Wrapped Up in You Read online

  She gave another heavy sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what, your sweet, sunshine-like nature? For assuming the worst of me? For apparently not knowing how to retract your claws?”

  She had to laugh. “All of the above.”

  He smiled, and she got the feeling he liked the sound of her laugh, which also made her all warm and fuzzy again. Dammit.

  He merely bowed his head in acceptance of her apology and vanished outside again. She followed with the last of the load and got into his truck. She’d just buckled her seatbelt and he’d done the same when her stomach rumbled so loudly it echoed off the windshield.

  Kel turned to her, brow up.

  Horrified, she pressed her hands to her belly and pressed hard. “Ignore that.”

  Kel flashed a grin. “You made all that amazing food and didn’t feed yourself, did you.”

  “I was busy.”

  He started driving. Ten minutes later, he parked at an all-night diner in the Marina District.

  “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “Feeding the beast.”

  The diner was mostly empty at this time of night. It looked like it’d been opened in the 1950s and not renovated since. Black-and-white linoleum, steel tables, bright red booths. It was, however, done up for the holidays within an inch of its life. The walls and every available surface were twinkling with multicolored strings of lights and decorations.

  It was a seat yourself sort of situation, so Kel gestured for her to pick a spot and she headed toward a booth, stopping short when she realized that hanging in front of each booth was a sprig of mistletoe.

  Kel stopped too, and toe-to-toe with her, they both looked up.

  “Don’t even think about kissing me again,” she warned.

  He grinned.

  “Because I’m not thinking about it,” she said. “So you shouldn’t either.”

  “Honey, I’ve done nothing but think of it.”

  Something deep inside her hummed in pleasure at that, but she ignored it and slid into the booth. Grabbing two menus sticking out of a holder, she tossed him one. “Have you been here before?” she asked.

  “No. But the flashing sign in the window says Best Pancakes Ever, and I’m planning on testing out that promise.”

  “Do you eat a lot of pancakes?”

  “Whenever I can. None as good as yours though.”

  She tried and failed to not be secretly pleased by that and eyed his leanly muscular build. “Where do you put it?”

  “Good metabolism,” he said.

  “Plus hard work,” she guessed. “You, Spence, and Jake go for miles every morning.”

  “Do you ever run?”

  “Only if I’m on fire.”

  He laughed. “A coworker and I used to run in the mornings, then hit up a local diner. We won the pancake eating contest three years in a row.”

  “If I ate pancakes every day, I’d weigh two tons. Is your coworker off work for these two weeks too?”

  Kel looked at her for a long moment. “My coworker’s in jail,” he finally said.

  She gaped before she could stop herself. “What happened?”

  “She was dirty.” He suddenly seemed to find the menu engrossing. “They have French toast too.”

  Her heart squeezed hard and she put her hand over the menu and waited until his gaze met hers. “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Right. He was a male. She gave him a get real look and he blew out a breath, pushing his menu away. “I’m the one who turned her in. She tried to frame me. For a while, she nearly succeeded. And then she nearly killed me. Hence my forced leave. Seems my superiors need a little space and time.”

  “But that’s not fair,” she said, a little surprised by her own vehemence. But she knew him, or she was starting to, and she knew the people who cared about him. She didn’t take the time to freak out about that. There was plenty of time for that later. “You’re innocent.”

  The smallest of smiles almost crossed his lips. “You don’t know that.”

  She looked right into his brown eyes, eyes that she knew could be razor sharp with focus and intensity, or soft with affection and heat. “I feel like I do,” she murmured, even more shocked by her easy admission.

  He seemed just as shocked. “Look at you going all sweet on me.” He paused. “You’re a surprise, Ivy.”

  And because he didn’t sound necessarily happy about that, she snorted. “Yeah. I hear that a lot. So what do all the women in your life think of your two weeks in San Francisco?”

  “My women?”

  “The people you’re seeing,” she said casually, eyes on her menu.

  He flashed another smile, which she caught because he put a finger on her menu and pushed it down. “Are you fishing?”

  Dammit. Yes. She lifted her chin. “In your dreams, cowboy.”

  His smile slowly faded and he leaned in, eyes on hers. “Putting aside the fact that you know my life doesn’t lend itself to relationships, you really think I’d kiss you like I did if I was kissing anyone else?”

  She stared at him, heart suddenly thundering in her ears. “Lots of men do.”

  He gave a single shake of his head and brought his hand over the top of hers on the table, squeezing lightly. “Ivy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but the men in your past really sound like a bunch of assholes.”

  Unable to deny that, she shrugged. “There haven’t been that many, to be honest. But I do tend to . . . pick the ones who are bad for me.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  She was surprised to hear herself answer, and truthfully at that, especially since she very purposely never thought about this particular time in her life. “My last relationship was my longest. I met Dillon in LA, where I was living at the time. We stuck a whole year.”

  “What happened?” Kel asked.

  This was embarrassing. And embarrassingly revealing. “I’d moved in with him. Then he got a promotion he’d been hoping for, but his new position was in New York.”

  “You didn’t want to move?”

  She turned her head and looked out the window, not wanting to see his face. Or have him see hers. “I would have. But he took the job and gave up his apartment without asking me to go with him.”

  “Leaving you homeless?” he asked with a whisper of disbelief.

  She shrugged. She’d been homeless before. And hey, she’d had a few weeks’ notice from the building super to get out.

  “That was a real dick move, Ivy.” She felt his hand take hers in his bigger, warmer one. “I’m sorry that happened to you. You deserved better.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “And anyway, I ended up getting something out of it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I realized I wanted to make some changes in my life. I wanted my own place. And real friends. I wanted a sense of permanence. And I came here, where I’m working at making it happen.”

  “By buying the taco truck and one of the new condos.”

  She nodded.

  “The first round of owners are moving in next week,” Kel said.

  “I’m not in the first round.” But she was hoping to be in the second. “I’m still working at getting my down payment. When I was there bringing you breakfast, they were doing finish work on the ground floor around the lobby, the offices, business center, and gym.”

  “It’s nearly all done now. We just got the office and business center fully furnished and equipped. All the computer systems are up and running, and the state-of-the-art gym will be finished by tomorrow. There’s now more money spent on that floor alone than most developing nations.”

  A waitress appeared at their table. She was midfifties with a trim build and a kind face, her gray-tinged brown hair pinned to the top of her head. She looked up from her pad and stilled, staring at Kel in shock.

  Kel looked just as shocked. “Mom.”