk with you.”
His frown didn’t seem to dissuade her, and as she ran to keep up with him, the darn woman kept talking about how much she’d always wanted to live on a ranch. She kept giggling, which made Noah walk faster.
Still, when he found Ivy cleaning out the horses’ stalls, the whole ordeal of listening to Mary Sue giggle was totally worth it. Ivy looked at her dirty clothes and at Mary Sue’s slinky dress. Her perfect model’s blue-violet eyes widened. Clearly she hadn’t been expecting this.
Noah performed the introductions—Ivy didn’t seem to have a clue who Mary Sue was—and then he leaned against a nearby railing to see what happened next. He remembered what Ivy had said about the women of the town not liking her, and despite her protestations that he shouldn’t interfere, he wasn’t leaving until he was sure that Mary Sue would behave herself.
“Well…here you are,” Mary Sue said.
“Here I am,” Ivy agreed, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Can I help you?” she asked the woman.
For a second Mary Sue looked flustered. “You’ve been away awhile. I thought we might get reacquainted.”
By rights Noah should be upset that Mary Sue was interrupting the work day, but his curiosity about why the woman was here when Ivy had intimated that no one liked her trumped his irritation.
“It’s break time. Go. Talk,” Noah said, even though work time hadn’t started that long ago.
His comment sent Ivy’s eyebrows arching, but it brought a look of relief to Mary Sue’s face. “Maybe we could talk at the house. It’s such a nice house,” she said, looking at Noah.
He glowered.
“No,” Ivy said quickly. “I don’t live there.”
Noah knew that Ivy’s objection had as much to do with Lily as it did with her status and the fact that she had never been inside the house. He also knew that Lily and Marta were playing behind the house.
“It’s okay, Ivy,” he said, and she got his meaning right away. She still didn’t look comfortable, but she went.
That was that, except…for the next few days women kept showing up at odd times. Noah considered barring them from the ranch during work hours, but something stopped him. In his mind, he saw Ivy prepared to stand outside until dawn throwing a rope so that she wouldn’t be a burden on the roundup. He remembered that her father had tied her to the ranch and…she had lost her child. She was alone in the world, while he still had his little girl. Trying to put himself in her place…losing Lily…he knew the pain would kill him. Nothing would stop it.
But maybe something new, some female friendships would help a little. So, much as he hated this flood of women invading his world, Noah made sure that Ivy’s breaks coincided with their visits, and if the visitor stayed a few minutes longer than usual, he didn’t say anything.
Ivy, however, protested. “Make sure you yell at me when fifteen minutes is up. I have work. You’re paying me,” she whispered when she passed him on her way to escort another woman to the house.
“What exactly do they talk about, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. The weather. The ranch, and…nothing.”
But there was an evasive, almost angry look in her eyes. Noah remembered how Mary Sue and the others smiled at him so brilliantly. All of them were, he realized, single. An unpleasant suspicion began to form, one that grew even more the day Sandra Penway came to visit.
“It’s good to see you, Noah.”
He glanced toward Ivy.
“And Ivy,” Sandra said, but she wasn’t smiling.
“Sandra.” Ivy nodded. She didn’t look any happier than Sandra.
“How is Lily? Where is that little cutie? She’s just a doll. She’s just an angel,” Sandra cooed. “Let’s go see her together, Noah.”
“She’s napping.”
“Oh.” Sandra looked perturbed. “Okay. Will she be up soon? I really want to see her. And, of course, she’ll want to see her daddy right away.” She held out her hand to Noah as if to lead him to the house. “You and I will just talk until your little girl wakes up.”
Suddenly Ivy banged her shovel onto the ground. “I apologize, Sandra, but Mr. Ballenger told me that we need to rebuild the floodgate that washed out after the rain. You know how it is. It’s a job that won’t wait.”
“You and Darrell and Brody can do it,” Sandra said.
Okay, that was just wrong, Noah thought. “I don’t ask my hands to do things that I won’t do,” he said. That was true, but there was only one floodgate affected. It wasn’t enough work for all four of them.
But Ivy obviously wanted the woman gone. And frankly, so did he. Noah stuck to his guns.
