Page 37 of Training the Heart

“What! He is, what do you think he does in Lexington?”

“I don’t know, goes shopping? Takes in the nightlife?” CeCe asks, not even believing it herself.

Ginger snorts. “He goes shopping, alright. Pussy shopping, the kind where he doesn’t ask to stay over after.”

“There’s my cue to exit the room.” CeCe stands to head to the kitchen, and Ginger eyes me with a smirk.

I can tell as plain as day that there’s not a chance she wouldn’t welcome Cole into her self-proclaimed Garden of Eden if she had her opportunity.

But like I said, I’ve never had friends, so I just wink at her. Her secret is safe with me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wade

By the time I get home on Wednesday and start dinner for us, Ivy is animated and full of chatter. This has been our routine for the last week. Dinners, drinks, snacks, talking … okay, mostly Ivy talking, while I listen intently through every action movie I can load up for us, about nothing and everything—our childhoods, her training plan, places we’ve been, college, music, food, you name it. It’s nothing too personal, but feels very personal just the same.

After spending these nights with her, I feel like I know Ivy a little better, and everything I know about her I like, and fuck, she’s becoming more difficult every day to put out of my head. You think it would be weird sharing a home with someone you barely know, but in this instance, I feel more at ease around her than I did with Janelle after six years of marriage. I’ve found myself almost excited to leave the office and come home the last few nights. And that isn’t a good thing for me when it comes to not giving in to this little mini Ivy obsession or whatever this is.

“What am I going to do when I get home and have to goback to boring dinners?” She smiles up at me as I hand her a steaming bowl of my family’s favorite—okay, Mabel’s favorite—deconstructed chicken pot pie topped with homemade biscuits.

“For a fee, I could leave a plate on your doorstep,” I say, only half kidding because I like cooking for her.

Mostly, I like the face she makes when she takes her first bite and realizes she loves it. Her throat makes the cutest moaning sounds and her eyes roll back just a little. It makes me wonder about the other times she’d make that face and those sounds.

“Oh my God, I would pay for it,” she says, giving me the sound I want as she takes her first bite. “You made these biscuits from scratch?”

I scoff as I take a bite. Fuck, thatisreally good.

“Don’t insult me, Trouble. There’s no other way,” I say, disgusted she’d think I’d use a box mix.

She holds both hands up in truce, and I look up at her as she smiles. She’s gotten a little more comfortable. Maybe too comfortable, since she’s wearing those little gray fleece pajama shorts again, the ones I wanted to tear off of her the first time I saw them. And just to further torture me, tonight she’s wearingmyred bandana, the one I gave her to dry her tears her first night at my place. It’s tied into her wavy hair like a little scarf, and I couldn’t give a fuck to ever get it back. Something of mine that close to her is doing something to me I can’t really put into words.

“Sorry, I would never want to insult the chef and risk never getting fed like this again.” She takes another bite.

I won’t tell her there’s probably no risk of that. I’m pretty sure I’d cook for her anytime she wants.

“Oh, I also talked to a handful of potential jockeys today …” she starts.

The conversation I’m trying so hard not to get used tocontinues as we talk about Nashville and the auction while we finish eating.

Reluctantly, I let her help me dry dishes afterwards because her ankle is a lot better. Also because she tells me if I don’t let her help with something, she’s going to eat all my Pop-Tarts while I’m sleeping tonight.

I listen to her hum to herself while she works. By the time we’re done and I’m heading for the shower, she promises to finish cleaning up and get the movie ready for us.

There’s a simplicity to this I can’t really comprehend. Oddly like we’ve been doing it for a lot longer than a week. When I get to the shower, I’m grateful for a few minutes alone. I’m strong, but my willpower is wearing thin, and my balls are a different level of blue than they’ve ever been before, just from spending every night sitting five feet away from her.

By the time I’m dried off and tossing on my sweats, I have a plan. I’m going to go to bed early. It’s her last night here, then we’ll go back to normal. I’m taking her things to Blue Eyes for her after work tomorrow, and she’s even going to spend some time in the barns before we head to Nashville on Friday.

But when I reach the living room, I see that Ivy has slid the coffee table out of the way and has a big nest of throw blankets and pillows from the couch in the center of the room, on the area rug in front of the fireplace. She’s holding a bag of candy and popcorn in her hand.

Fuck me.What plan again?

“Fast X?” she asks with a smile.

We’ve watched the first nine over the last few days.

“I mean, I can’t go home without watching the final movie. That would be a travesty.”

---