Wrapped Up in You Read online

  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.

  She removed the cowboy hat and set it on his head. “How about that for your spoils?”

  He shook his head. “I won more than the hat,” he said, and bought her another drink. They sat thigh-to-thigh watching the dance floor, talking easily, laughing, and seeing her relax with him was a gift he hadn’t realized he wanted. He couldn’t tear his eyes off her. “Want to dance?” he asked.

  She looked at him in surprise. “You dance?”

  “I grew up in a tiny town in Idaho. We had to dance for PE during snowy winter days in the auditorium.”

  She laughed.

  “It’s true.”

  She eyed him more closely. “Like the salsa and the cha-cha kind of dancing?”

  “All kinds,” he said.

  “Do you do the silly white boy boogie, where you just sort of rock back on your feet and look like you might be having a seizure?”

  He smiled. “Want to double down on our wager?”

  She laughed. “Hell, yes, I’ll take that challenge.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But if I win again, we change the terms of what you owe me.”

  “How?”

  “The ‘within reason’ clause gets eradicated.”

  She stared at his mouth and nibbled on her lower lip like the idea excited her, a lot, and the temperature in the bar seemed to spike about a hundred degrees. He led her to the dance floor just as “Thriller” came on, and when he began to make the moves with pinpoint accuracy, she started laughing. “Okay,” she conceded, “you really can move on the dance floor.”

  “I’m even better off the dance floor,” he promised.

  She laughed some more and moved in closer, until they were up against each other, writhing to the beat. And damn, she could move too, and feeling all her sweet curves rock to his was driving him crazy in the very best of ways.

  They danced until Ivy had to take off her shoes. Then they ate bad bar food and laughed and talked some more. It was midnight when he drove her home.

  Still in the truck outside her building, he turned to her. “That was the best date I’ve ever been on.”

  She stared at him. “It was?”

  “By far.”

  She squirmed a bit and then removed her seatbelt. “Thanks for tonight,” she said softly. “It’s late, and I’ve got to be up in a few hours, so—”

  Leaning in, he took a nip at her bottom lip. “You’re worried I’m going to claim my spoils tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Liar.” He laughed when she narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “I’m not collecting my prize tonight.”

  “You’re not?” She sounded a little breathless, and . . . disappointed. He got out of the truck and came around for her.

  On the sidewalk, Ivy called out a greeting to both Jasmine and Martina, who were huddled in their blankets. “Ladies,” she said, and handed them over her bar leftovers. Waffle fries.

  “Your breakfast tacos were real good this morning,” Jasmine said. “I like the new seasonings.”

  Ivy smiled. “Thanks, I’ve been changing some things up.”

  “You should try a pinch of cocoa powder,” Martina said. “My mama used to use it as her secret ingredient.”

  “I will,” Ivy promised.

  He and Ivy took the stairs and when they got to the top landing, she glanced up at him. “Kel?”

  He looked into her pretty blue eyes and smiled. “Yeah?”

  “It was my best date ever too,” she said very quietly and she turned toward her front door.

  And then froze, stopping short so fast, he nearly plowed into her back. He took one look at her pale face and immediately went on high alert. “What is it?”

  She sucked in a breath and squatted low to stare at the door handle.

  He crouched next to her. “What are we looking at?”

  “After the truck break in, I got paranoid,” she said softly. “I put a piece of tape on here from the handle to the wood of the door every time I leave so I can tell if someone’s tried to get in.”

  The implication being that if someone had so much as tried to turn the handle, the tape would break off.

  The tape was broken off.

  Rising to his full height he pulled her up with him. The lock didn’t appear broken or tampered with, but it was a cheap lock, one that anyone could pick with relative ease.

  She tried the handle and it opened. “Shit.”

  Pulling his gun, he nudged her back and entered first. He walked through the entire place, checking behind doors, her closet, under her bed, the window ledge—which didn’t take more than thirty seconds.

  While he did this, Ivy stood in the middle of her apartment, hands on hips, expression carefully blank as she stared at him