Page 32 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

Ivy directed Jaq to ride in a loose circle around the orchard.

Cognizant of his rider, Freddie stepped carefully, and Stevie leaned against the tree nearest Ivy, watching him pick his path carefully over the grass.

There were some ruts, but not many. Jaq held herself well in the saddle, hands loose but steady on the reins and face bright with concentration.

“See if you can feel which hoof hits the ground. When do you feel the front right?”

Stevie tuned out the call and response activity that followed as Ivy taught Jaq how to feel through her seat.

Her body hummed with residual pleasure despite a full day of work and lack of sleep as images from the night before replayed in a beautiful loop in her head.

Withdrawing her hand from Angie ranked among the most impressive feats of willpower she’d accomplished in her life.

That closeness—that aching, fever-dream of longing—filled her again, just as she’d filled Angie: completely and without recourse.

“Maybe this is a terrible idea,” said Ivy in a lower voice than her teaching voice, interrupting Stevie’s daydream.

“Does it feel like one?” Being Ivy’s confidante flattered her, but only half as much as it unsettled her. What did Ivy expect from her, and why did it have to include formal wear?

“Yes? No? I want it to have happened. I’m only scared out of my mind about doing the happening.”

“Doing the happening . . . Do you mean you want her to ask you?”

“What? No. It has to be me. I just can’t screw this up. There’s no do-over on a proposal.”

“I think there could be actually, but I see your point.” The trunk of the tree hit a knot in her shoulder. She leaned into it, massaging the sore muscle. “What’s the worst that can happen, though?”

“I botch it so badly she says no.”

“Sorry, I’m still struggling to picture that.”

Other things, however, she could picture easily: Angie’s mouth, wide and perfect, and her body, prostrate and beautiful, more than anything she could have conjured in the dark of her mind.

“Imagine proposing to someone. Have you ever felt strongly enough about someone you’ve considered it?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Stevie lied, wishing Ivy had chosen another day to ask that particular question. She flexed her hand against her leg, stretching out the residual tightness.

“Really?”

Stevie had taken Lilian’s critiques of Ivy with several shakers of salt, but now she wondered if there was a core of mean girl somewhere in there.

The question could have been idle. Maybe Ivy was too in love to remember not everyone got what they wanted.

Or maybe she was probing the wound to see how deep it went because that was what doctors did .

“I’ll imagine it.” Mean or not, she determined that Ivy didn’t fully understand how painful this exercise was for Stevie.

When you know, you know , she’d once heard someone say, and Stevie was prisoner to that fatal knowledge.

Ivy went on. Stevie watched Jaq, who was out of earshot and stroking Freddie’s neck as she continued naming the hoofbeats to herself.

“—that’s the right hind, Jaq, but close.” To Stevie Ivy said, “I want it to be perfect. I want it . . . Has Lilian told you what happened when we were in school?”

“Not the specifics.” Those Lilian had told to Angie, who, in turn, had told Stevie, so it wasn’t a complete lie, but she was curious to hear them from Ivy’s lips.

“I was an asshole, and instead of asking her to be with me, I pushed her away. I think about that all the time. If I’d just gotten over myself, I could have been with Lil since then. I wasted years. Healthy years. I want her to know that this time I’m serious about her.”

“I think she knows.” Stevie thought of some of the expressions she’d seen on Lilian’s face. Had she and Angie wasted years? Was that what Ivy was saying or warning against?

“I don’t want her to have any doubts. If I make her uncomfortable—” She broke off, frustration evident in the shake of her head. It so closely resembled one of Freddie’s head tosses that Stevie had to hide a smile. Some of her suspicion waned. Ivy was too worked up to be nefarious.

“Walk me through how you want it to go down. We can workshop it.”

“That might help.”

“Lay it on me.”

“There’s that spot on the island. It wasn’t our first kiss, but it was our first kiss that really meant something. The view is gorgeous and private. The odds of someone interrupting us are low even in the summer—okay, nice, Jaq. Think you’re up for a trot, same exercise?”

“Sure.”

“Will you do the one-knee thing?” Stevie asked.

Ivy folded her arms, studying Jaq’s form. “Yes. Lil deserves someone showing her that kind of deference. I made her vulnerable. Though, I suppose she does have a thing for assholes, given the person I used to be.”

“Fair enough.”

With a tilted smile, Ivy eyed her sideways. “I can’t picture you ever being a dick.”

