The Runaway Daughter (6 page)

Him.

She reached out and ran a fingertip down his belly.

“Ginger,” he growled, stepping back.

Moving forward, she slid both hands around his sides, just above the waistband of his pants. “What?”

He dropped the suitcase from his hand and grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

His skin was hot and moist and devastatingly perfect. “Yes, I do,” she said, forcing him to step backward again, up against the wall. He still had a hold of her shoulders, and could easily push her away, yet he didn’t, and his stomach muscles hardened as she skimmed her fingertips over his skin.

She could sense his desire as well as some kind of battle going on inside him. Having come this far, Ginger wasn’t about to stop now. Stretching onto her toes, she pressed her lips against his. Doubt or fear crossed her mind for a split second, but then he pulled her forward and parted his lips, letting her tongue enter his mouth.

Exploring the caverns of his mouth was more divine than having him explore hers. Every part of her melted, turning all warm and liquid and perfectly splendid. As he returned her kiss, Brock’s hands ran down her back. The silk of her camisole felt dreamy, warmed by his palm sliding across her skin. His kisses grew more heated and faster, making her tongue race to keep up with his.

Her heart thudded, her nipples ached at being pressed against his damp chest, and when his hands slid under the waistband of her cami knickers, her breath quickened as a great restlessness surged inside her. She dug her fingertips into his shoulders as his hands cupped the cheeks of her bottom. Then he lifted her in the air, and spun around, pressing her against the wall.

Ginger wrapped her legs around his hips and leaned back, giving in to her instincts. Brock kissed her chin, and lower, running his tongue right above the lace of her camisole.

A swirling, intense heat formed near his hands still holding her bottom, and Ginger wasn’t overly certain she could speak, to tell him how wonderful he made her feel.

His lips found hers again. She felt the rumble in his throat, and matched it with a growl of her own. Brock spun around again and this time carried her to the bed. He forced her legs to release his hips by pulling on her silk shorts, and tugging them all the way to her ankles when she stretched out on the mattress. One by one, he lifted her feet, and then tossed her underwear aside.

Hot and firm, his hands ran up the sides of her legs. Feeling deliciously wicked and bold, Ginger crossed her arms and lifted the hem of her camisole, laughing at the way Brock lifted both eyebrows.

“You’re one beautiful doll, Ginger.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she answered. “I bought this outfit just for you.”

He grinned. “For me?”

She pulled the top over her head and dropped it on the floor. “Yes, as soon as I heard you were going to Chicago, I knew you were my escape.”

His hands stalled on her waist. “Escape?”

“Yes, from my father. He’s a tyrant who won’t let me do anything but—”

* * *

Blood pounded so hard in Brock’s ears he didn’t hear the rest of Ginger’s statement. Other parts of him throbbed, too. She was so seductive, lying there naked before him. He’d never taken the time to explore a woman’s body before sex, but he wanted to with her. He wanted to kiss the swell of her breasts, her flat belly just below her navel and her inner thighs before running his tongue along the very seam of her. However, she’d just reminded him, albeit she hadn’t meant to, that he couldn’t do any of that.

“Brock?”

He took a step back, his body shuddering with disappointment and need. “You need to go home, Ginger.”

“I do not.”

Desire surged through him again as her breasts thrust forward when she jolted herself upward. “Yes, you do,” he growled.

“Did you not see the amount of money I brought in last night?”

Brock groaned, for several reasons.

She sprang off the bed to land on her feet right before him. Without a hint of embarrassment at being nude, she waggled a finger before his eyes. “You need me, Brock Ness. I’m the best agent you’re ever going to find. Together we’ll make history.”

He couldn’t deny that appealed, but he couldn’t deny who her father was either.

Brock shook his head, but the tears welling in her eyes blurred his thoughts.

“You don’t understand, Brock,” she whispered. “This is my dream, too. Earning my own money, having my own life. We can make that happen together, I know we can.”

If there was one thing Brock did understand, it was desperation, and he recognized it in Ginger’s voice. He hadn’t contemplated what she’d wanted, but he knew now.

