Chapter 6: Chapter 6
Harrison's expression didn't change from that blank, neutral mask as he relaxed back in his chair, but Ivy didn't miss the faint tightening of his hand, as if he wished he were holding something.
"Well, I bet you're fun at parties."
His tone was dry but she knew she'd gone too far, treading at the edge of territory he clearly didn't want to discuss. So she swallowed down her speculation about why he might have left the military and reminded herself that this wasn't a character whose head she could crawl around in endlessly in the name of the story. This was a real-life man, who had the right to privacy. He'd confirmed enough of her suspicions.
Wanting to put him at ease again, she flashed a rueful smile and shifted the conversation back to herself. "I can't remember the last time I went to one. I'm something of a workaholic."
The subtle tightening around his mouth eased. "You said you used to love your work. You don't anymore?"
Ivy hesitated before answering. She didn't talk about this. Not with anyone. Certainly not a fan. Fan questions, in general, usually made her uncomfortable. But she had a feeling that Harrison's wouldn't be the simple, surface stuff that people so often asked. And probably she owed him this after trying to get into his head.
"I wrote my first book in grad school. It was something I did to blow off steam in between writing my master's thesis. I did it for fun because almost every time we discussed a profile in class, my brain spit out so much more than just the facts of an unknown subject. Building a story around it was instinctive and drove some of my professors crazy. But my classmates enjoyed it. I had kind of a little mailing list, I guess. I'd send out new chapters as I wrote them. It was a way for us all to be entertained in the middle of all the stress that goes along with grad school. And after I had my epiphany that I would not, in fact, be joining the ranks of the FBI, a friend suggested I polish up the book and try to get it published."
She spooned up some soup, more to have something to do with her hands than because she was still hungry. "I didn't hold out much hope that I'd get far with it, but I ended up landing an agent out of the first batch of query letters I sent. And six weeks after I signed, I found myself in the middle of a bidding war between three different publishers."
He shifted forward and began to eat again. "That must've been a helluva charge."
"It was. It was exciting. Everything my professors busted my chops over, editors loved. I accepted a three-book deal. They rushed the first book to market because it was more or less done, other than some minor revisions, and Wally - that's my editor - ordered me to get started on the second. I had it and the third book finished by the time the first one hit the New York Times best seller list. Those books poured out of me, like they'd just been waiting for an outlet. I've never had so much fun in my life. I was getting to tell the kind of stories I'd been making up for years and getting paid for it." Her lips curved at the memory.
"So what changed?"
The remembered excitement faded. "Books two and three premiered on the Times list. My publisher asked for another three books in the series. And because I'd ripped out two and three at such a fast pace, they gave me pretty short deadlines, wanting to maximize on the momentum we'd started. It was a brutal, ruthless pace. But I was with it. I delivered. And I did all the things they asked of me. The social media and fan stuff. The blog tours. If my publicist told me to do something, I said yes ma'am. Literally the only line I drew was public appearances. I'm petrified of public speaking, and since they'd published me as Blake Iverson, they were cool with that. Maintaining the mystery, as it were.
"But book six was hard. Finding the balancing act between doing the research, getting the book written, keeping fans happy, doing all the social media crap so I wasn't forgotten in between releases...all that took a toll. The subject matter of Hollow Point Ridge was pretty dark, even for me, and took a lot out of me. I figured I'd be fine after a little break. And I was. For little while. Then my publisher came back with launch numbers and wanted a spinoff series focused on Michael. Being wise enough not to bite the hand that feeds me, I said yes. But this book is..." She trailed off, not knowing what to say about it.
"Is what?" Harrison prompted.
"It's...not."
His brows drew down. "Not hard?"
"No, it's not a book. I haven't been able to write it." Just thinking about it had additional tension knotting in her neck. Closing her eyes, she reached up to rub at it with both hands. "I've tried. I've come at it from every direction I can think of. But it's just not working. Nothing's working. And Marianne and Wally are breathing down my neck because I've already blown one deadline, and I keep putting them off because I can't admit the truth."
"You're burnt out."
The breath she'd held gusted out. "Oh my God, so much." There was such relief in hearing someone else voice the thing that had been circling around her brain for weeks now.
Harrison leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table - and damn, she hadn't known she had a thing for forearms, but his were powerful, with a light dusting of dark hair down the back. And those hands -
"So, if I'm getting this right, you've been working your ass off non-stop for...well the last three years for your publishing career, some number of years before that in grad school, and generally burning the candle at both ends. Have you taken any downtime to legitimately recover from all that?"
Ivy could only laugh, and she knew it had an hysterical edge. But she couldn't help it. The idea of downtime was as ludicrous as pink elephants in tutus. "There's been no time."
"You know what happens in the military if you don't take adequate time to deal with your shit?"
She stopped laughing and found herself leaning toward him, cheek propped against her fist. "I'm guessing you're going to tell me."
"You flame out. Lose your edge." People die. He didn't say it, but the implication hung between them.
Was that what had happened to him? Ivy knew better than to ask.
"I haven't been given a whole lot of choice. Publishing is all about deadlines and very few of them take the author into account."
"If you don't speak up, they sure as hell never will."
He didn't understand. And yet... "You're not wrong. I need a break. A real, legitimate break. With no pressure about the book, no threat of my career imploding hanging over my head. But I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get it."
