Ross 04 Take Me On (22 page)

Brian glanced at Ian and then waved toward her. “That’s all yours, man. My condolences, and don’t say I never warned you.” And he shut the door, muttering, “Fucking crazy” under his breath.

Gabby chuckled and turned. “There. Handled.”

Ian’s eyebrows couldn’t have climbed much higher in his forehead. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

There had been too much excitement today. From the scare over the baby to the tense words with Brian—both Ian’s and later Gabby’s. Ian could tell she was on edge. He was no doctor, but he knew that wasn’t good for her. She needed to relax, but here she was, running around to meet him late at night, fighting what should be
his
fucking battles with her brother.

Then again, Brian was
her
family, not his, so he guessed he didn’t have much say in how those two interacted with each other. He just wished he weren’t right in the damn middle of it.

“What do you say we get out of here?” he asked once he’d surmised she was about to pace a hole in his carpet.

“Hmm?” she asked distractedly.

“I don’t know. Go for a ride or something. I’m the new kid in town, remember? I don’t get out much except to hang with the same people I see every day.”

She scoffed, fingering a long, dark strand of hair from her ponytail. Then she sighed and dropped beside him onto the couch, close enough that the side of her warm thigh pressed into his. “I’m pretty sure you’ve seen all there is to see.”

“Hey,” he said, gently turning her chin toward him so she had to look into his eyes. Was it his imagination that she melted a bit into his touch? “You’re here, but I get the feeling you’re not, you know?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. He could stare into those clear green eyes all night.

“So let’s drop out of life for a while. Even if it’s only for a couple of hours, we’ll pretend it’s just you and me.”

The corners of her lips curled up in a most enticing way, got him thinking about all sorts of things he’d like to do but couldn’t. Wouldn’t push anything on her. God, she was so fucking beautiful. So beyond anything he’d ever dared to pursue. “Where will we go?” she asked.

“I’ll drive, you navigate. Show me your life here. I want to know everything about you.”

“I was pretty much a nerd, Ian. What life I’ve had didn’t start until I went away to college.”

She chuckled as his brows drew together. Someone as smart, sexy and seductive as she was, describing herself as a nerd with no life? He’d imagined a high school career filled with throngs of admirers and slavering suitors. “I expected that you were Homecoming Queen or something.”

“Ha. No. It wasn’t my thing to really care what other people thought about me, which is like the kiss of death around here, and I damn sure didn’t run around trying to be everyone’s friend or make people like me. I wasn’t popular. In fact, I was probably universally hated.”

“I find that hard to believe. They were most likely intimidated.”

Her little smile bloomed into that full-force grin that tugged at his heart in all the right ways. “Am I intimidating to you?”

“Hell, no,” he lied, and she laughed. Yeah, she could be, but he could handle her.

“All right, Ian, I’ll give you the grand tour, if you really want it.”

He only wanted to be with her—
only
her, not her and all the troubles whirling around in her head. “I do.”

“Let’s go.”

Minutes later, they cruised in silence down all but empty streets, past darkened buildings. He drove while Gabby mostly stared out her window.

It did make him a little crazy to live in a town where there wasn’t much to do except catch a movie or a beer at the bar. Not that he’d been one to revel in the incessant hustle and bustle of city life, but it had been nice to have the option.

“Do you find yourself going a little stir crazy, being back here?” he asked, trying to get her talking.

“Not really. I can function in both. It doesn’t take me long to adjust either way.” She pointed ahead. “Up there on the right? My high school.”

Jesus, it was small. It must’ve been impossible to blend into the background at a place like that… Something he thought he’d become somewhat of an expert on during his own school days. He hadn’t been able to have many friends, because inevitably they’d start to wonder why they couldn’t hang at his place every now and then, or why he often couldn’t go out on the weekends. Because his stepdad had been such a drunken asshole, Ian couldn’t subject anyone else to it, and he’d felt a duty to protect his mother from it as best he could.

His knuckles tightened on Gabby’s steering wheel as he fought down the rising tide of memories. “What’s your most embarrassing moment?” he asked on impulse. This was about her, not about him.

“Oh God.” She laughed. “I made it through most of my school years without very many. Then, graduation night, I wore some heels I wasn’t used to, and I tripped and fell while I was walking up to accept my diploma.”

“You did not.”

“I did. Believe me. I’m sure Brian still has a picture of me lying on my face. It was all I could do to get up and move forward, and not turn and run…” She trailed off into silence, then sighed. He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking. Reaching over, he laced his fingers through hers.

“You got up, and you’re moving forward,” he said, and out of the corner of his eye saw her smile. “More than once.”

“It was the same kind of feeling when Mark did that to me. Like I was back there, flat on my face in front of the entire town. ‘What do I do now? How can I face everyone?’ All at once, I realized how much I
did
care what everyone thought.” Her fingers tightened around his. “You know, you’re the only person on earth I feel I can talk to about this. I wonder why?”

He didn’t have an answer for her, because he couldn’t get past the knowledge he was the luckiest sonofabitch alive right now. Beneath that, however, another thought festered, upsetting the glow her words had given him. “Are you feeling the same way about everyone finding out you’re pregnant?”

 
She tilted her head pensively, and in between looking at the road, he stole glances at her as she formulated her reply. A passing streetlamp fleetingly lit her flawless profile, the slight purse of her lips, casting a sheen over her hair. Yep, luckiest bastard alive to be sitting with her, no matter what came out of her mouth. “I’m not, really. I mean, it’s crossed my mind. But it’s not my primary concern.”

“What did your parents say after we left the hospital?”

