CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Cole
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Cole
27 days to go
I wake to the sound of Ginger’s phone vibrating on the bedside table. My bets are on it being her father. He’s called her three times in the last twenty-four hours to remind her of all the things she needs to do for him, never once asking her if she wants to. I’ve been biting my tongue, but one of these days I’ll be reminding him she is his daughter, and that her job isn’t to help him win an election.
My brow furrows as I roll over and wrap my arms around her soft, warm body. Not only is it election day, but today marks the first step in our divorce plan. Mabel is also coming home from the cottage later and this protectiveness I feel over mine and Ginger’s situation has only increased tenfold over the last eight days.
For the past week, we’ve barely worn clothes when we’re together. We’ve talked; we’ve eaten every meal at home; we’ve swum in my pool, with and without bathing suits. We’ve watched movies, and turned some heads during our grocery shopping in this small, gossipy town. We’ve managed household chores and we’ve fucked, a lot. In every corner of my house and yard, yet still I never seem to get enough of Ginger. It’s given me a glimpse into what life might be like if I can convince her to stay. With Ginger by my side, I feel … whole.
I go to work and deal with everything there with an ease I’ve never experienced before. Even Brent seems less annoying because I know that, at the end of the day, I will drive home and she’ll be there, waiting for me, lounging by the pool in one of those skimpy bathing suits that turn me savage, or tending to the garden so as not to miss a beat while Mabel is gone. Hell, I even came home and found her on FaceTime with Mabes the other day, and the feeling I got when I heard them talking almost knocked the wind out of me. I watched her from the patio door as she paced around, asking Mabel whether she was remembering her pleases and thank yous, her sunscreen, telling her that the coloring page she held up was beautiful. I watched as they talked about what they’d do when Mabes got home. It wasn’t like how a nanny would talk to a child in her care, but how a mother would address her daughter.
I’ve witnessed how Mabel has blossomed under Ginger’s attention this summer. Their relationship fills the void of her own mother, who only went up to the cottage last week for four hours. The whole time Ernie and Trudy have had Mabel, and Gemma couldn’t even be bothered to spend one night with her.
Now, lying here in the morning sunlight that is starting to filter through my blinds, I’m a ball of nerves. Because, over the last week, it’s fucking hit me. Somewhere along the lines of friends to best friends to ‘fake’ wife, I’ve fallen in love with Ginger Danforth. Deep fucking in love with her. And this isn’t a fake marriage we’re both trying to get through. In many ways this is more real than the marriage I did my best at living in for years.
I make a pact with myself to figure out how to tell this woman how I feel—how to get her to stay longer, to convince her to be a mother to my daughter, to tell her that she’s the final piece of our puzzle.
Ginger hums beside me as she stirs and her phone buzzes again just as I’m about to slip a hand between her silky thighs.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “He’s called three times already.”
Ginger groans. “I have to answer it or he’ll just keep calling.”
I grunt and move to get out of bed while she picks the phone up to talk to her father.
I slide my sweats on over my hard-on and make my way to the kitchen. Ginger joins me twenty minutes later to work out the schedule for the day. I stare at her as she talks; she looks way too enticing in just my t-shirt and her bed hair falling around her shoulders in waves.
“So Mabel comes home at one p.m.,” she says, typing on her phone before looking up at me. “And you’ll be home when?”
I hand her a coffee, which she takes eagerly. “I’ll be home at four-thirty,” I say. “I’ll grab a pizza for me and Mabes on the way back.”
“Okay. I have to be at the Masonic Temple at five or so, and it’ll be a late one, whether he wins or not,” she says while chewing her bottom lip. She takes a sip of her coffee as she stares out of the window.
“Do you need Mabes and I there?” I ask. I am fully prepared to be there for Ginger tonight but I also don’t want her to feel overwhelmed with questions from the press and her parents about why I’m there.
“Um …” she says.
She looks way too stressed and I’m not having it.
“Come on, let’s start the day right,” I tell her.
I pull her by one hand to my bathroom, her coffee in the other. She sits up on the counter and takes a sip, a look of curiosity on her face. The tops of her thighs flatten against the counter and, naturally, I want to push them apart. I do my best to control my urges for five goddamn minutes to make this moment about her. It is not without great effort.
