Wrapped Up in You Read online

  Curious now, she turned, and time stopped.

  Brandon stood there, looking leaner and entirely uncertain of his welcome. “Hey,” he said. “I see you kept your cop.”

  “I married him,” she managed through a raw throat.

  This had become their standard, teasing greeting over the past five years whenever she’d visited him in prison. But she hadn’t been this year because of a difficult pregnancy.

  “You’re out early,” she whispered.

  “Good behavior.” He lifted a shoulder. “I’ve been practicing.”

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, she nodded. “It’s good to see you.”

  Some of the worry left his eyes and his shoulders dropped from where he’d held them practically up to his ears. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I mean it.”

  He held her gaze with his mismatched eyes. “Part of my early release was contingent on me having a place to stay and work. Kel got me a job working for him and Donovan. I’m going to live in the employee barracks on Donovan’s property.” He paused. “If that’s all okay with you.”

  Ivy thought she was choked up before, but she could scarcely draw a breath, overwhelmed with love and affection for her amazing husband. She looked up at him and hoped she conveyed her love and affection and gratitude back, because she couldn’t speak.

  With a smile, Kel leaned in and gave her a quick, warm kiss.

  “I love you,” she managed to whisper.

  “I know,” he whispered back before lifting his head and looking at Brandon. “I think it’s safe to say it’s okay with her.”

  “Very okay,” she said and reached for Brandon, pulling him in for a hug. When little Kenzie mewled her protest, Ivy pulled back with a laugh. “Meet your niece, Kenzie Snow O’Donnell. She’s as impatient and feisty as her mom.”

  Brandon stared down at Kenzie in awe. “Wow.” He seemed choked up. “She’s . . . amazing.”

  Just as choked up, Ivy nodded. “Guess us Snows have a future after all.”

  Brandon let out his first smile. A small one, and it felt a little rusty, but totally genuine. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  She looked up at Kel, knowing her heart was in her eyes. “I didn’t either. But I met someone who made me see anything was possible.”

  Kel smiled down at her. “To our future,” he said softly.

  “To our future.” And once again she kissed him to seal the deal.

  Announcement to Almost Just Friends

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next women’s fiction novel from Jill Shalvis

  ALMOST JUST FRIENDS

  Arriving January 2020

  Pre-order now!

  Chapter 1

  “Chin up, Princess, or the crown slips.”

  Piper Manning closed her eyes and plugged her ears against the horror. She’d known this would happen even as she’d begged against it, but sometimes there was no stopping fate. You’ve survived worse. Just push through it. Pretend you’re on a warm beach, vacationing, and there’s a hot surfer coming out of the water. Wait, scratch that. A hot Australian surfer coming out of the water, heading for you with a sexy smile—

  Someone tugged her fingers from her ears. Her best friend and EMT partner, Jenna. “It’s over,” she said. “You can look now.”

  Piper opened her eyes. No warm beach, no sexy surfer. She was still at the Whiskey River Bar and Grill, surrounded by her coworkers and so-called friends, and way too many birthday streamers and balloons, all mocking her because someone had thought it’d be funny to do it in all gloom-and-doom black.

  “You do realize that turning thirty isn’t exactly the end of the world?” Jenna said.

  Maybe not, but there was a reason Piper hadn’t wanted to celebrate. She’d just hit a milestone birthday without being at any sort of milestone, or anywhere even close to a milestone. Certainly nowhere near where she’d thought she’d be at thirty.

  “Hey, let’s sing it again now that she’s listening,” someone called out. Ryland, no doubt. The hotshot firefighter was always the group’s instigator.

  And so everyone began singing again, laughing when Piper grimaced and did her best not to crawl under the table. Truth was, she’d rather have a root canal without meds than be the center of attention, and these asshats knew it. “It’s like you all want to die,” she muttered. But someone put a drink in her hand, and since she was off duty now for two days, she took a long gulp.

  “I was very clear,” she said when the alcohol burn cleared her throat, eyeing the whole group, most of whom were also first responders and worked with her at the station or hospital in one form or another. “We weren’t going to mention my birthday, much less sing about it.”

  Not a single one of them looked guilty. In fact, they ignored her. “To Piper,” Ry said, and everyone raised a glass. “For gathering and keeping all us misfits together and sane.”

  “To Piper,” everyone cheered and drank, and then thankfully, conversations started up all around her so that she was finally no longer the center of attention.

  Her friends, God love them, were all used to her ways, which meant they got that while she was touched they’d all remembered her birthday, she didn’t want any more attention. Easily accepting that, they were happy to enjoy the night and leave her alone.

  “Did that hurt?” Jenna asked, amused.

  “What?”

  “Being loved?”

  In tune to the sounds of the bar behind them—someone singing off-key to Sweet Home Alabama, rambunctious laughter from a nearby table, the slap of pool balls . . . Piper rolled her eyes.

  “You know one day those eyeballs are going to fall right out of your head, right?”

  Piper ignored this and went back to what she’d been doing before being so rudely interrupted by all the love. Making a list.

  She was big on bullet journaling. She’d had to be. Making notes and lists had saved her life more than once. And yes, she knew she could do it on a notes app on her phone, but her brain hadn’t been wired that way. Nope, she was annoyingly old school, so she had to write that shit down by hand to make it stick.

  She had pages dedicated to:

  Calendars

  Grocery Lists

  Future Baby Names (even though she didn’t plan on having babies)

  Passwords (okay, password, single, since she always used the same one—CookiesAreLife123!)

  And then there were random entries, such as:

  Life rules

  —Stop eating entire bags of Cheese Poofs in one sitting.

  —Don’t cut your own bangs no matter how sad you are.

  —Never ever EVER under any circumstances fall in love.

  She had a bucket list of wishes. Oh, and a secret secret bucket list of wishes . . .

  Yeah, she probably needed help. Or a little pill.

  Jenna leaned over her shoulder and eyed the open page. “New journal?”

  Her vices were simple. She didn’t drink much, never smoked, but . . . she was an office supply ’ho. A never ending source of amusement to Jenna because Piper was also a bit of a hot mess when it came to organization and neatness. Her purse, her car, her office, and also her kitchen always looked like a disaster had just hit. “Maybe.”

  “How many journals have you started and either lost or misplaced since I’ve known you, a million?”

  Piper didn’t answer this on the grounds that it might incriminate her.

  Jenna played with the pack of stickers that Piper had tucked haphazardly into the journal. “Cute. But I feel like stickers are cheating.”

  “Bite your tongue. Stickers are everything.” So were pens. And cute paper clips. And stick-it notes . . .

  “Stickers? Come on. There are far more important things than stickers.”

  “Like?” Piper asked.

  “Like food.”

  “Okay, you’ve got me there.”

  “Or sex,” Jenna said.

  “Since it’s been awhile, I�€