“Assaulting an officer, Jim? You should know better than that.”
The whole bar is watching now, and everyone starts clapping when I drag him up to his feet like I just bagged one of the most wanted. I make a show of taking him out to the cruiser and shoving him into the back. I’ll release him once we get to the station, but it won’t hurt him to have a good dose of humility for a change.
Ginger comes trailing out the door behind us and stares into the back of the cruiser.
“Did you really have to take it that far?” she asks.
And I can’t believe the nerve of this girl. I was trying to do her a favor, and now she wants to throw it back in my face. But why should I expect anything else? She’s just the same old Ginger, out for herself and shallow as a kiddy pool.
“Next time you get yourself in a pickle, you better call on someone else then,” I tell her.
“I didn’t call on you at all,” she argues.
“Your eyes said what your lips couldn’t, Ginge. Everybody in that joint could see it, so don’t try to spoon feed me more of your lies.”
“Wow,” she whispers. “So that’s what you think of me?”
Silence settles between us, and the air is so thick with tension I can’t stand it. It doesn’t help that her eyes are glistening in the moonlight and she looks genuinely hurt by what I said.
I won’t let her make me feel bad. But when a tiny tear leaks from the corner of her eye, I close the distance between us and catch it with my thumb. Ginger trembles beneath my hand and then leans in closer like she’s been starving for my touch after all these years.
It doesn’t make any sense, but the man in me doesn’t care. He’s too busy beating his chest and getting high on her scent.
Wildflowers and cyanide.
She’s a red headed temptress. The devil incarnate. But I’ve never wanted her as much as I do right now when she’s soft and sweet and vulnerable. She peeks up at me from beneath her lashes and bites her lip. It’s a calculated move, no doubt about it. She wants me to kiss her.
I should walk away.
I should do something else. Anything else than what I’m about to do. But I lean down into her, close enough that I can feel her breath on my lips and taste her sweetness on my tongue. She’s the one who breaches the barrier between us, tossing her arms around my neck and standing up on her toes to kiss me.
I yank her body against me, seizing a fistful of those gorgeous red curls and forcing her to hold still so I can kiss the fuck out of her. My dick is so hard I could cut rock, and Ginger feels it. She feels it against her soft, warm belly, and she wants it.
She wants me. Ginger Duke wants me.
I’m like a teenager all over again, chanting out that sweet victory in my head. I grab a handful of her ass and squeeze. I kiss her throat. Her collar bone. I suck on her ear lobe. Her nipples poke out through her shirt and rub against my chest. Everything about her is so goddamned sexy, right down to her toes.
I could take her home and show her what she missed out on all those years ago. I could show her all night long. But come morning, I know I would regret it. Because Ginger would turn and burn me all over again. That’s what she’s good at. And already, I can’t control myself around her. It’s like not a day has passed since we were kids and I’m still the fool tripping all over myself for her.
Ginger looks up at me with wide, dreamy eyes when I jerk away.
“Gray?”
There’s a whole lot of things I should probably say. Or do. Or something. But I can’t find my voice, and I can’t let her know how bad she’s got to me.
“I need to take him in,” I tell her. “You have a ride home?”
She stiffens, and the dreamy expression on her face is wiped clean. Message received, loud and clear.
“Yeah, Mr. Johnson offered me a lift.”
I open the door to the cruiser and give her a curt nod.
“Then you have yourself a good night, Miss Duke.”
CHAPTER 6
Ginger
O ver the course of the last few weeks, the incidents have not only become more frequent, but more damaging as well. At first, it was just stupid things. Toilet paper strewn over the building. Shredded up paper tossed all over the parking lot. More graffiti.
But then the intruder started going inside. Emptying out the shampoo bottles. Dumping the trash onto the floor. Things of that nature.
I don’t like looking over my shoulder all the time. And I don’t like thinking that Chris might be watching me, doing these things. But, he’s bitter over the way I left. And I hate to think how bad it might get.
My nerves are frayed, but I don’t dare call Justice again. Not after he kissed me and then turned to ice that night. I’ve been doing my best to avoid him, even if that means dealing with this on my own.
I need a security camera, but the money I’m bringing in from the salon isn’t enough. I’m lucky if I can get three clients a day right now, and at this rate, I’ll be shutting up shop before I even get started. It’s taking longer than I expected to win over the locals again. I’ve been baking my heart out and volunteering my time after work to help out around the community or wherever I can. But the regulars are still turning up their noses at me, and I know exactly why.
There’s one surefire way to make peace in Oak Grove, and it’s the thing I’ve been avoiding since I arrived. As I stand here on my mama’s front stoop feeling like a mess of nerves, I’m still not sure I can go through with it. But Mabel has already passed by, and now she’ll be spreading the word around town like wildfire. So, I have no choice.
I lock my hand into a fist and knock on the door. It doesn’t feel right to just go on in. It hasn’t felt like my home since I left at eighteen. It didn’t ever really feel like home before then either. My safe haven was always in the warehouse with Justice.
