Page 28

Nico sucked a guilty breath in through his teeth. “Probably Mick. He took off when I was trying to get him on his leash. I figured he wouldn’t go far. With all the…excitement…I forgot to mention it.”

She stared at the scrub, searching for signs of brindle fur and a half-bitten ear. “Do you think he’s safe? There could be coyotes around here.”

“If there are, Mick’s their alpha by now.”

“Mick!” Ginny called. The sound echoed off the hills behind them, but there was no sign of him. “Maybe what we heard was a coyote?”

He pointed toward Annie and Jack. “Those two would be barking bloody murder if it was anything but Mick.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but before she could agree, a Mick-colored blur erupted from the scrub, heading in their direction. He was galloping going full tilt, as he always did—Mick had no moderation level—but he was going to plunge straight off the cliff if he didn’t slow down!

“Mick!” they both yelled, trying to get his attention.

But he’d already realized the danger he was in. His paws scrabbled wildly in the loose dirt in a cartoonish attempt to put on the breaks. When that wasn’t working fast enough to slow his advance, he changed direction, sending him plowing straight into Ginny like a seventy-pound bowling ball.

“Ah!” Ginny screamed as she realized she was now the one at risk of toppling down the steep slope.

She tried to get a foot under her sideways fall, but her recently injured ankle protested.

A sharp pain raced up her leg, tipping her further off balance.

Helplessly, she felt herself falling, until Nico grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him.

They were both breathing hard as Nico picked her up completely and moved them both several feet away from the ledge.

He set her down, but kept his arms wrapped tightly around her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded as she let out a relieved breath.

“A little shaky.” She looked over at Mick, who’d ambled toward his siblings and laid down next to them as if he hadn’t just nearly murdered their owner.

“Look at him now, acting like nothing happened. And here I thought you were the one who was going to shove me over a cliff.”

Nico exhaled a laugh. “It was either him or you, and he chose you.”

With her palms flat against his chest, she could feel his heartbeat, as rapid and erratic as her own.

His eyes, deeper than the ocean just beyond, and just as dangerous, searched her face.

Once again, she had the strongest urge to run her fingers along his cheekbones and lose them in the tendrils hiding just behind his ear.

“Ginny, I hate that you feel unsafe around me, especially since it’s my own fault. It was cruel of me to set up those speakers and dump strange dogs right next door. Even though we’ve talked about it already, I still feel terrible about it.”

She lifted her shoulders in a narrow shrug. “I could’ve been nicer too. I did like the outdoor theatre. It was romantic and sweet. I think the only reason it didn’t occur to us to just move the dang house was?—”

“We were too busy torturing each other.”

A moment of silent agreement stretched between them, but it gradually became awkward. He was still holding onto her tightly even though there was no need.

“I’m safe now.” Her voice came out softer than she’d planned.

He let her go, but didn't step back, and neither did she. Even without his arms around her, she still felt enveloped by him—his scent, his warmth, his solidity.

He cast his eyes downward, looking uncharacteristically shy. “I don’t know why, but…I kinda like you.”

Ginny laughed. “I know, right? It doesn’t make any sense, but I kinda like you too.”

His expression when he looked back up held more of that boyish hope, but there was still a reticence. “When I found you in the kitchen and you were mumbling, you said something about a Greta Linda hiring Mick Jagger to put a hit on me?”

Ginny was confused for a second, then smiled. “That would be my Great Aunt Lydia, man hater of the ages.”

“Should I be looking over my shoulder in case Jagger shows up with a gun and a silencer?”

“Not unless Great Aunt Lydia made the arrangement from her grave. She and her misandry passed away about a year ago.”

He scrunched his eyes as if fearing blowback from what he was about to say. “Sometimes it seems like she left a piece of it behind?”

“Who, me? I don’t hate all men, just…,” she crinkled her nose and shuddered, “…specific categories.”

“The ones wearing suits?”

“Definitely. But then, really, who doesn’t? Though I hear they are good in the air fryer with a spicy buffalo sauce.”

“So, you obviously don’t date suit wearers, but do you date any of us or are you…”

“I date men, but I’m picky, and I don’t get serious. I have a full life all on my own. I guess, maybe like you, I get a little bored. Long-term, you guys seem more trouble than you’re worth.” She winked at him. “At least, that’s what Great Aunt Lydia always said.”

He squared his shoulders. “Well, my equally wise mother says we’re crunchy pickles. So…maybe we try this, but with the stipulation that no one gets hurt when one of us calls ‘boredom’?”

Her smile was coquettish as she reached for his hands. “I do like crunchy pickles.” She gave his hands a squeeze and then went up on her toes, all the better to stare at his lips, so near and yet so far. “I think I need a kiss first to know whether it’s worth the risk.”

His voice became a smolder that rumbled through her. “Then you’re in luck, because I’ve been wanting to do just that.”

Still coming to terms with the fact that the man she’d recently wanted to rend limb from limb was about to oblige her request that he kiss her, she puckered her lips—only to find that he wasn’t aiming for them.

“It’s…,” he said, as he placed the lightest of kisses high on her cheek, “these…,” he continued, as he placed a second tiny kiss ever so slightly closer to her lips, causing her knees to melt, “freckles.”

Whether he intended to so tantalizingly miss her lips a third time, she would never know.

She took matters into her own lips, shifting her face to meet his mouth, and he didn’t seem to mind one bit.

His kiss was like the man himself –a seemingly impossible mix of strength and tenderness, stone and fragility.

Letting go of his hands, she reached up and did the thing she’d been longing to do.

Tracing the arc of his strong cheekbones, she sunk her hands into his hair, feeling him deepen their kiss as her fingers ruffled through his soft curls.

Her mind, so often a frenetic butterfly unable to land, stilled up there on that mountain with her lips pressed against his and the taste of him on her tongue.

The gulls still called overhead, and the scent of sage swirled around them, but there was only one sensation in her universe just then, and that was Nico Vitale.