“I promise. I won’t do anything stupid. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
This is a bad fucking idea, James.Say no. No fucking way.
“Fine.”
“Thank you.”
“For the record, I don’t like this.”
Some of her excitement fades. “If it’s really dangerous, I won’t go. I’ll stay here and sketch, or whatever. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way. Never again.”
Blowing out a breath, I shake my head.
“I’m just going to a hardware store. It’ll be okay. But I’m trusting you, Lena.”
“You can trust me.”
Chapter Twelve
Lena
“So where did you go to school?” I shift in the front seat of Gideon’s truck so I can look at him better. “Did you have to ride an hour each way every day?”
“No, we went to Paradise Valley schools.” He checks his mirror and then makes a lane change. “That’s a small town about fifteen minutes from the ranch. There were twenty-six kids in our graduating class.”
“Holy shit, that’s small.” I nod and glance out the windshield. When we arrived almost two weeks ago, it was dark, so I couldn’t see any of the scenery on the way out to the ranch.
And I’m sad I missed it, because this is gorgeous. Brown fields flank the highway, with lots of evergreen trees rising tall into the sky. There’s a little herd of deer in one of the fields, and little puffs of clouds that hang close to the ground, making it feel eerie.
The past week or so has been so ...hard.
I was mortified when I realized that Gideon knew what I’d been doing in the shower. Honestly, I kind of hoped it would encourage him to actuallyreallytouch me.
It had the opposite effect.
He’s hardly even looked at me since, let alone talked to me. It took a horrible, giant spider to break the ice again.
And what does that say about my allure?
That it’s nonexistent.
We fall back into silence, and I let out a sigh.
“Are we allowed to make any other stops while we’re there?”
“No.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the road ahead. His hand grips the wheel, his forearm flexes, with all those muscles and veins snaking down to his hands, and I have to squeeze my thighs together becauseholy shit. His arms belong in a movie, and I’m sitting two feet away, and I want to lean over and lick him.
But also, I feel bad that he has a little wound where I bit him yesterday.
“Hear me out.”
“No.”
Actually, I want to bite him again.
“Gid—”
“You said I could trust you.”
