Back to Before

by Tracy Solheim

  “You can’t afford me. And you’re certainly not going to guilt me to help anyone in this town.” Ginger had embraced her inner Destiny and she wasn’t going to let her go now. “Besides, I already have a job, remember?”

  Audra pushed the key back toward Ginger before laying her head, facedown, on her desk. “Keep the key. I didn’t give it to you to rope you into teaching here. Honest. You forget I know the people in this town, too, and I figured you’d need a place to get away. As a last resort, I can beg one of the high school girls to teach the kids.”

  Ginger slid into the chair across from Audra’s desk, a twinge of guilt nipping at her belly. “I really wouldn’t have the time, Audra,” she said.

  Audra waved a hand. “I know. I know. Your schedule is crazy. Forget I even asked.” She lifted her head off the desk. “I could really use a drink. My husband is deep-sea fishing this weekend. How about I take you out to Chances Inlet’s hottest nightspot, Pier Pressure?”

  “Why not,” Ginger said. It certainly beat staring at the four walls in her room at the inn.

  It was Friday night and Pier Pressure was crowded with both locals and tourists. Not surprisingly, the waterfront bar was decorated in a nautical theme with captain’s chairs from salvaged ships serving as stools shoved against the mahogany bar. Tables and chairs from old ferryboats were scattered around the long narrow room. Deep into the bar, a small stage stood above an empty dance floor, a jukebox beside it blasting out a Luke Bryant song.

  “Oh, my gosh, Destiny Upchurch is in my bar!” a woman wiping out some glasses yelled above the noise. “Can I get a picture for Instagram and Twitter?” she asked, snapping a photo with her cell phone before Ginger had a chance to answer. “Hey, I heard you’re going to get Savannah Rich to come to town. That’s so cool!”

  Ginger shook her head in disbelief as she took her seat at the bar. At least everyone in this town was predictable if not relentless.

  “What can I get you ladies?”

  Audra slid into one of the captain’s chairs, carefully positioning her braced knee away from the crowd. “I’d like a big glass of Merlot, Jolene.”

  “How ’bout you, Destiny?” Jolene asked.

  “It’s Ginger,” she said with a sigh. “And I think I’d like to try”—she glanced at the triangular card depicting summery drinks—“this lemonade looks nice.”

  Jolene gave a little whistle. “My specialty. One Lynchburg Lemonade, coming right up. Of course, I’ll need to see some ID first.” She winked at Ginger. “You played a teenager on the show. I need to make sure you’re not one in real life.”

  “You do know there’s whiskey in that lemonade?” Audra asked after Jolene had studied Ginger’s driver’s license long enough to commit it to memory.

  Aside from an occasional glass of wine or champagne, Ginger made it a point to stay away from alcohol. It seemed the prudent choice ever since the accident that had devastated both her and Diesel’s lives. But Destiny Upchurch wouldn’t venture into a bar without having ordered a drink, so Ginger decided to give the people of Chances Inlet what they wanted. “Sure,” she said to Audra before posing in another bar patron’s selfie. Besides, Diesel had been right. Destiny was already having a lot more fun than Ginger ever had in this town.

  * * *

  It was nine thirty and Gavin had to weave his way through a larger-than-usual crowd hovering at the entrance of Pier Pressure. He’d only just arrived back to his loft from his nightly walk-through of Dresden House. After a long day spent in Wilmington, he was looking forward to knocking back a cold one and finishing up some drafting, but then Audra had texted him. He bumped into Sheriff’s Deputy Hayden Lovell on his way through the crush of people.

  “Oh, good,” the deputy said. “Maybe you can take care of this without me having to arrest her.”

  “Arrest who?” he asked as they finally broke through the crowd. His eyes were immediately drawn to the stage at the back of the bar where the answer to that question stood and shimmied her hips with a microphone in her hands. White jeans accentuated her long legs while the rest of her was clad in a poufy sleeveless top with big pink flowers that swung provocatively from side to side with every move she made. Her hair formed a wild halo around her head and those unique eyes shone with unabashed delight. Ginger was a sensual fantasy come to life strutting around on that stage.