When Sandra had gone, he turned to Ivy. “Thanks.” But he had to know more. “You don’t like Sandra. Has she been mean to you?”
Ivy shrugged. “She doesn’t like me.”
“Why?”
She frowned.
“What?” he asked.
“Basically, I’d say she covets you and she thinks I’m in her way,” Ivy confessed.
Yeah, he kind of got the coveting part. “That’s pretty disgusting for her to mistreat you because she wants something.”
“Yes, but on the other hand, I’m not any better. I lied about the floodgate.”
He shook his head. “You kept me from having to play nice guy to someone who isn’t all that nice. So we’ll make your story true. Brody has plenty of other things he can do.”
“I didn’t mean to make extra work for you.”
But work felt curiously like…not work as he and Ivy dived into the messy job of rebuilding the floodgate. They hadn’t spoken much during these days when all the women had been visiting, so as he and Ivy worked in concert, he turned to her. “Are you okay with the women of the town now? Tight?” he asked, twisting his fingers together the way she had the day she had lied and told him that.
She shook her head. “They’re polite, but I’m not the reason they’re here. I’m just the conduit. They want to know about you. And…they ask a lot of questions about you and Lily. I don’t like that.”
“Because you’re uncomfortable talking about her.” He hoped he managed not to show how much that bothered him.
“No, it’s not that. The things they ask…they want to know what you and Lily do together, what you’re like with her, that kind of thing. I remember that day in the store. Some of them, even though they seem entranced by the thought of you peeling off your shirt, were concerned that you weren’t raising Lily right. I don’t like thinking that they might be spying on you. That’s not right. You’re a good father.”
“How do you know that?” She was never with him when he was with Lily. Her eyes were dark pools of pain when she discussed his daughter, and he knew that a lot of that was because Lily was so close to the age her Bo would have been had he lived.
“I hear it when you talk about her. I know it,” she said simply, staring into his eyes.
Noah stared right back. Emotion flooded through him, even though he didn’t want it to. She was the last woman he could be attracted to, and yet he was.
“You don’t know much about me,” he argued. “I was a skirt chaser when I was young. Then I met a woman who was spending a summer with her relatives in the next county. She was French, exotic, exciting and different from anyone I’d ever met. I fell hard, and her actions seemed to indicate that she loved me, too, but when summer was over, she left and married a well-connected diplomat with an Ivy League background. She just used me to hold boredom at bay for the summer, and she was amused that I had thought she would settle for a rancher.” A bit like the way the women of the town were using Ivy to get to him, Noah realized. He hated that.
“I got in a lot of trouble during the next year. Gillian was a hard lesson to learn, but I thought I’d mastered it. Then I met Pamala. She was funny and quirky and in love with ranching, I thought. So I bit. Two months after giving birth to Lily, she left. She went running off to the next lifestyle she fell in love with—acting—and she left Lily without a backward glance. So yes, I love my child. She comes before everything. And no, I’m not remarrying or letting anyone separate me from Lily. Now, maybe you know enough about me to say that I’m a good father, because some days I am.”
“And the other days?”
“I’m totally petrified, don’t have a clue what I’m doing and am scared to death that I’ll somehow damage her.”
Ivy reached out and touched his cheek. “You haven’t damaged her yet. I know damaged. She’s not even close. I don’t think you could manage it if you tried.”
Maybe not, he thought when they had both gone back to work, but he could manage to do something stupid with a woman again, and he was perilously close to doing that with Ivy. Thank goodness he was stopped cold by the thought that Lily would be hurt if he brought a woman into their lives and that woman left.
Because Ivy was going to leave. She might think she was through with modeling, but he saw the way she walked and looked. Even her cowgirl clothes had class. He’d found articles on the Internet about her adventures in Paris and Rome. When she was finally through mourning, that life would come calling again. So he couldn’t allow himself to be foolish.
A part of him wished he’d stayed firm and not hired her. But mostly he was glad he’d given her the job. While she was here, she made him smile; she made him think. And…she was so alone. At least this job would do one good thing for her by enabling her to pay off the taxes and sell her ranch.
