6. Marco

6

MARCO

It was as though someone else had taken over control of my mind, like I was having an out-of-body experience.

For as long as I could remember, I was always known as the laidback guy. I was the one who didn’t get worked up or stressed out over anything. Even in a crisis, I remained calm.

Now, I felt as though I couldn’t think straight.

With my mind constantly consumed by thoughts of Ivy, I was grateful to have a huge project at work to occupy my time.

Because I was waging a battle with myself, and without having work that needed to get done, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to keep myself away from her.

Maybe that shouldn’t have been a problem. Maybe I should have been able to call her, walk into the hotel and find her, or even visit her at her place. After what she’d been through, didn’t she deserve at least that much? Even if there was nothing but what there had always been between us, shouldn’t I have been a good friend to her?

I was both proud of and disgusted with myself.

Disgusted because after all that had happened two nights ago, how had I just gone on with my life like she wasn’t on my mind every waking second? How did I pretend I wasn’t worried about how she was coping with what she’d endured at the hands of a monster?

The only reason I felt proud of myself for keeping my distance was because at least I’d be able to prove to my best friend that everything I’d said to him yesterday had been the truth.

I rolled my eyes as that thought flitted through my mind. Was I really pleased with myself for ignoring my gut instinct to seek out Ivy and check on how she was doing?

Of course, I wasn’t.

And although Cooper sought me out yesterday afternoon to offer an apology for how he’d reacted when he found me with his sister, I couldn’t seem to let go of the things he hadn’t said.

Sure, he ultimately thanked me for being there for her, but he hadn’t said anything about how his initial reaction to believing there was something going on between Ivy and me hadn’t been how he really felt.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that, about the fact my best friend didn’t think I was good enough for his sister. That he wouldn’t think I was the best option for her, that he wouldn’t be the guy hoping she and I would wind up together one day.

None of this had anything to do with Ivy or how she may or may not have felt about me. It wasn’t about me making assumptions that she even felt an attraction to me. It was merely the knowledge that Cooper would never support it if she and I had decided together to pursue something.

My best friend knew me. He knew my values, my character. He knew my family. And he still didn’t think I was good enough.

Maybe I’d been considered the guy who never took anything too seriously, but this was something I couldn’t seem to shake.

It was a good thing I had plenty of work to keep me busy, work I tried to focus on instead of thinking about Ivy, Cooper, and that I’d been blind to what had been in front of me all these years.

Having not slept well last night—visions of the look on Ivy’s face as she left the hotel replayed in my mind for hours—I got out of bed early and decided to get to work.

The only way to the villas was to go through the hotel, and unsurprisingly, Ivy hadn’t been working at the early hour. So, I came here and immediately got to work.

It had been hours now, and I was in the thick of it. The villas had the bones of the construction work done—they were full standing structures with doors and windows—but now we were busy working on the interiors.

I was in the back bedroom of one of the two-bedroom villas when I heard the door open. Immediately, I’d assumed Cooper had arrived at work or that one of the other guys had come to work with me, but when I heard the footsteps moving through the space, I knew I was mistaken.

Heels. Stilettos, perhaps.

I didn’t have to see her yet to know it was her.

And in another instance of experiencing things that were uncommon, my body was suddenly wracked by tingling all over as my heart pounded. Not even when I’d been beside her in the bed after she’d woken up from her nightmare yesterday had I felt this way. There was something about the mere anticipation of seeing her that was doing me in.

“Marco?”

I’d been crouched in the closet of the room, but at the sound of her soft, feminine voice, I closed my eyes and dropped my chin. My hand came up and squeezed the back of my neck.

After taking two more settling breaths, I stood.

“Marco, are you here?”

I stepped around the closet door I’d hung, moved into the room, and walked out into the hall.

Ivy jumped back, her hand flying to her chest. “Oh, God. You scared me.”

Shit. I hadn’t been thinking straight. “Sorry, I should have said something. Are you okay?”

