Page 3 of Welcome Home to Ivy Falls (Ivy Falls #3)

FORD

A Shock To The System

I pushed away the knot in my gut and headed in the direction of the apartment I’d rented off the square.

It was a newly renovated space with a small bedroom and even tinier kitchen, which was great because I didn’t own much.

That was the exact reason my mother had bought me the ridiculous shoes.

Insisted I wear them today for our family brunch.

The thick summer heat beat down on my head, making the scent of the vanilla latte soaked into my pants chokingly pungent. A vision of the woman from the bookstore filled my head. That itch at the back of my brain returned, insisting I knew her, but I still couldn’t figure it out.

I crossed the street, passed the town’s only stoplight, and kept walking. The doughy smell of fresh bread floated out of the nearby bakery. At a place called the Dairy Dip, kids sat at metal tables licking at the ice cream streaking down their cones.

After traveling much of the world, Ivy Falls was a shock to the system. I was used to the frenzy of people, honking horns and food vendors shouting about whatever they were cooking that day. This place had a calm rhythm that was nice. Peaceful.

My phone went off again. How many times was my mother going to call?

When the ringing stopped it turned to buzzing. She’d moved on to texts.

I let out an annoyed breath and started scrolling. None of it surprised me.

Where are you?

Why aren’t you answering your phone?

Leaving brunch without saying goodbye was rude. I taught you better

than that, Crawford!

Her ranting continued on text after text, and I shoved the phone into my soggy pocket without answering.

This was the reason I’d stayed away from Tennessee for so long. My mother meant well, but she didn’t understand a damn thing about me.

Unlike my older brother, Grayden, I was not made for the old-money society life that came with growing up in the small community of Harpeth Manor.

It was ten miles from Nashville, but it might as well have been Jupiter with the way people behaved like their existence was the only thing that mattered.

My family adored the country-club lifestyle, but I had zero interest in spending my days comparing stock tips, playing golf and dating the latest debutante back from law school.

Beads of perspiration trickled down my neck, and it reminded me of my time spent in Africa.

How the heat and humidity clung to me like a second skin.

The way the hazy tangerine sun melted into the horizon at dusk.

Each night the subtle lap of waves from the Atlantic lulling me to sleep.

My friend, Kip, called it nature’s own version of white noise.

Senegal. Damn, I missed it. The staff on the floating hospital ship, Humanity of the Seas , was my second family. The clinic shifts were long and chaotic, but I’d never felt more invigorated or useful as a physician.

On my first day, the medical staff threw me into the deep end.

By the time I got into a groove weeks later, I was seeing dozens of patients, charting and quickly clicking with the nurses and surgical staff.

It wasn’t long before I was making connections with the ship’s crew and the entire community on board.

Over my four years on the ship, I’d only left twice.

Once was to do a stint with Doctors in Service working in a field hospital.

The other was to return home for a brief visit.

That time away had taught me quickly that my place was on the Humanity of the Seas .

My last stint was for eighteen months and, when it was close to ending, I made my mother a deal: I’d return to Tennessee for six months.

While I was gone, I’d hoped my parents would finally accept the path I’d chosen.

Sadly, I’d been back less than three weeks now and nothing had changed.

My dad continued to lecture me about my obligations to my legacy in Harpeth Manor and goading me every chance he got about the small salary I made.

My mother wasn’t much better, taking every opportunity to set me up, against my will, with any girl she deemed appropriate to be my future wife.

Four years and I was still fighting the same fucking battles with them. The hope that they’d understand why the work I was doing was so important faded more with every passing day.

My strides grew longer as I walked by pastel-colored buildings housing a candle shop and a music store.

Red and purple flowers spilled out of moss-covered baskets anchored to light poles along the small, narrow streets.

This place was idyllic compared to the cold and colorless world of Harpeth Manor.

At the end of the block, I pushed through an ivy-shrouded gate that led to a small wooden staircase.

Once I reached the top, I walked through a door into a hidden hallway.

The day Diego from Gold Star Properties showed me the place, I rented it on the spot.

It was quiet and secluded. Everything I wanted after living in my parents’ house for two weeks too long.

What struck me first about the apartment was the exposed brick and piping overhead. The warm yellow light that spilled into the space thanks to a massive sliding glass door. It was both rustic and homey, which was a big change from the eight-thousand-square-foot monstrosity I’d grown up in.

I headed for the bathroom and turned on the shower. As I peeled off my coffee-stained shirt and blazer, I laughed. Getting a latte bath had not been on the agenda for today, especially when that bath came from the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

Piper , the bright yellow stitching on her apron said. Maybe we’d met in Nashville? Or in Harpeth Manor? My mind kept spinning but I still couldn’t place her.

I stepped into the shower, scrubbing the sugar and coffee off my body.

The knots in my neck were back. My stress levels always skyrocketed the minute I came back to Tennessee.

