Jake (California Dreamy) - By Rian Kelley Page 0,13

she’d fought long and hard to achieve and came to covet that she felt was under attack? Or was there more to it than that?

She felt her feet slipping. She leaned backwards to compensate for the sudden change in gravitational pull.

More. There was more going on. Genny’s words fluttered across her mind. Expectations. She was supposed to have them. From the sweet to the grand. Most women not only had them, but made them clear. Ivy knew this. Every time she picked up a fashion magazine there was at least one article addressing ‘what a woman wants’ or ‘how to set and expect…’ Was that part of the problem? Ivy had no expectations?

She definitely had no prior experience with this kind of care. Maybe Jake’s gesture was one more thing to chalk up to ‘the norm,’ as she and Holly called it. If they’d lived a normal childhood, Ivy’s world would not be so rocked now by this extension of kindness.

Yes, she decided. She often found herself tracing emotions back to her childhood. Since leaving Trace and rebuilding her life, she’d gotten much better at identifying them and assigning them the right amount of weight. Baggage—she had to remember when she felt that dread rearing its head, to check her baggage. Like with anything else, she would get better at it with practice.

Ivy took a deep breath and her lungs felt looser. She opened her hand and looked at the key resting in her palm. And after checking her baggage, she decided, she was going to find a way to enjoy her new destination. That would take some practice, too, but she was worth it.

And the thought struck a chord with her. She felt its soft vibration from within, rolling out to her fingertips and down to her toes. Worth. Value. That was the more. Jake treated her like she possessed both. It was also the same old struggle. She’d thought she’d beat that into submission. She could tell herself ten times a day that she had value, that she was a good person with lots to give, but believing it required consistent reminders.

New situations came with new tests. But she was a quick study. It’d only taken her a few hours to get Jake straight in her heart: she was wildly attracted to the man and maybe that was a good thing. He was certainly worth exploring. And that thought thinned the air supply and made her slightly dizzy.

Ivy pressed the button on the key pad that released the door locks. Her headlights flashed and she opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel, and sank into the soft upholstery. A car that worked well, that got her from A to B no problem, was a gift. So she took a moment to appreciate it. The Patriot was her first vehicle. When she was a kid, they rarely owned a car, which was probably just as well as her mother was too drunk to drive or to know better. Trace had been stingy with the keys to his pick-up, but he had taught her to drive. When she was still in high school, and had completed the teen driver course, he’d taken her on the back roads until she was ready for her test. Driving was a gift of freedom, of autonomy. And Jake had restored that. That was the complete opposite of threatening her independence. Another way of looking at the situation. A positive spin. Why couldn’t she have gone there first?

Practice, she reminded herself.

She took another breath, opened her eyes, and moved her purse from her lap to the passenger seat. That’s when she noticed the invoice. It was folded neatly in half and propped against the console, where Ivy couldn’t fail to see it. She plucked it from behind the gear shift and scanned the type and numbers.

He’d left her the bill—of course he had. And that made her smile, which was like pulling

a ball of string—the remaining tension in her muscles eased. Jake understood there were boundaries. He’d proven that to her already on the drive to San Diego. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time. When was she going to take her own advice? Ivy dropped her eyes to the bottom line and was relieved to see that the total wasn’t bad at all, after a deep military discount.

Chapter Five

Ivy parked on the street three blocks from her apartment, which wasn’t bad. This close to the water, any kind