smell of a freshly showered Ivy Hawkins, Sutton began to think he might be able to handle all this forced togetherness after all.
For one night, at least.
“I don’t think they’ll find the shooter,” Ivy said a few minutes later as she poured steaming tomato soup into a couple of mugs. “Do you?”
“Probably not,” he agreed. He handed her a plate holding a crispy grilled cheese sandwich. He still hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around who the shooter could be. He’d been in plenty of dangerous hot spots over the past decade or so, made a few enemies, at least in the abstract. But Special Forces operatives toiled mostly in anonymity.
“Do you know anyone who might want you dead?” Ivy sat at the small breakfast nook table and waved at the opposite chair, inviting him to take a seat. She wrapped her hands around the mug of soup, making a contented noise deep in her throat, undermining Sutton’s earlier confidence that his sleepover at Ivy’s would be easier than expected.
“I was just thinking about that,” he admitted. “I’m sure I did things while I was in the army that might earn me some enemies. But none of them ever knew my real name. I was never captured, never had my story written up in a newspaper. I was the mystery man in the civvies and beard—they probably thought I was CIA rather than Special Forces.”
Ivy’s eyes narrowed slightly at his answer, and he wondered what she was thinking. He’d always been pretty good at reading people’s thoughts in their expressions and their body language, but Ivy Hawkins kept her emotions and thoughts well hidden these days. He wondered how much of that particular talent had come as a natural result of covering up for a sexually promiscuous mother with dangerous taste in men. How many lies had she been forced to tell just to keep the Department of Children’s Services away from her door?
He’d told a few lies like that in his day, especially after his mother died. His growing disdain for his father’s con games had been eclipsed only by the fear of getting sucked into the foster care system. He’d known kids in Bitterwood who’d been pulled onto that particular governmental merry-go-round, and he’d promised himself he’d put up with anything Cleve might do as long as he didn’t have to leave home and go live with strangers.
Of course, the first thing he’d done the second he’d left Bitterwood behind was sign up for the army and spend the next months and years putting his life in the hands of strangers who wore the same uniform he did.
“You don’t think it could have anything to do with the murders, do you?” Ivy asked.
“I don’t see how. Not many people even know I’m back in town, much less that I’m investigating April Billings’s murder.”
“Word flies pretty fast in a small town.” She took a sip of the soup and gave another soft murmur of pleasure that made Sutton’s jeans feel two sizes too tight. Worse, he’d just realized she wasn’t wearing a bra under that snug-fitting T-shirt.
Why the hell couldn’t he get sex off his mind around her?
A faint trilling noise came from somewhere nearby. Ivy sighed and crossed to the table where she’d left her purse. Digging her cell phone from one of the inner pockets, she answered. “Hawkins.”
Another murder? Sutton edged forward in his chair, keeping his eye on Ivy’s face, trying to read her expression.
Her face remained carefully neutral. “Yes, thank you for calling me back tonight. Can you hold for a moment?” She put her hand over the phone speaker and looked at Sutton. “Excuse me. I have to take this call.” She walked into one of the rooms off the living room and closed the door.
He released a slow breath and looked down at his uneaten food, his gut in knots. He’d never let a woman derail him from anything he put his mind to, and he’d been involved with his share of smart, sexy women, in the service and out. So why was Ivy turning him inside out all of a sudden?
She was pretty. Curvy and physically fit. Gutsy to a fault. And she had a bright, inquisitive mind he’d always found appealing, even when they’d been kids. But none of those attributes should have been enough to make a man his age with his experience feel so off-kilter.
He made himself eat his sandwich, washing it down with the cooling soup. Maybe hunger and