Facing the Music (Rosewood 1)

Ivy reached out and ran her fingertips gently over the scars. He shivered under her touch, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, pulling her hand away.

“No.” Blake sighed and put down his leg. “I’m just not used to people looking at it, much less touching it.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Yeah, although not as much as my pride. Even after all the physical therapy, I’m still only at sixty percent of my previous flexibility and mobility. I can jog slowly, but not for long. There’s no way I could make it through training camp, much less take another hard tackle. Out on the football field is a line of guys looking to lay the quarterback out on the turf. I couldn’t risk it again. But it was a good excuse to get a spa put in,” he said, pointing to the hot tub set into the deck on the far side. “Therapy,” he said with a smile that seemed hard wrought.

“Do you miss it?”

“Every single day. The only thing that makes life bearable some days is working with the kids.”

Ivy was glad he had something. She felt more than a touch of guilt knowing she had exceeded her every goal and he had lost it all. “Coaching seems to come naturally to you. I’ve heard nothing but how great you are with the players and how much they seem to love you.”

At last, Blake smiled with genuine warmth. “Sometimes things work out the way they’re meant to. Grant likes to remind me of that when I’m feeling down about things. I still have football, it’s just not the way I envisioned it. And now I have time to settle down, start a family, and have a life outside of the game if I want to.”

Settle down. Those were words she hadn’t considered in a long time. Ivy wasn’t sure if it was the cooling air or the serious turn of the conversation, but she started to shiver in her strapless dress.

Blake looked at her and frowned. “Let’s get back inside. I’ll give you the tour of upstairs.”

Ivy followed him back into the house and up the circling wood-and-iron staircase that led to the second floor. Blake’s injury hadn’t been noticeable to her before, and even now he wasn’t limping. He’d ridden horses and danced. He’d walked all night around the fair. However much pain he was in, he did everything he could to hide it.

“There’s an elevator in the far corner of the house,” he said as they neared the top. “I had it put in because I knew eventually these stairs would be a problem, but I refuse to use it until I absolutely have to.”

Blake opened a door into a dark room and flipped the switch. “Here’s the media room, used most often for watching football with my brothers, of course.” There were rows of leather chairs facing a large screen and a projector mounted in the ceiling.

Down the hall was his office. The space was lined with dark wood bookshelves that were filled with leather-bound books, trophies, plaques, and photos of his football glory days. Ivy expected him to spend more time showing off some of his achievements, but he skimmed right past them. The layer of dust on the desk indicated he didn’t go in there very often. He tried to be positive, but the office was proof to her that he wasn’t over losing his football career yet. It had to be hard to be trapped between pride in your achievements and sadness over having to stop before your time.

“Here at the end is my room.”

Blake opened a set of double doors made of old wood. “These were repurposed outer mill doors,” he said. The sharp A-line of the ceiling continued into the room with sloped ceilings that framed the king-size bed in the center of the room. The bed had a stone-and-wood headboard they had to circle around, since the bed faced the wall of windows, not the entrance.

Sitting atop a frame that looked like old railroad trestles stacked up, the bed was covered with a quilt that must have taken someone forever to piece together. He had put so much thought into every detail of the home. It was one of the things she’d appreciated about him when they dated. He paid attention to every detail, be it a coach’s play on the whiteboard or the secret spots on Ivy’s body that made her arch up and cry out. She looked forward to experiencing that once again.

Ivy sat on the edge of the bed and kicked out of her heels. She gave the bed a test bounce with a mischievous smile. “This is a little more comfortable than making out by the lake,” she noted.

Blake sat down beside her with a chuckle. “I did the best I could. A blanket by the lake seemed like the best plan.”

Ivy looked into his eyes, remembering that night with the stars overhead and the soft blanket below. “It was a great plan. I couldn’t have asked for a better night.”

A sly smile curled Blake’s lips as his hand went to her bare knee. “I think I might be able to beat it tonight. I’ve picked up some sweet moves over the last few years.”

Ivy giggled.

It was a soft, familiar sound that made Blake’s heart stutter in his chest and his crotch throb against the too-tight fit of his tuxedo pants. The woman on the television and radio was not the Ivy he thought of on lonely nights. What he imagined was his sweet, cr

eative Ivy. Thoughtful, sensitive, and unbelievably trusting. He might have been responsible for destroying parts of the old Ivy, but that giggle was enough to make him believe she might still be in there.

He wanted to lose himself in Ivy Grace tonight, not the rock icon. Part of him was driven to peel back each of her layers, one by one, until he fully exposed her. He would start with that god-awful dress.

He leaned in, planting kisses along the sensitive line of her neck. He let his hands roam over the back of her dress until he found the metal tab of the zipper. The slow, rhythmic sound of it unfastening mingled with her soft gasps.

Ivy’s neck had always been her weakness. He could talk her into anything as long as his lips were dancing along her skin. The zipper reached the end of its path, his fingertips brushing over the hollow of her lower back.

“You know,” she whispered, “I’ve learned a few sweet moves over the years, too.” Pulling away from him, she stood up, holding her limp dress to her body to keep it from falling.

Blake leaned back onto his elbows, watching the dark silhouette of her body move in front of the wall of windows behind her. She turned her back to him, looking coquettishly over her shoulder. She smiled and let the dress drop to the floor. The light in the room was dim, but it was bright enough for him to make out every detail of her body. She was wearing a black lace thong that exposed the hard, round cheeks of her ass. She kicked out of the dress and turned back, showcasing the tight little bustier she’d worn beneath her outfit. The boning and lace clung to her ribs and the satin cups pushed the full swell of her breasts nearly up and over the top.

“You packed that,” he said, “to come home to Rosewood?”