Bestselling Author Collection
Harlequin
March 2010
On Sale: February 23, 2010
Featuring: Ivy McKenzie; Ryder Calaway
352 pages ISBN: 0373389884 EAN: 9780373389889 Mass Market Paperback (reprint) Add to Wish List
The bleak winter landscape was as depressing to Ivy as the
past few months had been, but she felt a sense of excitement
as she watched the long country road. Ryder was on his way.
Guilt wrenched her heart as she gave in to the need to see
him, to listen to him, to love him. She'd always loved
Ryder, even as she feared him. It was her secret passion for
Ryder that had sent her running scared into a tragic
marriage that had ended six months ago in the death of her
husband. This would be the first time she'd seen Ryder since
the funeral, and she was torn between delight and
shame.
She'd lost weight, but that only made her more
attractive. She was tall and willowy, with long black hair
that waved around her shoulders, and a complexion like fresh
cream. Her eyes were as black as coal—a legacy from her
French grandmother—framed by lashes that were thick and long
and seductive. Ryder always said that she looked like a
painting he had in his living room—an interpretation of the
poem "The Highwayman," depicting Bess with her long black
hair. But Ryder was fanciful at times.
Ryder had been
at the funeral, down in Clay County, Georgia, near the banks
of the wide Chattahoochee River, a good half hour's drive
from Ivy's home in southwest Georgia. They'd buried Ben in
the cemetery of the little Baptist church he'd attended as a
child, under a canopy of huge live oak trees dripping with
gray Spanish moss. Ivy had stayed close beside her mother,
trying to ignore the tall, commanding presence across from
her. Ryder had been at the house as well, and she'd had to
pretend not to notice him, to pretend grief for a man who
had made her life a living hell.
Ryder couldn't know
that his very presence had been like a knife in her heart,
reminding her brutally that her secret love for him might
actually have led to Ben's death. It had hurt Ben that Ivy
couldn't respond to him in bed, and because of that, he
drank. The accident that killed him had resulted from one
drink too many, and Ivy felt responsible for it.
She
thought back to her teenage years, when Ryder had been the
whole world and she'd worshiped him. He'd never guessed how
she felt. That had been a blessing. She smiled, remembering
the tenderness he seemed to reserve especially for her. He
wasn't the world's most lovable man; he had a quick, biting
temper, but Ivy had never seen it.
"That's the first
time I've seen you smile in weeks," Jean McKenzie observed
dryly, staring at her daughter from the hall. "It does
improve your looks, darling."
"I know I'm a misery,"
Ivy confessed. She went over and hugged her mother, ruffling
the thick salt-and-pepper hair that framed eyes as dark as
her own. "But you're a doll, so don't we make the perfect
pair?"
"Ha!" Jean scoffed. "Pair, my eye. The very
last thing you need is to stay here for the rest of your
life." Her voice softened a little, and she frowned at the
faint panic in her daughter's eyes. "Listen, baby, it's been
almost six months. You have to start looking ahead. You need
a change. A job. A new direction. Ben wouldn't want this,"
she added meaningfully.
Ivy sighed and moved away
from the older woman. "Yes, I know. It's getting easier, as
time goes by."
"I know that, too. I lost your father
when you were only a toddler," Jean reminded her. "In a way,
I'm sorry you and Ben couldn't have had a child. It would
have made things easier for you, I think. It did for
me."
"Yes. It was a shame," Ivy murmured, but without
really agreeing. A child would have been a disaster. At
first, Ben had been a good friend, but he'd never been a
good lover. He'd been always in a hurry, impatient and
finally harsh because Ivy couldn't feel the passion for him
that he felt for her. She'd cheated him by marrying him, and
it was guilt more than any other emotion that had haunted
her since his death. She'd never felt passion. She wondered
sometimes during the last miserable weeks of her marriage if
she was even capable of it. She'd promised Ben that she'd go
to a therapist, although she couldn't imagine what one would
find. Her childhood had been uneventful, but happy. There
were no emotional scars. She simply didn't want Ben
physically, because she belonged, heart and soul, to another
man—a man who'd always thought of her as his sister's best
friend and nothing more. And what could any psychologist
have done about that?
Money had been another
ever-pressing problem. Ben had spent money recklessly when
he was drunk, and when she'd insisted on going to work
herself, to help out, there had been terrible arguments.
