Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1) (6 page)

Mathew considered and discarded
several quotes he remembered from his Latin studies to describe his situation
until he settled on Virgil’s simple
Fugit Irreparabile Tempus,
Time is
Irretrievably Flying.  That was it exactly.  He had to change his
life before he wound up like Steve, alone at 60 with nothing except his life as
an agent.  Mathew started with the latest relationship first, listing down
what would have been required to make it work, then he went on to the
second.  At the end, he reviewed the list and felt some of the home truths
it represented.  Then he enumerated the top five changes he needed to make
in his life and in himself.  He needed more personal time.  He had to
open up his feelings.  He had to learn how to be joyful and to spread that
joy.  He had to define a life with space for a mate where they had common
interests, goals and understandings.  Perhaps most importantly, he needed
to look forward to a warm future and not backward to his cold
childhood.   On the surface, those changes sounded easy, but he knew
himself well enough to understand they would be a struggle.

The door to their office suite opened
and in came Steve, uncharacteristically smiling to himself and jeez-louise, he
was humming some tune or other.  He raised a hand in greeting and made his
way into his office, still humming.   Something was up for
sure.   Then it hit Mathew – Brian and Moll had come back praising
that woman they dealt with in Portland.  Steve hustled back to Portland
after the failed capture attempt in Manzanillo and today he was smiling and
humming. 

Now Mathew was really depressed over
his own life.  Even Steve had someone he was dreaming about.  He had
known Steve a long time and had seen him go through a period of one night
stands, followed by apparent abstinence, and now perhaps interested in forging a
relationship.  Brian and Moll dated whenever they could, although Mathew
was never sure that Moll’s heart was in it.  Moll was a bit of an
island.  Brian played the field, taking care not to get serious, wanting
to avoid becoming stifled in the way his mother had suffocated him.  Still
in all, he knew that when Brian was ready, he would have no trouble finding a
mate.  Mathew reviewed the five things he needed to change within himself
to have a chance at a good relationship.  If he did not get moving soon,
then the man reputed to have bedroom eyes would never be more than a member of
their sometimes four-man FBI monkhood. 

***

A week later, Steve and Mathew flew to
Los Angeles on the child trafficking case.  They received word from the
local FBI office that the undercover drug unit of the Los Angeles Police
Department followed a lead and raided the operation of an alleged local
pimp.  The man ran women out of an upscale duplex and dispensed CNS
stimulants to their clients, including cocaine and ecstasy.  Secreted away
in the basement, they found four children forced to work as part of the
prostitution ring.  All four spoke limited accented English and were from
the Ukraine.  Steve scheduled a Bubird as soon as the call came in,
alerted Mathew and then grabbed the suitcase he always kept packed in his
office to take off immediately for LA. 

Working with the local authorities,
they reviewed the evidence and questioned the perps.  Then they talked
with the prostitutes and the four girls who ranged in age from eleven to sixteen. 
Seasoned agents though they were, both Mathew and Steve had trouble seeing
those kids already hardened into a life of drugs and sex.  They could go
from innocent and fearful to cocky and aggressive, or to
withdrawn
and silent as if all they could do was play a role.  That made a sort of
sick sense, since the pimp was a failed movie director and some of the adult
women working for him had once aspired to careers in Hollywood.

Mathew was combing through the pimp’s
texts and emails, hitting some that were encrypted and likely in one or more
foreign languages.  Steve estimated how much work they had yet to do and
decided to leave on Friday.  How he went back east would be determined by
the phone call he was about to make to Ivy Littleton.  When he talked with
her early the week before at work, she had been, if not encouraging, at least
not hostile.  Early this week he called her again ostensibly to find out
what other banks they might have data on, although he had no intention of using
it.  On the second call they talked about the case for a short time, then
he asked about what she was doing at work and what Portland was like in the
fall.  While she was a little distant with him, he was encouraged enough
to ask her to dinner Friday night.

Steve selected her work phone even
though it was after seven on Thursday evening.  The call went to voice
mail.  He dialed her home phone.  She picked up after three rings.