Mama answers after a minute, and her face goes white as a sheet when she sees me standing there. But she recovers quickly in the presence of nosy neighbors gathered down the block watching us so subtly.
“Ginger,” Mama says. “Come on inside. I just made some lemonade.”
I walk inside the childhood home that I can only describe as a time capsule. The place is just the way I remember it, right down to the plastic overwrap on the couches. It squeaks when I sit down and sticks to the bottom of my thighs. I have to peel myself away from it three times before Mama pours us each a glass and returns with a plate of cookies as well.
The silence between us is awful and stiff, but we never really did have much to talk about.
“The place looks nice, mama.”
“It looks the same,” she says.
That it does. It’s like a shrine to my father. Everything is still just the way he liked it. The house is spotless, and the curtains pulled back just so. I would bet my last dollar that if I opened the cupboard all the tins in the pantry would be alphabetized and stacked neatly as well.
“How have you been?” I ask.
Mama purses her lips and shakes her head. “That’s how we’re going to start, is it? Ginger, why don’t you just get to whatever it is you came here for.”
Her words sting and they’re all the worse because they ring true. I don’t want to need anything from her, but she knows I do. I hate that she can see that weakness in me.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I fixed up the old salon in town.”
“I heard alright,” she says. “Can’t go to the bathroom in this town without the neighbors talking about it. I’ve heard all the things you’ve been up to since you came back. Making a spectacle of yourself at the bar. I didn’t raise you that way, Ginger. If you want to make an embarrassment of yourself, you ought to do it somewhere else.”
It feels like she’s slapped me. My mama always did have a sharp tongue when she was angry, and she’s been angry with me for a long time now.
“Daddy’s not around anymore,” I say. “There’s no need to pretend we’re anything that we aren’t, mama.�
��
She points a shaky finger at me, and her face goes red.
“Don’t you talk about your daddy. You have no right to talk about your daddy. Not after the way you did him. Couldn’t even bother to come to his funeral. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was for me?”
“I’m not a child anymore,” I tell her. “And I had no intention of coming there and putting on a show for everyone in town like I was sad when I wasn’t.”
Mama shakes her head.
“When are you gonna grow up, Ginger?” she asks. “You were always such a wild child. So mouthy. You never knew when to bite your tongue.”
“I guess that’s what you tell yourself, huh? That’s what makes it okay. It was my attitude that justified him knocking me around all the time. But if you were so perfect, then what was his excuse for knocking you around too?”
Mama shuts her mouth and keeps it that way. She doesn’t know how to deal with stuff like this. Not when you throw it right in her face. She came from the school of keeping your dirty laundry buried deep in the closet where nobody could ever see it, let alone talk about it.
It makes me sad for her in a way. All those years of driving hours and hours to different hospitals and making up stories to hide the truth. Putting on her makeup so carefully and never letting her composure crack, not even for a second.
I will give her this. The woman has an iron will. But it doesn’t make it any easier to accept what happened. She didn’t protect me. She just expected me to follow in her footsteps. To act like my daddy was such a great man. To keep up the illusion that everyone had of him.
We weren’t cut from the same cloth, and my mama has always hated that. It’s written on her face now, and even after all these years, we can’t breach the divide. I don’t know what I was thinking coming here to ask for help. It was the most ridiculous idea I ever had.
“I’m gonna go, mama.”
She gives me a curt nod.
“I think that’s probably for the best.”
The only silver lining is that she sends me on my way with a cookie.
CHAPTER 7
Justice
I’m sitting at the diner enjoying my dinner when Mr. Johnson takes a seat opposite me, folding his hands across the table. Nobody else would do that without asking first, but Mr. Johnson doesn’t ask anybody anything. He’s older than creation, and he does what he wants whether anyone likes it or not.
He was the first person in town to treat me like I wasn’t scum just because of who my mama was. He’d let me help him out on the farm every now and then and toss a few bucks my way and feed me too. Then we’d sit out on the front porch, and he’d tell me stories about his life.
I thought he was old then and that was almost twenty years ago. But he’s still strong as an ox and stubborn as one too.
“Sheriff, I’ve been giving this situation some thought,” he says. “And I’m no busybody, but I don’t feel it’s right if I don’t say something.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s that Duke girl. She’s been helping out on the farm to earn some extra cash. But something just doesn't sit right with me. I think she might be in trouble.”
I swallow the bite I was chewing and set down my silverware. My food feels like lead in my gut, and I don’t like it. I’ve been trying my best to avoid Ginger, and I’ve been doing a fine job of it. But it seems as though the universe has other plans in mind.
“I gave her a ride home a couple times,” Mr. Johnson says. “She’s living in a camper outside the town limits. Bunkered down in the trees just off the highway. I don’t like it one bit.”
“A camper?” I repeat.
Mr. Johnson nods.
“And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she asked me the other night if she could borrow my shotgun. Looked like a wild horse when she said it. All skittish and jumpy. I didn’t like the idea of her having to use that gun, but I didn’t see no other choice being as she’s all alone out there.”
