Wrapped Up in You (Heartbreaker Bay, #8)(82)

“That’s because you don’t go food shopping. You order in.”

Jenna smiled. “Oh, right.”

“Paint samples!” Piper remembered suddenly, and wrote that down. When you ran your world, everyone in that world tended to depend on you to do it right. That’s how it’d always been for her. She’d been in charge whether she liked it or not.

“You know you’re a control freak, right?”

Piper chewed on the end of her pen. “I’m forgetting something, I know it.”“Yeah,” Jenna said. “To get a life.”

“What do you think I’m doing here?”

Now it was Jenna’s turn to roll her eyes. “Everyone else is talking about the hot new guy in town, and you’re over here in the corner making a shopping list.”

“Hot guys come and go.”

Jenna laughed. “Yeah? How long has it been since you’ve had a hot guy in your life, or any guy at all?”

Piper looked across the bar to where Ry was currently chatting it up with not one, but two, women. Her ex was apparently making up for lost time.

“Well, whose fault is that?” Jenna asked, reading her mind. “You dumped him last year for no reason, remember?”

Actually, she’d had a really good reason, but it wasn’t one she wanted to share, so she shrugged.

“You need a distraction. Of the sexy kind,” Jenna said. “You carry that journal around like it’s the love of your life.”

“At the moment, it is.”

“You could do a whole lot better.” Swiveling in her barstool, Jenna eyed the crowd.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“About what?” Jenna asked innocently.

“Fixing me up.”

“Would that be so bad?” Jenna asked, softer now, putting a hand on Piper’s writing arm. “You’re the one always fixing everyone’s life, everyone but your own, of course. But even The Fixer needs help sometimes.”

It was true that she’d gone a whole bunch of years now being the one to keep it all together. For everyone. Asking for help wasn’t a part of her DNA. But Jenna did have a point. Today was her birthday, a milestone birthday at that, so she should do at least one frivolous thing, right? She turned the page of her journal and glanced at her secret bucket list.

—Take a cruise to Alaska.

—Get some “me” time every day.

—Learn to knit.

—Buy shoes that aren’t nursing shoes.



“Okay, seriously, I’m worried,” Jenna said. “You’re sitting at your birthday party eyeing a list about buying nursing shoes?”

“About not buying nursing shoes,” Piper corrected. “And this isn’t my party.”

“It’s your party. And if you’d told Gavin and Winnie about it, they’d be here helping you celebrate too.”

Just what she needed, to give her twenty-seven-going-on-seventeen-year-old brother and her not-quite-legal-to-drink sister a reason to party. “I told them not to come. Gavin’s busy at his job in Phoenix, and Winnie’s working hard on her grades at UCSB.”

“They’re lucky to have you, I hope they know that,” Jenna said genuinely. “You work so hard, Piper, keeping all of you going. But today, at the very least, you should have some fun.”

“I hear you. But keep that . . .” She pointed to the sign hanging above the bar. “. . . In mind, yeah?”

The sign read:

WARNING:

ALCOHOL MAY MAKE THE PEOPLE IN THIS PLACE

APPEAR BETTER LOOKING THAN THEY REALLY ARE.



Jenna laughed, but wasn’t deterred from glancing over at the closest table to the bar, where three guys sat.

“Oh, no,” Piper said. “Don’t you dare.”

But then she was grimacing because Jenna dared. “Who here is single?”

Two of the guys pointed to the third at their table.

“You?” Jenna asked him.

He took a beat to check Jenna out. Tonight her partner was channeling Beach Jenna with her wild blonde hair rioting around her pretty face, her athletic build emphasized by tightly fitted fancy yoga gear. “Yeah,” he said with a smile. “I’m most definitely single.”

“Good. Because my friend here . . .” Jenna turned to gesture at Piper, who’d been trying to sneak off, but froze in the act of getting off the barstool when they all looked at her.

“It’s her birthday,” Jenna said.

“She’s hiding in the corner writing in a book,” the guy said doubtfully.

“Yes, well, we can’t all be perfect, right? Look, she’s friendly . . .” Jenna grimaced and made a correction. “Ish. And she’s got all of her shots and is potty-trained to boot. I mean, yeah, sometimes she hides out in bars writing in her journal. Or in her pantry closet inhaling an entire bag of Cheese Poofs while thumbing through Pinterest, but hey, who doesn’t, am I right?”

Looking alarmed, the man turned back to his friends.

“Gee,” Piper said dryly. “And you made me sound like such a catch too.”

Jenna shrugged. “Maybe he’s just not a Cheese Poofs fan.”

“Yeah. That’s definitely it.”