Protecting What's His (Line of Duty #1)(33)

He’d left without a word.

As she’d lain there awake wondering what kind of awkward morning-after speech Derek had prepared, he’d left his bedroom—to take a shower, she’d assumed—and never returned. Waltzed right out the front door, leaving her wearing nothing but her birthday suit in his bed. She’d sat up like a shot at the realization that he’d left, surprised to find she would have preferred the awkward speech in exchange for how she now felt. Empty, exposed.

A little used.

She resented being made to feel that way. He wasn’t required to tell her she was special or cook her an omelet, but anything would have been preferable to silence. Silence could be interpreted to mean too many things. Maybe now that he’d gotten what he wanted from her, leaving without saying good-bye had been his way of gently nudging her toward the door.

Well, she’d be more than happy to oblige him.

Ginger grabbed her mug and went to rinse it out in the sink, giving her an excuse to turn her back. She felt the hot sting of tears behind her eyes, but blinked them away and focused on what needed to be done.

“Good news, sis,” she called over her shoulder. “I called Lenny and since it’s going to take a while to repair our place, he’s letting us move into a vacant unit upstairs. I was thinking of browsing the local swap meet for pieces today, but I think I’d rather get a jump start on moving out of here and into the other place.”

She didn’t need to turn around to see Willa’s confusion. It made no sense, swapping one temporary home for another. All she knew for certain? She needed to get out now. This moment. She didn’t know how to explain that to Willa, though. Or herself for that matter.

“Why the rush? Why don’t we just stay here instead of moving twice?”

“No reason,” she said quickly. “Just want our own space.”

The long pause that followed made Ginger’s shoulder blades itch. “Are you sure it doesn’t have anything to do with last night?”

Ginger tensed, then began cleaning the coffee mug for the third time. “What do you mean?”

“You and the lieutenant weren’t exactly quiet about it,” Willa said jokingly. “But hey, if you want to hit him and quit him, that’s fine by me. We’ll leave today.”

Ginger’s stomach plummeted to the floor. No, please, no. She’d been careful, hadn’t she? They’d been in the farthest room in the house. Had she been so caught up in the moment that she’d actually woken her little sister? Just like… She couldn’t let the thought fully form or she would be ill.

Slowly, she turned from the sink to face her sister. “Oh God, Willa.”

Her sister’s smile disappeared and she came toward her with hands outstretched. “Ginger, come on. I was just kidding. Your side of the bed hasn’t been slept in and you’re sitting there stewing, so I took a wild guess. But I didn’t hear anything. Honestly.”

Ignoring Willa’s attempts at denial, she breezed past her toward the bedroom.

“I’m going to pack. We’ll be out of here today. I promise.”

…

“I’d appreciate any information you can pass on.” Derek lowered his voice as he strode down the hallway toward his apartment with a bag of groceries under his arm Monday evening. Adjusting the cell phone against his ear, he repeated the information. “Haywood Devon. Owns a few strip clubs in Nashville, among his other enterprises. I’m specifically interested in any connection he has with a Valerie Peet. Thanks.”

Derek walked through his door and came to a stop. Staring down at the spare set of apartment keys resting on his kitchen counter, an uncomfortable feeling spread through his chest. He’d given Ginger the set when she and Willa moved into the spare bedroom Saturday night. Obviously at some point between Sunday morning and now, they’d left. Without giving him a courtesy call or leaving a simple note.

A muscle flexed in his jaw as he set down his phone a bit too heavily on the counter. He supposed he couldn’t expect a courtesy call from Ginger when he’d neglected to do the same. Every time he’d picked up the phone to call her, he’d hung up, not knowing how to say what was on his mind. He had very little experience expressing his feelings to a woman, especially a woman like Ginger whose reactions he could never predict. No, what he wanted to say would need to be said face-to-face.

Derek hadn’t slept or eaten a decent meal since Saturday night and until just now, when he walked through the door, he hadn’t realized how much he’d needed Ginger to be here when he got home. Work had been hell now that Alvarez’s informant had finally come through with information about a meeting between the two feuding gangs that was set to take place tomorrow night. He’d worked around the clock to get his men in place, organizing the raid and casing the location of the meet so they would know the lay of the land going in.

Those bastards were going down tomorrow night.

For two days, when he wasn’t strategizing or running back and forth to police headquarters to brief the chief of police on their progress, he’d thought of Ginger nonstop. Every time he earned a quiet moment, she materialized in his mind looking like she had Sunday morning in his bed. Rosy and naked, snuggled into his pillows. The image was permanently seared into his brain and refused to fade. He didn’t want it to.

She’d been a virgin. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Besides her age, an age when most woman had accumulated a decent number of partners, the way she moved, smiled, breathed—it oozed sensuality. He’d hated every man who’d made her that way, even though her outrageously sexy demeanor undeniably drew him in. He couldn’t fathom a woman like Ginger, who left men drooling in her wake, making it to twenty-three without having been with a man.