  Until she opened her mouth.

  “Whoa,” Hayden said. “I’m pretty sure I heard wailing in the mountains of Afghanistan that sounded better than that.”

  Ah, shit.

  “You can’t arrest her for being a terrible singer,” Gavin snapped at the deputy.

  “I don’t know, Gavin,” Cooper Rawlins, the town’s auto mechanic, said. “It does kinda border on cruel and unusual punishment. That girl couldn’t carry a tune with a bucket.”

  Everyone around Gavin laughed.

  “I don’t really want her arrested, Gavin,” Jolene said from her position behind the bar. “But if sexy Deputy Lovell were to carry her out kicking and screaming, I wouldn’t mind the publicity that would generate.”

  “It’s my fault, Gavin,” Audra said. “People kept buying her drinks. I tried to call Diesel, but he didn’t answer.”

  A pulse of fury shot through Gavin as he saw the people milling around in front of the stage with their cell phones out, presumably recording Ginger’s performance. He glared at Jolene. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” he said. “You have no right to take advantage of her publicity like that.”

  No one met his eyes as he stormed to the back of the bar where Ginger was still mutilating a song.

  “Show’s over, folks,” he heard Hayden say beside him.

  “Gavin!” Ginger squealed while the instrumentation carried on without her. “You’re here! Look, we’re having a party. Guess what? Everybody finally likes me.” Her attempt at a whisper sounded more like a shout over the still-live microphone, its loudness seeming to startle her a bit.

  Gavin put his hands up to catch her as she wobbled a little too close to the end of the stage. Her eyes sparkled and a pretty blush covered her cheeks. “I’m not done with my song,” she said, finding her balance and pulling out of his grasp.

  “Ginger, sweetheart, it’s late,” Gavin said as he reached for her arm. “You need to give someone else a turn. Jolene has karaoke again on Wednesday nights. You can come back then.”

  A collective groan emanated from the bar’s patrons. Gavin shot them another glare over his shoulder as he tried to coax Ginger off the stage.

  “Here, miss,” Hayden said as he reached for her other arm. “Let me help you down.”

  “You brought a policeman?” she said, a hint of panic in her voice. “Gavin, why did you bring a policeman?”

  “Because Carrie Underwood called!” Cooper shouted out. “She filed a cease and desist order with the sheriff!”

  Laughter engulfed the bar and Gavin saw the exact moment when reality started to permeate Ginger’s inebriated brain. Raw anger made his chest seize as he watched her face begin to crumble. He reached for her again, wanting nothing more but to gather her up in his arms and shelter her from the hurt the morons in the bar had inflicted on her, but she took a step back away from him. The microphone hissed as she brought it too close to her face, her hands coming to her mouth. “Oh, my God, this was all just a joke, wasn’t it?” She sucked in a mouthful of air. “I thought small towns were supposed to be nice. All my life, I dreamed of living in a place like this. A place where someone would say we take care of our own and they would be talking about me. But obviously those kinds of places don’t exist. There’s no second chance in this town,” she spit out. “Not when you don’t give people a first chance. You’re all as fake as that stupid soap opera you love so much!” Ginger’s words were a bit slurred and her tone belligerent as hell, but Gavin couldn’t help the proud smile that settled onto his face.

  With a hiccup she threw the mic at Hayden. She hesitated a moment, seeming to ponder
the best way to exit the stage.

  “Gavin,” she whispered. “I’m really woozy.”

  “I’m here to catch you, sweetheart,” he said, lifting up his arms again just as Ginger launched herself into them. She shivered briefly before settling her face against his neck. Without a word, Gavin turned and carried her from the now-silent bar.

  She was quiet and still in his arms as he marched up Main Street toward his loft, but he could feel the telltale dampness of her tears against his skin.

  “When was the last time you ate something?” he asked when they arrived at the loft. “Something of substance.”

  Ginger started, almost as if she wasn’t aware he was carting her up the stairs like a rag doll. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I had a banana sometime this afternoon. But no dinner.” She hiccupped, making it sound indignant. “Everything on the menu at the bar was either deep fried or smothered in somethin’ loaded with preservatives.”