The corners of that surprisingly sensual mouth tipped up, just a little. "Well, you're currently trapped in a cabin with no wi-fi, no phone, and no way for anybody to reach you to bug you about it."
When exactly had that stopped feeling alarming?
"I am," she agreed.
"Maybe let yourself off the hook and take advantage of it."
As she sat across from this interesting, sexy guy, all she could really think about was taking advantage of him.
* * *
He'd been on the verge of suggesting she stay here for a little while. Much as he thought he'd wanted - needed - solitude, he was enjoying her company. He was so aware of her, there was no room to focus on anything else - like the very stuff he was trying to escape. But the words caught in his throat at the flash of hunger in her eyes.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, wondering how she'd taste and what those lips would feel like cruising over his skin. His body woke to attention, his hands itching to reach across the table and drag her into his lap. Her quickened breath and parted lips suggested she might be on board with that plan. When he managed to drag his focus back to her eyes, her pupils were blown wide.
This was a terrible idea. He tried to hang on to that fact as the tension and heat seemed to build in the space between them. Doing anything about this attraction, when there was no escape if it all went sideways, was a prime recipe for a shit show. And, fuck's sake, she'd been in an accident today.
But none of that stopped the wanting or dimmed the desire to lose himself and his lingering grief in the body he'd fought so hard not to notice. He wanted to touch and taste and take. To strip away her stresses and her secrets until she'd forgotten everything but him.
The lights went out.
Harrison jerked back from where he'd been leaning toward her, the sudden darkness snapping him out of the haze of lust before he did something he couldn't take back. If he felt some regret at that, well, it had been a long damned time since he'd wanted anyone this badly.
He could just see Ivy's silhouette in the glow cast by the fire.
"I'm guessing that's bad." Her tone was so bland and natural, he wondered if he'd imagined the heat in her gaze.
Struggling to get himself under control again, he shifted his attention to this newest wrinkle in his plans. "I'm actually surprised it took this long, given the volume of snow out there. The infrastructure around here isn't really prepared for this." Shoving back from the table, he made his way over to where he'd left his boots. "I'll go see about turning on the generator."
Ivy got up, too, reaching for the coat he'd hung up by the fire to dry out.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Going with you."
"There is no reason for you to get frozen again." Although, if she did, they could share body heat again, preferably naked and active this time... Get a grip, Wilkes.
She frowned at him. "You might need somebody to hold a flashlight while you do...whatever you do to a generator."
"If I need that, I'll come back and get you." With the image of getting naked with her in more than medically-recommended ways still fogging his mind, he needed a few minutes to get his arousal under control. Or maybe more than a few. The cold ought to do that.
"Fine. I'll clean up the dinner dishes."
Grabbing a flashlight from his pack, Harrison headed outside. Porter had told him the generator was in a little lean-to off the back of the cabin. Trudging through the accumulated snow - there had to be a good five or six inches here already - he rounded the corner. Temperatures had to be hovering in the low twenties, with wind chills in the teens. It was gonna get damned chilly in a hurry if he didn't get this thing up and running.
Using the keys Porter had given him, he unlocked the lean-to and wrestled the door open. The generator was ready and waiting as advertised. He checked the fuel level and cables. Balancing the flashlight on the shelving unit holding assorted tools and equipment, he got a good grip on the handle of the crank cord and yanked. Nothing. Expecting that, he gave it a few more pulls. The motor sputtered and coughed, but refused to catch. Grabbing the flashlight, he made a closer inspection, trying to figure out the problem. The cables were intact. No signs of fraying or chewing by animals. Nothing else jumped out at him as the obvious culprit.
Shit.
Without more light, there was no way he could diagnose this thing. He could take Ivy up on her offer of assistance, but if he wasn't able to fix the generator and the power didn't come back on, she'd be getting cold for no reason, and no matter what his lower half thought about the idea, she didn't need to go through that again. Better to conserve the heat they had in the cabin now, and he'd sort everything out in the daylight tomorrow.
Gathering another huge stack of firewood, he tromped back inside. "So I've got good news and bad news. The bad news: Something's wrong with the generator. It won't crank. I can probably fix it, but it'll take a while, and I don't like my odds of missing something in the dark, so that should wait until tomorrow." He made a neat stack of the logs beside the wood basket and turned to face her. "The good news is that the water heater and range are gas, and we've got more than enough firewood to last us through the night."
"That doesn't sound so bad." Ivy's gaze slid upstairs. "And since heat rises, the loft should stay pretty warm as long as the fire's still burning, right?"
The loft. Which held the only bed in the place. And now he was back to willing away his hard-on. Damn it.
"Yeah, it ought to be okay up there. You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the sofa." He'd break his back and probably wouldn't sleep a wink, but at least by the fire he wouldn't freeze, and she'd be safe from his questionable control.
Hands on hips, she shot him an exasperated look. "Harrison, that's just stupid. You barely fit on the sofa. We're both adults, and I think we've already proved we're more than capable of sharing personal space and doubling up on blankets to conserve heat."
Was that what they'd proved on the sofa earlier? He was pretty sure he'd only proved he wanted to get her naked. Sleeping in the same bed with her, inches from that tempting skin, without being able to touch her, sounded like a recipe for a sleepless night of torture. But he couldn't see a reasonable way to refuse without admitting to the attraction it was probably best they ignore.
At least a sleepless night in a bed meant less pain to his back.
"All right. If you're sure you're comfortable with that."
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Why, indeed?
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