“Borrowed? Weren’t we pulled over and practically arrested?”
“I was practically arrested. Until the new deputy called Dad to the scene and he realized I’d taken the car.”
“But wasn’t I driving?” She frowned, as if she was only just letting the scene play through her mind after all these years. “I didn’t even have my license yet. Good God, Jeb, why the hell would you do such a fool thing? What if I’d wrecked that car? Daddy would have—”
“Paid to have Dad’s car fixed,” Jeb broke in gently. “Miss Belle would have grounded you for a century, or so she would have claimed, but deep down, they would have really just been relieved that you were okay.”
“Didn’t you get in trouble?”
“Sure did. I was grounded for two months and had to clean Dad’s clinic every night after dinner. Plus I lost my driving privileges.”
“You rode your bike to school,” she said softly. “Why on earth did you do such a thing?”
He glanced over at her, catching her gaze for just a moment. She honestly doesn’t know. He sighed and turned his attention to the road. For not the first time in his life, he wished Tyrell hadn’t bought land so far out in the middle of nowhere. “I did it for you.”
“But why? I mean, honestly, I never asked you to steal a car and risk so much trouble for both of us. Though I guess you sure didn’t have to twist my arm to get me behind the wheel.”
“Nope,” he replied, smiling at the memory of how her eyes had lit up with excitement. She’d even thrown her arms around his neck in a quick hug before hopping behind the wheel. “Just like I didn’t have to twist your arm when we got caught sneaking into Mr. Tolson’s orchard and stealing peaches. Or when a bunch of us skipped school to go to the beach.”
“Oh, man, I remember that. None of us had suits but that sure didn’t stop us from stripping down to our skivvies and jumping in. We were crazy fools, weren’t we?”
“Indeed.” He didn’t dare look at her again because he’d be remembering what she’d looked like in her simple bra and panties. Or how he’d worried that his interest would be too visible in his boxers. Thank God it’d been chilly that day and they’d barely been able to last an hour in the water. “I don’t think Miss Belle ever figured that one out, did she?”
“Not that I know of. It was senior skip day anyway.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, but you weren’t a senior, Ginny. Not that one year slowed you down any. You hopped in my car with everyone else and away we went.”
“Jebadiah Garrett, why on earth did you let me do such a thing?”
He snorted and shook his head. “Like anything could have stopped you? Besides, you asked me to go. I never could tell you no.”
She shifted her cast restlessly. “If my arm wasn’t busted, I’d reach over and punch you.”
He had to swallow to try and get some moisture back in his mouth. “A fate worse than death, surely.”
“If I’d told you to jump off a cliff I guess you would have just broken your fool neck.”
He couldn’t help but grin. “Yes ma’am.”
“With a smile on your face,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What am I going to do with you? Are you still that gullible?”
Oh I have only a million or so suggestions. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wondering if he could reach down and adjust himself without her noticing. “Probably. You ought to tell me do something stupid and see if I’ll actually do it.”
“You’d do it all right.” She sighed but her lips were soft, the hard, guarded lines of her face erased by the walk down memory lane. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.” He said it too quickly, ardently, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted her questions as much as he wanted her orders, her deliberate commands, her touch.
“Was I ever…?” She sighed again, her right hand opening and clenching in her lap. It made him want to reach over and take her hand, but he didn’t want to risk hurting her injured arm. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry if I ever took advantage of our friendship. I got you in a lot of trouble and I know people talked. About us.” She laughed, but it sounded forced and uncomfortable. “Like we were a couple.”
It was almost a question. Could she really not know how he’d felt about her all those years? He wasn’t sure how to respond. The Westwood Inn appeared ahead and though he’d regretted the long drive before, now he wished he had another half hour or so in the car with her. It felt like they were on the verge of a breakthrough where she might finally understand what she’d meant to him. What she still meant to him.
He parked the car and turned off the ignition, but didn’t immediately open the door. “I would have asked you to my senior prom. In fact, I’d already worked out how I was going to make it a joke, a dare, to make sure you’d go with me, because I sure knew Virginia Healy wouldn’t ever back down from a challenge. But then you made it into the jumping finals in Dallas the same weekend.”
“I didn’t know,” she said softly, her voice quivering, but she didn’t lift her head. “I didn’t—”
“I bought a ring,” he said in a rush, determined to get it all out in the open. He started to touch the box again, but he made himself squeeze the wheel instead. It’s too early. You ask her now and you’ll blow everything. “I know it was stupid. How was I going to ask you to marry me when I couldn’t seem to even ask you on a real date? But I had it all planned in my head. Every weekend I came home, I was going to ask you, but somehow always managed to go back to College Station banging my fist on the steering wheel all the way to the dorm. I finally decided I’d come back for your senior prom and ask you, but then Sissy told me you were dating Tyrell. I’d missed my chance.”