As she became steady on her feet, I took her in. Even in the cold winter weather, Ivy didn’t slack when it came to getting herself dressed for work. Obviously, I’d taken notice of her before—the woman was beautiful—but seeing her now didn’t feel the same as it had every other time before.

Now, I was looking at how the navy-blue cable-knit sweater dress she was wearing molded to her curves. Curves my fingers itched to touch. My eyes drifted to the bare skin on her thighs that was exposed just beneath the hem of her dress. Her knees were bare, and I quickly realized I’d been partially correct about what was on her feet. The bottom half of her legs were covered by the spike-heeled black boots with silver accents.

My eyes drifted back up over the length of her body. I felt a heavy, dull ache in my chest. I’d had the opportunity to see her nearly every day for years, but it was only now that I felt like I was really seeing all these parts of her for the first time.

“Yeah, it’s okay. I’m alright.” She held up her opposite hand. “I wanted to return your shirt to you. I washed it for you, too.”

Instantly, I recalled the memory of her wearing my shirt, and it was an effort not to close my eyes, so I could linger in it longer. I took the shirt from her and said, “Ah, you could have held on to it. There was no rush to get it back to me.”

I had wanted to tell her I would have much rather preferred her to wear it several more times and not wash it before returning it to me.

Ivy shrugged. “I appreciate that, but if I didn’t take care of it right away, I probably would have forgotten it altogether, and you might not have ever gotten it back.”

One half of my mouth quirked. “You? I’m not sure I’m buying that. Next to Tate, you’re one of the most organized people I’ve ever met.”

“At work,” she reasoned.

My brows drew together. “What?”

“I’m organized and efficient here at work, because I have to be,” she clarified. “I’m not going to let anyone think I have the job that I do, simply because my family owns this company. I work hard and am on top of things here, but I’ll warn you now. Don’t ever ask to look at my personal laptop. One look at the number of tabs open or all the things on the desktop, and you’d probably lose your mind.”

After all these years I’d known her, I was just learning these details for the first time. And I wanted more.

The smile built slowly on my face, the urge to reach out and wrap my arms around her growing with each passing second.

If I didn’t manage to speak, I was convinced I’d have done just that. “I think you’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m serious.”

I held her stare a beat, deciding not to challenge her. Instead, I asked the one thing that had been on my mind since I’d last seen her yesterday morning when she walked out of the hotel with Cooper. “So, how are you doing?” I asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to follow up with you later in the day yesterday.”

She waved her hand dismissively in the air. “Oh, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. After the trip to the police station, I spent the majority of my afternoon talking to the rest of my family about what happened.”

“How’d it go?”

Ivy huffed. “About as well as you would expect. Wyatt, Tate, Liam, and my dad all just about lost their minds. My mom did her best to stay strong, but she was devastated. And after the initial shock wore off for Jules, she cheered us both up with cupcakes.”

I laughed. “That was a good tactic.”

“Yeah. We ate them at her bakery, but then she packed up some extras for me to take with me back to my office here at the hotel, where I spent the rest of my day yesterday. I’m trying to avoid scaring the guests off with my face looking like this.”

The evidence of her attack was still present on her face—cuts, scratches, and a hint of bruising. I wondered if the rest of her body was any worse. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you look, Ivy.”

“You can be honest. I’m not fragile, and I promise I’m done crying about this.”

If there was one thing that I knew to be true about Ivy, it was that she was such a strong woman. That she stood here mentioning how she worked as hard as she did because she refused to be viewed as someone who had the job simply because her family owned Westwood’s was a testament to that. But I’d also seen or heard about her in several other instances. She didn’t back down from anything when she had something to say or needed to set things straight. Her brother got that from her yesterday morning when she refused to leave the hotel until he apologized to me.

And though I thought it was one of her most attractive qualities, I was surprised it had led to her resilience in this situation. How had she bounced back so quickly? She’d been crying in my arms and waking up from a nightmare little more than a day ago, and now, barring the physical evidence of her attack, I wouldn’t have known that anything had ever happened to her.

