Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(50)

She stared at him, trying to get a read on all he wasn’t saying. But other than looking pretty serious at the moment—extremely unlike him—he wasn’t revealing much. “What will happen if I kick you out right now?” she asked.

“Besides your boyfriend giving me the third degree when I hit the street? You don’t want to know.”

Dammit. She shook her head. “One night, that’s it, no money. And I want Aunt Cathy’s necklace back.”

“You won’t regret it,” he said with clear relief. “What was for dinner?”

“I’m going to shower but there’s food in the fridge.”

Thirty minutes later she came out of the steamed up bathroom and stopped in surprise. Her brother was vacuuming. And by the looks of things, he’d also tidied up, including cleaning the kitchen. “Why are you here?”

He flashed her a sweet smile. “Made you some hot chocolate.”

“Did you steal anything?” she asked him suspiciously.

“Not yet,” he said with a look of innocence that she knew could fool the pope.

Great. So he’d been looking for something else of hers to sell for cash. Moving to a window, she pulled the shades aside and looked down to the street. Kel’s truck was still at the curb. He’d meant it. It wasn’t often that someone told her something and followed through or kept their word, so it was still a novelty.

Was he sleeping?

If not for their untimely interruption, they might’ve slept the entire night together, wrapped up tight and warm in each other. She’d never wanted such a thing before, but the idea of it with Kel sent shocking waves of yearning through her.

“So,” Brandon said. “Where do you keep the booze?”





Chapter 18




If you want to see results, you’ve got to stay with me



Two hours later Kel was still in his truck in front of Ivy’s place. He was head back, baseball cap low over his eyes to cut the glare from the streetlamp on the other side of the street, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was reflecting. On being back here in a city he’d left at age twelve after losing . . . well, everything, on whether or not he missed Idaho, on the fact that he and Ivy had pretty much decimated each other in her bed in the very best of ways and he still wanted more.

The way she’d felt wrapped around him, his name on those soft lips, along with everything else she’d done with that sweet, sexy mouth—

The passenger door opened.

“I could’ve been a murderer, you know,” Ivy said and hopped into the passenger seat. “You can’t just sit in an unlocked vehicle in this neighborhood, cowboy. It’s dangerous.”

He slid her a look, amused that she seemed to think he was naive. “I heard you coming.”

“Why are you still here?”

“You know why.”

“I agreed to call if I needed you.”

“You don’t do need,” he said.

She lifted a shoulder in agreement to that fact. Then sighed and assumed his position, relaxing against the seat, tilting her head back. “You don’t have to do this.”

He hadn’t moved a muscle, and he didn’t now either, going still as stone. Did she mean be with her, or watching her back? “Define ‘this,’” he said.

“Guard me. I’ve been watching my own back for a long time now. I’m good at it.”

He looked over at her, but her eyes were still closed. “I’ve got no doubt of that,” he said. And that was true. She was clearly capable, smart, wily . . . It was all sexy as hell. “Sometimes in life you meet someone,” he said. “And suddenly you don’t have to be alone all the time. You can share the burden. Relax your guard.”

“For the few remaining days you’ve got here in town, you mean?”

This caused an odd stab of pain in his chest. “Sometimes you only get a beat in time. Sometimes you get a lot longer. But what you don’t do is let it pass you by. Not when it’s this good, Ivy.”

She didn’t respond to that. Her body appeared relaxed, but he knew better. He was starting to know her now and this was her false calm, the one that was only skin deep, the one she showed the world, while on the inside, she was scrambling.

He turned in his seat, lifting his hand to the back of her head, letting his fingers slip beneath her hair to knead at the tight muscles of her neck. “Do you want to tell me what’s really going on with your brother?”

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On if I’m talking to the man I just had sex with, or the cop.” With that, she opened her eyes and turned her head to meet his gaze. “Because if I’m talking to the guy who just rocked my world . . .”

He let out a long shaky breath, filing that incredibly welcome compliment away for later. He had a decision to make, and in that moment, looking into her wary, guarded eyes, he knew there wasn’t a choice. “Yes,” he said. “You’re talking to the guy who just rocked your world. Just as you rocked his.”

She bit her lower lip, which didn’t hide her small, quick smile. “Then I’d tell him that my brother makes bad decisions, but he promised one night and he’d be gone.”