Page 30 of Catch Me (Townsend Legacy #4)

A ndreas

I walk past my doorman, nodding, feeling fucking spent but uneasy.

Everything on set went perfectly today. I knew it in my bones that I nailed the scene. But I haven’t seen Ivy all day aside from the moment right before filming started.

Though it’s past midnight, my heart aches to see her, to hold her while I drift off to sleep.

“Mr. Townsend,” the night security greets with a smile as if it were nine in the morning instead of the middle of the night.

“Chris,” I say, knowing all of the security on staff by their first name.

“There’s a gift waiting for you in your condo,” he tells me, a tinge of worry in his eyes.

“It was dropped off by Ms. Sterling. Since you granted full access to her even when you’re not home, she was sent up right away, but told the front desk that she left you something when she came down less than a half an hour later. I hope …”

He trails off when I hold my hand up.

“What time was this?”

“About seven o’clock. I didn’t come in until eleven, but Clarke was the officer on staff at that time, and he left timestamps in our shared notes.”

He hesitates.

“If, if, if that’s a problem we can bring in additional security to search your apartment and revoke?—”

“It’s not an issue at all,” I tell him. “I’m going up now.”

What I don’t tell Chris is that there is an issue. The problem isn’t that Ivy was here without me. It’s that she left.

I’m tempted to race up the stairs, but my legs feel like lead at this point. So I wait for the damn elevator.

I enter my front door only to come to a complete stop two steps in. My lips twitch as I stare at the aluminum balloons that read “Congratulations” and “Job Well Done” respectively. At the end of the balloon strings, sitting in the middle of my coffee table, is a cake box.

Moving closer, I read the writing on the cake through the plastic window.

“We knew you would kill it!” it reads.

Next to the cake is a separate box, this one flatter. A shirt box. I open the gift to find a note laying on top of tissue paper. I lift the note first and just take in the feminine swirliness of the cursive letters.

Andreas,

I tried not to watch but I couldn’t help it. You were amazing today. Since it’s apparently bad luck to say what I really think, I wanted to give you something as a congratulations. The cake is carrot, so there are some vegetables in it *winky face*.

The moment I saw this shirt in the vintage store, I thought of you. I made some alterations to make it more your style. Hope you like it.

Ivy

I pass my finger over Ivy’s writing one more time, committing her handwriting to memory before placing the note on the table. Beneath the tissue paper is a vintage dark green, short-sleeve shirt with an extended tan color. The color contrast elevates the elegance of the shirt.

Right away I know this shirt would look amazing on me with a pair of dark black slacks or jeans, depending if I wanted to dress it up or down.

Before I can make heads or tails of anything, my phone is in my hand and the phone on the other end of my call is ringing.

“Hello?”

Her groggy voice has a trace of guilt coursing through me. But my selfishness wins out.

“There’s something missing,” I say.

A beat of silence on the other end.

“Andreas?”

Fuck, I love it when she says my name. No one has ever said my name the way she has. Or if they did, I didn’t care nearly as much.

“There’s something missing,” I repeat.

“What? I left everything there?—”

“You.”

Ivy goes silent.

“Spencer can be there in ten minutes to pick you up.”

“It’s late,” Ivy says just above a whisper.

My cock hardens. I know for a fucking fact she doesn’t even know how sensual her voice sounds like this.

“Ivy, I want you in my bed tonight.”

“You have to work tomorrow.”

“Not until tomorrow afternoon,” I tell her.

If she’s not willing to get out of bed, I will be the one to go to her.

“I’m a selfish son of a bitch for asking you to get up out of your bed to come to mine, but, Ivy, I need you.”

She pushes out a breath, and I picture her biting her bottom lip.

“I’ll come.”

Damn straight you will.

“I’ll see you soon.”

It wasn’t soon enough.

Even with the lighter traffic due to the time it still took nearly a half an hour between hanging up the phone and for Ivy to appear at my door.

She gasps and then lets out a small laugh when I pull her body into me and cover her lips with mine.

“What was that for?” she asks, when we pull apart.

Wordlessly, I glance over my shoulder toward the gifts still sitting on my coffee table before turning back to her.

“Thank you.”

Ivy cups the side of my face. Her eyes grow heavy with an emotion that has my chest swelling.

“You left me speechless today. Not just me,” she adds. “The entire crew couldn’t stop talking about how you gave them chills during that scene.”

Her words buoy me. The pride in her eyes wraps itself around the core of who I am.

After she kicks off her shoes and places them by the door, I guide Ivy with one arm around her waist to the couch. I sit first, bringing her down on my lap because I don’t want any space between the two of us.

I’ve become a clingy motherfucker apparently.

“You’ve had a long day,” she says, running her hand down my cheek.

“I have.” I kiss the inside of her palm.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Not anymore,” I answer while looking directly into her eyes.

She squirms in my lap, making me groan.

“The shirt is perfect,” I say.

“Do you like it? I thought the color would look fantastic on you and the cut was perfect. The collar needed some alterations, but I think it came together.”

“You sewed a new collar?”

She nods. “I had help from Lillian since she has way more seamstress experience than me. It was like …” She trails off.

I lightly squeeze her arm, feeling her reluctance. “Like what?”

She glances toward the shirt, then back at me. “When I was a little girl, my aunt was the first person who taught me to sew. She was so good.”

I remember the aunt that inspired her love of fashion.

“What was her name?” I ask.

“Gloria. Aunt Gloria. She was my dad’s younger sister.” She chuckles. “She was the first one who put a Vogue, Ebony, or Jet magazine in my hands and told me that fashion tells a story.”

