A Twisted Love Story(17)

“Ivy?”

“She’s a problem.”



* * *



—

I’ve got a client thing tonight, but I’m free tomorrow. Dinner?

Maxwell’s?

Perfect.

Ivy smiles as she makes a reservation online. Maxwell’s has always been one of their favorites, a place that holds a lot of good memories and not a single bad one.

It also distracts her from thinking about the detective for a minute. Fair Valley obviously doesn’t have enough crime, because Karen is spending entirely too much time on Ivy and Wes. Ridiculous, because Ivy hears about crime every day in the news. Karen has no business looking into a situation that’s already over.

And the longer their conversation at the office had continued, the more Ivy realized she had made a huge mistake by going to the police.

“After meeting with Wes,” Karen had said, “I did a little digging into your relationship.”

“Digging?” Ivy said.

“Eight years ago, Wes called 911. He accused you of vandalizing his car.” Karen scrolled through her phone, reading the details out loud. “Broken windshield, slashed tires, and the rearview mirror was destroyed.”

“Then you also must have seen that no charges were ever filed. A number of cars were vandalized in our neighborhood,” Ivy said.

“I did see that. I just thought it was odd Wes immediately named you as the one who did it. He believed you were capable of that kind of violence.”

“Wrongly believed,” Ivy said. “We had been fighting at the time. I guess that’s why he thought it was me.”

Or maybe because he had watched her do it.

Ivy had thought of this possibility—that Karen would find that report. Ivy knew there was a record of it somewhere in their system. But she also knew it would be easy to dismiss it as a mistake.

“Wes recanted his statement,” Ivy said. “He was angry at me for something else, and he made a mistake.”

“Yes, I saw that, as well,” Karen said.

Ivy assumed this would be the end of their conversation about the past. It was not.





15




Ivy heads into the dressing room with at least a dozen outfits. She has to split them up—only six allowed at a time!—but she is a firm believer in trying things on. Even if you don’t love it on the hanger, you might love it on your body. Fact.

Not that she needs a new dress for dinner at Maxwell’s. She has a least a dozen that Wes hasn’t seen, all bought over the past year, but there’s nothing like a new dress to make a date special.

Plus, it stops her from obsessing about that detective.

Ivy and Wes have finally come to a point where everything is good. Better than good. It’s fantastic. No lies, no games—they’ve returned to something real. Or rediscovered it.

She takes off the black dress, which is too boring, and puts on the emerald green one.

Better, but not perfect.

Yes, she and Wes got back together in a screwed-up way, and it probably never would’ve happened if she hadn’t called the police. But it didn’t have to turn into all this. Karen didn’t have to dig so deep into the past. It’s a little rude, to be honest.

The blue dress is next. Sky blue, though not so light it’s transparent. Snug without being too tight, sexy but not vulgar, and it doesn’t make her look like she’s trying too hard. It’s also the most expensive.

She can almost afford it. Close enough.

On her way back to her car, she imagines being at Maxwell’s tomorrow night. The little candle on the table, piano music in the background—not so loud that you have to shout, not so soft that you can hear the other customers. Ivy is wearing her new outfit, Wes sits across from her, and they’re smiling.

Until she tells him about her visit from the detective. She should tell him, because being open and honest is the only way to make a relationship work. Everybody knows that, and Ivy knows it from experience. Secrets can ruin everything.

She imagines how that conversation would go, especially when she tells him Karen has been digging into their relationship. More than anything else, she tries to picture the look on Wes’s face when Ivy tells him the worst part.

It’s not good. The only upside is how hot he is when he’s angry.



* * *



—

Marcus walks into Wes’s office without knocking. He is another sales rep, one of the most successful at Siphon, and he always looks like he just walked out of a magazine. Marcus is what they’re all supposed to look like, but he is the only one who manages to pull it off. Other than Tanner, of course. The original. Everyone else is a copy-and-paste.

Marcus smiles and pulls two tickets out of his pocket. “Tonight.”

“No way.”

“You doubt me?” Marcus throws the tickets on Wes’s desk. The Warriors game, not floor seats but close enough.

Wes will be at Maxwell’s with Ivy. If he cancels now . . . well, he doesn’t want to think about what she would do. And it’s a long drive to and from San Francisco. If he goes, he probably won’t see her at all tonight. Yes, he would like to go to the game. No, he doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of making that decision.

“I can’t go,” Wes says.