The large ivory claw-foot bathtub in the middle of the room looks out over the backyard through a frosted glass picture window. The morning sun streams in while I start running a bath.
“Why am I in your bathroom, Cole?” Ginger asks.
“Just sip your coffee and stop asking questions,” I tell her, adding some Epsom salts and bubbles to the water, letting the tub fill while I head back to the kitchen to bring my own coffee mug and the pot back in.
I bend down to kiss her, taking her cup and setting it down beside her. I drop a chaste kiss to her lips once more before pulling her shirt off over her head, lifting her off the counter and turning her to face the mirror. I stand behind her and, using both of my hands, sweep her thick tresses into a high bun. All the while trailing my lips down her neck and shoulders, just enough to relax her. She lets out a sigh.
“Tonight is going to go well,” I tell her as I reach into my bathroom drawer and pull out a black hair tie, securing the bun and using my hands to smooth her hair. “You don’t have to be his entire support system.”
“Not bad, Law Daddy.” Ginger smirks at me in the mirror, admiring her hair. Most of her is now on display, her pink nipples pearled and ready for my fingers … my mouth.
“If the sheriff thing doesn’t work out, you could always go into hairstyling,” she says.
I smack her panty-clad ass and turn away from her. If I look at her in the mirror for too much longer, it will be game over. I slide the teak bath table in the corner over to sit beside the tub, setting both our mugs on it before losing all my clothes and sinking into the hot bath and shutting off the faucet.
“Truth or dare?” I ask as she climbs in to sit in front of me, her back to my chest.
“Always a dare, Cole,” Ginger says as I begin to move the bubbles up over her shoulders. She sighs and I reach over to hand her her mug of coffee. She takes a sip as I trace lines over her shoulders, her neck. She instantly relaxes into me and the feeling pushes all the blood in my body straight to my cock.
Fuck. Focus, Cole.
‘I dare you to tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours. What are you afraid of?” I ask.
“That’s cheating, Sheriff. I didn’t say truth.” She laughs.
I kiss her neck, once—fuck it, twice. She smells like coconut and the sun, and me. I can’t tell which note I like best.
“That’s the nice thing about being sheriff. You get to make the rules,” I tell her as I slide my fingers over her arms, penciling circles in the bubbles against her skin.
“You’re being very convincing,” she muses.
“Then start talking, Mrs. Ashby,” I tell her in my best cop voice.
“I’m … nervous,” she says, draining her mug and setting it back down on the table.
“About what?” I ask as I start to draw words into the bubbles on her back: wild , light , loving. Anything that comes to mind about her.
I kiss a line down her warm neck as she tips back further, exposing the smooth column of her throat to me. When she doesn’t answer, I lean forward and nibble on her shoulder. She flinches and swats at me as I kiss her in the same spot.
“About what?” I repeat.
“This. You … us … Why the hell I seem to care about you so much. It’s annoying and hard to understand … and …” She trails off as my tracing of her skin continues.
I write sweet and proud , then smooth more bubbles up her skin to start again.
“And what?” I press her for honesty. I don’t have to look at her to know she’s biting into her plump bottom lip in thought. Grace.
“How I’m going to adjust … when I leave and go back to work,” she says. “How I’ll cope when I’m away from Mabel.”
Goddamn, I did not expect that much honesty, and Ginger’s rawness causes a tight feeling to take over my chest. I say nothing as I trace another word: beautiful .
“You owe me one,” she says, angling back into me but still giving me enough space to continue my tracing of her upper back and shoulders. She likes it .
“Truth or dare?” she continues, tilting her head to look up at me. Her fiery eyes meet mine and I’m a goner. I kiss her once because she’s too perfect to resist.
“Truth,” I say.
“Tell me something real ,” she says, skimming her fingers over my thigh.
I take a deep breath. “You asked me why this G is burned into my skin?” I start.
Her body instantly stiffens. “Each moment …” she says, trailing off when she can’t make out the rest of the saying inked in Italian under the G .
“Each moment only once,” I tell her, still writing what comes to mind. Friend .
I push the bubbles away and lean down to her ear with a kiss as I trace the last words. Soul. Love.
“It’s you ,” I whisper.