Ginger's Heart (A Modern Fairytale, #3)(106)

“I have my reasons.”

“Tell me, Cain. Thanksgivin’s come and gone. Please tell me why you’re still here.”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

She didn’t want it to matter. She desperately didn’t want it to matter.

She nodded.

He leaned back from her and searched her face as though trying to determine something—if she was ready to know something, if he was ready to tell it.

“I tell you what, if you want to know why I’m still here, I’ll show you, but you need to take a ride with me.”

“Where to?”

“Not tellin’.” He paused. “You trust me?”

She shook her head. “No. ” She shrugged, sniffling softly. “Kind of.”

“We got a lot of water under the bridge, don’t we?” he said, looking away from her. He shrugged. “Well, it’s up to you.”

A good thirty seconds passed in silence as she struggled to make a decision. Part of her felt like running as far away from Cain as she could possibly get. The other part, however, needed him like a lifeline.

Survival won the draw.

“When?”

“Next Saturday.”

“What time?”

“Five,” he said. “And dress warm. I can’t keep borrowin’ my pop’s truck. We’ll take my bike.”

“Your bike. Oh, okay,” she said, watching as he opened his door and waiting as he walked around the truck to open hers.

She’d never ridden on a motorcycle before, but she was too intrigued to say no.

And Saturday felt like a very, very long way away.

***

For most of his life, Ginger McHuid had been forbidden fruit to Cain Wolfram. He hadn’t respected much of anything in his adolescence, but one thing he had tried to respect was his cousin’s early and undying love for Ginger.

When he’d realized, at fifteen, that he was attracted to her . . . or at eighteen, that his feelings for her ran far deeper than the childhood friendship they’d shared . . . or at twenty-one, that he was in love with her . . . he’d still denied himself having her in deference to Woodman. Even five weeks ago, when he’d showed up at her doorstep threatening to haul her out of bed and throw her on Heath’s back in pajamas, he’d still maintained that walking back into her life was the only way to honor his promise to Woodman, and not because he had any tender feelings for Ginger. He couldn’t have any. He wouldn’t allow it.

But the thing he hadn’t expected was that being forced to care for her and be good to her also meant, by default, investing personally in her happiness and well-being. And that investment was causing an unintended shift in his heart—the hate and hurt he’d held on to for three years was shifting back to love so quickly, he didn’t know how to stop it. And without Woodman’s presence in his life, there was nothing stopping Cain’s conscience from loving Ginger all over again. And this time, forever.

Well, there was one other thing stopping Cain: the fact that she’d told him that she loved him, then turned around and slept with his cousin a few hours later. It had hurt like an unimaginable bitch to find her naked body entwined around Woodman’s. If he let himself think on it, it still hurt like hell. And if she’d hurt him once, certainly she could hurt him again.

After a lifetime of keeping his heart safe from harm, he’d be a fool to give it to the only girl who ever broke it, wouldn’t he? Yes. And Cain Wolfram was no fool.

Which was why the feeling of her body pressed up close to his, with her arms around his waist and her cheek resting against his leather-clad back as they raced through the darkness toward Versailles, was perilous to his heart and his sanity and his reason.

He was unprepared for the rush of emotions he felt as she held him tight, or for the way his cock swelled uncomfortably in his jeans, twitching and throbbing with every mile they rode, the vibration of the engine only making the torture worse.

It had been months since Cain had been with a woman—ten weeks, in fact, since he’d f*cked a girl he met in a Norfolk bar before leaving for Versailles. Ten f*cking weeks. He’d never gone that long without a woman since he’d given up his V card to Mary-Louise at the distillery when he was fifteen. And since the only woman with whom Cain had spent a significant amount of time in those ten weeks was Ginger, maybe it wasn’t so surprising that he’d get wood when her * was pressed up against his ass—clothes be damned—going sixty miles an hour into darkness.

But he was lying to himself if he pretended that’s all it was.

The uncomfortable reality was that the more time he spent with Ginger, the less he wanted to wander, the less he wanted a taste of random snatch. Though she’d been his cousin’s woman, and though he would miss Woodman every day for the rest of his life, Ginger was a growing ache inside. Not only in his heart, which could prove lethal, but to his traitorous f*cking body too.

Exiting the highway, he pulled up to a red light and felt Ginger’s warm breath on the back of his neck behind his ear. He clenched his eyes shut for just a moment.

“Where in the world are we goin’?” she asked.

“Ten more minutes,” he said, surging forward, allowing himself to enjoy the rush of adrenaline he felt from having her on the back of his bike.

He’d spent the last week whipping his place into shape for her visit. He’d had a neon exterior sign made a few weeks ago, but he’d finally mounted it and turned it on before leaving to pick her up. He’d purchased a few bikes from a Lexington distributor so that he had some inventory on the floor. The cot in the office was gone, and the refrigerator was on top of a file cabinet that also held a Keurig machine for coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. He’d cleaned up the bathroom, installed a new sink and toilet, and placed a bar of orange-scented soap in a little white dish.