The living-kitchen area of their home ran the breadth of the front of the apartment and had windows flanking the entrance. A narrow corridor at the rear of the property led to the bathroom and bedroom. There wasn’t much left to clean up, so her distraction, needed to keep her mind off Dax, was beginning to dry up.
The front door opened, and she tried not to display the flood of relief that overcame her. Coming home so soon, when she’d half expected him to be gone for days, was a good sign. Going to the fridge to retrieve the dinner steaks, Ivy was ready to forget that she’d ever cast her eyes on Brad again.
‘I got these from a place Bri recommended,’ she said of their female neighbour who she’d become friends with.
‘That’s it?’ Dax asked.
He came up behind her and slid one hand over her hip while the other scooped her hair out of his way, then his warm lips touched the artery pulsing in her neck. Ignoring his actions, she carried on seasoning the steaks.
‘The butcher is supposed to be amazing. The guys at the garage were jealous when I said I’d picked them up, and for what they cost…’
The hand on her hip carried on around to her belly, his other hand skimmed down her arm, and he pried her fingers away from the knife she’d just picked up.
‘Dax,’ she whined, but when he unbuttoned her shorts, she smiled. ‘You have to be at the club in an hour, and I have to feed you before—‘
‘I stopped at Blaser’s before I came up, he’s giving us some time off.’
‘For a belated honeymoon?’ she asked, coiling her arm around her body to slip his belt from its restraining loops. ‘Somewhere hot and far away from these shores?’
‘Actually, yeah, that’s one way to look at it. How does California sound?’
‘Like my idea of hell,’ she said, withdrawing her hand before it got to the good stuff. ‘You’re not much of a comedian, tough guy.’
‘I’m not kidding. We’re going to California tomorrow.’
‘Oh no we’re not,’ she said.
‘We are.’
With her hands on the counter, Ivy used all of her weight to push her body back into his, giving her space to escape. After shoving him aside, she went to the sink and washed her hands, using the reprieve to subdue the strength of her reaction to what he’d said.
Tossing the towel aside, she turned to face him. ‘You’re going back to them?’
‘We,’ he said, trying to encroach on her, but she removed herself from his path and headed into the living room.
‘I am not going back to Maurice Stark, and what about Trystan?’
‘What about him?’ Dax asked, his face set in a frown. ‘You’re not afraid of him, you’re not fucking afraid of anyone.’
‘It’s the fucking part that I stick on. You didn’t tell me about what happened the night you walked away, at that midnight meeting, but I can guarantee no one floated their congratulations, did they?’
‘Maurice has taken care of it,’ Dax said. ‘Brad told me that Maurice has told everyone about us and told them to keep their hands off you.’
‘Oh well if Brad told you that then I guess it’s ok.’
‘Why would he lie?’
‘Why would he tell the truth?’ she demanded. ‘And Bruno, what about him?’
His eyes went one way and his chin went up while his tongue darted out to moisten half of his top lip, she didn’t like that tell, not one little bit.
‘Forget about him.’ Dax spoke in his company voice, in that blunt, intimidating tone, and then he went to the living room window. None of his actions were encouraging reassurance.
‘There’s too much going on here that you haven’t told me about,’ she said. ‘I can’t go back there.’
‘I can’t leave you here, if they want to divide us, then me going to California leaves you wide open.’
‘I thought you just said that Maurice had taken care of things for us. Either you trust the guy or you don’t.’
‘Fine, if you want to stay here, then stay here,’ he said. Whipping around, he began to march toward the bedroom, but she hurried over to block the head of the hallway.
‘You do still trust him? How can you—‘
‘Maurice never lied to me,’ Dax said. Grabbing her arm, he tried to wrench her aside, but she got hold of him to keep herself in his way.
‘Maurice didn’t tell you that he took care of it, Brad told you that he did. Do you trust him?’
‘Brad? No. I don’t trust that bastard.’
‘Then why should we get on a plane with him?’ she asked, reaching up to cup his cheek. ‘He’s manipulating you. Whatever he wants you to do, it can’t be worth the risk, can it?’
‘He doesn’t want me to do anything, Maurice wants to see me.’
‘Then he can get his ass on a plane and come here,’ she said, though she wasn’t keen on having Maurice Stark sniffing around in their new life.
‘He can’t get on a plane.’
‘Why not? Is immigration looking for him?’ Her joke fell on deaf ears, and he tried to look away again, so she slapped her other palm onto his other cheek. ‘What aren’t you telling me? How did Brad upset you like this?’
‘He’s sick.’
‘Brad?’
Dax shook his head. ‘Mauri is sick, he’s only got a few months.’
Lowering from her tiptoes, her hands fell away. In the same moment that they lost eye contact, he put a hand on her elbow to move her aside, and this time Ivy let him walk away from her. If Maurice Stark was sick then she could understand why Dax wanted to go and see him. He had acted as a father to Dax, and Dax had always respected him.
Letting go of his relationship with Mauri was the hardest part of Dax’s decision to be with her. Something had happened at the midnight meeting on the night that Dax left the Stark mansion for good. He had never told her about it, but she’d always suspected that there had been an exchange between her husband and his father figure that plagued Dax to this day.
Mauri had thoroughly trained Dax to follow his orders without question and for twenty years that was exactly what Dax had done… until he got entangled with her.
Heading for the bedroom, she found him packing things into a suitcase that lay open on the bed. ‘Devil’s advocate,’ she said, ‘what if this is all a ruse just to get you back there?’
‘You’re not playing devil’s anything,’ he replied. ‘You’re your own advocate.’
‘Do you blame me? The last time I was with them—‘
‘Nothing sinister happened, I kept you safe.’
‘Yeah, the days I spent in the beach house basement were a ball, and Bruno—‘
‘You don’t have to worry about him,’ Dax said, zipping the partially filled case. ‘And I promised that you wouldn’t spend a night in that basement again, didn’t I? We’re going to my apartment in the city, you don’t have to go anywhere near the Starks.’
‘You know that it won’t work out that way,’ she said. ‘I want to support you, and we can’t show them weakness or they’ll jump all over it and use it to their advantage.’
‘So what is your problem?’ he asked. ‘You don’t trust me, is that it? You think that I’ll just hand you over to them if they ask?’
‘You’ve tried that before,’ she said.
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘No, you let me walk out of your apartment and we were separated for seven weeks.’
‘I stood up to them, that’s what happened at the midnight meeting. I told them to go to hell, that I wanted nothing to do with them.’
‘They obviously didn’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, why are they here?’
‘Mauri knew he was sick, he’s known for a while, but he didn’t tell anyone. It’s part of the reason he wanted to see Trystan settled before he…’
Dax wouldn’t break down, he wouldn’t reveal just how losing Mauri would affect him. But Mauri had been the only consistent man in his life. Mauri was the man that Dax respected above all others. She couldn’t tell Dax not to go; she just had to hope that it was true and that this wasn’t some elaborate plan to hurt them again.