Page 39 of Who Pissed Off Ivy Dell?

Jensen

Fishing for Forgiveness

Ivy’s either not homeor she’s in a deep sleep in there. I’ve been banging around at her front door for twenty minutes.

The drill gets her attention. She flings her door open. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

She’s been asleep. Her hair is a sexy mess. But her swollen eyes make me want to hold her and apologize until she accepts it. She opens her eyes wide and gestures at the barrier between us. “What is this?”

“It’s a screen door.”

“How’d you know I wanted a screen door?”

“My mom always like slamming one when she was mad, and this one was just taking up space in my shop, so I figured youcould put it to good use.” I open the screen door and slam it, mentally patting myself on the back for the good job I did hanging it.

“I’m only going to be here for another week.”

“Yeah, well, I might not be done pissing you off yet.”

“I’m pretty pissed off that you woke me up.”

“Sleeping all day is unhealthy. And rude. Zara came all this way to see you, and you’re not even hanging out with her.”

“She left me for Dice. And I don’t even where they went.”

I laugh because I already knew that. “They’re fishing with Cujo and Josephine.”

“You never took me fishing.”

“How come I didn’t know you liked to fish?”

“Probably because you never asked.”

“Well, damn!” I open her screen door and slam it again.

She bites her lip, trying not to smile. “Does this thing have a latch so the wind won’t grab it and bang it open and shut all day and night?”

“No. But if you’re nice to me, I could probably find you a latch for it.”

“I got a whole door without being nice to you at all.”

“That’s not true. You just haven’t been nice to me today.”

“I don’t have enough reward points built up from my past nice moments?”

“You might. I guess I could find you a latch based on that.”

“You’re going to give in, just like that?”

“Would a latch for this door make you happy?”

“You can’t just do things because they’ll make me happy.”

“Try me.” I lean my forehead against the screen. “Do you want to go fishing?”

“I’m not sure. Are you going to keep any pertinent information from me?”

“I am going to tell you everything there is to tell about this fishing hole. I am going to describe every lure to you, sparing no details. When you catch a fish, I’m going to count its scales so you’ll never have to wonder how many it had. If we—”

---