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“I like your shoes,” he said. “I don’t think I told you earlier.” He was already looking at them, but Ginny looked down too.
“Thank you,” she said, a smile greeting him when their eyes met. “I’m sorry my mother called earlier. I would’ve liked to have danced another song with you.”
Cayden bit back on the urge to ask her if she was serious. Most things about Ginny were very serious, as she ran a business every bit as profitable as Bluegrass Ranch. “I would’ve liked that too,” he said, finding himself speaking and acting more properly than he normally did. He tried to get rid of that, because he didn’t want to be someone different with Ginny.
Either she’d like him for who he was, or she wouldn’t.
He cleared his throat. “I know you said you were busy, but I’d still—uh, I was thinking we could get dinner sometime soon.” He opened her door and waited while she stepped up on the running board of his truck.
Cayden let his hand drop to her lower back, his nerves rejoicing at the touch. She smelled like something flowery and spicy and full of vanilla all at the same time, and he was sure it was one of Olli’s concoctions. He needed to find out which one. Perhaps he could sniff them all and tell Olli which one he liked best. Then, she’d tell Ginny, and surely Ginny would wear that perfume every time they went out.
You’re way ahead of yourself, he thought, pulling back on his thoughts. He re-entered reality and closed her door. “Stupid,” he muttered to himself as he rounded the hood, walking directly through the high beams. He’d asked her out, and she hadn’t even answered.
She had answered, months ago. She was busy.
He shouldn’t have asked again. “Stupid Olli,” he said just before yanking open the door. He got behind the wheel and closed his door as quickly as he could so the interior lights wouldn’t shine on him, giving away how he felt about the woman in his truck.
After easing onto the road and turning around again, he said, “I don’t know where you live.”
“Right.” Ginny picked up his phone from the console and started tapping. Several seconds later, a cool, female voice directed him where to go. “There.”
“Thanks,” he said, glancing down. Twenty-four minutes to her house. His exhaustion suddenly caught him right behind the lungs, and he yawned.
“Sorry to make you drive me home,” she said. “I should’ve told you how far away I live.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I just have to ask, though… You can tell me to mind my own business. Why did you call Olli? You have three brothers who live nearby.”
“I always call Olli when I need help,” Ginny said quietly. “She calls me. I call her.”
“Okay,” Cayden said.
“Besides, I’m not really talking to my brothers at the moment. Well, Drake I am. The other two, I’m not.”
Cayden worked very hard to keep his eyes on the road. “And your parents?”
“We’re a bit at odds,” she said coolly. “We discuss business and not much else. Mother has been pestering me to get a new car, and I suppose that’s exactly why I haven’t.” She gave a light laugh that wasn’t truly filled with humor. “It’s also why I didn’t call Daddy to come get me.”
“I’d love to know more about all of this,” he said. “I thought you got along with your parents, and I’ve never heard you say a bad word about your brothers.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime,” she said slowly, letting the last word hang there. “Cayden, I know you’d like to go out with me. I’d very much like to go to dinner with you too. I am wondering, though…perhaps you’d be willing to stay in?”
He came to a stop at an intersection and turned to look at her. Without other traffic on the road, he could take his sweet time. “Stay in?”
“I have several social obligations over the course of the next few weeks and months,” she said. “They’re mostly at the distillery, and the reason I’m not currently speaking to my Mother about anything but business. She’s been badgering me to have a date for the parties, the dinners, the terriblyimportantfundraiser soirées.” She rolled her eyes. “You’ll be horribly bored, but the food is usually very good, and we’d get to see one another…”
She left the sentence there, her eyes filled with what Cayden could only describe as hope.
He gaped at her, his pulse crashing against his ribcage.
“It would require a fair bit of pretending,” she said. “To be clear.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice sounding rusted.
“You have to wear a smile all the time,” she said, her voice pitching up as she put an obviously fake smile on her face. “It never slips, even when someone says something unfunny or inappropriate. You just smile and let them kiss your hand, all while they’re simply trying to get your money.”
The gesture slipped from her face and she looked out her window. She took a deep breath. “I apologize,” she said quietly to the glass. “I’m simply overwhelmed at the moment. Please don’t think I dislike my family.”
Cayden got the truck moving again, though he’d rather sit in it with Ginny for a good long while. “I understand the complications of family relationships,” he said into the void between them. “I have seven brothers to deal with, and…let’s just say all of us are in various stages of working out how to make things right with our mother.”
