She looked at him and knew it was over. Whatever they might have had was gone, blown away as completely as autumn leaves in a stiff winter wind.
There was no going back. There was no undoing what had been done. No more than she could unring a bell.
Since it was over, since she had nothing left to lose, she vowed that she would at least, leave on the truth. That much, she owed to herself.
“You know why I slept with you, Tanner?” she asked, keeping her gaze locked with his so he would read the truth of her words in her eyes. “Because I love you.”
A long moment passed before he pushed up and away from her. “Oh, please. You expect me to believe that? You love me? How convenient.”
She laughed now and the sound was harsh and brittle even to her own ears. “Convenient? Not even close.” Ivy pushed one hand through her hair. “My God, do you think loving you is something I asked for? I’ve never met a more difficult man to love.”
“Thanks very much.”
She shook her head and walked to the kitchen table, where her purse was slung over the back of one of the chairs. Picking it up, she slid it onto her shoulder then turned to look at Tanner again.
“I’m sorry I lied to you Tanner. I really am. But mostly, I’m sorry for you.”
He just stood there in a wash of golden sunlight, glaring at her as if she were an intruder. “I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t need anything from you.”
“That’s the really sad part,” she told him. “You need so much. You need someone to love you. Someone to show you how to live outside the closed-in, sealed-off palace you’ve built here.”
“And that’s you, I suppose?”
“Could’ve been,” she agreed, heart aching as she walked to the kitchen door. She turned the knob, then looked back at him over her shoulder. “I want you to remember that, Tanner. I would have loved you for the rest of my life.” She gave him a tired smile. “But that’s not your problem anymore. Oh, and one more thing. You don’t have to fire me. I quit.”
She walked outside, closed the door quietly and left the man she loved and the future they might have had together behind her.
“You’re fired.”
Mitchell Tyler laughed into the phone and Tanner gripped the receiver so tightly, he was half surprised it didn’t snap in half.
“Not funny, Mitchell,” he snarled.
“Oh, please. You can’t fire me.”
“I just did.”
Ivy had been gone for only a half hour and already, the silence in the house was beating at Tanner’s brain like a hammer wrapped in silk. Every room echoed with her memory. He could still hear her voice in his mind. See her eyes at the last moment before she left, glistening with banked tears.
He could still feel the sharp stab of betrayal. So what better time to call the friend who’d set him up.
“You rotten, no-good…” Tanner muttered darkly.
“Tanner, what the hell is going on?”
“Ivy Holloway,” he said. “Owner of Angel Christmas Tree Farm.”
“Oh.”
Tanner snatched the phone from his ear, gave it an astonished look, then slapped it back to his head again. “Oh? That’s all you’ve got to say? You lied to me, damn it.”
“Yeah, I did,” Mitchell admitted freely.
Tanner grumbled under his breath and stalked a fast circle around the kitchen. Hairy was just behind him, his nails skittering on the polished wood floor. The chocolate cake Ivy had made still sat in the middle of the table, its scent wafting to him every time he got close. And even with all that had happened, even with the rush of anger still churning inside him, he couldn’t help wishing that instead of chocolate, he could smell that flowery citrus scent of Ivy’s.
Which made him the biggest damn fool in the world.
When he thought he could speak without shouting at his longtime friend, Tanner demanded, “Aren’t you the guy who said you would always tell me the truth whether I wanted to hear or not?”
“I am.”
“Then explain this to me.”
Mitchell muttered something Tanner didn’t quite catch and then said, “I tried to tell you what I thought before and you didn’t want to hear it. You didn’t leave me much choice.”
He laughed a little at that. Both Ivy and Mitchell had somehow found a way to blame him for their lies. “How do you figure that?”
“Because you were being an ass, Tanner,” Mitchell said flatly. “Calling the damn sheriff, threatening lawsuits every day when you called me incensed over a Christmas tree farm of all things. You were making yourself insane and aggravating the ulcer you already gave me.”
True, he admitted silently. But the betrayal was still there. “I trusted you.”
“And you still should.”
He laughed shortly, without humor. “Why’s that?”
“Because I’m your friend, Tanner,” Mitchell said on a heavy sigh. “We’ve known each other forever and I still have your back.”
“You mean the one with the knife in it?”
“Jeez, you should have been an actor, not an artist,” Mitchell muttered.
“And you should have told me who she was.”
“You never would have let her in the house.”
“Exactly,” Tanner said. Then in the next moment, he realized all that he would have missed by not meeting Ivy Holloway. His mind dredged up dozens of images of her, one more haunting then the next. Ivy laughing. Ivy reaching for him. Ivy leaning over him, helping him solve the problems in the computer game. Ivy getting soaking wet while they bathed Hairy together.
Ivy.
Always Ivy.
“How’d you find out?” Mitchell asked after a long minute of silence.
Tanner stopped at the bay window in the kitchen and looked out the glass at the deepening twilight beyond. His gaze shifted unerringly to what he could see of the tree farm. The roofline of Ivy’s house stood out as a darker shadow in the gloom. He pictured her there, alone, as he was. And he told himself that he shouldn’t care where she was or what she did.
He’d trusted her and she’d lied to him.
Simple.
“I overheard her on the phone with her farm manager,” he said. “When I confronted her, she told me everything. Threw you under the bus, too, though I don’t think she meant to.”
Mitchell chuckled. “I can take care of myself.”
“Why’d you do it, Mitch?” Anger drained away now, leaving just bafflement. “Why’d you set me up? Why’d you help Ivy against me?”