Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(38)

It also made him want her. A dangerous road to go down for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which was that he didn’t want to hurt her.

Or be hurt.

In the past, he’d done a real bang-up job of holding himself back, always. Mostly because a part of him didn’t trust love. But he was having a hard time holding back with Ivy, and that it’d only been a week made it all the more difficult to understand.

He pulled up at the address she’d given him and stared at the building. The sign read The Trough. It was a country Western bar. “Interesting choice,” he said, idling at the curb.

“Cowboys are welcome. And you’re a cowboy, so . . .”

“Not exactly, no.” He had to park a block down and across the street, at least tonight. Apparently cowboys were popular.

“I thought you were raised on your grandparents ranch in Idaho.”

“And you think that makes me a cowboy?” he asked, amused.

“More than anyone else I know.”

That was probably true.

“And maybe you’re missing Idaho and all the wide open space and big skies and all that.” She waved a hand to indicate there was more to miss but she didn’t know what exactly. “Right?”

No. Being back in San Francisco was reminding him of a time when he’d been a young city rat, and a happy one. He loved the constant motion of the city, how he could get Thai food delivered at two in the morning if he wanted. He loved being with Caleb, like nearly two decades hadn’t gone by. The only thing to miss about Sunshine, Idaho, was feeling like he had a handle on his future.

But that was gone now too.

“They’ve got a mechanical bull in there,” Ivy said.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, he had to laugh. “You do realize that no real cowboy would be caught dead on one of those things.”

“You’re going to be,” she said confidently.

“Oh yeah?” He turned to her and found her with a smug smile that was utterly contagious. “And how do you know that?”

“Because I’m going to ask real nice and sweet,” she said, making him laugh again. “Okay,” she admitted. “So maybe I’m a little short on nice and sweet. But let’s just say there’ll be a prize for whoever stays on the longest.”

He held her gaze. “You have my full attention.”

“Winner gets to pick their spoils.”

And just like that, he was in. “I could take you outside the city to a working ranch in Sonoma that Donovan, a buddy of mine, runs,” he said. “We could ride real horses.”

She looked horrified. “What, are you crazy? No way.”

He arched a brow. “Let me get this straight. You’ll get on a mechanical bull, which by the way is actually very dangerous, but not a real horse?”

“I’m not riding anything that’s got a mind of its own.”

He sidled her a glance. “Ever?”

She grimaced. “Well I walked right into that one, didn’t I.”

He grinned. “Want to take it back?”

She looked him over, slowly and with great interest. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”

“I look forward to it.”

They got out of the truck. Ivy held his hand, tugging him off the sidewalk and into the street.

“Jaywalking’s illegal,” he said.

“You can give me a citation later.”

He liked the sound of that. He found himself smiling as she tugged him along, in her usual impatient hurry to get to everything.

The bar was every cliché of a cowboy bar imaginable, down to the saddles for seats and wagon wheels on the walls, and let’s not forget the mechanical bull. Kel was still taking it all in when their drinks were served.

Ivy tossed hers back and stood. “Watch and learn, cowboy.”

She strode to the mechanical bull. Someone gave her a cowboy hat and when the bull began to move, she was one hand on the hat, the other on the rope, her body moving in sync with the bull.

Kel’s mouth went dry.

She lasted a respectable ten seconds before being tossed and landing in a graceful pile on the mats.

Then she was in front of him again, grinning with pride, still wearing the hat. “Beat that, cowboy.”

Her excitement and love for life was contagious as hell, and against all his own personal boundaries and sense of dignity, he stood up. He did a brief internal inventory of his still healing injuries, but he was feeling good. Good enough to do this. “Winner gets to pick their spoils,” he reminded her.

She looked at him for a beat. “Within reason,” she amended.

He smiled, thinking he could work with those odds, and strode to the damn mechanical bull.

It was possibly the most ridiculous thing he’d ever done in his entire life, so why he was still smiling as he mounted the thing, he had no idea.

When the bull began to move, the crowd went wild while he held on for dear life. He could hear Ivy chanting “cowboy, cowboy, cowboy!” making him laugh and nearly fell off.

He lasted ten point five seconds before he was flung into the air, landing flat on his ass in an undignified heap. Before he could get up, Ivy jumped on him, laughing as she straddled him, slid her fingers into his hair, and—to the crowd’s delight—kissed him. Then she pulled back and rose, offering him a hand. He let her pull him to his feet before he stole another kiss, this one more aggressive than hers. “I won,” he said against her mouth, hands gripping her hips, enjoying the satisfaction of watching her eyes heat.