Wicked Hearts (An Ivy Morgan Mystery Book 9) Read online

  “It’s the festival of love,” Max replied, smirking. “It’s right up your alley.”

  Jack considered questioning further, but the fact that a woman he didn’t recognize approached and handed him a rose while smiling caused him to change his mind. “I think this place has a few too many festivals, but this one sounds fun.” He handed the rose to Ivy. “For you, honey.”

  Ivy smiled as she accepted the bloom. “It’s cute that you’re excited for this, but it’s not what you think it’s going to be. It’s not going to be all love, kisses, and flowers.”

  “Okay. What is it really?”

  “An excuse for people to yell and scream at each other.”

  “Oh, well, that sometimes excites me, too.” Jack squeezed her hand. “Come on. Show me around.”

  “Okay. You asked for it, though.”

  Two

  “Okay, now I definitely need the rundown of this thing.” Jack absent-mindedly rubbed his hand over Ivy’s slim back. “How can a festival that supposed to be all about love cause people to be unhappy?”

  “Oh, you’re a simple man so it’s hard for you to understand a complicated truth,” Max teased. “The Festival of Love has been a convoluted mess since we were kids.”

  Jack shifted his eyes to Ivy. “Would you like to explain? I have a feeling that your brother is going to drag things out so long that I lose interest in the answer.”

  Ivy snorted as Max rolled his eyes.

  “He has a point, Max,” Ivy noted. “You do tend to run off at the mouth.”

  “And you’re a calm and collected cucumber,” Max shot back, miffed. “I don’t run off at the mouth.”

  Ivy made a dubious expression as a young woman – barely in her twenties – passed the small group. She wore tight pants and a red festival coat, which happened to be zipped down so Max could get an eyeful of cleavage. “There goes one of your Valentine Vixens now, Max. Things are looking up for you at least.”

  “Valentine Vixen?” Jack watched the woman walk down the pathway, his eyes dipping low enough that Ivy was convinced he was watching her swinging hips.

  “Do you want to sleep on the couch?” Ivy challenged.

  Jack forced his eyes back to Ivy. “What are you talking about?”

  The way his lips curved told Ivy he knew exactly what she was talking about. “You’re on my list.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t be like that.” Jack ran his tongue over his teeth before focusing on Max. “You name all the festival chicks, right? I’ve heard of the Haystack Honeys, the Christmas Cuties, the Turkey Tarts – although your sister might have made up that one now that I think about it – and now the Valentine Vixens.”

  “I can’t help myself,” Max replied. “They always wear these cute little outfits and are ridiculously hot.”

  “You’re right about them being hot,” Ivy said after a beat. “I wonder who picks the female volunteers. I notice they don’t have any hot guys walking around to entice the women. It must be a man in charge of the selection process. I’m totally going to find out who it is and have a talk with him.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Max extended a warning finger. “I like the festivals how they are.”

  “I know you do.” Ivy was blithe. “Perhaps I would like a little eye candy, though. I mean … fair is fair.”

  “You have eye candy,” Jack argued. “I’m your eye candy.”

  “You just zeroed in on that girl’s butt right in front of me,” Ivy argued. “How is that fair?”

  “I didn’t zero in on her butt,” Jack protested. “I merely … watched her walk down the sidewalk because I was worried she might slip and fall.”

  “Oh, whatever.” Ivy rolled her eyes so hard Jack worried she might topple over. He found the expression cute, though, so he grabbed her around the waist and smacked a loud kiss against her cheek. “You know you’re the only one for me.”

  “Oh, I feel like puking.” Max wrinkled his nose. “How long are you guys going to be like this?”

  “Forever,” Jack replied without hesitation.

  “I’m hoping we’ll be happy forever,” Ivy answered. “I’m guessing the sickly-sweet proposal hangover won’t last much past Valentine’s Day.”

  Max’s expression softened momentarily, genuinely happy because of his sister’s overt delight, and then he brightened. “That’s right around the corner.”

  “And Jack says he has something special planned.”