“We can do this together, Brock. I know we can.”

She deserved her dream as much as he did, and despite it all, he wanted her beside him every step of the way. “You’re right, doll, we can,” he whispered, pulling her against him. “We can.”

That’s exactly what happened. Fame. Money. Dreams coming true.

By the end of that first week, Brock had more money than he’d made in the whole of last year. The next week doubled that. The following, tripled it.

Ginger worked every gin mill they entered, lining his pockets and her purse. He mentioned the clubs as promised and paid KYX a portion of their takings, just to be fair.

They were still staying at the hotel, where they found the time for a few hours of shut-eye between broadcasting, hitting the nightclubs and shopping. Ginger loved to shop, and was good at it. Folks now referred to him as a guy who could really cut the mustard, and she was known as the glamorous billboard at his side.

He hadn’t seen her naked again, but knowing Ginger wanted him as badly as he wanted her had his desire scorching hotter than ever. She wasn’t a short-skirt and he wasn’t going to turn her into one. He’d told her that, too, although it didn’t stop her from torturing the hell out of him.

Decked out in a little red number with matching silk gloves pulled up to her elbows and a red feather stuck in the side of her gold headband, Ginger was sitting on his lap. It was how they always sat when visiting joints. He liked that; it let all the other men know her lips were closed to anyone but him.

It was only two in the afternoon, but the gin mill held a full crowd. Guys and gals wearing duds as fancy as his and Ginger’s filled the tables and booths, drinking cocktails and nibbling on hors d’oeuvres.

Ginger poked a miniature cake into his mouth. “It’s cherry-flavored,” she whispered.

He ran a hand over the top of her knee, under the fringed hem of her skirt. Joints like this were full of people petting, and he’d started to believe he’d learned to live with the rather permanent bulge she left in his trousers by wiggling her little backside against him.

“Like it?” she asked.

“You know I do,” he answered, not talking about the cake.

Ginger’s sky-blue eyes sparkled like diamonds as she popped one of the tiny cakes between her red lips. “Me, too.”

The crowd around their table was talking and laughing, but Brock wasn’t getting involved. He was thinking about diamonds—about buying Ginger a set to wear around her neck and a big one for her ring finger.

Things had changed, in his mind anyway. It had been three weeks since he talked to Nightingale, and though he’d mailed a wad of cash to the resort, he hadn’t heard a word from the man.

Brock was about to take a swig of his mint-flavored drink when the room went eerily silent. He followed the direction all eyes, including Ginger’s, had followed, shifting to look over his shoulder.

He set his glass down, amazed by the sense of calm he felt instead of panic. The fact Roger Nightingale didn’t look nearly so formidable as Brock remembered was just as amazing. Something else struck Brock, too. Or maybe he’d known it all along and just hadn’t deciphered it. Money wasn’t what it would take to claim one of Nightingale’s daughters.

So be it.

Meeting the man’s gaze, Brock nodded toward a door at the back of the room.

Nightingale lifted a single brow, but wordlessly walked toward the door.

* * *

Ginger had known her father would find her sooner or later, but she wasn’t remotely prepared to see him walk through the door. She recognized Palooka George behind him, too.

The only sound in the room, other than her father’s footsteps, was dubbed-in laughter blasting from the radio. The stations did that, telling listeners when they should laugh.

Brock kissed her cheek, which helped ease her alarm, before he slid her off his lap. “Stay here.”

Ginger wasn’t about to do that, and grabbed her glass from the table as she followed him. She needed the fortitude, but barely found the wherewithal to swallow a sip.

“What is this?” her father demanded, throwing a wad of money on the desk of the small office the three of them had entered.

“The money for my father’s medical bills,” Brock said. “With interest.”

“Just because you’ve made a little money singing on the radio,” her father bellowed, “you think you can do this? Steal my baby girl.”

“He’s made a lot of money,” Ginger shouted, though neither man looked her way. They were too busy glaring at one another. That was something she’d never seen before. Most men bowed before her father.

“I didn’t steal her,” Brock said low and stern. “I telephoned you. Twice. Told you to come and get her. You chose not to.”