“Ivy Vine?  Steve Nielsen here.”

“Steve?  Are you calling to
terrorize me into giving you more data?” she said, but she laughed after asking
the question.

“No, I’m down in L.A.”

“You do get around, don’t you?”

“Uh, yeah.  Same case. Say, I
could be in Portland late tomorrow afternoon and wondered if you would have
dinner with me.”

Ivy was silent.  Steve waited for
her to respond.  Was she thinking up a reason to say no?  Did she
have another date?  Was she in a relationship?

“Steve, I don’t like to cross the line
between business and personal lives.”

“Understand.  As far as I’m
concerned, any future dealings with your company will be through your attorney
at Corporate.”  He paused to let that sink in, then said, “Look Ivy, I was
a real jerk with you at times.  It is my way to get what is needed for a case
as quickly as possible.  That is what I do, not who I am.  Hopefully
there were also times when you saw that I could be a reasonable guy.”

“Maybe so.  Still in all, you
seem to bring out the worst in me.”

“Ivy, give me a chance.  Won’t
you give me one dinner to prove myself?”

Ivy was silent again.  In the
background, he could hear classical music playing.  He waited.  He
could be good at waiting when he thought it would advance his cause.  He
watched the minute change on his laptop clock.

“Seven.  At a restaurant called
Urban Farmer upstairs in the Nines Hotel.  I will meet you there.”

“I’ll make a reservation.”

“I’ll be the woman sipping a Manhattan
at the bar wondering why she is crazy enough to be there.”

“Correction.  You will be the
lovely tall woman with the amazing hair wondering . . . “

“See you tomorrow,” she said in a
voice that sounded a little warmer than it had before.

“Goodbye, Ivy.” 

Steve clicked off his phone.  If
the ceilings were higher, he might have jumped up in the air to release the
tension from fearing he would be turned down.  Tomorrow at 7.  He
opened the browser on his laptop to book the restaurant.  He would take a
commercial flight to Portland on his own nickel.  Mathew could wrap things
up here tomorrow, take the Bubird up to meet him in Portland early Saturday,
pick him up and they would then fly back to D.C. together while Mathew briefed
him on new findings.

He stopped for a moment,
reconsidering.  Was he ready for the emotional ups and downs of getting to
know someone?  Did he have time?  Was the mercurial Ivy a wise
choice?  The answer to each of those questions was ‘no’.  Should he
call her back and cancel?  He sat back, trying to think rationally. 
It was only dinner.  Nothing more.  Was he so fearful emotionally
that he could not risk having dinner with an intelligent, feisty woman with
delicious curves, expressive eyes, and a mouth that . . .?  Just dinner –
who was he kidding?  This was about a whole lot more than dinner. 
Com’on Nielsen.  If you won’t take a risk now that you are 60, when the
heck will you?  He found the website for the restaurant, checked out its
menu and then clicked the booking option. 

***

On Saturday afternoon, Ivy was out in
her yard, cutting back spent perennials, deadheading the fall bloomers, and
doing some pruning.  She always found it a bit sad when the gardening
season was over.  The asters were still bravely showing off sapphire-blue
flowers in a brilliant shade that only nature could have produced.  Around
their base, a deep pink hardy geranium bloomed playfully.  They looked so
happy and cheerful that she decided to leave them to enjoy any remaining sunny
fall days. 

The garden needed to be tidied up
before winter and a life-long Portlander like Ivy knew that the rains would
soon hamper working outside.  Around the neighborhood, other folks were
mowing grass, working in the garden, caulking, doing repairs – all taking
advantage of the still pleasant weather.  The corgis were on the other
side of the yard raising a ruckus at any passing dog, person, or
squirrel.  They were protective and territorial, making them the
neighborhood busy-bodies.  Soon Ivy would have to bring them to sit near
her before they became too much of an irritant.

