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He pulled out his phone and typed something. “I’ll get him on it.”

I didn’t plan the hug. I leaned over and wrapped my arms around him quick and tight, the way you did when gratitude moved too fast to reconsider. Then I realized what I was doing and jerked back. “Sorry. I… uh—”

“Don’t be,” he insisted as he pushed to his feet, lips twisted into an amused grin. “I need to take care of a few things.”

“Yeah,” I said too sharply. “Yep. Good luck.” My eyes slid shut as an embarrassed flush warmed my face and neck. “Ignore me.”

“Nah,” he said, chuckling before he disappeared into the house.

I stayed where I was with my laptop and my mother’s jacket, and the strange lightness of possibility. I might get to see my mom’s grave. I might get to talk to her, well, as much as you can talk to a headstone, but still. It felt huge.

Significant.

I smiled to myself and got back to editing, giving myself five more minutes before packing up and heading inside to get dinner going. It wasn’t my job to feed Knox, but without the print shop I didn’t have a lot to do most days, and he seemed to appreciate my limited skills, which felt nice.

He looked up from the papers spread out on the table and grinned, as if he was still thinking about my earlier weirdness. Then he turned back to the papers with furrowed brows and pursed lips.

“Everything all right?” I didn’t want him to feel pressured, so I moved around the kitchen easily, pulling out ingredients, a skillet and kitchen knife.

“Not sure,” he grumbled to himself.

I stifled a smile at how surreal this moment was. It was so domestic it was almost funny. I’d known him for a week and this moment felt more like family than any I’d experienced since losing my mother. “Anything I can help with?” I asked automatically.

Knox froze and looked up, his gaze darting around the kitchen. Whatever it was, he didn’t want me to know. And that reminded me that however domestic we might seem, we weren’t a real couple. It was a civil roommate situation with legal paperwork.

I held my hands up and turned back to the counter where potatoes sat, waiting to be peeled and chopped. “It’s okay. I know I’m not your real wife. Forget I asked.”

“Ivy…” he sighed, sounding almost frustrated.

I stiffened on instinct, my hand gripping the knife handle harder than necessary. “Yes?”

He waited patiently for my eyes to meet his before he spoke. “We don’t share sensitive club info with old ladies, not ever. It’s for your safety and it doesn’t have shit to do with trust.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but it was an explanation. “Okay. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. I appreciate that you asked. Really.” His eyes burned with sincerity.

I decided to take him at his words. “Okay,” I said with a small smile. “Just okay.”

“Good girl,” he grinned and turned back to his paperwork, totally unaware of how those two words sent a lightning bolt of arousal straight through my body.

Chapter Thirteen

Knox

Sleep wasn’t coming. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling for forty minutes before I stopped pretending. The house was quiet. Too fucking quiet. There was no good reason for me to be lying in bed, unable to sleep after a long day of getting shit done. Except there was a reason, and she slept twenty feet away on the other side of a wall that felt more like a barrier every fucking day.

I got up.

Ivy occupied too much of my mind lately. I told myself it was proximity. Seeing her every day was fucking with my concentration. Maybe it was irritation, or just plain inconvenience at having a woman in my space again. I told myself a lot of things.

They were all bullshit.

Ivy was equal parts soft and strong, and I suspected she had no clue how fucking strong she really was. Soft in the way she talked to the three-legged MC dog, Tripod. In the way she thanked the guys after they helped her with something she didn’t expect. In the quiet patience she had with a situation that would have rattled most women. She wasn’t loud about her strength, but she had her limits and she held them even when she was scared.

It was more than that, though. If it was just that, maybe I’d admire or respect her, but it was more. Something about her got under my skin in a way I hadn’t been prepared for. She intrigued me. She aroused me too, and that only had a little to do with hearing her fuck herself on the other side of that damn wall.

I bit back a groan as I jogged down the stairs before I could give that thought anymore mental space.