Wrapped Up in You - Jill Shalvis Page 0,95

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’ll have to take your word on that.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Jenna nudged her chin at the journal. “What’s today’s entry?”

“A list for figuring out what’s next on fixing up the property.” Which was the house and cottages on Rainbow Lake that Piper and her siblings had inherited from their grandparents. “It still needs a lot of work. I’m in way over my head.”

“I know.” Jenna’s smile faded. “I hate that you’re going to sell and move away from Wildstone.”

Wildstone, California, was Piper’s hometown. Sort of. She’d moved here at age thirteen with her two younger siblings Gavin and Winnie, to be raised by their grandparents. But in the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.

And hers could finally start.

All she had to do was finish fixing up the property, then she’d sell and divide the money in thirds with her siblings. With her portion, she’d finally have the money and freedom to go to school and become a physician’s assistant like she’d always wanted.

So close. She was so close that she could almost taste it. She squeezed Jenna’s hand. “Don’t worry. I’m coming back to Wildstone after school.”

Where else would she go? Her only other home had been following her parents all over the world, providing healthcare wherever they’d been needed the most. But her mom and dad were gone now. Her family was Gavin and Winnie, and everyone in this room.

“But why the University of Colorado?” Jenna asked. “Why go so far? You could go right here to Cal Poly.”

Piper shook her head. Staying wasn’t an option. She’d been stuck here for seventeen years. She needed to go away for a while and figure out her life, who she was if she wasn’t raising her siblings. But that felt hard to explain, so she gave even her bff the excuse. “U of C is one of the really strong schools for my program. And I think I’ll like Colorado.”

Jenna looked unconvinced, but she was a good enough friend to let it go.

“Don’t worry,” Piper said. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better.” Jenna read the journal over Piper’s shoulder. “You sure make a lot of very responsible lists. I can’t even make a shopping list.”

“That’s because you don’t go food shopping. You order in.”

Jenna smiled. “Oh, right.”

“Paint samples!” Piper remembered suddenly, and wrote that down. When you ran your world, everyone in that world tended to depend on you to do it right. That’s how it’d always been for her. She’d been in charge whether she liked it or not.

“You know you’re a control freak, right?”

Piper chewed on the end of her pen. “I’m forgetting something, I know it.”“Yeah,” Jenna said. “To get a life.”

“What do you think I’m doing here?”

Now it was Jenna’s turn to roll her eyes. “Everyone else is talking about the hot new guy in town, and you’re over here in the corner making a shopping list.”

“Hot guys come and go.”

Jenna laughed. “Yeah? How long has it been since you’ve had a hot guy in your life, or any guy at all?”

Piper looked across the bar to where Ry was currently chatting it up with not one, but two, women. Her ex was apparently making up for lost time.

“Well, whose fault is that?” Jenna asked, reading her mind. “You dumped him last year for no reason, remember?”

Actually, she’d had a really good reason, but it wasn’t one she wanted to share, so she shrugged.

“You need a distraction. Of the sexy kind,” Jenna said. “You carry that journal around like it’s the love of your life.”

“At the moment, it is.”

“You could do a whole lot better.” Swiveling in her barstool, Jenna eyed the crowd.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“About what?” Jenna asked innocently.

“Fixing me up.”

“Would that be so bad?” Jenna asked, softer now, putting a hand on Piper’s writing arm. “You’re the one always fixing everyone’s life, everyone but your own, of course. But even The Fixer needs help sometimes.”

It was true that she’d gone a whole bunch of years now being the one to keep it all together. For everyone. Asking for help wasn’t a part of her DNA. But Jenna did have a point. Today was her birthday, a milestone