Chapter 2
The house was clean in two hours, and the food was as good as ready, all Ivy needed to do was set the table. It wasn’t seven yet, and she decided to take a bath and get ready for the evening now that she had some free time.
At half past six, Ivy was holding up her recently washed dress up to the washing line behind her bedroom. That’s where she hung all their clothes to dry, but this evening she had only hand washed her own dress. She had a clothes peg in her mouth while she held up the dress to the line as she tried to arrange it neatly.
A gust of breeze was blowing in her direction and Ivy was already regretting stepping out here in nothing but a towel wrapped around her. Her hair was still damp from the bath she had just had and she could feel the goosebumps on her flesh from the breeze. But this was at the back of the house, a small private yard behind her own bedroom, so she wasn’t that worried about the breeze or her towel or her damp hair. Nobody would see her here.
So, when a strong gust of wind blew in her direction again, Ivy took care to hold on to her dress, instead of paying attention to the towel wrapped around herself. Which, in a swift moment, before she could stop it, had untangled away from her body and blown away.
Ivy shrieked from the shock of the cold breeze that lashed against her body. She was standing completely naked, covered in goosebumps and still trying to fix her dress on the washing line. It made her smile, because she assumed that she was by herself.
Till her eyes settled on the tall figure leaning against the brick wall of the house, several feet away from her, but looking at her nonetheless.
Ivy shrieked again. It wasn’t Leon and she didn’t recognize the man. She fumbled quickly to get a hold of the dress from the line to cover her breasts. She had squeezed her thighs together in an attempt to hide the rest of her modesty. But the man was smiling. He had seen what he needed to see.
It had to be Archer Cooper.
Astonishingly, he looked nothing like his twin, Leon. He had thick dark wavy hair, that was so black that it was almost blue. His jaw was covered in a dusting of a dark stubble, like he hadn’t shaved for a few days. His eyes were sharp, but unlike his brother’s his were an electric blue and it somehow made him look more dangerous. He was very tall too, even from the distance, Ivy could see that he was taller than his brother, at least six and a half feet. And Archer Cooper was grinning at her, because she could see the deep dimples that slashed across his cheeks. But there was something in his eyes, in the way his jaws were sharp and chiseled, which gave it away, that he was Leon’s brother.
Archer remained where he was, leaning against the brick wall, facing in Ivy’s direction. He had a lit cigarette between his fingers which he now brought up to his thin red lips and sucked in a mouthful of smoke.
“Don’t mind me.” He said lazily, when he let out the smoke from his mouth. That was when Ivy realized that she had been frozen to the spot, that she hadn’t moved since the towel fell away from her, since when he had seen her completely naked.
“This is a private space.” Ivy snapped at him, clutching her dress ineffectively over her breasts. She knew that he had seen her, he had seen what he had to see.
He continued to smile, and continued to take long lazy drags of his cigarette.
“My brother doesn’t like me smoking in front of him, so I had to find a quiet spot.” He said, ignoring the rage in Ivy’s voice.
She didn’t know why she continued to stand there, why she didn’t just rush back into the house, save whatever bit of modesty that she could. There was something about this man that drew her, to watch him, to look at him.
Ivy could feel her heart beating against her chest wildly, these were the exact feelings that she had felt when she had first laid eyes on Leon.
“Can you please leave?” She forced herself to say, aware that she was sounding rude. But he didn’t seem to mind, in fact the smile on his face only grew wider.
“Why aren’t you going back inside?” He said with a laugh in his voice. He formed a thick cloud of cigarette smoke in front of his face when he blew it out of his mouth.
Ivy was growing conscious of her hardening nipples, how her stomach was clenching and unclenching itself the more she looked at him. Whatever Leon had awakened in her, his brother was doing the same.
She glared at him for a few seconds longer, and he continued to smile back at her, till she turned on her heels with a flourish and rushed back into her room through the side door. She knew he had seen her naked back, her bare butt, but what other choice did she have? He wasn’t offering her any help and she only had the dress to save her.
When she was safely back in her room, Ivy rested her damp head against the door and slid down to the carpeted floor. She was breathing heavily; her chest was heaving. She couldn’t be sure what was happening to her, what exactly was going on. Why was her body reacting this way, like she was excited that Leon Cooper’s brother had just seen her naked?
She should have been embarrassed and angry, but instead Ivy could feel a thrill coursing through her veins, and she tried to suppress a smile.