“No, there has never been anyone else other than you. I wish there was. Right now, you don’t know how much I wish that were true. If there had been, I wouldn’t still be sitting here. Believe that, Gavin.”
“I was making sure we didn’t leave any stones unturned.”
“Is that what you were doing? I don’t think so.” She shook her head at him. “I think you were trying to explain away why you’re so damn concerned about the way I smile at other men. Why don’t you call and ask Nickel if he thought I was flirting with him? Then call Shade, Rider, Moon—hell, call every man I am acquainted with and ask them! You want to know something about me, Gavin, come out and ask. Don’t dillydally around and presume something about me that isn’t true.”
“The only way I’m going to figure out who it is, is to find a link between you and whoever is stalking you.”
“There is no link!” Tears glistened in her eyes. “There is no link. There can’t be, Gavin.”
“Quit calling me Gavin!”
“I can’t call you Reaper!” she yelled back.
“Why not?”
“Because I fell in love with you before you were Reaper. I fell in love before I really knew what love was.”
“Stop … I don’t—”
“What if I tell you something that you can connect to my stalker?” Mockingly, she waited for him to argue. When he couldn’t, she continued piercing his heart just as surely as she had when she poked his chest with her finger when she got angry at him in her car.
“There is no link to anyone else, because there has never been anyone but you. I have a large family, mainly boys, but I had a sister who was everything to me. Our father homeschooled us, and while Leah spent a few days a week with her mother, she was the only girl I spent time with. When Leah came back from visiting her mother, she brought books and magazines that she let me have. We laid on her bed and dreamt about what it would be like when we grew up. Bless her heart, Leah was a romantic. We would read the magazines and books together and dream about the man we would love and the life we would have one day.” The tender, reminiscent smile on her lips pierced the hard interior of his heart, aware that none of Leah’s dreams would ever come true.
“Leah wanted to be an astronomer. She was fascinated with the stars in the sky. She was the one who told me what a soul mate was, and we would dream about who they’d be. Leah was certain hers was a boy she had seen a few times. She said all the signs pointed toward him.”
When Ginny paused to stare blankly over his shoulder, Reaper knew she was lost in her memories.
“Signs?” he encouraged her to continue.
“Like one of the mountain superstitions I told you about,” she resumed talking, her focus returning to him. “There are dozens of them, and Leah knew them all. Our brothers would make up a few of them just to trigger us. Jody told Leah her husband’s first name started with a B.” Peals of laughter came from her at the memory.
“What’s so funny about that?” Captivated by both her and the story, he began thinking of the men in town who had names that began with a B. He couldn’t think of any that would be so funny, until one family came to mind. “The Hayes?”
Ginny had to wipe tears of laughter away. “Part of the Hayes’ property borders ours. They had cousins who were always coming to visit them. Their pa named the boys starting with the letter B. Leah had a crush on Bubba, but Jody said it could be Bud or BoDean. Then Matthew told us if we buried a lock of our hair under a bush on their property on a cloudless night at midnight when there was a new moon, and then dug it up on the cloudless night of a full moon and put it in a bowl of water, the hair would point in the direction our husbands would be.”
From the peals of laughter coming from Ginny, Reaper was left to assume the girls were gullible enough to be taken in by their brothers. “You did it, didn’t you?”
“Oh … yes.” She had to wipe more tears away.
“But how did you know it was a cloudless night during a new moon?” His lips twitched when his question set off another round of laughter.
“That question would have been helpful if you had been around when we were cutting our hair. Back then, we took Silas’s word for it.”
Reaper couldn’t hold back the full-fledged smile any longer. “He was in on it too.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “They all were very helpful, keeping Pa occupied so we could sneak out. Of course we were terrified sneaking onto the Hayes’ property at the dead of night. The Hayes and the Porters are adamant about how they deal with trespassers. Our pa was, too, but at least he wouldn’t shoot you dead if you went over his property an inch. Luckily, we made it back with our lives. When it was time to dig up our hair, our brothers generously helped us to sneak out again. That time, it didn’t go as easily.”
“What happened?”
“We had no sooner dug up our hair when three bright orange lights appeared in the trees. We were so scared we were afraid to move until these things started coming down the hillside from where the lights were. They were carrying flashlights and were wearing shiny clothes, and their skin was green. I tried to hide under a bush, but Leah was so scared she took off screaming.”
“What did you do then?”
“I went after her. I couldn’t let them catch her alone. Thankfully, we managed to outrun them and made it home alive.” Ginny laid her head down on the table on her folded arms, her shoulders shaking. It was a few moments before she controlled her laughter enough to continue. “We scared our pa to death when we ran into his bedroom, screaming that aliens were coming, and we hid under his bed.”
His laughter joined hers at just imagining the terrified girls.
“Pa jumped out of bed, yelling for the boys. When they didn’t come right away, he knew what they’d done. He gave them two minutes or he was getting his belt. Miraculously”—Ginny rolled her eyes at that—“Pa didn’t grab his rifle when they came out wrapped in aluminum foil and green face paint. Poor Leah was nearly hysterical before Pa was able to drag her out from under the bed to show her it was our brothers.”
“They had all done it?”
“Everyone, except for Moses and Ezra. They were the lookouts to make sure Pa was occupied.”
Reaper wanted to ask how long it had taken to get her out from under the bed, but being a boy once himself he understood their warped since of humor when it came to harassing your siblings. “How bad did they get in trouble?”
“In the morning, Freddy let Leah and me pick the switches he used to spank them with. Of course”—making a grimace, she shook her head at her young self—“after the wailing started, I begged him to stop.”
“Leah didn’t?”
“No, she left to take a bath. She was too miserable. We had run through a patch of poison ivy.”
“It didn’t get you?”
“Some, but I wasn’t mad at the boys like Leah was. She dropped her hair, so she was more mad at that than anything else.”
The love she shared with her family was unquestionable; it was apparent in her voice and expression. What he couldn’t fathom was why her brothers hadn’t remained in her life after Leah and her father had died.