“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.
He’d been her first. The first man to enter her body and bring her to orgasm. He could still feel the way she’d tightened and shook around him so powerfully, as if she’d been waiting for him all that time, needing him fill her and satisfy her. God, he’d never forget the way she’d moved and twisted on him like she couldn’t get enough.
The things he’d said to her, done to her when she’d been inexperienced intruded on his conscience. If he’d known from the beginning that she was a virgin, would he have still spoken to her in that manner?