She finally turned and faced him but he didn’t have the courage to meet her gaze. “Why? Why didn’t you ever ask me? Tell me? Give me any kind of hint that…”
“That I loved you,” he whispered harshly, gripping the wheel hard to keep from reaching out to her. “Because you were my best friend, Ginny. I didn’t want to mess that up. I didn’t want to risk losing you. I thought that maybe someday if I was always there for you that you’d look at me and see not just a friend, but a man. A man that you might care for. Even love. Then you met Ty and it was all over. All I had to do was look into your eyes and I knew you loved him. You never looked at me with that kind of longing. You never wanted me like that.”
His voice broke but he couldn’t stop. Now that the dam had opened, he couldn’t stop spilling out the words he’d been dying to tell her his entire life. “Until that night you came to Texas A&M. That’s the only time you ever looked at me as a man and not your friend. Don’t you remember, Ginny? How it was between us? But it wasn’t enough, because you went right back to Ty and told him everything.”
“I had to. I loved him. I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”
“I know,” he replied hoarsely, finally turning his head so she could see the agony that must have been grooved into his face. “But you loved him more than me. Even after all those years we’d spent growing up together. You couldn’t even bear to look at me after that. You refused to talk to me. So in the end, I lost you, just as I feared, but it was worse than I ever imagined after you showed me what it could have been like for us. I lost you and I wanted to die.”
Virginia’s throat ached worse than her broken arm. All she could do was stare at Jeb and try to find something to say that could undo the hurt she’d done to him. God, she’d been so stupid. So blind and selfish and foolish. “I’m so sorry. Jeb, I had no idea.”
“I hunted Sissy down, dragged her to my car, and drove like a demon to catch you, following you back to Crystal Springs that night. I had to make sure you got there safely. Then I went to see Tyrell.”
Her eyes flared with surprise. “You did? You…”
“I talked to him before you did. I told him everything. I t
old him it was my fault, that I’d tricked you into coming to College Station so I could make one last attempt to steal you away from him.”
She shook her head. “Even then, you were still trying to protect me.”
“He wasn’t even mad. He sure wasn’t surprised.”
She opened her mouth, but couldn’t seem to find anything to say. Ty wasn’t surprised that she’d kissed another man? “But I saw the bruises on you both. You were in a fight.”
“Later. After you talked to him. That night, though, he told me it was up to you.”
She couldn’t wrap her mind around what Jeb was telling her. All those years, Ty hadn’t said a word. He’d never told her he had this talk with Jeb before she’d ever found him to tell him the truth. “What was up to me?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘I promised her she’d get exactly what she wants. If she wants you, she’ll tell me. And if she don’t, then I’m going to beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of you.’”
Her mouth fell open again. Closed. Opened. But she could only stare at Jeb.
“So when Ty showed up alone at the house the next evening and asked me outside, I knew the truth. You didn’t want me.”
“He… And you…” She closed her eyes, trying to seal out the truth, but it was too late.
Ty had known the truth before she’d ever even admitted it to herself. And he’d never said a word. She’d looked him in the eye and told him she didn’t have any feelings whatsoever for Jeb. A sound escaped her lips, a half-strangled hiccupping laugh of shame.
“Ginny?”
“I lied.” She looked up into his dark, concerned gaze and fought not to burst into tears. “I never thought I could do it, but I did. He knew it too, but he never called me on it. He let me lie to his face. I can’t believe the bastard let me go on and on like a half-brained twit and never said a word. Damn it all to hell, if he wasn’t dead already I’d be tempted to beat him within an inch of his life. But then he’d only enjoy it.”
“Ginny,” Jeb repeated, louder.
“Did he tell you about that too? Did he tell you that the first time he kissed me, it was because I beat him with my crop and the damned fool enjoyed it? Worse, so did I. And that was only the beginning.”
Jeb averted his face and spoke so softly she had to strain to hear him. “Did you tell him that when I kissed you, I ended up on my knees?”
“No,” she whispered gently. “That was only for you and me to know. There are so many things you don’t know about me, Jeb. Dark things. Hard things. I’m not a soft and easy woman to know, even in bed. Especially in bed.”
“Good.” His voice deepened. He let go of the steering wheel and gripped his thighs, as though he was fighting to keep his hands from reaching toward her. “There are things you don’t know about me too, Ginny. Dark things. Hard things. Not even Sharon knew, not until the end.”
“Is that why you’re divorced?”
“Partly. But mostly because I finally decided I had to start living. Really living. And that meant I had to find a way back to you.”
Regret swelled in her chest, strangling her. All those years, those wasted, lonely years. It broke her heart all over again. She’d been so alone since Ty’s death. Jeb hadn’t been alone, but he’d been unhappy. All because of a silly, too-proud girl who’d been too afraid to admit to her fiancé that she also had feelings for her best friend.
Feelings. That was the understatement of the century. Because staring at the chiseled lines of his face, his broad shoulders straining at the exquisitely cut suit coat, his hands, so determinedly held in place by will alone…
“What?” Jeb turned his head toward her, but kept his body determinedly frozen in place. His shoulders were tense, his jaw firm, his fingers still locked to hold himself back. “What are you thinking?”