“Meaning you can be an asshole?”

Stevie heard the smile in Ivy’s voice.

“One hundred percent.”

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“What bothers me?” asked Stevie, wishing she’d kept the bitterness out of her voice.

“That people make assumptions about you.”

“People make assumptions about everyone. For example, I assumed you were very gay when I first met you. That handshake. Phew.” She fanned herself.

“You deflect really well. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No one has called me out on it, no. Rude of you.” She glanced at Ivy, who waited and grinned.

“Yeah, since you seem to want to psychoanalyze me, I guess it does bother me,” she admitted. “People think I’m this peppy vanilla ball of sunshine and bad jokes.”

“Which part of that is wrong?”

“My jokes are awesome obviously.” She paused. She didn’t have to answer. Yet it was flattering to be asked. To be noticed. Her friends loved her and knew her, but perhaps because they loved and knew her, they also did not question the person she was with them. “It’s all wrong.”

“Now I’m intrigued. Also, the kid has really good form. Too bad she started late.”

“She’s, like, nine.”

“Fourteen.”

“Whatever.”

“What’s beneath the sunshine?” Ivy asked.

“My secret goth.”

“Really?”

“No.” She’d never fit easily into any category as a kid, and as an adult one of things she most enjoyed was no longer feeling like she needed to.

“Does Angie take you seriously?”

“Holden comes out of left field with a tackle and a machete,” said Stevie, reeling only partially in jest.

“It’s a fair question.”

“Is it?” Stevie glowered at the grass.

“How about the vanilla part?”

When Stevie glanced sideways at Ivy she saw the definite edge of a smirk around her mouth.

“She definitely doesn’t think that anymore,” she said, the truth slipping out. Shit . So much for that rule. Not that she had come out and explicitly said I tied her up in the barn and got her off, then fisted her on the living room floor.

“Thatta girl.” Ivy used a phrase Stevie would not have thought to hear out of Ivy’s cultured mouth. It reminded her of some of the things she’d said to Angie, and a jolt of desire startled her.

“What about you? What assumptions bother you most?” Stevie asked, hoping to turn the tables.

“When I feel shitty, I hate that people still think I look healthy, and when I feel fine, I hate that people remember I have MS.”

“Fair enough. Lil doesn’t think that, though, and neither do the rest of us.”

“Thanks.”

“She’s going to understand what you’re trying to do with the proposal.”

Ivy shrugged and in a darker tone said, “Maybe. Relationships are the one place where the person most likely to understand doesn’t because they’re too emotionally invested.”

“A horrifying thing to say, Holden. Keep your hard truths to yourself and let the rest of us live in blissful ignorance.”

Tires on gravel caught her attention. It was probably a client of the daycare, but something made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She narrowed her eyes against the glare of the setting sun to get a better view, and the peace of her evening exploded.

“That motherfucker.”

“Stevie?”

“Keep going with the lesson. I have to go deal with this.” She didn’t give Ivy any more explanation and vaulted the fence, breaking into a jog to intercept the woman making a beeline for the barn and Angie.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked her least favorite piranha. God, that hat looked stupid on her.

“None of your fucking business,” said Lana.

“Actually, it is. I live here.”

“You rent. Angie owns the place. I’m here to see her, not you.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“Which you know how exactly?” Lana drawled the words, but Stevie saw the anger simmering beneath her affect.

“Because she fucking told me.”

“Yeah, no. Move.”

“Nope.” Stevie braced herself in front of the taller woman, blood pounding. She would love nothing more than the opportunity to punch this woman’s lights into next week. “If she wants to see you, she’ll call you. Oh wait, she isn’t responding to your texts.”

For a second Lana looked like she might deck Stevie for that, but then a nasty smile spread across her face. “Oh, I get it. She’s finally fucking you.”

Stevie’s face roared with angry heat. “Watch it.”

Lana tried to sidestep. “I guess if it took two years for someone to notice me, I’d be upset too.”

It had been longer than two years, but Lana didn’t need to know that, especially when her words dug right into the old wound.

“Get the fuck off the farm.”

“Might as well wait. She’ll get bored of you in, like, twenty minutes.”

The arrogance of this piece of shit. “Die in a fire.”

Lana reached out to push her shoulder aside. Stevie knocked her arm away with force.

“Seriously?” said Lana.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”