  Exactly what he was afraid of. Gavin tried to ease her into one of the leather chairs surrounding his pool table, but she locked her arms tighter around his neck. “Sweetheart, I’ve got to get you sobered up before I take you back to the inn.”

  “No!” she cried. “Not the inn. Please. Oh, God, your mother . . .” She made a little mewling sound against his neck. “Please, Gavin, don’t take me back there. I want to stay here.” Her lips grazed the skin along his jaw and he swallowed a low groan. “I want to spend the night with you.”

  He’d been working up a good hard-on ever since she’d wrapped herself around him at Pier Pressure, but her quiet plea nearly did him in. Not that he was going to be able to act on it tonight. As fired up as he was, sex with drunk women never ended well.

  But he couldn’t take her back to the inn, either. His normally kind mother had been as unwelcoming to Ginger as the rest of Chances Inlet and there was no telling how condescending she’d be to an intoxicated Ginger.

  She flicked her tongue in his ear and his jeans grew even tighter. “Okay, you can stay,” he choked out. “But on one condition.”

  Drowsy green eyes peered up at him. “Anything,” she whispered, her pert lips forming a shy smile so erotic it caused his eyes to blur. Untangling her arms, he set her on her feet, needing to feel some distance between them so he could stay in control of the situation.

  “I need you to eat something for me, Ginger,” he said. She recognized the double entendre seconds before he did, pink coloring her cheeks as she arched an eyebrow at him. He wrapped his hand around his skull and squeezed, but that did nothing to relieve the throbbing in other parts of his body.

  Ginger’s husky laugh wasn’t helping. “Whatever you want.”

  “I meant food, Ginger!” he shouted in frustration. “Protein and carbs. I have some sliders or a burrito in the freezer that I can nuke for you. Or I can warm up the fish taco left over from last night.”

  Ginger’s face went pasty white and her eyes grew a little more dilated. With a jerk, she shoved a trembling hand to her mouth.

  “Gavin,” she sobbed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Ah, shit!”

  NINE

  “Apparently, women don’t get the munchies when they’re drunk, Midas,” Gavin said as he sat in the leather recliner in his bedroom, crunching a pretzel. Midas whimpered from his crate across the loft. “At least not this woman. Not that that should surprise anyone.”

  Ginger had been in the bathroom nearly twenty minutes. Gavin had already brought her a glass of water, some Tylenol and one of the toiletry sets he’d pilfered from the inn. When she emerged a few moments later, she was wearing the T-shirt he’d worn to bed last night and, as far as he could tell, nothing else.

  The woman was freaking torturing him.

  Still peaked and a little wobbly, she made it only as far as the bed, collapsing on her back in its center with another of those lusty sighs. Gavin froze where he was. He’d been dreaming of this woman all week and now she lay with her long naked legs spread all akimbo on his bed like a pagan offering, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  “The room is spinning,” she whispered.

  Gavin sighed. That’s not all it will be doing if you don’t cover yourself up. “Put one foot on the floor.”

  He watched as she carefully slid to one side of the bed, delicately placing one foot on the floor in front of him. “It’s not working,” she said, patting the mattress. “I think it’ll stop if you lay down beside me.”

  “We both know that’s a bad idea.”

  She angled her head so she could meet his gaze. There was something so profoundly sad and lonely about the look in her eyes. How come being a gentleman makes me feel like such an ass?

  “You don’t want me, either,” she whispered. “All this time, I thought you were into me, but that was just you being charming, wasn’t it?”

  Gavin was on the bed in an instant, pinning her tempting body beneath his larger, much harder one. Bracing himself on his forearms, he stared into her now-wide eyes. He caught a whiff of mint toothpaste as her pink tongue licked her bottom lip. Her hips rolled forward restlessly and he felt as well as heard her sharp intake of breath when their bodies came into contact with each other.

  “Does it feel like I’m not into you, Ginger?” he rasped. “Because I am. I am way into you.” He jerked his hips back up before he lost control and showed her exactly how into her he could be.

  “But I don’t understand. How come you don’t want to—”

  “Because when we do this—and we are going to do this, more than once, in fact—I want you awake, alert and fully participating,” he growled.