One sentence echoed over and over in Ginger’s ears. “You telephoned him?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” her father said.

“Every man has a choice,” Brock replied.

Furious at the way they were both ignoring her, Ginger released a rage-filled growl. “Every woman has a choice, too,” she yelled. Just in case that hadn’t caught their full attention, she grabbed her glass off the table, pitched half the contents in Brock’s face and the other half in her father’s. “Go to hell, both of you!”

She slammed the door so hard Palooka George jumped off his barstool. Ginger shoved aside his Bruno, gun and all, as she marched through the crowded but quiet room, refusing to release the tears burning in her eyes.

By the time she’d climbed the stairs out of the basement and run through the grocery store that served as a front for the gin mill, the knot of betrayal in her chest was so tight she couldn’t breathe.

Brock had called her father to come get and her. No wonder he’d refused to sleep with her.

Leaning on a nearby car, she attempted to gather herself. This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out. She’d loved him for so long. Thought he could be the one man who’d stand up to her father, fight for her.

“Ginger.”

She tried to twist away from his touch, but wobbled. “Get away from me.”

“I tried,” Brock said. “But I can’t.”

“You called him to…” Her throat burned too fiercely to continue.

Brock turned her around so she had to face him. “Yes, I called your father,” he said. “To let him know you were all right.” Wiping her cheeks with his thumbs, he continued, “That was when we first arrived, but even then I knew I couldn’t live without you.”

Ginger found she couldn’t breathe again, this time from shock. “What?”

Brock’s smile was tender and sweet. “I love you, Ginger. I’ve loved you for some time, but thought, in your father’s eyes, I wasn’t good enough for you.” He shrugged. “You were the reason I came to Chicago. To become someone you could love.” Flashing her a wonky grin, he whispered, “I don’t want to make history without you.”

If she hadn’t loved Brock before, she’d have gone goofy over him right that second. “I do love you, and I don’t want to make history with anyone but you.”

“Good.” His lips brushed against hers. “Because I told your father I’m marrying you.”

She jerked her head back, fear once again clutching at her heart. “You
told
him?”

“Yes, he told me. He didn’t ask.”

Ginger spun around.

The sheepish grin on her father’s face tossed her back ten years, to when she’d been the apple of his eye and had him wrapped around her finger. “And I told him a man’s integrity will make him my son-in-law long before the size of his pocketbook.”

“Brock’s as honest as the day is long,” she said proudly.

“I know that.” Her father chuckled. “You two remind me of the time I met your mother. I didn’t have two coins to rub together, but that didn’t stop us.”

“You always said I was just like Momma.”

“You are.” Her father kissed her forehead and then shook his head. “If old George hadn’t spouted off to that radio station about how good Brock is, we’d all be home celebrating your wedding instead of here. George owes me for that.”

Ginger laughed, and then right there on the street, in front of her father, threw her arms around Brock and kissed the daylights out of him.

Less than an hour later, in Palooka George’s office, by a judge the mobster had summoned—complete with an antedated marriage license—Ginger became Mrs. Brock Ness.

Afterward, her father insisted he had to head back home, before another one of her sisters went on the lam. Ginger promised she and Brock would visit soon, and then, extremely glad her husband didn’t have to perform on the radio that evening, climbed into a waiting taxicab beside him.

They no longer drove the Ford, finding that parking at the speakeasies was too difficult. Ginger liked the intimacy of the backseat and by the time they arrived at the hotel there wasn’t a trace of lipstick on her lips and the windows were so steamed over the driver glared at them. Brock threw a bill over the front seat, and they ran across the street hand in hand much like they had the first day they’d arrived.

Empty except for the two of them, the elevator became a ride she’d never forget, and elation burst inside her when Brock hoisted her into his arms and carried her down the hallway to their room.

When he set her on the bed, she whooped and kicked off her shoes. Her gloves came off next, one landing on his head as she threw them in the air. She’d lain in this bed so many nights, burning with need, and knowing nothing would come between them tonight made her giddy.