  Max flicked his eyes to Jack, suspicion returning. “Is this something special in your pants?”

  “Don’t be gross.” Jack flicked his ear. He and Max had developed something of a sibling relationship of their own. Even though it weirded Ivy out to think too hard on it, she was glad they liked one another. It made the situation – the one where Max was essentially Ivy’s best friend – much easier to deal with. “I’m taking her out to a romantic dinner.”

  “He won’t tell me what he has planned,” Ivy lamented. “Personally, I think I should be the one to handle the big Valentine’s Day plans since he was in charge of the fancy proposal. He won’t let me, though.”

  “I thought you told me he just dumped the ring on your lap and said ‘let’s do this,’” Max argued.

  Jack pinched his face into a dark expression. “That is not what happened.”

  “It’s kind of what happened,” Ivy argued.

  “Only because you ruined my big proposal plan by going through my stuff and causing a whole … thing,” Jack groused.

  Ivy grinned. She felt markedly better about the fact that the incident still bothered him. “You’re like a girl sometimes with the grudges you hold. I like it.”

  Jack wanted to pout, but her expression wouldn’t allow him to remain angry. “Let’s go back to talking about the festival, shall we?”

  “Definitely,” Max agreed. “Talking about Ivy makes my skin itch, like I have cooties or something.”

  “I will hurt you,” Ivy threatened.

  “You guys make me laugh.” Jack chuckled appreciatively. “Tell me about this festival, though. I would think if you have a Festival of Love that people would walk around being in love … or looking for love … or at least trying to hook up, which would force everyone to be polite.”

  “I think that was the initial intention,” Ivy explained, nudging Jack to get him moving. “The festival was supposed to be a Valentine’s Day thing. It started when we were kids.”

  “Yeah, all the games have heart-shaped prizes, all the cookies are shaped like hearts, and once they used to have a dunk tank where they made the mayor dress like a cupid – you know, in a big diaper and everything – and people would donate money to dunk him for charity.”

  Jack cocked an eyebrow, amused. “I see.”

  “The bonfire was supposed to be a big romantic thing,” Ivy said. “That’s the Saturday night event. Everyone dresses in warm clothes and makes s’mores and has hot chocolate in mugs.” She took on a wistful expression. “When I was little I hoped to have someone to go to the bonfire with because Mom and Dad always looked so happy when we attended.”

  “Yeah, Dad used to get handsy and everything,” Max confirmed.

  “Well, you have me,” Jack pointed out. “You can get handsy with me at the bonfire.”

  Ivy snorted. “I’m looking forward to the hot chocolate more than getting handsy in public.”

  “Don’t knock it until you try it,” Jack chided. “I’m thinking we’ll be able to work both in.”

  “We’ll see. The festival was a big hit until I was teenager and they changed one aspect of it. Once they did that, it stopped being as much fun.”

  Jack waited for Ivy to expand. When she didn’t, he turned to Max. “I’m dying to know what the one thing they changed is.”

  “It’s kind of a sore spot between Ivy and me,” Max hedged, scratching the side of his nose as he shifted from one foot to the other. “We had a big fight over it when we were teenagers and we didn’t speak for a month.”

 
“You two didn’t speak for a month?” Jack was understandably dubious. There were days Max and Ivy couldn’t go an hour without texting one another. “It must have been some fight.”

  Ivy averted her gaze and focused on a food booth across the way. “It wasn’t a good time.”

  She sounded morose enough that Jack wondered if she still harbored ill will regarding whatever went down between them.

  “How about you tell me the story and then I’ll beat up Max for you for old time’s sake,” Jack suggested, earning a reluctant smile for his effort.

  “It’s probably better that we show you,” Ivy said. “I think the story will lose something in the telling.”

  “Oh, well, I can’t wait to see this.”

  “You’re going to regret saying those words,” Max supplied. “Trust me.”

  “WOW.”

  Jack blinked several times in rapid succession as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the lighting in Shadow Lake’s community barn. He’d only been in the structure a few times – once because he wanted to attend the weekly dance with Ivy after hearing so much about them – but he’d never seen the building when it looked like this.

