Wrapped Up in You Read online

  She felt the threat of tears and willed them away. God, she’d been so stupid. It was her fault a man was in the hospital, not to mention that she’d allowed her brother to draw her into this mess. The worst part was, she knew she’d ruined not only what she’d had with Kel, but also had most certainly destroyed any trust Caleb had had in her. And ditto for the friends when they found out. And they would find out, this building didn’t hold its secrets. Hard to believe she’d found that refreshing.

  She’d actually started to believe that this life could be hers. But the joke had been on her . . .

  When she got off the bus, she walked through the courtyard of the building, heading directly for the coffee shop. No way could she possibly face customers without caffeine. Caffeine would bolster her up and allow her to get through the day without losing it completely.

  Something she refused to do.

  She strode up to the counter and gave Tina her order. “A tall, nonfat latte with caramel drizzle. And if you could make it more like a scoop than a drizzle, that’d be great.”

  Tina nodded. “You weren’t at class.”

  “I know.”

  “Bad day already?” Tina asked.

  “Bad doesn’t begin to cut it.”

  “Give me a minute, darling.”

  And in the promised minute, Tina reappeared with a jasmine green tea and an organic banana oatmeal muffin. “Strong is what happens when you run out of weak.”

  “Um . . . what?”

  “Trust me,” Tina said. “Mama knows best. That tea’s going to rejuvenate you instead of send you to an early grave, and you look like you’re down a quart so the muffin’s going to fill your tummy and give you energy and life.” She paused. “Man problems?”

  “Is there any other kind of problem?”

  Tina smiled grimly. “Not that I’ve ever found.”

  Chapter 25

  Strong is what happens when you run out of weak

  There’d been many times in Kel’s life where he’d felt he’d been wronged. It was rare for him to feel like he was the one doing the wronging. He just didn’t operate that way. He followed his own moral code and instincts, and they’d rarely steered him off base.

  Work first. He’d promised himself this after the last fiasco, he would never again put anything ahead of work. Certainly not emotions.

  So that’s what he did. He turned himself into an unfeeling machine to handle the situation calmly and thoroughly. He gathered all the evidence and facts he had at his disposal, and now he was going through it all with Caleb.

  While simultaneously ignoring a very unwelcome feeling tightening his chest with each minute that ticked by.

  Regret. So much fucking regret.

  But there wasn’t time for that right now. This was the job, this was his job, and that’s just the way it had to be.

  They were going over all the known intel at their disposal; the surveillance feeds, Arlo’s recounting of what had happened, and also Ivy’s.

  When Caleb heard about the two assholes who’d gone to her apartment and then her work, he scrubbed a hand down his face. “We need to put a guy on her 24–7 until this thing is finished.”

  “Already done,” Kel said. “She’s now in your security rotation until one of us says otherwise.”

  “Does she know?”

  “What do you think?” Kel asked.

  “I think she’d have our balls in a sling if she thought we were spending money protecting her,” Caleb said.

  “Which is why she doesn’t need to know. Also, we have manpower out looking for Brandon. He’s going to give his sister back the money he stole from her if it’s the last thing he ever does.”

  “Agreed.” Caleb rose from his chair and moved to his floor to ceiling windows to stare out at the city.

  The reflection of his grim expression moved Kel to stand as well. “I feel like I failed you on this one.”

  “You’ve never failed me,” Caleb said.

  “Arlo being in the hospital suggests otherwise.”

  Caleb turned to him. “Did you hit him?”

  Kel shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. You feel the need to control every single situation so that it goes your way. But life’s annoying like that, man. You can’t control everything. Believe me, I’ve tried. Ask the women in my life, they’ll tell you, especially Sadie.” He shook his head. “Which means I had to let go of a lot of shit I didn’t want to let go of.”

  “But Sadie never put your job in jeopardy,” Kel pointed out. “None of them closed themselves off to you at every turn. You had it easy.”

  Caleb laughed. He laughed so hard he had to sit down. “Let me correct that notion right now. Sadie was more closed off than Fort Knox. It took patience, cunning, and every ounce of brainpower I had to make her fall in love with me, and in the end I nearly screwed it up by not trusting her.” He gave Kel a direct look. “I’d say don’t do that, but it seems like I’m too late.”

  “You want me to trust the woman who hid stuff from you too?”

  “Self-protection is something I understand all too well, and so should you. And it’s all a moot point anyway, because in spite of everything that happened between Sadie and me, I wanted her anyway. Every minute that she’s in my life, she makes it better. Her smile, the way she looks at me, hell, the way she laughs at me. She . . .” He trailed off, searching for the words.

  Kel groaned. “If you say she completes you—”

  Caleb pointed at him. “That’s the one.”

  Kel shook his head.

  “Don’t believe me?” Caleb asked, amusement fading. “Then think about what it will feel like when you go back to Idaho and leave what you have with Ivy in your dust.”

  Kel had thought about nothing but . . . and it still didn’t change facts.

  Caleb’s brows went up. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to go back?”

  “I was always going to go back, Caleb. You know that.”

  Caleb shook his head, not accepting this. “You’re looking at that ranch in Sonoma.”

  “As an investment.”

  “I call bullshit,” Caleb said. “You’re really going to walk away from the best thing to ever happen to you—and for what? A job that betrayed you?”

  “It wasn’t the job. It was the people.”

  “So stay and work for people who’d never put you second to a job.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Kel said.

  “Yeah, it is, but you’re too stubborn to see that.” Caleb shook his head again. “So are you going to be a total dick and just ghost her, or are you going to try to work things out first so that you can at least try the long-distance thing?”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “Really?” Caleb asked, heavy on the disbelief. “You think she should come to you? Because she’s not humiliated enough that her brother screwed things up in a very large way, affecting you, me, and her entire life here, the life she’s worked so hard to get for herself?”

  It was Kel’s turn to stare out the window now, blindly, into the city.

  “You fell in love with her,” Caleb said.

  “You can’t fall in love in two weeks.”

  “I fell in love with Sadie in one night.”

  Kel shook his head. “That was you.”

  “What, and you’re immune?” Caleb studied his cousin. “No, that’s not it,” he said slowly, not sounding happy. “You think you don’t deserve it.”

  “More like I don’t want it.”

  “But you admit you fell in love.”

  Kel hadn’t articulated it to himself quite that bluntly, but there was zero doubt that Ivy had gotten to him. She’d gotten inside his head, inside his heart, even down to the primal part of his soul. She’d bypassed all his defenses and brought something to life deep inside him that he’d kept hidden and protected. “It was a mistake,” he said.

  “What a load of horseshit.”

  “You’re friend