“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,
