by Jill Shalvis
“Actually, it might just be me investing,” Ivy said. “Brandon just got into a deal on the East Coast I was telling you about.”
“The auction house job.”
“Yes, and it’s going to keep him busy for a while, so . . .” She shrugged. “I told him I’d go after this myself.”
“That’s too bad,” Caleb said. “Was looking forward to meeting him.”
Kel stopped chewing because something in Ivy’s tone had just set off his bullshit radar. She was either lying or stretching the truth, but his eyes were still watering and his throat was burning or he might’ve joined the conversation.
Ivy reached out as if to take away his basket, but he held firm to it and kept eating. He was starting to sweat and he couldn’t feel his lips, but he also couldn’t get enough.
“Okay, cowboy, it’s your funeral,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she was impressed or horrified.
A few more people were milling around her truck now, and she eyed her watch.
“They start lining up earlier every day,” Caleb said.
“Hey, Ivy,” one of the guys who was waiting called out. “The fuzz! They’re coming around the corner!”
“Crap!” Ivy ran toward her truck, yelling to the people standing in line, “I’ll be back in ten minutes. If you wait and save my spot, I’ll give you a discount!” And then she slapped the window and door closed and roared off down the street.
A minute later a cop drove by slowly, but didn’t stop. When he was gone, the group of people who’d been lining up for tacos stepped into the empty parking spot Ivy had left.
Not ten seconds later, a car came along and honked at the people standing in the spot. “Get out of my way,” the driver yelled.
No one budged.
The car window lowered and a hand emerged, flipping everyone the bird.
This didn’t make anyone move either, and finally the guy swore and drove off in a huff.
“What the hell?” Kel asked.
“She’s not supposed to be on the street before seven,” Jake said.
“I’m working on getting her a city permit,” Caleb said. “They’re extremely hard to get.”
Kel was boggled. “But . . . those people are blocking the street. They could get a ticket.”
“Thought you weren’t a cop,” Caleb said, looking amused.
Kel shook his head and went back to his tacos, and for a guy who believed in the law, when the incredible burst of flavors once again hit his tongue, he thought maybe he could understand the flagrant disregard of it in this one case.
Chapter 2
Go hard or don’t go at all
That night, Ivy stayed up late paying the bills that couldn’t wait any longer, setting aside the ones that could, playing around with her credit card, doing the monthly money dance between bank accounts. Just the insurance policies alone—general liability, business owner, commercial auto, self-employed health care—nearly killed her.
But it was also an undeniable thrill to be legit.
For someone who’d grown up in dumpy trailers and motels across the southern states, living off her mom’s cash tips from singing in lounges and crap bars, it was certainly surreal.
She even had a savings account, which made her smile every time she thought about it. A savings! She’d been in the city for just over a year now, living off next to nothing in order to put away every spare penny. She had eighteen grand put away, a fortune for her. But she was still two grand short of having enough for the down payment on a condo in Caleb’s newly acquired and renovated building. The twenty thousand was only half the required down, but there was a first-time buyers program in play to ensure equality of housing, and the mortgage broker—Caleb—was going to match her down payment. The agreement was that she’d work that debt off by catering all of his business events, of which there were many. This was a good deal for both of them. Ivy didn’t have to put up cash she didn’t have, and Caleb was guaranteed her most excellent catering, if she said so herself.
For the first time in her life, she just felt ridiculously proud of herself. She was so close to having it all together. She wanted that condo. Needed that condo. It would be 1,600 square feet of home, and it even came with a parking space for her truck.
Right now, the owner of the Pacific Pier Building allowed her to park overnight in the alley, which was like having a golden ticket. But that was only temporary, and playing Russian roulette with the parking police wasn’t easy. Plus, she really wanted to have the truck more safely stowed at night because she came from a world where your possessions could be taken away at any moment if you didn’t clutch them tight to your vest.
Having it so far from her apartment was a constant source of stress. Other than her slowly growing savings, the truck was all she had. And both were thanks to the business plan she’d painstakingly put together when she’d taken over the taco truck.
She’d come so far. Granted, she still had a long way to go, but pride filled her. And as usual, right on the heels of that was an odd sense of loneliness because she didn’t have anyone to show off to. Her mom was much more interested in her next singing gig than her children, so contact was extremely infrequent. As for Ivy’s brother, he was sweet and charming and charismatic and . . . utterly incorrigible. He was one of those guys who could use their powers for good or bad.
He’d tried to choose good. It just hadn’t worked out for him. It was always about the next get-rich-quick scheme. And unfortunately, along with those came trouble. She’d had to distance herself.
It’d hurt because in spite of all his faults, Brandon was blood, and he cared about her. In his own way. Which wasn’t always the right way. Or any sort of legal way. The biggest problem they had was that she couldn’t trust him to keep her safe. Or to put her first in a bad situation—which she only ever landed in when he was involved. Some of those memories were bad enough that they still haunted her.
