Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(6)

Yes, her exercise app had shamed her into getting up. So here she was, being beaten up and paying for the pleasure. When she’d first come to the city, she’d been oddly lonely and sad. She’d gone to Google instead of a therapist she couldn’t afford, and had learned that moving your body helped with depression. She still hated the gym. Hated. But she was a whole lot less sad.

But because she knew herself, she’d doubled downed and bought a gym pass knowing she was far too cheap to not go. So she tried to get to sleep, but couldn’t. Something was niggling at her. Had she left something on in her truck? Had she left something plugged in? Had Jenny locked it up properly? She’d swear the answers to those questions were no, no, and yes, but . . . she couldn’t shake the feeling.

There’d been many times in her life when her instincts had been all she had, and they’d never failed her. The first time they’d kicked in, she’d been fourteen years old, Brandon sixteen. Since their mom had worked nights, Brandon had been in charge. He’d had some new friends over to play darts in the yard—a hustle, of course. On a good night, Brandon could earn several hundred in cash.

But halfway through the evening, Ivy’s instincts had kicked in, the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up. Not questioning it, she’d climbed out a back window of the trailer and huddled in the bushes, listening as some of the guys who’d become bored with losing money to Brandon had come inside to “have some fun with the hottie little sister . . .”

Brandon had been furious when he’d found out, and had promised not to bring them around again. And he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean the trouble stopped. A year later, this time in a seedy motel in Florida, Brandon had been selling pot out of their single room, using the bathroom as his “office.” He’d been open for business when Ivy had gotten the same hinky feeling, complete with the hair standing straight up on the back of her neck. Again, she’d sneaked out a window. She’d gotten across the yard when the police had come, sirens screaming, into the lot and confiscated all their possessions and Brandon.

Lesson learned. She never ignored her instincts now, never. Which meant she shut off her laptop, locked up, and headed down the stairs. It was only two miles to her truck. Normally, she’d just hoof it over there like she did every morning, because calling a Lyft was a luxury she’d given up for her savings account’s sake.

But no matter how badass she liked to think she was, she wasn’t stupid. No way was she going to risk walking that far alone this late at night. So though it killed her, she opened her Lyft app.

Fifteen minutes later, she got out of the Lyft at the southeast corner of the building, which housed O’Riley’s pub. The place was packing and thriving. Music and laughter poured out of there as she walked by and stopped at the front of the alley to eye her truck.

All looked well. But unable to shake her weird feeling, she moved closer, and then she was running toward it because the back door was cracked, the lock broken and dangling uselessly.





Chapter 3




Leave it all in the room



Kel heard something, a female cry maybe? It indicated fear and he immediately moved in that direction from the pub, where he’d been with Caleb.

They’d met up with a bunch of his cousin’s friends for dinner and drinks, including Sadie, Caleb’s lovely significant other. It’d been a sort of welcome back to the city thing, and though Kel had planned to lay low for the duration of his visit, being out tonight had been good. Caleb had toasted and roasted him—with “Kel the Cowboy Does the City” jokes, cracking himself up.

None of it had bothered Kel, it’d all been in good fun, and sitting there surrounded by Caleb’s tight-knit group of friends and the exciting, urban energy of the city itself, made his own not-great reality feel a million miles away.

He’d left San Francisco when he’d been twelve years old, and it hadn’t been under the best of circumstances. He hadn’t given it much playtime in his brain in the nearly two decades since, but being back had definitely opened the floodgates.

Realizing that, and the fact that the pub had gotten too loud for him, he’d left just after midnight, escaping to the courtyard attached to the pub. It was peaceful out here and he’d taken in the incredible architecture of the old building, the corbeled brick and exposed iron trusses, the large picture windows on the retail shops, the cobblestone beneath his feet, and the huge fountain centerpiece where idiots the city over came to toss a coin and wish for love.

And all of it was decorated for the holidays with garlands of evergreen entwined with twinkling white lights in every doorway and frame, along with a huge Christmas tree near the street entrance, making it look like a Christmas card. It’d rained earlier, so the cobblestone pavers were wet and shiny.

He’d stood there looking up at a sky that was vastly different from the one he had in Idaho, all the old memories stirred up and causing havoc in his head, the ones he’d thought he’d put to rest a long time ago.

That’s when he’d heard the cry and then muttered cursing. He ran down the courtyard, passing the pet shop, the coffee shop, the tattoo place, the hundred-plus-year-old fountain in the middle, a wedding shop, a paint and wine place, a stationery store . . . and ended up at the alley opening to the street. There he turned in a slow circle looking for . . . what, he had no idea.