“Honestly, not much. Which concerns me, truth be known. I’m sure they’ve been having it out between themselves all night about it, and I’ll learn the verdict soon enough.” She chuckled, but it didn’t hide her nervousness.

Fuck. She didn’t deserve this. Above all else, he wanted her happy and relaxed…but how was he supposed to get her that way? It was impossible. Every turn their conversation took led deeper into gloom.

“I shouldn’t have asked that,” he told her. “We’re supposed to be shutting everyone else out for a couple of hours. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

She surprised him by turning to him and grinning. “We can pretend we’re an established, happily married couple out on a romantic date to celebrate the life we’ve created.”

The image hit him like a kick in the gut, and his throat closed up for a moment. Was that the future she envisioned? Maybe she’d just put into very blunt words the only things she needed to be relaxed and happy. “If you want,” he said lamely, then turned away and gritted his teeth in a cringe of frustration.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!

He could ask her to marry him—and she could laugh in his face and say her words had been a joke. Maybe it was a preposterous, old-fashioned idea. They’d only today made the decision to give their relationship a try. To think a woman like her…

The warmth of her hand left his, and he drew a quick breath. Had he just let something momentous slip right through his fingers? No matter how he tried to wrestle his thoughts into something coherent, he couldn’t. She’d released his hand to turn the radio up a little.

“Are you a metal fan like my brother?” she asked.

It took him a moment to switch gears. Here he was contemplating forever with her, and now she was talking about music.

“I’m more a classic metal fan. Sabbath, Maiden, AC/DC.”

“I can handle that,” she said. “You and my dad have some common ground after all—he’s a huge Led Zeppelin fan, anyway. Hey…take a right up ahead. I’ll show you where everyone used to go to make out.” Despite her teasing tone and the pinch she gave his arm, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d just majorly fucked up.

A few miles down that dark highway, she guided him through a maze of back roads that finally turned to dirt—
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th
-type shit. Trees towered on either side of them, blocking out the black sky, and he began to pray they didn’t meet another vehicle, because this road wouldn’t give them much room to pass. He wondered if he’d hear dueling banjos if he cracked the window open. “Jesus,” he said as they crept past a falling-in farmhouse that must have been there since the turn of the century—
last
century.

“Is this your first time riding dirties, city boy?” she teased. “You grow up here, that’s all there is to do sometimes. Not to be confused with ‘riding dirty’, of course.”

“It would seem that stopping to make out anywhere around here is only
inviting
an ax murderer to chop your head off.”

“Well…just wait.” She lapsed into silence and watched the landscape creep by. It was intermittently flat and moonlit, then choked with foliage. “I’ve always wanted to go into a place like that,” she said as they passed yet another abandoned, decrepit old house, lonely in the moonlight. “Not sure why.”

“It would be pretty cool. Until fuckin’ Jason shows up with a machete.”
 

“It’s all fun and games until someone gets decapitated.”

“Right?”

Another bumpy, dusty mile later, the road widened and the trees thinned out until a spectacular lake came into view, calm and glassy in the still wind. “Wow,” he said, trying not to look so he didn’t drive off the road.

“Pretty, isn’t it? Keep going… See that turn-off up there? Take that. There’s a great view up on that hill.”

It was deserted, so apparently it wasn’t the prime make-out spot anymore. He brought the car to a stop, and Gabby popped open her door and bounded out. Ian followed, taking in the scenery, the pale roadway the light of the moon made across the surface of the water. Out here, far removed from the lights and noise of civilization, there was no sound but the symphony of frogs and crickets and the gentle lapping of the water on the shore.

“I haven’t been here in so long,” she said, walking around to slide up on the hood of her car. He took his place beside her. “And don’t worry,” she went on, nudging his arm with her elbow, “it was never to make out. I had this one friend who was eternally convinced her boyfriend was cheating on her, and we had to drive by here every other night to check if he was here.”

Okay, so maybe he had felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of her here with some other dude. He could admit it. Laughing at being called on it, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her closer to his side. “Yeah? Well, maybe we should change that.”

“Ooh, I could go for that.”

Her breath caressed his mouth a half second before her lips did, warm and softer than the light breeze. So sweet. She sighed and melted into his kiss, and he could hardly take it—but then she gasped and jerked away.

Moonlight sparked in her deep green eyes. “I’ve always wanted to make out here to Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’. I’ve got it on my phone!” She leaped excitedly off the hood and ran for the door while he laughed and shook his head.

“Whatever you want, baby.” He admired the scenery while she synced the phone to her car, and then the dreamy strains filled the air, adding to the music of the night.

Grinning, she rejoined him, whispered, “Perfect,” and put her lips back to his. All at once, he was swept away…by her, by the song, by the beauty around them, and every ounce of restraint he possessed stretched to the breaking point with the need to tear through her walls, take her, make her his…wipe out every bad memory of what her ex had done to her. Replace them all with good. But he didn’t know if he could give her the kind of good she deserved. The absolute best of everything. How could he do that when he had nothing?

She broke away from him and stared up into his eyes, her fingers stroking the back of his neck. “You haven’t shared much.”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Nothing much to share.”

“What’s one thing you would want to pass on to our baby?”

From himself? God, he couldn’t think of anything. A lump lodged in his throat, and he could hardly breathe around it. Or maybe it was the sight of her, damn near ethereal in the moonlight, looking at him as if she wanted all the secrets of his soul laid out before her.

He hoped their baby was an exact replica of her. Not so much of him.

“I don’t know about passing anything on,” he said. “I’d rather build something brand-new. New traditions. New things that maybe he or she would want to pass on someday.”