She kept her voice light. “I’m wishing I didn’t have this busted arm, and that we were twenty years younger, and then I’d be half climbing over the console to see for myself.”
“See what?” He took the implied invitation, though, turning toward her and moving closer to make it easy for her to reach him. Jeb would always make it easy for her. Even if that made it hell for him all these years.
Gently, she reached up and combed her fingers through his hair at his crown, dragging and twisting her fingers into the fullness and completely messing up the hair he’d carefully smoothed back. “If this hair is still yours. Still real. I hardly recognized you without the hair tumbling down across your forehead.”
“It’s mine, just a little thinner I guess.”
“Still as wavy and thick as I remembered. Grayer, but then mine is too.” She watched him, the way his eyes never left hers. He didn’t push to take any advantage, even after her admission that she’d lied all those years ago. He didn’t even try to lean in and get a kiss. “I always thought you were too damned polite, but that wasn’t it at all. Before Ty showed up, I kept daydreaming about how you might kiss me. One day, you’d just lean into me and catch me by surprise. I kept waiting, like it was a game, and then I got pissed that you wouldn’t do it. I thought it was our upbringing, the years our families had been friends. But that wasn’t it at all. You’re not just polite. You’re submissive.”
The tension straining across his shoulders bled away. “It went against every bone in my body to start that kiss. I felt like I was forcing myself on you, but I had to try. I had to make sure you knew how I felt. I didn’t know what I was, not then. Not for years.”
“Ty was into pain. What are you into?”
Jeb’s eyes were larger, dark and shining, reflecting the moonlight like deep, secret wells. “Anything. Everything. You.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You tell me to do something, and I’ll do it, no questions asked. No hesitation. No doubt. If you need something, I’ll give it. Gladly.”
Once, Ty had said something like that. Hoarsely, she repeated what her husband had said the first time they’d kissed. “You’ll never let me down.”
“Exactly.”
She had to look away a moment, fighting down the tumultuous emotions whirling through her. Grief, loss, relief, joy, regret, hope…and yes, love. Gratitude that despite how she’d hurt him nearly forty years ago, he was still willing to give everything he had just to love her the way he’d always wanted. “How can you forgive me after what I put you through?”
“I just want to love you, Ginny. No matter what that means.”
“I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve a second chance. Not when I lied to us all.”
“Right before I went back to Texas A&M for good, I ran into Miss Belle. She said something that I didn’t understand until later.”
“Oh, good Lord, what did she say?”
Jeb smiled. “She said that sometimes we don’t get what we want the most because we’re not able to handle it yet. If we got it then, we’d just lose it, because we weren’t ready. But some things are meant to be and they’d come back when it was time. When I was ready. When you were ready.”
“She said that about me?”
“Not in so many words, but it makes sense to me now. Think about it, Ginny. I didn’t know what it meant to be submissive back then. You weren’t ready either. If we’d tried to marry, we probably would have messed each other up so bad we’d have ended up divorced in a heartbeat, both of us frustrated and confused because we couldn’t get what we needed so desperately. I never was going to be the kind of man you were looking for then. But now…”
He let the question hang in the air between them, waiting for her answer.
She tightened her fingers in his hair and pulled him down to her, making him come to her instead of leaning across the console. And he came, eagerly and gladly, ready to be put where she wanted him. “Now you’re exactly what I’m looking for. What I need.”
She didn’t take his mouth ge
ntly. After so long, so many years, she couldn’t. She shoved her tongue deep into his mouth and he opened, groaning, letting her go as far as she wanted.
Dangerous, so dangerous. She made herself pull back, softening to something less an assault and more a kiss. And just like that night in College Station all those years ago, Jeb sagged into her embrace and would have gone to his knees if they weren’t already sitting in his shiny expensive car.
Her skin throbbed, every inch desperate for a touch, for the warmth and weight of his hands. God, it’d been so long since she’d been touched. So long since she’d been held. Since she’d heard a man’s gasp and grunt and groan as she wrung every ounce of pleasure out of his magnificent body that she could. She tried to press up against him, using the cast for leverage, but pain broke through her need. Not the good pain, as Ty would have said, but the grinding broken bone pain that made sweat bead on her lip and her stomach heave.
She broke the kiss, falling back against her seat with her eyes closed, breathing deeply to avoid throwing up.
“Ginny? What’s wrong? What can I do?”
“It’s all right,” she panted, shifting her broken arm off the console and into her lap. “I tried to use my arm a little too much. I’ll just have to be more careful when you take me home to your place after dinner.”
“That’s the plan, then?” His voice rumbled deep and low, his fingers lightly brushing her cheek in a gentle caress. “You don’t want to go back to your place?”
She groaned. “Not as long as Miss Belle’s in town.” He didn’t laugh like she expected, so she cracked open her eyes and searched his face. His hair tumbled down over his forehead, his lips were soft and delicious, but the look in his eyes was guarded. As if he was braced for a blow. “You think I don’t want you in the house where Ty and I lived together all those years.”
Never Let You Down: The Connaghers, Book 4 Page 7