Finally she'd given up trying to offer her help and
reconciled herself to living in poverty. The months had gone
into years, and Ivy eventually withdrew completely into
herself and avoided contact with everyone, especially Ryder.
That had been necessary because of Ben's rage at seeing her
speaking to him once at her mother's. That had been, she
remembered, shivering, the first time he'd struck
her.
A month shy of her twenty-fourth birthday, a
piece of heavy equipment had fallen on him. A freak
accident, they'd called it, but only to spare her feelings.
She knew he'd been drunk when he'd gone to work. He'd
handled the equipment haphazardly and paid the ultimate
price. Just the morning of his death, he'd raged at her
about Ryder again. He'd accused her of being unfaithful to
him in her mind, of making his life hell. The words had
haunted her ever since.
She and her mother were
churchgoing people, and it was that bedrock of faith that
had helped Ivy get through the agony of guilt that had
followed the funeral. It was all that kept her going even
now.
"When did Ryder call?" Ivy asked
suddenly.
"About an hour ago," Jean said, yawning,
because it was early and she'd had only one cup of coffee.
It took her at least two to wake up, so she dragged back to
the coffeepot and filled a cup for Ivy as well.
"Will
he stay long?" she asked, her eyes haunted.
"Now, who
knows what Ryder Calaway's plans are, except for the
Almighty?" the older woman teased as she retied her loose
brown chenille bathrobe before she sat down at the dainty
little white kitchen table and creamed her coffee. "For all
that we've known him for years, he's still a
mystery."
"That's a fact." Ivy sat down, too, her
burgundy velour robe exquisitely hugging her figure,
highlighting her face. "This is an odd place for such a
high-powered businessman, isn't it?" she added
gently.
And it was. They lived in a small county in
rural southwest Georgia, in a heavily agricultural area near
Albany. Neighbors lived far apart, and even in town, the
lots were large. Agriculture was big business here, with
most of the small family farms a thing of the past, because
big farming combines grabbed them up as more and more
farmers went bankrupt. In fact, Ivy's parents had been a
farm family until her father's death. Jean still lived on
the farm, and she still had two enormous chicken houses. She
employed a family to pick up eggs and feed the thousands of
chicks until they were old enough for market. One of Ryder's
contacts bought chickens from her for his chicken processing
plant, and Jean made a comfortable living.
After she
had graduated from high school, Ivy had gone to work for
Ryder's construction company in Albany some years before and
had found that her friend Ben Trent was also employed there.
They'd been in school together, and as time passed, they
began to date. In no time at all they were married. Ivy
frowned, remembering Ryder's shock when he'd found out. He'd
congratulated her and Ben on their wedding, but he had been
reserved and distant, and just afterward he'd gone to Europe
for several months to set up some new company.
As
Jean had said, Ryder was mysterious. He owned acreage like
some women owned shoes, and judging by his clothing and his
private jet and the luxury car he drove, he was never short
of money. But it wasn't for his money that Ivy loved him. It
was because he was Ryder. He was as big as all outdoors,
with an indomitable personality, and he conquered things and
people with equal ease. She'd adored him since she was in
school, palling around with his younger sister. The Calaways
had always been well-off, not minding at all that the
McKenzies weren't. Ivy was always welcome in the big
redbrick house with its exquisite rose garden, just down the
road from the McKenzie's house. And Ryder never minded
including her when he took his sister to movies or
picnicking with whichever girl he was dating at the
time.
He'd gone off to college, and then to Albany to
take over a small construction company that had gone
bankrupt. He'd turned it into a mammoth conglomerate over
the years, with offices in Atlanta and New York, and it
seemed to keep him busy all the time. After his mother's
death, his father had returned to New York to live, and with
his sister's marriage to a Caribbean businessman, Ryder was
all alone in the big redbrick house. Perhaps he was lonely,
Ivy thought, and that was why he traveled so much. She
wondered why Ryder had never married. He was thirty-four
now, ten years her senior, and women loved him. Surely, with
his money and vibrant masculinity, he'd had
opportunities.
