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

Kel paid the locksmith, and in doing so pissed off Ivy. He hadn’t meant to step on her pride, but he had the feeling she was already stretched thin, and the late-night cost of having the guy come out hadn’t been cheap.

“I’m going to pay you back,” Ivy said stiffly.

He hated that she was acting like an injured animal with her back up to the wall, so he did his best to give her lots of space. Not easy in the close quarters, but he deferred to her for what she wanted done and then quietly followed her example without pushing.

And he wanted to push. He wanted to know why she felt so . . . alone. Why she didn’t trust anyone. But she wasn’t exactly an open book, so he worked alongside of her, meticulously scrubbing everything down.

“People rave about your food,” he said.

She looked up, and he could tell the statement gave her pleasure, but she kept her cool. “Everyone loves a good taco.”

“Do you do it all yourself?”

“I’ve got part-time help. Jenny’s a grad student and helps serve the dinner crowd. But I do all the food stuff.”

“You’re a good cook.” He cocked his head. “Or is the right word chef?”

She grimaced. “Chef seems a bit fancy for what I do.”

“I’ve gone to upscale restaurants that don’t come even close to what you manage to create inside this truck.”

She bit her lower lip as if to hold back her smile, but those blue eyes lit. Nice to see the spark back. He hated what the break-in had done to them, leaving them hollow and haunted. “How did you learn to cook?” he asked.

“My earliest memories are of rifling through what was available to eat and making it seem better than it was,” she said, and shrugged. Her head was down now, she was concentrating on scrubbing her counter as if its life depended on it. “I was four maybe?” She shrugged again. “Turns out, I like to eat.”

His chest had gone tight, and he had questions, so many questions, but he worked at keeping his mouth shut because he wanted her to keep talking.

“As I got older,” she said, “I realized I was good at it.”

“Where did you grow up?” he asked, having detected a very slight, maybe Southern, accent in certain words.

“We moved around a lot, mostly the South though. My first jobs were cooking in bars. Eventually I worked my way up to restaurants, honing the skills. But once a city rat, always a city rat. Staying in one place made me itchy and anxious. I liked being on the move, never settling down.”

“You could work at any five-star restaurant in the city,” Kel said.

She shook her head. “I’m not that good.”

“Yes, you are.”

Their gazes met and held. He’d have sworn the air shimmered and heated, but that was most likely either exhaustion or wishful thinking.

She looked away first. “I’ve always liked being able to move around when I want to. Running a food truck’s the natural progression for me.” She smiled. “Old habits die hard and all that.”

She’d carefully left off any mention of family, and while he wanted to know so much more, he didn’t want to spook her either. “You’ve got a brother. Older? Younger?”

“Brandon’s two years older.” She was turned away from him now, still scrubbing. “He was fond of eating too, so he was happy that one of us was willing to cook.” She paused a moment. “He was the dessert king though. We had quite the sweet tooth, and that was his job. Getting the sweets.”

Her voice hadn’t changed, but there was something off about her body language. It was defensive, and didn’t match her casual voice, and he realized it was the same way she’d acted when Caleb had mentioned her brother that morning. Wishing he could see her face, he asked, “What about your parents?”

She shrugged. “My dad was never around, and my mom worked nights singing in bar lounges and sleeping during the day.”

“So you’re self-taught,” he said, and she laughed, although he wasn’t sure it was with true mirth.

“Most definitely self-taught. How about you?” she asked, turning the tables on him. “Do you cook?”

“If I have to,” he said, making her laugh again, which he enjoyed. “Not while I’m here though. I’m staying with Caleb. His fiancée, Sadie, has been cooking. My cousin’s spoiled rotten and doesn’t even know it.”

“Oh, he knows it. Sadie’s great.”

“You know her?”

She nodded. “I was invited to the pub tonight, but I had work to do. You’re here on vacation?” she asked, changing the subject from herself. “And to work with Caleb?”

Not vacation. More like a leave of absence while his superiors poured over his last case, the one case in all the years he’d served in law enforcement to go bad. They’d decide his fate, which, for the record, he hated. “I’ve got two weeks off and Caleb nagged me out here.” His good humor faded some as he thought of that, of how upon going back, his life could go one of two ways.

“To handle security on the new building,” she said. “Because Archer Hunt and his investigations and security company, who’d normally handle this, aren’t available. Something about a government contract and being stretched too thin.”