‘It’s over?’ Carina asked. ‘But I didn’t get a chance to—‘

‘The truth is there’s too much going on for Dax to deal with this right now,’ Ivy said. ‘If you want to give me a phone number, I can talk to Dax, and if he decides he wants to get in touch, then I’ll tell him to call you.’

‘A phone call,’ Carina said.

Ivy shrugged. ‘It’s the best I can offer right now.’

With the bounty and Mauri’s illness, this wasn’t the time for an emotional reunion between mother and son. If Carina pushed Dax right now, then she wouldn’t get the response that she was hoping for. Dax would be abrupt, and he could be cold. His only reaction to Carina so far had been to ignore her, and that didn’t bode well.

Saul got them pen and paper so Carina could write down her phone number and after taking it, Ivy said her goodbyes. She went outside to see Dax back in his car enjoying the air conditioning until he buzzed the window down a couple of inches.

‘Get in.’

Trusting that Dax had switched her things into his car, she did as he asked and got in the passenger seat. ‘Is Trystan going to be a nightmare?’

‘Yes,’ Dax answered. ‘Your sister knows how to pick ‘em.’

He backed out of the driveway and began to head toward The Strip. ‘Ironically,’ she said, fishing in the backseat for her purse, which Dax had flung in there. ‘She always went for the bad boys, and I always tried to avoid them.’

‘Why is that ironic?’

Peeking up from her purse, she smiled at his profile. ‘No reason, my baby-faced angel.’

His scowl made her laugh, and she pulled her sunglasses from her purse. ‘Ok. So, I’m no innocent, but I’m better than Trystan.’

‘Hands down,’ she said. ‘Rosie just likes the attention and a guy like Trystan, with money, he could take care of her. If he was decent that is. I didn’t know that they were flirting until she vanished with him last night. Carina said that they met at Mauri’s party.’

‘Why did you bring her? Why would you—‘

‘Carina came of her own accord. I packed up our things at the beach house and by the time I got downstairs, she was waiting for me. I didn’t have the time to argue.’

‘I don’t want you to make friends with her.’

‘I haven’t. I spent most of the time avoiding her. But we did… we got the chance to talk before Rosie took off. I think you should listen to what she has to say.’

‘So now you know more about where I come from than I do?’ Dax grumbled.

‘If you’d taken the time to listen to her then you would know too,’ Ivy said. ‘Some of what she said was… I was shocked, but… it made sense too.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’

Unsure if he was putting up the barriers just to be bull-headed, or because he was affected by his past, Ivy started gently. ‘When she was pregnant, she left to protect you,’ she said, deliberately avoiding Bruno’s name. Though riling Dax now would mean that his patience with Trystan would be non-existent, which was a good thing as far as Ivy was concerned. Dax had shown Trystan plenty of patience over the years, too much in fact.

‘Protect me from what? Getting involved in Mauri’s world?’ Dax asked. ‘That worked out well, didn’t it?’

‘She didn’t know that Mauri had tracked you down and taken you in until years after the fact. She figured that you wouldn’t want to see her. Carina knows Mauri well, knows the people in his world, and if they had closed ranks around you—‘

‘She didn’t try, did she?’ Dax asked.

‘Did you want her to? Can you see yourself welcoming her? Look at how you’re acting towards her now, if she had shown up when you were fifteen or sixteen, would you have fought against Mauri to keep her in your life? Be honest.’

His jaw moved, and Ivy knew he was peeved by the direction of the conversation, but she put her purse back on the backseat and waited for him to respond.

‘Mauri told me that… that he tried to stop me fighting.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Me neither. When he did, I got aggressive, and that’s why he pulled me from school. He let me go back to fighting, and that changed things, calmed me down, least that’s what he said.’

So Dax had been learning things about where he came from. Knowing that sort of made this whole journey worth it. They could have stayed away and refused to return with Brad despite Mauri’s illness. But if they had done that then Dax would never have any answers to his questions.

Time had forced him to face up to where he had come from, Mauri had limited time left, and he was the greatest source of information. Bruno would never offer it if anyone saw him again, and Carina had her own agenda. That being said, Mauri always had an agenda too, except this time they knew exactly what it was – to have Dax take over the reins in line with Brad.

‘I can imagine you as an angry teen,’ Ivy said. ‘All the more reason to doubt that you’d let Carina in though.’ Watching the road in front of them, an idea struck her. ‘Wait a minute, is that why…? You think that because when you lost the outlet for your anger back then that… that’s why you thought you might hurt me when you retire from fighting now?’

‘Makes sense,’ he mumbled.

‘To who?’ she sighed. ‘Dax. You’re nothing like him, and you are nothing like the angry, hormonal teenager you were back then. You’ve grown and changed, even just in these months since we’ve been together I’ve seen a change in you. You should be proud of what you’ve become, not fear it.’

‘I don’t fear—‘

‘Yeah, yeah, you’re a big brave man who fears nothing… I’m telling you that I’m proud of you, and I wouldn’t have married you if I feared you. You can always beat the shit out of your bag and run as many miles as you want every time I piss you off. When you give up fighting, we’ll find something else to keep you occupied.’

‘Something else like what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she exhaled. ‘You can teach our boys how to defend themselves.’

Taking his eyes from the road, he frowned at her. ‘Our what?’

‘Sure. Now that I know you’re not going to turn them into felons, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have kids.’ This time it was her stomach that was the focus of his scowl. ‘No, I am not pregnant… yet. But it’s something to think about.’

‘If I can keep you alive long enough.’

‘Well yeah, I guess there’s that,’ she smiled. ‘I always worried that you brought more to this partnership than I did, you have skills that you get paid for and I just sort of tag along. But having babies… that’s something we can do together.’

‘Ok, this conversation is too weird to have while we’re on our way to do what we’re going to do.’

‘Off to threaten together again,’ she said, sliding a hand onto his arm. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure that Bri and Blaser will babysit if we have to do this when we get back home.’

Bri and Blaser were their neighbours and employers in North Carolina. That was a friendship they could trust wouldn’t turn into this kind of craziness, and it was a friendship that Ivy wanted to get back to as soon as possible.

Chapter Twenty-One

The GoldSpring hadn’t changed. Ivy had been working here when she met Dax, which wasn’t all that long ago if she put it into real terms. But they’d both changed and been through so much together that it seemed like a lifetime ago.

It was difficult to be in this place again because it was also the place that Trystan had assaulted her. But that was part of the reason that Trystan was happy to keep coming here and spending his father’s money. In this hotel, the staff would let him get away with anything as long as he kept coming back to splurge as he did at frequent intervals throughout the year.

Dax parked in the private parking garage and then took her out of the car and up in the elevator to the floor where Trystan’s suite was located. With gold carpeting and gleaming white walls, the sweet smell of vanilla flowed down the hallway when the elevator doors opened. It was pumped in, Ivy knew that the housekeeping staff had a specific, and large, budget just for the air fresheners alone.