Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(2)

On work days, she pulled the truck out to the street at the entrance to the courtyard, always a gamble because her city permit hadn’t yet come through. Permits were incredibly difficult to come by, but she’d been told she was finally going to get one, and hopefully that was true.

Just looking at the truck had put a smile on her face—a real one. She moved the truck and had just parked for the day when her day’s deliveries arrived. She received her preordered inventory and eyed the time. Six thirty. She opened at seven sharp, so she got started chopping ingredients, frying up meats, arranging the makings for the day’s menu. Her menu. She liked the work. Actually, she loved the work, and her boss wasn’t bad either. She smiled at that as she worked because she was the boss. She owned the truck.

Okay, so she was making payments on it, but she was actually in the black these days. Everything about that thought improved her day on the spot. Today she wasn’t going to worry about bills or permits. She was going to enjoy herself, her food, and her new goals.

She was comfortable here in her small but mighty space of seventy-five square feet, working her magic, making what she liked to think were the most delicious tacos in the Bay Area. It wasn’t an easy job. She spent just as much time prepping and being a mechanic as she did being a chef. And then there was the ordering and buying of all the necessary supplies, not to mention the bookkeeping, which often kept her up late into the night.

Her work was never done, but she was good with that. Hell, she was great with that. After spending most of her life at the mercy of others, she thrived on being independent and having no one tell her what to do or when to do it.

She was still prepping when she heard voices outside. She handled breakfast and lunch on her own, her two biggest meals. After that, her part-time helper, Jenny, came in the afternoons to handle the much thinner dinner crowd and closing. For now, Ivy still had her Closed sign up, but the voices stopped right outside her truck. Men, at least two of them, possibly three. With a sigh, she opened the serving window and stuck her head out.

A trio of extremely hot guys dressed in running gear and looking hungry as hell glanced up from the menu board posted on the side of her truck. Ivy knew two of them, Caleb and Jake, both currently off the market, so she felt free to give them her flirtiest smile. “Sorry, guys, not open for another twenty minutes.”

Jake returned her flirty smile from his wheelchair while upping it another factor, which she knew was just a ploy to get his way.

“But you make the best food in the city,” he said sweetly, as if Ivy could be swayed by sweet. “And we’ve all gotta be at work by seven.”

Caleb stood at his side, and was a friend of Ivy’s, and also a savior as he’d helped her navigate the purchase of her truck when dealing with the previous owner had gotten tricky. “I’m pretty sure you said you owed me a favor,” he reminded her, always the negotiator.

Knowing the venture capitalist could talk anyone into just about anything, she laughed and gave in. “Fine. Figure out what you want and make it quick. But then we’re even, Caleb.”

They weren’t even. She owed him much more than an early breakfast, and they both knew it. But having gotten his way as he always did, he smiled. “The usual for me.”

“Me too,” Jake said.

Ivy nodded and turned her attention to the third man.

She’d never seen him before; she most certainly would have remembered. Like the others, he was in running gear that fit his leanly muscled bod, which he held in a way that suggested military or cop. And just like that, the always-on-alert scared little kid she’d once been sent an automatic danger warning to her brain.

But she was no longer helpless, she reminded herself. She no longer had to pretend to be tough and brave. She was tough and brave. So she kept her smile in place, forcing herself to relax. She had nothing to hide. Well, almost nothing, anyway.

And it wasn’t exactly a hardship to look at him. His smile certainly was heart-stopping as he added his charm to both Caleb and Jake’s. And there was considerable charm. He had dark eyes and dark hair cut short, and in spite of his smile, when those eyes met hers, they gave away nothing of his thoughts.

Yep. Cop, she thought, which was a damn shame.



Kel O’Donnell stood there in front of The Taco Truck, starving and aching like a son-of-a-bitch. Pushing his body on a five mile, full-out run hadn’t been the smartest of ideas after what he’d been through. But his more immediate problem was that if he didn’t get food and fast, his stomach was going to eat itself.

The woman inside the truck looked to him for his order. “And you?” she asked, her voice slightly amused, as if life wasn’t to be taken too seriously, especially while ordering tacos.

But he was taking this very seriously, as his hunger felt soul deep. “What do you suggest?”

This caused twin groans from his cousin Caleb and their longtime friend Jake, which Kel ignored.

Not his server though. She quirked a single brow, the small gesture making him feel more than he had in months. Certainly since his life had detonated several months ago when he’d chased after a suspect on foot, only to be hit by the getaway car, getting himself punted a good fifteen feet into the air. That had hurt. But what had hurt more was his perp turning out to be a dirty cop. And not any dirty cop, but a longtime friend, which had nearly cost him life and career.

But hell, at least neither were on the line this time. It was just a pretty woman giving him some cute, sexy ’tude while waiting on him to decide between avocado and bacon tacos or spicy green eggs and ham tacos.