  “It’s like the colors pink and red threw up and coated the world with … this,” Jack muttered, glancing around at the decorations. Everything was hearts as far as the eye could see. Hearts, hearts, and more hearts. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “It’s a pageant,” Max explained.

  “A beauty pageant,” Ivy clarified, her tone dark. “It’s for teenagers.”

  “Little Miss Shadow Lake Love,” Max added. “It’s a big deal. All the female teenagers of a certain age participate and the winner gets to ride on a float and make public appearances at different festivals over the summer.”

  “I see.” Jack said the words, but he wasn’t sure he meant them. “And this is the event that ruined the Shadow Lake Festival of Love? I thought things like this were fairly normal in small towns … at least that’s what television has taught me.”

  “I think the pageant itself is normal,” Max said, risking a glance at Ivy before focusing his full attention on Jack. “This one here … well, it gets pretty intense. You have to understand, there’s not a lot to do in Shadow Lake in the middle of winter.”

  “Yes, it’s downright depressing here,” Ivy muttered.

  Jack tentatively reached out and pressed his hand to the back of Ivy’s neck, giving her a solid rub to ease the tension she was obviously feeling. “I think you need to tell me the story, Max. Your sister isn’t going to do it.”

  Max heaved out a sigh, as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders and he was struggling to stand because of it. “The first year the pageant happened was when we were in elementary school so we didn’t know that much about it by the time we hit high school and it was our turn – or better, Ivy’s turn – to participate.”

  “Okay.” Jack failed to see why that made Ivy so angry. She was hardly the beauty-pageant type. She was more the get-down-and-dirty type. He liked that about her.

  “They didn’t have a lot of contestants the year Ivy was a senior,” Max said. “I can’t remember exactly why, but it was like the one year not a lot of people wanted to be involved for some reason. Mom was on the organizational committee for the festival. She volunteered Ivy for the pageant.”

  “Oh.” Realization dawned on Jack, and instead of feeling sorry for the woman who would become his wife, he barked out a laugh. “You got forced to participate in the pageant against your will? That must have been torture for you.”

  “You have no idea,” Ivy said, rolling her neck until it cracked. “It was horrible.”

  “It got even worse when Ivy decided she wanted to win,” Max said. “She was up against Ava and Maisie that year. They both wanted to win, too.”

  “Why did you want to win?” Jack was understandably confused. “That doesn’t sound like your type of thing. Did you want the crown or something? If so, I can buy you a crown.”

  Ivy’s mouth tipped down into an ugly scowl. “I didn’t want the crown. I didn’t care about the parade. I didn’t care about the fact that Maisie’s idea of talent was dancing like she had a pole.”

  Max snickered. “Yeah. That was the one and only time I found her attractive.”

  Ivy scalded him with a dark look. “You’re a pig.”

  “Go back to the pageant,” Jack prodded, moving quickly when a squealing girl in a tight sequined outfit screeched as she ran past him. He’d never been a fan of teenagers of the female persuasion. Even when he’d been a teenager himself, the screaming and theatrics annoyed him to no end. He’d always pictured Ivy as a different sort of teenager. Perhaps he’d been wrong. “Why did you want to win, honey?”

  “That’s just it,” Ivy said. “I wanted to win. I didn’t care what it was, I just wanted to beat Ava and Maisie. They were … um … not my friends.”

  “They were mean to her,” Max translated for Jack’s benefit. “Even back then people knew Ivy was different. Teenagers are like chickens. They try to peck to death the thing that’s different.”

  “Oh.” Jack felt mildly sick to his stomach. He knew Ivy struggled in high school because people whispered that she was a witch. It turned out she was, although she was still grappling with that new reality and refused to own up to her abilities. He knew better than pressing her on it, though. “Honey, I’m sorry that happened.”

  “You don’t know what happened,” Ivy challenged.

  “No,” Jack agreed. “I figured that you lost, though. Was I wrong?”