The pressure from my parents to fit into their perfect mold was like a bad headache always lurking in the back of my mind.

When I told them my plans for the summer, that I’d be living forty-five minutes away from Harpeth Manor, their faces morphed into their regular masks of disappointment.

When were they going to learn I wasn’t the golden boy they could brag about to all their friends?

After toweling off and throwing on some shorts, I slid on my glasses and moved to the caramel-brown couch that came with the apartment.

Once my laptop was open, I scrolled for a few minutes until a new email appeared.

The subject line made my heart race. The contract for my next stint on the Humanity of the Seas was pretty much all boilerplate.

It listed out the typical items: my role as a staff physician, date of arrival and how I’d board the ship in Senegal’s capital city of Dakar.

I’d promised my parents I’d come back to Tennessee, I just didn’t tell them I wouldn’t be staying for the full six months.

My phone buzzed once more, this time a different number than my mother’s.

‘Hello, Gray,’ I answered.

‘Ford, you have to call Mom back. She’s absolutely blowing up my phone over today.’

‘Sorry. I needed some time to calm down after she totally blindsided me.’

‘Come on, Missy Flynn-Boyd is a cutie. Could it have hurt to trade some small talk at brunch? Have a mimosa or two with her?’

‘Gray,’ I sighed, tugging my hand through my wet hair. ‘It was wrong to take off, and I’m sorry, but Mom got me to the country club under false pretenses. She swore it was going to be family only, and then Missy shows up. She’s nice and all, but that wasn’t why I agreed to brunch.’

‘Believing Mom was your first mistake. Claudia Cannon Beloit Foster always has a plan.’

I groaned. ‘Why do she and Dad refuse to listen to me?’

‘Because they think they know better than you.’

‘In this case, they don’t. I mean, hell, I did what they asked for a while. I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad and medical school. I even did my residency a few miles away at Meharry. What else do they want from me?’

‘They want you to buy into a practice here. Get married and have babies so you’ll be chained to Harpeth Manor for life.’

‘What about you? Why isn’t she harassing your ass? You’re thirty-five.’

‘Mom’s given up on me. I’ve already told her I don’t want to get married. That I’m going to work at the bank, play golf on the weekends, and then retire to Lake Como and never come back to Tennessee. You’re her last hope, Obi-Ford Kenobi,’ he chuckled.

‘Not funny, Gray.’

An uneasy breath filtered through the phone. ‘Listen, I get it. Mom can be overbearing sometimes, but she means well. The accident last year shook her up, and she is unflinchingly focused on being a grandmother one day soon.’

‘That’s not happening. She needs to set her sights back on you.’

‘Nope. I enjoy being a bachelor way too much.’ The phone went muffled and then he said, ‘Gotta go. My tee time is up.’ He paused. ‘Let her cool off a bit and then call her, okay?’

I grumbled an agreement and let him go.

A knot tightened in the center of my chest. We’d been in port along the coast of Senegal when I was notified that my mother was in a car accident.

I stayed in contact with my dad, who raged about some idiot texting and running a red light, and the surgeries needed to fix her shattered femur, tibia and fibula.

Once it was over, Mom spent a couple of months recuperating.

Before the incident, she’d been determined to get me back to Tennessee.

After, she was like a dog focused on a steak sitting at the edge of a kitchen table.

Her sights never veered from her one goal: getting me home for good.

It was the only reason why I’d agreed to come home for six months.

I glanced at the sticky shoes sitting next to the couch.

Since I was a child, I’d never fit the Harpeth Manor mold.

I hated prep school. The starched uniforms and even stiffer personalities.

It was like everyone knew what was expected of them.

Get good grades. Go to an Ivy. Move back to the suffocating little burg, marry, procreate and add to the long line of old-money families.

Maybe that made some people happy but it was never for me.

When I showed my parents my first contract for Humanity of the Seas it was like a bomb detonated in my father’s head.

Without my permission, he’d already spoken to his country club friends about me joining one of their family practice clinics.

On the day I had to leave, only our housekeeper said goodbye when I left for the airport.

Looking back at the contract on my laptop, I scrolled to the bottom of the document and added my signature. I’d made a promise to stay in Ivy Falls for a short time, but then I was going back to Senegal where I belonged.

Determined to ignore my phone, which was buzzing again, my thoughts veered back to the beautiful woman in the bookstore. I couldn’t help but wonder if she lived close by. She had to in this one-stoplight town.

I picked up my coffee-soaked clothes and dumped them into the washing machine. That scent of vanilla latte hit me again and I saw Piper’s panicked eyes. How my body flamed when she tried to dry me off.

No way. I wasn’t going there. But even as I turned the knob, the washer filling with a gurgle, my mind went back to the bookstore. I wasn’t sure I could stay away from it, especially now that I knew she worked there.