Noah tried to pretend that he wouldn’t even notice once she was gone. He didn’t succeed. In fact, when Noah woke up in the middle of the night, Ivy was already on his mind. He’d been dreaming about her, and she hadn’t been wearing a whole lot in his dream. That couldn’t be good.
He sat up with a grunt, flipped on the light and rubbed his eyes as if to rub away the image of Ivy dressed in a short, tight white dress and boots, her blond hair floating around her face as she beckoned to him like a Siren calling him to both ecstasy and doom.
“Stop it, Ballenger,” he muttered. “Now.” If he was going to think about Ivy, he could at least avoid thinking about her in erotic ways. That would only complicate things.
Besides, now that he was awake and more in control of himself, what he kept remembering from this latest conversation with Ivy was how determinedly nonchalant she had been when she’d told him that the women in town didn’t like her, and how haunted she had looked when she’d told him that she knew Lily wasn’t damaged because…
He didn’t have to finish the thought. Ivy knew about damaged little girls. She’d been a virtual prisoner on her father’s ranch and she’d had no female friends. And yet, what he couldn’t escape was how polite she’d been to those women even though she suspected their motives. She hadn’t called them out. She’d accepted the fact that they had used her as an excuse to get to him. And she’d done it while holding her head high.
Those women were using her, dismissing her, and he knew all too well how it felt to be used and dismissed. He hated the fact that his child would suffer because a woman had decided to use him as a temporary toy, then had walked away. It still burned that he hadn’t been able to stop that from happening, that it still messed with his life and his child’s life.
Using people…the very subject made him fume, but this situation with Ivy was different from his own. This time he was forewarned. Maybe he could stop it from happening.
Stay out of Ivy’s business, Ballenger, he told himself.
But thirty minutes later he was still raging about the fact that he had played a part in this scenario, even if it hadn’t been by choice. It was his fault that those women were using Ivy.
“Dammit,” he muttered. Ivy had gone through enough. She was more alone than any person on the ranch. He and Lily and Marta had each other. Darrell and Brody had friends. Ivy had no one. She’d grown up in this town having no one. And now when she’d lost so much already…she didn’t deserve to be treated as if she didn’t even matter. He knew how that could mangle a person’s pride, and he wouldn’t wish that kind of humiliation on another person.
It made him want to lash out, but Ivy hadn’t done that. She’d patiently listened to the women as if she didn’t know what they were up to. She’d behaved much better than they had.
Ivy, you could teach those women a thing or two, he thought. And just like that, an idea came to him. A way to turn the tables and give Ivy the upper hand in a very public way, maybe even make up for some of the distress she must have been feeling these past few days. He couldn’t go back and rewrite his own history. He had to live with his failures, but maybe he could rewrite this situation. It was a good idea or…maybe not. It was three in the morning. By tomorrow he might decide it was the dumbest idea in the world.
Ivy was up at the house three days later wondering why Marta had asked her to come there. She fidgeted with the pretty braided belt she’d worn. The gold-and-teal scarf at her throat felt a bit too tight. Going to the house still made her uncomfortable, and she hoped she wasn’t being called because another woman had shown up. How many single women could there be in a town the size of Tallula? Ivy didn’t know, but it sure seemed as if all of them wanted Noah. She braced herself for another woman trying to use her as a front.
But only Marta was there. “I just need a little help with this dishwasher, and Noah says that you’re very good at fixing things,” Marta said.
In the distance Ivy could hear Lily’s whispery little singing. She blinked.
“She’s a quiet child,” Marta said. “She’ll play by herself for hours. You don’t have to worry about her.”
Ivy knew Marta meant that she didn’t have to worry about Lily coming out of her room, but what Ivy suddenly worried about was the other—the fact that Lily played alone for so long that she never met other children.
Like me, Ivy thought, then immediately quashed the thought. It wasn’t the same. Noah loved Lily. Ivy’s father hadn’t loved anything but his ranch. Still, the soft singing tore at Ivy’s heart.
She was almost glad when the doorbell rang, but she kept working. Marta called out to her, and, resigned, Ivy came out from under the sink. She washed her hands, then turned to see a plain, pleasant-faced woman looking at her.
“I need help,” the woman said. “Noah said you might help me.”
O-kay, this is different.
