“Tonight, Ivy,” he said, lifting one of her hands to his mouth. He trailed the tip of his tongue across her knuckles and smiled when she shivered in response. “Tonight, I want it all. I want you in my bed, naked.”
Her stomach spun and her throat closed up tight. It was a wonder she could breathe, let alone speak. But somehow, she managed. “Tonight, Tanner. I want you inside me.”
His eyes flared. “Glad to know we’re on the same page.”
“Oh yeah.” She leaned toward him to give him a kiss to seal their deal, when a too-familiar, outraged voice stopped her cold.
“Ivy! What the hell are you doing?”
Seven
“Mike!” Ivy sounded both shocked and horrified.
Tanner sent a quick look toward the speaker and spotted an older man, gray hair bristling, pale blue eyes narrowed, standing on the outside of the bounce house, glaring in at them.
“What the hell’s going on, Ivy?” the older man demanded again.
She hurried to her feet, tossed one anxious glance at Tanner and then scuttled wobbly across the floor. “I didn’t know you were here,” she said.
“Yeah, well I could say the same.” The old guy looked past Ivy to glare at Tanner. “I heard a ruckus. Thought I should check it out. So you want to tell me what’s happening?”
“Not really,” she said, half turning as Tanner walked up behind her. “Um, Mike Angel, this is Tanner King. Tanner, this is Mike.”
Well hell.
The owner of the tree farm, Tanner thought. No wonder Ivy was acting so weird. She’d just been caught by her boss and she was probably embarrassed. Plus, he thought, the old man looked mad enough to fire her and Tanner couldn’t let that happen.
See, his brain taunted, this is what happens when you relax your rules. When you forget to keep your distance from people. But even though he knew his brain was absolutely right, he couldn’t really regret what had just happened between them. In fact, he was looking forward very much to more rule-breaking as soon as he could get her to his house.
For the moment however, they had to get out of this situation.
“Good to meet you, sir,” he said and would have extended his hand, but for the mesh wall separating them.
“I’ll bet,” Mike Angel told him, then shifted his gaze back to Ivy. “You come on out of there now.”
“Right.” She gave Tanner a quick look that said she wasn’t going to argue with the man and hoped he wouldn’t either.
Tanner wasn’t going to argue, he assured himself. But he also wasn’t going to be treated like a ten-year-old caught throwing a baseball through a window, either.
Ivy dropped to her hands and knees and slipped out the doorway of the bounce house to sit on the grass so she could tug her boots back on. Tanner was right behind her.
“So you gonna tell me why you’re rolling around in the kid’s play palace?”
Ivy flushed and Tanner was struck by it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman blush with embarrassment. Hell, he hadn’t been sure they were capable of it anymore. But Ivy, he’d already discovered, was like no other woman he’d ever known.
“I was giving Tanner a tour of the farm and—”
“Just what kind of tour was this?” Mike asked.
Tanner wasn’t the kind of man to stand by and have a woman defend him—even when he needed defending, which he didn’t. They hadn’t done anything wrong. Although, Ivy’s boss might not be too happy with her. And that worried Tanner a bit. He wouldn’t want to see her lose her job over this.
He felt more himself once he had his shoes on and was standing on ground that didn’t ripple and shift beneath him. The fact that he towered over the older man didn’t hurt either. Still, this was Ivy’s employer and the owner of the farm he’d been complaining about for two months. Maybe, he thought, that was part of why the older man looked less than welcoming. After several visits from the sheriff, who could blame him?
“Tanner King,” he said, holding out one hand to the man.
Mike Angel looked at his extended hand but instead of taking it, turned his gaze on Ivy. “Anything you want to tell me, Ivy girl?”
“Not a thing, Mike,” she said honestly. Pushing her hair back behind her ears. “I just thought you’d want me to see that Tanner here got a good look at the farm.”
“Uh-huh.”
Tanner let his hand drop and accepted that the older man wasn’t happy about his being there. Still, he wasn’t used to being ignored and found he didn’t care for it much. “I asked Ivy to show me around, Mr. Angel. She gave me a tour of the farm and when we ended up here, I suggested we try out the bounce house.”
Ivy shot him a grateful, if surprised look, as he took responsibility for slipping into the inflated palace.
He ignored it and focused instead on the older man watching him through shrewd eyes. “She’s shown me your whole operation here and I’ve got to say it’s impressive.”
“Is that right?” Mike’s gaze measured him and Tanner felt like a kid standing in front of the principal’s desk.
“It is,” he said, refusing to be cowed by the steely look in his adversary’s eyes. But at the same time, he wanted to smooth things over so that Ivy wouldn’t be in any kind of trouble. “Look,” he said, “I realize you and I got off to a bad start.”
“Didn’t get off to any kind of start at all, Mr. King,” Mike countered. “Since you decided to go to the police with your complaints instead of coming directly to me. Seems to me a man might come and talk to another man face-to-face if he has a problem. Rather than going to the sheriff over and over again.”
Mitchell had been right about that, Tanner told himself with an inner grumble. He hadn’t done himself any good at all by complaining to the local police instead of simply talking to his neighbor. But in his own defense, Tanner never met his neighbors. Hell, he’d lived in his condo in L.A. for five years and wouldn’t have been able to recognize his neighbors in a lineup.
“Mike…” Ivy sounded worried and the tone in her voice had Tanner nodding.
“No, Ivy, he’s right.” He met the older man’s eyes and thought he spotted a flash of admiration there. Why that made him feel better, he couldn’t have said. “Mr. Angel, I should have come to you from the start. That was my mistake. Maybe we could have worked things out between us without getting the police involved.”