So she’d gone west without a forwarding address, and instead of wishing for her family to change, she’d gone after making new connections. She’d made friends here, and was happy. The only thing that kept her from enjoying her life fully was knowing she’d lied to everyone about her past.
But that was a problem for another day.
Leaning back in her kitchen chair, she looked around. Her apartment was a third floor walk-up, and she used the word apartment loosely. The building had once upon a time been a single family dwelling, and when the owners had renovated each of the floors into individual units back in the 1930s, they’d called the attic a “generous loft.”
The two hundred and fifty square feet hardly qualified for generous anything, but she had a roof that leaked only in big rainstorms, decent electricity—if she didn’t run her toaster and her blow dryer at the same time—and almost always could get hot water for a good three to four whole minutes at a time.
But the best part of the deal was that the landlord, a sweet old lady named Evelyn, adored her and gave her a huge discount on the monthly rent—in exchange for leftovers from Ivy’s truck every day.
Tonight that had been brisket tacos, and Evelyn had been thrilled. She’d talked Ivy into having a seat and joining her as she’d eaten, telling stories about her kids, and her kids’ kids . . . none of whom, at least that Ivy could tell, ever came and saw her.
Evelyn also always made Ivy tell her a story about herself as well, and tonight was no different. Evelyn had wanted to hear about Ivy’s famed brother, so she’d drawn a deep breath and did what she did.
She told stories.
She was good at it. She’d been making up stories about her family since she’d been little, each different, each more exciting than the last, and all as far from the truth as she could possibly get. Because the truth wasn’t a story, it was a nightmare. Mentally sifting through a long list of fantasies, Ivy told her landlord all about Brandon the artist, who was living in Paris at the moment, becoming famous for his incredible oil landscapes. She left off the fact t
hat he peddled stolen art instead of creating it, and it hadn’t been Paris, France, but Paris, Texas.
Now, in the attic with her lights dimmed and the only sounds the creaking of the old bones of the building that had seen better days decades ago, Ivy shook her head and clicked on one of her open tabs to view her savings balance.
Still there, and she felt the smile curve her lips. A few more weeks and she’d be able to talk to Caleb about getting the paperwork started for the condo. Her condo. It was almost unreal to her, given how she’d grown up in a string of motels, each more roach infested than the last because Brandon, ever the fun-loving, trouble-seeking stoner of their threesome, had burned down the one halfway-nice trailer they’d had.
Ivy had left “home” at age sixteen to strike out on her own, couch surfing or living out of her car, working at whatever jobs she could get, mostly in bar kitchens, which was where she’d learned to cook.
Something that had given her purpose, and now a job she loved.
With a smile, she changed venues, moving to her office desk—which was really her bed. She fluffed her pillows behind her and stretched out her legs. She considered going to sleep. It was late, midnight, and she had to be up at five a.m. for kickboxing class.
Ugh.
Well-known secret: Ivy hated kickboxing class. She hated the gym. She hated to work out at all, but she hated the way her clothes fit when she didn’t do it even more. And yet she still might’ve taken the extra hour to sleep if her exercise app hadn’t texted her a notification with a picture of a guy working out, captioned: This is Jack. Jack got up on time for his workout. Be more like Jack . . .
Yes, her exercise app had shamed her into getting up. So here she was, being beaten up and paying for the pleasure. When she’d first come to the city, she’d been oddly lonely and sad. She’d gone to Google instead of a therapist she couldn’t afford, and had learned that moving your body helped with depression. She still hated the gym. Hated. But she was a whole lot less sad.
But because she knew herself, she’d doubled downed and bought a gym pass knowing she was far too cheap to not go. So she tried to get to sleep, but couldn’t. Something was niggling at her. Had she left something on in her truck? Had she left something plugged in? Had Jenny locked it up properly? She’d swear the answers to those questions were no, no, and yes, but . . . she couldn’t shake the feeling.
There’d been many times in her life when her instincts had been all she had, and they’d never failed her. The first time they’d kicked in, she’d been fourteen years old, Brandon sixteen. Since their mom had worked nights, Brandon had been in charge. He’d had some new friends over to play darts in the yard—a hustle, of course. On a good night, Brandon could earn several hundred in cash.
But halfway through the evening, Ivy’s instincts had kicked in, the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up. Not questioning it, she’d climbed out a back window of the trailer and huddled in the bushes, listening as some of the guys who’d become bored with losing money to Brandon had come inside to “have some fun with the hottie little sister . . .”
Brandon had been furious when he’d found out, and had promised not to bring them around again. And he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean the trouble stopped. A year later, this time in a seedy motel in Florida, Brandon had been selling pot out of their single room, using the bathroom as his “office.” He’d been open for business when Ivy had gotten the same hinky feeling, complete with the hair standing straight up on the back of her neck. Again, she’d sneaked out a window. She’d gotten across the yard when the police had come, sirens screaming, into the lot and confiscated all their possessions and Brandon.