“Your collection,” I say.

Ivy nods. “She gave me the first few magazines, but I started collecting more after she died. I think it helped me feel connected to her.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Fourteen. One day I came home from school and there was a hospital bed set up in the spare bedroom. Aunt Gloria was in it, looking so thin and frail. She waited as long as she could before even telling my parents she was sick.

“By the time she told my dad, the cancer had spread to almost all of her major organs.” Ivy pushes out a shaky breath.

“I’m sure that was difficult to experience.”

“It wasn’t easy.” She chuckles but it lacks humor.

“The hardest part was that I felt like I was the one most impacted in our household. A week after she died, my dad had her belongings packed up and donated to charity. No one even spoke of her.

“She was his younger sister, but it was almost as if she didn’t exist.”

Ivy’s forehead wrinkles in confusion.

“I didn’t mean to make this conversation all about me. Especially not when it’s your night.”

I turn her to face me so that she straddles me.

“There’s literally nothing more that I want to hear about than you. I want to know everything about you,” I confess.

She rolls her eyes, but a smirk plays on her lips.

“I’m not that interesting. What I want to know is if you ate dinner? You worked super late, did they have dinner catered?”

“They did, and yes, I ate. Did you eat?” I turn the tables.

“Of course. It’s late, so I doubt you tried the cake. I got carrot cake because I had an inkling that it might be something you’d like.”

My smile widens. “Because of the carrots?” I lift an eyebrow.

The humor is back in her laughter. “Yes. No one eats as many vegetables as you. I took a guess that the best type of sweet treat for you would be something with a vegetable in the name.”

“You’re one hell of a guess. Carrot cake happens to be my favorite,” I tell her honestly.

“Really? My gut was right?”

I pull her in for a quick kiss. “Your instincts are better than you think.”

Something passes through Ivy’s eyes before she blinks and it’s gone. Whatever it was, I don’t like it, though. She doesn’t give me time to ask about it before she’s out of my lap.

“Since you’re obviously not going to take my advice to go to sleep anytime soon, how about a slice of cake to celebrate your big win today?”

She makes her way into the kitchen, and I watch her, moving around, knowing where everything is. The satisfaction that I’d lacked earlier settles over me.

“Although you usually don’t eat this late, today’s an exception.”

“I’ve definitely eaten this late,” I tell her, giving her a mischievous stare.

Ivy bursts out laughing, which is what I was aiming for.

She slices a piece of cake and then hands it to me. That won’t do.

A small growl of protest comes out when I pull her back onto my lap instead of letting her cut a second piece. I grab the plate and fork and break off a piece of cake before holding it up to her mouth.

“You should have the first bite. It’s your celebration cake.”

“Open.”

She glares but parts her lips, allowing me to feed her. My eyes remain glued to her lips as I feed her and then slowly pull the fork from her mouth.

“Mm.” She lets out a small moan. “Carrot cake is probably only my sixth or seventh favorite type of cake, but this one is pretty good.”

I chuckle. “You have your cake preferences ranked?”

She gives me a curious look. “Doesn’t everyone?” Then she shakes her head. “Of course, Mr. Greens and Sprouts wouldn’t have a ranking of favorite desserts.”

“Mr. what?”

I put the plate on the table and instantly go for her ribs. Just as I suspected, Ivy is ticklish.

Laughter bubbles up her chest as I tackle her to the couch.

“Take it back,” I demand over her guffaws.

“Absolutely not …” she heaves. “You earned that nickname.”

I increase my tickle attack, which makes her shrieks turn uproarious.

“Damn, I love the sound of your laughter.”

It’s not until Ivy’s laugh softens and her eyes turn more serious that I realize I’ve spoken my thoughts out loud.

“I thought about you today,” I say into the silence.

She sits up, looking at me. “What?”

“During that scene. I saw you out of the corner of my eyes and my thoughts switched. One of the first acting tricks I learned for a sad scene was to imagine losing someone I cared for deeply.

“For a while I didn’t need to imagine. When I was younger, my mom had cancer, so at first I would imagine losing her. Then I used Thiers.”

“Your twin,” she says.

I nod.

I don’t go into what happened to my brother, the incident that changed him. But I know the emotion shows up in my eyes.

“Today it wasn’t either one of those scenarios.” The truth is I haven’t had to use that trick in a while. I’ve become better at stepping into my imaginary character’s shoes.

“I’ve worked with Victor Rivez on my method acting for the past half a decade.

Today, though, I didn’t need that technique either.

I just thought of you,” I admit. “I thought what if this were real and I were losing everything. Then I saw your face, and the idea of losing you sent me into a spiral. That was the emotion I used to act out that scene.”

Ivy blinks, her lips parting but no words come out.

“I love you, Ivy,” I admit. “You’re probably thinking it’s way too soon for me to have these feelings and say all of this to you, but … well, the men in my family fall fast and we fall hard, Ivy.”

It’s so damn true that words are a poor substitute for emotions because what I’ve just told Ivy doesn’t express half of what I’m feeling.

“Are you sure?” she asks, her words barely audible.

“As sure as you’re sitting on my lap right now,” I declare.

Her lips slowly part. “I think I love you, too,” she says, this time it is a whisper.

But it’s enough for me.

She pushes out a heavy breath. “But it scares the hell out of me,” she admits.

“What are you afraid of?”

“That I’ll fail yet again,” she answers. “That somehow I’ll stumble and fall, and this time I won’t be able to get up.”

I cup her face.

“That’s easy, baby,” I tell her. “If you fall, I’ll catch you.”

With that, I cover her lips with mine again.