As Evan walked toward the office, he knew his life was about to change. Ginger was a given, but a baby? As he let the possibility sink in, he found himself oddly calm. A father? Coud he do that? Only with her. With each step away from her, the ache in his heart grew stronger. Someone was following her, targeting her, and now they were calling her a whore. He wanted answers, which made him tenacious, focused, and thorough. If Ginger was pregnant, it wasn’t just her that needed his protection, but his child, too. By the time he reached the office, he was even more determined to find who was harassing her.

As soon as he broke the threshold of the door Nathan asked, “Man, you okay? I mean that out there with Ginger. She seemed a little…you know.”

Evan knew Nathan was concerned. Hell, he even knew Nathan was protective of Ginger after that night in the bar. Nathan joked about taking her from him, but he knew it was no different than he and Mitchell. It was a brotherly thing. “Yeah. Y’all heard what she said, so she’s doing some research because she can’t call her doctor until Monday.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to have it if she is?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“What the fuck you getting at?”

“Does she want to keep it?”

Evan stared Nathan in the eyes because he knew Nathan’s history. He assumed keeping the baby was a given, but they hadn’t discussed it. He’d make sure they did after she talked to the doctor’s office. Finally, he nodded at Nathan, “I’ll make sure.”

“Good. Now, do we have business to discuss tonight or do you need some time?”

“Business. You need to know what happened because it concerns you. Since Sam knows about Denver and Reno, I thought he should know in case someone connects him to us.”

Nathan’s brows furrowed and mouth pursed. “What does this have to do with Reno?”

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna tell y’all everything in hopes we can put the pieces together.” Evan showed them the picture of Ginger with Cowboy Heaven. As they studied the picture, he told them what Marcus had said.

“What do you know about the picture itself?” Sam asked.

“Ginger was seeing the guy with his arm around her, David. He’s their lead singer. The record company thought they’d bought up all known copies of the picture because the guy whispering in her ear was telling her David had been cheating on her. They didn’t like the appearance of betrayal.”

“Were they talking literally or about what he’s telling her?” Sam had a scowl on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“At first glance it looks like he’s trying to take the girl away from the star. It could be seen as betrayal. What she says is happening is betrayal on another level. I can see why they’d pull it. Did you know she dated David Whitehouse? Dude, Cowboy Heaven is your workout music.”

“No, I didn’t know who he was until Marcus told me yesterday. Guess I’m finding new workout music.”

Nathan studied the photo again. “So who had access to the photo?”

“Don’t know. Apparently, it was released for a short time, but pulled very quickly. Someone could’ve kept a copy I guess,” Evan said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“ATF still working on it?” Nathan asked.

“Doubt it unless we can tie it to this one,” Evan said as he showed them the email Ginger received. “I forwarded it to my computer after ATF researched the email on hers.”

“That’s Reno. That picture was never public.” Nathan ran his hand down his face. “What the fuck?”

“Exactly. Not only did they use a picture from the bust, but look at the arrow. They know more than what I do for a living. The words they chose were specific to mean either a sex club or between us. Marcus said AFT has backup security on photos of their agents, he didn’t say anything about the debriefing documents. We had to disclose what happened in Denver and Reno. That’s why they sent us to be tested. Hell, if the test results aren’t in those documents, they’re in our personnel files. Marcus said the person knew what they were doing and they’re not one of ours. Also his clearance had to be high enough to even allow him any access to ATF’s information.”

“Shit,” Nathan mumbled under his breath. “Okay, that explains the picture, but what about the email itself?”

Evan told them everything Marcus had said including how it came to Ginger and that ATF was still working it.

“When will he know something?” Nathan asked.

The look on Evan’s face said more than his words, “When he knows it. I don’t know how long this shit takes.”

“All right. What do we do in the meantime, hope our identities are revealed? Dammit, if this leaks out they may as well hang signs around our necks! I’m not having fucking surgery to continue working undercover, man.” Nathan’s California cool cracked.

“I know. Me neither, but listen, there’s more.”

“Oh, you’re just full of good news, aren’t you?” Nathan said.

“This has to do more with Ginger and me than anything else.” Evan had put the note in a plastic bag that he slid to Nathan who handed it to Sam. “That was given to the valet tonight just after we walked into the restaurant. He gave it to me when we picked up the car, but I haven’t let Ginger see it yet.”