Lesson learned. She never ignored her instincts now, never. Which meant she shut off her laptop, locked up, and headed down the stairs. It was only two miles to her truck. Normally, she’d just hoof it over there like she did every morning, because calling a Lyft was a luxury she’d given up for her savings account’s sake.
But no matter how badass she liked to think she was, she wasn’t stupid. No way was she going to risk walking that far alone this late at night. So though it killed her, she opened her Lyft app.
Fifteen minutes later, she got out of the Lyft at the southeast corner of the building, which housed O’Riley’s pub. The place was packing and thriving. Music and laughter poured out of there as she walked by and stopped at the front of the alley to eye her truck.
All looked well. But unable to shake her weird feeling, she moved closer, and then she was running toward it because the back door was cracked, the lock broken and dangling uselessly.
Chapter 3
Leave it all in the room
Kel heard something, a female cry maybe? It indicated fear and he immediately moved in that direction from the pub, where he’d been with Caleb.
They’d met up with a bunch of his cousin’s friends for dinner and drinks, including Sadie, Caleb’s lovely significant other. It’d been a sort of welcome back to the city thing, and though Kel had planned to lay low for the duration of his visit, being out tonight had been good. Caleb had toasted and roasted him—with “Kel the Cowboy Does the City” jokes, cracking himself up.
None of it had bothered Kel, it’d all been in good fun, and sitting there surrounded by Caleb’s tight-knit group of friends and the exciting, urban energy of the city itself, made his own not-great reality feel a million miles away.
He’d left San Francisco when he’d been twelve years old, and it hadn’t been under the best of circumstances. He hadn’t given it much playtime in his brain in the nearly two decades since, but being back had definitely opened the floodgates.
Realizing that, and the fact that the pub had gotten too loud for him, he’d left just after midnight, escaping to the courtyard attached to the pub. It was peaceful out here and he’d taken in the incredible architecture of the old building, the corbeled brick and exposed iron trusses, the large picture windows on the retail shops, the cobblestone beneath his feet, and the huge fountain centerpiece where idiots the city over came to toss a coin and wish for love.
And all of it was decorated for the holidays with garlands of evergreen entwined with twinkling white lights in every doorway and frame, along with a huge Christmas tree near the street entrance, making it look like a Christmas card. It’d rained earlier, so the cobblestone pavers were wet and shiny.
He’d stood there looking up at a sky that was vastly different from the one he had in Idaho, all the old memories stirred up and causing havoc in his head, the ones he’d thought he’d put to rest a long time ago.
That’s when he’d heard the cry and then muttered cursing. He ran down the courtyard, passing the pet shop, the coffee shop, the tattoo place, the hundred-plus-year-old fountain in the middle, a wedding shop, a paint and wine place, a stationery store . . . and ended up at the alley opening to the street. There he turned in a slow circle looking for . . . what, he had no idea.
He saw Ivy’s taco truck. He’d noticed it earlier when he’d walked into the pub with Caleb. Catching movement in the alley, he stepped closer. The back door to the truck was open, and from inside he could see a beam of a flashlight moving around.
Pulling his gun was automatic, and he stepped closer, catching a shadow of a figure inside. “Hands where I can see them,” he called out.
The figure jerked, gasped, and then whirled around. In the ambient lighting, he immediately recognized her.
Ivy.
He slid his gun away. “You okay?”
“Hell no, I’m not okay! Are you kidding me? You just gave me a freaking heart attack! What’s wrong with you?” She had a hand to her heart. She’d startled hard, and for the beat before she’d recognized him, there’d been real fear in her eyes, something that had quickly turned into pissed-off woman.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I was at the pub.” He took in her appearance. Camo leggings, untied boots, huge black sweatshirt that threatened to swallow her whole and
hit her at her knees. No makeup. Eyes stricken, mouth grim, her wild hair loose around her pale face. And he got the feeling whatever had brought her down here, it’d been without warning. “I’m going to ask you again,” he said quietly. “Are you okay?”
She exhaled a long shaky breath and then shook her head as she turned away from him. “Do you always carry a gun when you go out, cowboy?”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“How about during the day?”
He gave her a look, wasted because she still had her back to him. “Still yes.”
“How about when you’re in bed with a woman?”
He knew what she was doing. Stalling. Also clearly trying to annoy him. But he’d been to hell and back, and on the return trip he’d learned how to shut himself off enough that he didn’t get easily annoyed. “Do you always answer a question with another question?”
Again she shook her head. She moved inside to an industrial refrigerator and dropped to her knees in front of the low pull-out freezer. When she went through the drawer, she made a sound of distress.
He was at her side in a second. “What is it?”
“Someone broke in. Took some money. Left my refrigerator and freezer door open, and it’s been just long enough that nearly everything is ruined.”
“Why did you have cash in here? And how much was taken?”
“It was petty cash, locked up in my cash drawer, and it was around a hundred bucks. Which maybe doesn’t seem like a lot to you, but to me it might as well be a grand.”
