Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(10)

Her smile faded. “I’m sorry. What about your mom?”

He concentrated on the road as he pulled into the street. “Where’s your place?”

“The Tenderloin,” she said, and gave him the address. “Are you not answering about your mom on purpose?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at that, and he relaxed. “I like it when you do that,” he said.

“What?”

“Smile.”

She rolled her eyes and looked out the window.

They didn’t speak again, just drove through the city lit within an inch of its life for the holidays with festive garlands and twinkling lights on every block.

Then the neighborhood changed. The decorations vanished, as did pride of ownership, each street more run down than the last.

Ivy had him stop at a very old, possibly falling off its axis Victorian that had seen better days—like five decades ago. It’d clearly been broken up into a few apartments, one per floor. He counted three floors, and what was possibly an attic. He didn’t like the street and layout, and he especially didn’t like the bushes and shrubbery that were overgrown and too close to the house. The ground floor was a security nightmare. Someone could climb into any window virtually undetected. The top floor was just as bad because there were gussets strengthening the angle of the structure that could easily be used to climb like a ladder up the corner of the place. “Tell me you don’t live on the first or the top floor.”

“I don’t live on the first level.”

He looked at her.

“But I do live on the top floor. It’s the attic.”

Shit.

Ivy unhooked her seatbelt. “Thanks for the help.” She turned to him and in the soft ambient light looked at him. Like really looked at him, as if maybe she was seeing him for the first time.

“How did you know anything was wrong?” he asked. “How did you know to show up at the truck?”

“Instinct,” she said. “Just a feeling, I guess.” She held his gaze. “And now the same question to you. How did you know anything was wrong?”

“I heard you cry out.”

She cocked her head, eyeing him like he was a puzzle and she was missing some pieces. “Most people would’ve run the other way, but you ran toward what could’ve been a dangerous situation.”

“I’m the law.”

Something flickered in her gaze at that. She didn’t like that he was a cop. “The law can be dirty,” she said.

As he well knew, but he wasn’t going there. Instead, he let a teasing smile come into his voice. “True. And I can be very dirty, but only when I’m off duty, and only if you ask real nice.”

She laughed out loud at that, the sound both soft and musical. “Okay, I’ll give this to you—you’re funny. And maybe also sexy as hell, but this isn’t happening, Cowboy.”

He’d take sexy as hell any day of the week. “We’re just talking.”

“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. “But when men talk, they think they’re flirting, and to them flirting leads to everything else, which is always a disappointment. And if I wanted to be disappointed, I’d just go inside and stream The Bachelor.”

“How do you know I’d disappoint?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you?”

He slid her a look. “Coloring all of us with the same pen then?”

She shrugged and slipped out of his truck. He got out too, and there on the sidewalk, she put a hand to his chest. “You’re not coming up until I invite you.”

He liked the promise of “until,” but he left it alone for now. “I’m not coming in unless you invite me,” he clarified, extremely aware of the fact that even as they stood there, they were being watched by two homeless people sitting under a tree, a man smoking on the driveway next door, and two guys loitering at the corner. “But I am going to walk you to your door,” he said firmly.

He waited for her response, still keeping vigilant on their peripheral audience. Even twenty years ago when he’d last been familiar with the city, this neighborhood was known for bad news and he liked to be ready for the worst.

Ivy tilted her head as she studied him. “You’re different.”

“Now you’re getting it.” He took her hand. “Come on.”

They passed the tree, under which were two women, each huddled beneath a pile of dirty blankets.

“Hey, girl,” one of them said.

Ivy smiled. “Hey, Jasmine. Too cold to work?”

“My corner flooded, thanks to a broken hydrant.”

“Sucks,” Ivy said. “Hey, Martina. Bad week?”

Martina uncovered her head and nodded.

Ivy handed over something from inside her big purse. It was some food from her truck that hadn’t spoiled, but couldn’t be served because she didn’t know if it’d been handled.

“Thanks,” Martina said. “Can Marietta still hang with you tomorrow afternoon?”

“Of course,” Ivy said and led Kel up the steps to the building.

“Who’s Marietta?” he asked.

“Martina’s daughter. Martina’s bipolar and schizophrenic. She lives at home with her elderly mom and her fourteen-year-old daughter, but sometimes when she goes off the meds, she goes to the streets.”