Ivy and the Cop (Power Play) Read Online Free Page B

her about the Honda’s low oil level anyway. No, she wasn’t mopin g or depressed. So she had spent the entire day in her pajamas and had finished off her carb-fest with popcorn and Mountain Dew and a Buffy marathon. That didn’t mean anything.
    It had to be PMS.
    It was most definitely not Patrick. Thinking about Patrick. Remembering the way he touched her, the way he kissed her, the feel of his hands on her. Oh god. Oh no, definitely not that.
    “Horses,” she muttered, shivering in the transition from sleep to awake, looking at the blackness of the night. No moon. Her parents owned half a dozen horses, all of them show-quality, most of them winners at some point or another, and she was going to be accused of starving them to death if she didn’t trudge out to the barn at midnight to feed them.
    “Okay, okay.” She gave in to her guilty conscience, which sounded suspiciously like a cross between her father and Patrick, one on each shoulder, lecturing her about the right thing to do. She slipped on a pair of her mother’s gardening Crocs—pink with white fur—and her father’s big Carhartt coat, stopping at the junk drawer to get a flashlight. Her father had, of course, put all new batteries in before they left.
    The night was dark and quiet, starless, moonless. It was a little chilly, but no worse than it had been the other night, when she’d b een stuck out on Hobbes Road. She remembered the heat of Patrick behind her, entering her, filling her. Oh god, she couldn’t think about that. It made her knees weak and her belly clench. Just thinking about him made her want him. That was no good.
    The barn was out back, the path well-worn, and she followed the bounce of the flashlight’s circle of light even though she probably could have made it in the dark from memory. How many times had she snuck out of her room, creeping out onto the eaves and down the drainpipe, heading out to the barn to meet Patrick in the loft? A hundred times? A thousand? Her memories of him were warm and melancholy, and she didn’t want to admit it, but she’d missed him. She’d missed him a lot. And since their little reunion over the hood of his cruiser the other night, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
    But he hadn’t called. Of course, she’d told him not to, but still. Didn’t he understand a woman’s logic? Don’t call me meant don’t call me—except when it didn’t. Why couldn’t men ever discern the difference? It wasn’t so difficult.               So call him. She shoved the thought away with a scowl, following the path beside the barn now. She’d been ignoring that little voice for days. She couldn’t possibly call him, go crawling back, admit she’d been wrong, that she never should have broken things off. I was just a kid. I was scared. Scared of losing him.
    Well, that had worked out well, hadn’t it? She couldn’t lose him if they weren’t together. Go ahead and cut your nose off to spite your face, Ivy! That was her mother’s voice, joining tonight’s chorus in her head. And so she had. Too afraid to risk losing the man she loved that she had to reject him. Like cutting off her own limb. I won’t miss it once it’s gone, she’d reasoned.
    How very wrong she’d been.
    Ivy hesitated at the barn door, cocking her head and frowning. Something was wrong. Missing? What was it? She traced the flashlight’s circle over the barn door’s edge, down its center, where the wood should have been locking it closed. That’s what was missing. The doors were closed, but the piece of wood that kept them that way was gone.
    She used the flashlight to look around, finding it on the ground a few feet away. It wasn’t like her father to forget to lock up the barn, but maybe he’d left it open for her? She reminded herself to lock up when she left and smiled to herself as she reached for the light switch, relishing the thought of admonishing her hypervigilant father about leaving the barn door