While she worked, gradually filling up
the gardening recycle bin, she was thinking over her time with Steve. 
Dinner the night before had gone better than she expected.  After a little
stumbling conversation at the beginning, they were soon chatting over
appetizers, laughing when their entrees arrived and feeding each other tastes
of dessert.  Actually Steve fed her tastes of his dessert.  He would
take a taste of each course she was served, eat his food and then bide his time
until he could finish off whatever she had ordered.  He ordered extra side
dishes of potatoes, asparagus and creamed spinach and ate those as well. 
The man’s appetite was so prodigious that she had to smile at the memory. 
Once they were finished, he asked if she would like to take a walk around the
city.  After looking ruefully down at her heels, they walked first to her
office where she put on a sensible pair of flats and out they went, walking
over to Burnside, turning left and then going up to Broadway, where they turned
and walked up to the Park blocks.  The air was crisp and fresh with the
chill of fall.  Sometimes she leaned on Steve’s arm; sometimes he held her
hand.   Once in the park, shaded from the streetlight by one of the
big-leafed trees, Steve asked if he could kiss her.  That evening he had
the manners of a gentleman.  She had seen the more aggressive side of him
and she was having trouble reconciling the two.

Ivy stopped trimming the rudbeckia,
still with a few of their cheerful black-eyed susan flowers that she put aside
for an arrangement in the house.  She thought about the way Steve had
kissed her -- long, slow and increasingly sensual.  For once in her life,
she felt scaled to size when he put his arms around her.  He gently drew
her close, nestling her against him.  Afterward he stared at her without
smiling and said.  “Oh yes, this is about much more than just
dinner.”  They meandered their way back to the parking lot where Ivy had
left her car.  Finding out that he would not leave until ten the next
morning, she offered to pick him up at his hotel, buy him breakfast and drive
him to the airport.   

Seeing him again that morning let her
know that more than the wine the night before drew them together.  They
talked easily as they sipped lattes and dug into large plates of food at a
place called Mothers downtown.  All too soon, they were in the car and on
their way to the Hillsboro airport where Steve had an FBI jet coming to pick
him up.  Once there, he wanted her to meet Mathew who she had heard a
fair amount about. She watched from the small waiting room while Steve jogged
out to the jet and returned with yet another fine-looking agent in his late
thirties.  Like Brian Tovey, Mathew Heylen was about six feet but more
substantial.  He had sandy hair and moody sea-green eyes that almost seem
to laugh as they echo
e
d his warm smile.  Mathew was like a blue
spruce, tall and handsome, with many fine attributes that made it a perfect
specimen planting as the backbone of a garden. They talked for a few minutes
and then Mathew left to go back on the plane. 

Steve kissed her again.  “I will
not say good-by, Ivy, because I am hoping this is only hello.”  He strode
towards the plane, then turned and hastened back, taking her in his arms,
swooping her in a waltz-like turn and then dipping her back for another
kiss.  Those blue eyes of his were intense with warmth.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
he asked gently pulling her back upright. 

Ivy let her face grow serious. 
“Making a big turkey dinner for a fellow I know who is going to be in
Portland.”

It surprised her that he appeared
crestfallen.  “It’s kind of iffy,” she continued, “You see, he travels a
good deal and is very committed to his work.”

Steve took in the teasing expression
in her eyes and realized she was talking about him.  “Darn it Ivy. 
You shouldn’t taunt a man like that.  If this case is wrapped up by then,
I will schedule to be in Portland for the Thanksgiving weekend.  If not,
let’s plan a long weekend together when the case is over.  I want to know
you better.  You are one special woman, Ivy Vine.”

“And I am learning that perhaps you
are not always a fire-breathing dragon yourself, Agent Nielsen.”

Smiling at the memory, Ivy went back
to cutting down the perennials.  Steve was different from any man she had
dated in the way he seemed made up of contradictory parts.  The brash,
demanding FBI agent juxtaposed with the easy manners of a gentleman; his
delight in technology seemed out of sync with an appreciation of fine wines; he
was oversized and yet always pressed and neat.  While he touched her gently,
she worried that he could turn aggressive in a relationship during a rough
spot.  The long, soft kiss and the tender way he held her were as
unexpected as the boyish grin that he rarely showed.  Even with her
concern, Ivy found she was eagerly anticipating hearing from him again.