  “She did lose,” Max volunteered. “Maisie won. Ava came in second. At the very end, Ivy pulled out and refused to participate. It was the very end, though. Like … five minutes before the start of the pageant. They still marked her down as a loser on the official ballots.”

  “And Max ran Maisie’s campaign for her so I had to hear about it forever,” Ivy said bitterly.

  Jack swung his head so he could glare at Max. “You did what?”

  “She had this tiny little outfit and it made my head do weird things,” Max explained. “I plead temporary insanity. I was a teenager myself. My hormones got in the way.”

  “Oh, whatever.” Jack ran his hands over Ivy’s back. “Honey, it’s okay. We don’t have to watch the pageant.”

  “I hate the pageant,” Ivy gritted out.

  “How can you hate the pageant?” A perky woman, dark hair falling over her shoulders, pulled up short when she heard Ivy’s declaration. “The pageant is very important to the girls in this area, Ivy. You should know that.”

  Ivy’s body was stiff as she turned and the look she fixed the woman with was hardly friendly. Jack swallowed hard and risked a glance at Max. The older Morgan sibling looked as worried as Jack felt, though.

  “Simone,” Ivy gritted out. “I heard you’re running the pageant this year.”

  “I run it every year,” Simone pointed out. “That’s why it runs so smoothly.”

  Jack sensed trouble so he interjected himself into the conversation. “I’m Jack Harker. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

  The woman jutted out her hand. “I’m Simone Graham. I went to high school a few years ahead of Max and Ivy.”

  “And now you run the pageant?” Jack asked, casting Ivy a sidelong look full of worry out of the corner of his eye. “That must be a big job.”

  “It is and I just lost one of my volunteers,” Simone said. “Jill Novak was supposed to help, but she just went into labor.”

  “That sounds terrible,” Jack lied. The problems plaguing Shadow Lake’s beauty pageant were hardly his concern.

  “It is.” Simone shifted a thoughtful expression in Ivy’s direction. “You know, you were in the pageant once … er, well, you trained to be in the pageant before you dropped out. You know how things run.”

  Ivy’s eyebrows flew up her forehead. “Excuse me?”

  “I think you should volunteer your time
to help,” Simone said. “Your nursery is shut down for the winter. You have plenty of time.”

  “Absolutely not,” Ivy said. “I have no interest in this pageant.”

  “Then why are you here?” Simone challenged.

  “Because Jack wanted to see the set-up.”

  “Is that true?” Simone pinned Jack with a questioning look. “Were you that interested in seeing a bunch of teenagers in costume?”

  “No.” Jack replied instinctively because he didn’t like her tone. The look on Ivy’s face told him he should’ve given the response more thought. “I mean … .”

  “Whatever.” Simone tuned out whatever Jack was going to say and fixed her attention on Ivy. “Do you have a legitimate reason why you can’t volunteer your time?”

  Ivy nodded. “I’m busy.”

  “With what?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  “I heard. You’ve shown your ring to everyone in town. Just to save you some time, it’s beautiful and we’re all jealous you snagged the new guy.”

  Ivy pursed her lips, mortified. If people were talking about her actions behind her back, she must’ve been acting even goofier than she originally realized. “I … um … .”

  “She would love to help,” Max volunteered, taking everyone by surprise.

  “I would not,” Ivy snapped, her voice rising an octave.

  “I agree with Max,” Simone said, winking at him in a playful manner that turned Ivy’s stomach. “I think you want to help and you just don’t know it yet. You can start today.”

  Ivy balked. “No. I … .” She didn’t get a chance to finish her argument because a warning alarm sounded in her head, something magical in origin, and she slanted her eyes in the direction of the girls practicing a dance number in the middle of the floor. They were having a good time, oblivious of what was to come, but Ivy sensed serious trouble and she knew it was too late to stop it.

  “Oh, my … look out.”

  “Look out for what?” Jack asked, confused.

  As if on cue, one of the girls pitched forward and hit the ground face first. The other girls gasped and screamed as the girl rolled to her side and started shaking, as if she was having a seizure.