“I’m not saying what I think you want to hear,” I assured her. “Cuts and bruises or not, you’re still just as pretty as you’ve always been.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “Pretty?”

I hadn’t intended to say anything of the sort to her and possibly make things awkward, but I wasn’t going to lie to her, either. I sent a smile her way, my brow slightly cocked. “Are you telling me you don’t already know that you are?”

She shrugged. “I’m not suggesting I’m ugly, but I guess I wasn’t expecting such a compliment from you.”

I attempted to think back to all the interactions I’d had with Ivy. Hadn’t I ever told her she looked nice, even if on some special occasion where it might not have been deemed something more than just a friendly compliment?

“Well, I’m sorry if I’ve never indicated it before. I guess I always assumed you had to know already,” I told her. In an effort to lighten the mood and shift the conversation to something else that wouldn’t get me into trouble, I joked, “In my defense, I do spend the majority of my days working with Cooper. And until Skye came into the picture with him, I’ve always had to contend with his moodiness. I can only imagine how he might have reacted if he learned I’d said something like that to you.”

Her shoulders fell, her head dropping to one side. “I’m still mortified by the things he said to you yesterday morning. I hope you two had the chance to talk about it later.”

I nodded. “We did. And you don’t have anything to feel embarrassed about with that. Cooper’s a grown man. He made his own choices.”

“It bothered me, though. I hope you know that I wasn’t okay with anything he’d insinuated about you.”

I smiled at her and finally gave in to the urge to touch her. My hand landed on the outer cap of her shoulder and squeezed. “I know you weren’t. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was okay with most of it, either.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say he was okay with parts of his reaction. He did not like the idea of Ivy and me having some kind of relationship that went beyond what it had always been all these years.

“No, I guess you’re right. He was remorseful.” She sighed and looked around the villa. “The villa looks great. You’re much further along than I would have anticipated you being at this point.”

“Yeah, it’s coming along nicely, I guess. We haven’t really had any major delays or disruptions in the project so far, so that helps things.”

She inclined her head in agreement. “Yes, but I heard you were here earlier than normal this morning. I think that probably helps things along.”

“I only did that today.”

“You like working so much?”

Shaking my head, I returned, “I love my job, but that’s not why I came in so early.”

“What was different about this morning?”

“I didn’t sleep well and was up earlier than usual, so I figured I’d do something to be productive.”

“Is everything okay?”

I sent her a look of confusion. “With the villa? Yeah, it’s going great.”

“No, I meant with you. You said you didn’t sleep well.”

I couldn’t tell her.

How would I explain that I’d had such a difficult time sleeping because I couldn’t stop thinking about her and if she was okay? How could I tell her that mere hours after I realized I felt an attraction to her, her brother made it clear he wouldn’t approve of us ever having something like that between us?

Ivy would lose her mind, not because I believed she felt an attraction to me, but because she would never stand for someone else telling her what she could and couldn’t do. And the last thing I’d ever want to do is cause a rift in this family.

“I just have some stuff on my mind. Nothing to worry about,” I declared.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

She nodded slowly, but the look in her eyes told me she didn’t necessarily believe I was being honest with her. “Alright. Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to work. I need to head back in there and catch up on things I didn’t get done yesterday.”

“Sure.” I held up my shirt between us and shook it in my hand. “Thanks for returning this.”

“You’re welcome. Thank you for being so good to me and letting me borrow it. I owe you for what you did for me that night.”

“No, you don’t. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

She smiled. “I’ll see you later, Marco.”

“Later, Ivy.”

Ivy turned and walked toward the door. I followed her there, my eyes unable to resist roaming over her curves.

And that’s when I realized a sleepless night was going to be the least of my worries. If I didn’t get a handle on this sudden attraction, I didn’t know how I was going to continue to be around this family as often as I was.