  “I can fully participate right now,” she argued as her fingers slid the button open on his fly. The zipper was loud in the open room as she slowly lowered it, her eyes never leaving his.

  Gavin didn’t stand a chance. His erection sprang free at the first hint of cool air. Ginger’s warm fingers wrapped around him before he could protest and his eyes slammed shut at the pure pleasure of it. He heard her own breath hitch as her skin came in contact with his, and that little sound turned him on even more.

  “Ginger,” he groaned, but he knew he was useless to stop her now. It felt too damn good.

  “Let me,” she whispered, nipping at his chest through his T-shirt as she pushed him over onto his back. Guilt warred with pleasure before her lips closed around him and all coherent thought was gone. The hand that should have been pushing her away threaded through her hair, guiding her head up and down on his.

  “Holy shit,” he bit out a minute later, pulling Ginger’s mouth from him before he spent himself in the towel he’d left on the bed for her. Both their breathing was ragged as Ginger crawled on top of him. He stroked a hand up under the T-shirt and over her ass. She did have panties on.

  Not for long.

  All he needed was five minutes to rebound and, sober or not, Ginger Walsh was getting what she’d been asking for. The hell with the manners his parents had ingrained in him.

  “You have the most amazing mouth,” she whispered as she traced the dimple on his chin with the tip of her tongue. “From the first moment I saw it, I wanted to taste it. I dream at night about what that amazing mouth could do to me.”

  Make that two minutes.

  She brushed her lips over his. “All I have to do is close my eyes and your mouth is right there, kissing me. All over.” He felt her tender sigh fan his cheek as she laid her head on his chest.

  Gavin stroked a hand down her back, but Ginger didn’t stir. Instead her breathing relaxed into the gentle rhythm of a deep sleep. He nearly laughed at the irony before wrapping his arms around her and dozing off himself.

  * * *

  Ginger awoke to the sound of running water and the smell of stale doggie breath. Her head felt like it was wrapped in a cinder block and she didn’t dare move it. She pried one of her eyelids open before quickly squeezing it shut again. Too bright. Clearly, she hadn’t closed the blinds in her room the night befo
re. Except that, as far as she could remember, her room at the inn didn’t have skylights.

  Cheese and crackers!

  She was definitely not in her room at the Tide Me Over Inn. Fighting through the pain, she forced both eyelids open until her weary pupils focused on two industrial-sized skylights bracketing a giant ceiling fan swirling twenty feet above her. Cautiously, she angled her head to get a look around the very masculine room. The white jeans she’d worn the night before were draped over a leather recliner in the corner, a pair of well-worn blue jeans lying beside hers.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned as snippets from the previous evening began to replay themselves within her aching skull. I went to the bar with Audra and somehow ended up singing karaoke. Ginger pulled the covers up over her head in hopes of blocking out the embarrassing images flickering across her eyes.

  A dog whined next to her ear and Ginger lowered the sheet, slowly turning her head until her blurry vision locked with the chocolate eyes of Gavin’s ill-behaved golden retriever. The dog, seated inches from the bed, wiggled forward in excitement, placing a paw on the mattress.

  “Don’t even think about,” Ginger rasped. The sound of her voice was painful to her ears. The water stopped abruptly and she realized it must have been the shower, which meant she wasn’t alone in the loft. One look at the drooling dog and she knew who was behind the bathroom door. Her stomach did a little dip when she pictured a naked Gavin drying himself off. A fantasy about her own hands on his satiny skin forced a sigh from her lips, followed by a very authentic-feeling memory of her crawling over his body.

  Panic began to set in. How had she gotten from Pier Pressure to Gavin’s loft? And what had she done in Gavin’s bed? Her hands did a hasty assessment beneath the sheets. Panties: check. Bra: no. Cheese and crackers with crap on top! She was wearing an oversized T-shirt for which she was thankful, except that begged the question of how she’d gotten into it. Quickly, she ran her hand along the sheet beside her. It was cold and the bed’s other pillow was missing. Not exactly conclusive, but still a good sign.