She stared into her coffee cup as Jean
got up to take bacon off the stove and check on hot biscuits
in the oven. She wondered what her own life would be like
from now on, if she could ever stop blaming herself for
failing Ben so tragically. She should never have married
him, feeling as she did about Ryder. She lived with the fear
that Ben didn't really mind dying. He'd wanted more than she
could give him, especially in bed. She was frigid, of
course, she reminded herself. Surely that had been part of
the problem with their marriage. She'd carry the scars
forever, along with her sense of failure. If she'd tried
harder, maybe Ben wouldn't have spent so much time with his
friends. Perhaps he wouldn't have drunk so much, or spent
most of their time together trying to hurt her. He'd gone
from a gentle, laughing boy to a vicious drunkard so
quickly….
"Isn't that Ryder's car? My eyes are
getting old," Jean muttered, pausing with a platter of bacon
to peer through the kitchen window.
Ivy got up with a
quick heartbeat, following her mother's gaze. "A black
Jaguar." She nodded. "Did he say why he was
coming?"
"Does he ever? Just to visit between world
trips, I guess, as usual." Jean laughed. "He hasn't been
home since the funeral."
"Well, I'm glad, whatever
the reason," Ivy confessed. "It's been a long time. Ryder
has a way of livening people up."
"And one of us
needs that," Jean murmured under her breath.
Ivy
wandered onto the porch in the concealing burgundy velour
robe she wore over her thick flannel gown, her hands
unconsciously fiddling with the knot that held it together,
her long hair wisping around her patrician features as she
watched the tall, dark-haired man untangle himself from the
elegant vehicle. As always, her heart leaped at the sight of
him, and she went warm all over with excitement. Only Ryder
had ever had that effect on her.
He stared up at the
porch, big and rough-looking, as formidable as a tank. He
looked like a man who owned a construction company, from his
craggy face to his huge hands. His face looked as if someone
had chiseled it out of concrete. He was all hard angles,
except for a body that would have made him a fortune in the
movies. He had to be six foot three, and all muscle. He
still liked to do construction work himself, frequently
spending a Saturday helping his men catch up on jobs when he
was in a town where they were working. His eyes were a
steely gray color, deep-set and piercing, and his mouth was
firm and faintly sensuous. He was wearing a charcoal
pinstriped suit, and it clung to his muscular frame like
silk.
"Not bad, honey," he drawled as he lifted his
arrogant chin to give her a good going-over with his eyes.
"But you could use a few pounds between your neck and your
knees." He had a voice like dark velvet, smooth and
silky.
Ivy felt her blood racing, as it always did
when Ryder was around. He generated a wild kind of
excitement that she'd felt ever since she'd known him and
had never fully understood. Her full lips smiled
involuntarily as he joined her on the porch, her black eyes
laughing up at him.
"Hello, Ryder," she
welcomed.
"Hello, yourself, tidbit," he murmured
dryly. It was a long way down, despite her above-average
height. He smiled faintly as his eyes made an intent and
disturbing survey of her face.
"Don't I even get a
kiss?" she asked, trying to call back the easy affection of
her youth, so that he wouldn't guess at the depth of her
lacerated feelings. "It's been months since I've seen
you."
His face seemed to tighten for an instant as he
responded to the gentle query. "I'm getting old, honey," he
confessed, reaching out to lift her by her waist with
careless ease so that her face was on a level with his lean,
dark one. "Before long, I'll forget how to kiss girls at
all."
"That'll be the day," she said with a smile.
She smoothed the shoulders of his jacket as he held her,
liking the rich feel of the fabric over all that imposing
muscle. He looked different close up. Not the carefree man
she remembered at all. He was a stranger these days, darkly
observant, intense and very, very male. He smelled of
expensive cologne and smoke, and his big fingers felt steely
biting into her soft waistline. She felt shaky down to her
toes in his grasp. "You look tired," she said
softly.
"I am tired." He looked down at her lips.
"You have a pretty mouth, did I ever tell you?" he asked
with a faint grin. "Come on, come on, I don't have all
day."
"Do I have to kiss you?" she asked, eyebrows
lifting innocently.
"You'd better," he murmured. "If
I kiss you, God knows where it might lead
us."
"Promises, promises, you heartless tease," she
chided. "Oh, Ryder, it's so good to see you!"
"You've
been mooning around, haven't you, pretty girl?" he asked
softly. "I'll have to take you in hand."