Son of a bitch.
I shake my head and toss my napkin onto my plate. I don’t want to hear this. And why in the hell did I ever think it was a good idea to be the town sheriff?
Mr. Johnson pats me on the shoulder when he stands up.
“You’re a good lad. I know you were always sweet on that girl. You’ll do the right thing.”
And with that parting shot, he leaves me to my guilty conscience. I don’t wait for Kelly to come around with my bill. I toss some cash onto the table and head out to the cruiser. Twenty minutes later, I’m standing in front of Ginger’s home on wheels.
It’s a tiny thing. Could have only cost her a couple hundred bucks at the most. It looks like it should have been salvaged about three decades ago. And there she is, sitting in her cutoff jeans on the tailgate of her Chevy, shotgun propped up next to her as she stares at the front door of the camper with a furrowed brow.
She didn’t hear me come in since I had to park up on the highway, so when I step on a twig, it scares the bejeezus out of her. She swivels the shotgun in my direction and has it aimed straight for my face before she realizes it’s only me. And I know Mr. Johnson was right now because something has her spooked as hell.
“What are you doing out here?” she snaps.
Her cheeks are red, and she’s humiliated that I’ve seen her this way. Living like this. Ginger has always been so proud. It doesn’t matter to her that I came from a place a lot like this myself.
“Came out to check on you,” I tell her.
“Goddamn Mr. Johnson,” she mutters. “Nosy ass people can’t mind their own business. I’m plenty capable of taking care of myself.”
I nod to the shotgun.
“I can see that.”
She sets it down beside her and runs a trembling hand through her hair. There’s a reason she’s sitting out here like this and I intend to know what it is.
“Well, aren’t you going to invite me in for a cool drink?” I ask.
She looks at the camper door again and bites her lip. She doesn’t want to tell me, but she’s going to.
“What’s going on, Ginger?”
“It’s nothing,” she says with a wave of her hand. “You can run along now and chase after puppies or arrest some more drunkards. I have it handled.”
The urge to take her over my knee and smack that round little ass of hers is strong, but I ignore it. I cross my arms over my chest and don’t move.
“It’s alright,” I say. “I’ve got some time on my hands. Being Sheriff of Oak Grove isn’t as time-consuming as you might think. Matter of fact, I could probably stay here all night and never get a call.”
She glares at me.
The standoff lasts for about five minutes before I start rankling her.
“Heard you been over to see your mama.”
“I’m sure you did,” she says. “I’m sure you heard what color shirt I was wearing that day too, along with exactly how long I was there or what people think was said between us.”
“You know that’s just how it is around here.”
“Well sometimes I wish it wasn’t,” she snaps. “I don’t need everyone in my business all the time. I’m a grown ass woman and can’t even have some peace and quiet out here at my own place.”
I shrug. “Technically, you’re parked here illegally.”
“Give it a rest, Gray. What are you going to do? Arrest me?”
“It might be fun to parade you through town.”
I don’t know why I get such a kick out of rubbing her the wrong way, but she looks beautiful when she’s angry. That red hair only seems to get redder when her cheeks do too.
“If I tell you what’s going on, will you leave?”
“Can’t make any promises,” I say. “But I guess it’s worth a shot.”
She sighs and hops down from the tailgate before gesturing over to the camper.
“Someone’s been breaking in here too, the last couple of days.”
And suddenly, the situation isn�
��t so funny anymore.
“Are you sure about that?”
She glares again and crosses her arms, pushing her cleavage up between the vee in her tee shirt.
“Yes, I’m sure. They took some of my things. Personal things that meant a lot to me. They weren’t worth anything.”
I want to believe she's paranoid because of what’s been happening at the salon, but I don’t think that’s true. Ginger has always been level headed. She doesn’t get flustered over things or make them bigger than what they are. Not like this.
“Have you been inside there yet?” I ask.
She shakes her head, embarrassed. “Not yet.”
She was afraid. Sitting here with her shotgun staring at the door because she was too terrified to go inside. And I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet right now.
“Let me go on in and check it out then.”
She nods and tosses me the key. It unlocks easy enough, and it wouldn’t be too hard to get in with a few tools. But the lock is so banged up already it’s hard to say if it’s been tampered with or not.
Inside, there isn’t a whole lot to go on. A few meager possessions of Ginger’s are all that I find. The space smells like her, but it doesn’t feel right. She shouldn’t be living this way, and I don’t know why she is. I guess she’s struggling to rub two dimes together but too proud to say anything.
I walk back outside, and she breathes a sigh of relief when she sees me again.
“We need to move your camper,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, but what she doesn’t say is that she has nowhere to go.
“I like it here.”
“Well, you can like the view just as much from my back yard or Mr. Johnson’s. Either way, you’ll be moving.”
She doesn’t usually take to being bossed around too well, but she doesn’t argue with me this time. She’s exhausted, it’s clear on her face. Her nerves are frayed, and I have to wonder what else it is she’s not telling me.
Drawn to Him: A Romance Collection Page 39
