Zoe laughed. “I wish I could take you up on the offer, but there’s a lot to do here with the farm. Thank you, Shane. You’re such a sweet boy.” She put a hand over his. “Always were.”
Trevor snorted, and Ginger glared at him. “You should eat more slowly, so you can avoid making ugly noises at the dinner table,” she said.
“Ginger,” Fraser said.
“It’s true.” Ginger looked down at her apple pie. She’d eaten only half of it. “May I be excused? I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed early.”
Zoe glanced at Fraser, then nodded. Ginger stood up with her plate and left.
“Same here if you don’t mind,” Shane said. “The flight from Thailand was long and exhausting.”
“Yeah, me too,” Trevor said.
Zoe shook her head. “You didn’t have a long flight from Thailand too, did you? You said you were in Mexico.”
Trevor made a face. “I can still be tired.”
“Just finish your pie before you go,” Zoe said.
The muscles bunched in his jaw, and Shane gave Zoe a grateful glance. Then he took off after Ginger.
* * *
Ginger slipped out through the backdoor. The final dying sunshine colored the farm a deep orange.
Soon she heard another person follow her. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was Shane. Nobody else would’ve made her skin prickle with awareness. “What are you doing here?”
He stood next to her. His gaze settled over her like silk. “I wanted to apologize.”
She kept her eyes on the horizon. “Don’t.”
“Why not? It was wrong of me to leave last night.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because.” She looked up at him. Exhaustion had deepened the lines bracketing his mouth. “I’d rather you be honest. Don’t stay if you want to be somewhere else.”
“Ginger…”
“You used to tell me about how you thought your parents should divorce because they didn’t belong together. You were convinced your mother stayed with your father for the money, and your father stayed because he wanted to be able to have affairs without giving his mistresses any false hope about becoming his missus. Well, I don’t want that.”
She looked away. Brave words, but she’d be lying if she told herself she wanted him to go. Why was she even with somebody who hurt her the way Shane did?
Because when things are good, they’re really, really good. And she wanted to make things work between them so badly. She wanted what her own parents had, with him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Shane reached out and held her hand. She didn’t pull away. Tingling warmth spread from his skin to hers. I must be a glutton for punishment, she thought.
“I got a call from Dane,” he said. “He told me you were dating somebody else.”
She glared at him and tried to yank her hand away, but he held on. “You couldn’t ask me?”
“In front of my family? Not without making a scene, and I didn’t want to do that. Especially with Vanessa acting so hostile.”
“She saw me with Robert. That’s why she was like that at the dinner. I never got a chance to tell her we broke up.”