“You had one before?” Sam chuckled.

“No. It’s a long story. I planned to tell Ginger about it before y’all got here, but we got sidetracked,” he said with a cocky smile.

“One of the four times?” Nathan asked with a shit eating grin on his face.

“Yeah,” Evan quietly said.

“Do we need the details or just the highlights?” Sam asked.

Evan gave them what they needed of the story because he only wanted Ginger to have the details. She deserved to have the whole story, or as much of it as she wanted. “So is this girl still in town?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen her in years though.”

“She still in the business?” Sam asked.

“As far as I know.”

“Any ideas about the note?” Nathan asked with an angry tone. “I want to punch the asshole who said that about her.”

“You’ll have to wait in line, man,” Evan said. “This one feels different than the other two.”

“How so?” Nathan asked.

“The others are warnings. One to me, and the other to her. Look,” Evan said as he brought up both emails. “This is the email to me. It’s a warning that he knows who and where she is and can get to her anytime he wants. Maybe he’s challenging me to keep her safe, but it’s not disrespectful to her. This one is clearly a warning for her. Again, nothing disrespectful. These were sent remotely. Why would he hand deliver a note? Why would he change his MO, going from warning to calling her a whore?” The gasp from the door caused all three men’s heads to turn. Evan jumped out of his chair and was to her within a few strides. “Darlin’, I didn’t hear you walk up. I’m sorry you heard that.”

“Is that what the note said? He called me a whore?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” When he back away from her, Nathan rose to greet her.

“Hey, sugar. You okay?” Nathan kissed her on the cheek.

“Hey. I don’t know yet. Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, Ginger. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”

Evan held out his hand to her and pulled her onto his lap. There was no way he wasn’t going to touch her. He slid the bag to her as he held her tight. “What does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you in a bit, okay? It’s a long story.”

Nathan looked at the emails and the note several times. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, my ranch hand saw a man today up where y’all flipped that Challenger looking over the ranch with binoculars. By the time he got close enough, the man drove off on a motorcycle. He said it wasn’t a crotch rocket, but wasn’t sure what it was either.”

“Could be custom made,” Sam responded.

“Can you trace those?”

“Yeah, those guys usually have something that’s a signature they do. For them the bikes are art, labors of love. Each one is personal.”

“So until we can find the bike, we don’t know how to trace it.”

“Exactly.”

Ginger snuggled in closer to Evan. She was quiet for a few minutes absorbing everything they said. In a quiet voice she asked, “Should I go home?”

Evan clinched his jaw several times. “No, I can’t protect you there. If he can find you here with me, then he sure as hell knows where you live.” Evan placed a fingertip under her chin and tilted her face up. She’d obviously not thought of that from the look of terror in her eyes. He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ve got you. No one’s gonna hurt you,” he said as he held her tighter.

“It’s late and sounds like you two have more to discuss so we’ll head out. What do you need?” Nathan asked.

“I don’t know yet. Mainly, I wanted you to know about the picture.”

“You got any state contacts?”

“Yeah. I’ll call them if I need them.”

They all made their way down the hall toward the door. As Evan shook Nathan’s hand he said, “You need me, call me. I’m here for both of you.” He turned and kissed Ginger’s cheek.

“Ditto, man,” Sam said before he kissed Ginger, too.

As soon as he locked the door Evan said, “It’s late. Let’s get some rest and I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

“Please tell me now. Otherwise, my mind will run me crazy and I won’t get any sleep.”

“Okay, but in bed. I wanna touch you.”

“I like that idea.”

As they undressed for bed, Evan thought how he was going to tell her. What would he tell her? She needed to know so she’d never be blind-sided. If they were going to spend much time in Riverton Crossing, she deserved as much information as she wanted. He was in bed before she was so he reclined against the headboard with his eyes closed trying to focus on the important stuff. She didn’t need the details unless she wanted them. When he felt her climb on the bed, he opened his eyes and stared apprehensively at her.

He knew Ginger would wait until he was ready to speak. This was different than the sex club, but he wondered if she’d see it as worse. She took his hand as she slid under the covers. He watched her like he expected her to pack her bags and leave, but she entwined their fingers and squeezed.

He cleared his throat. “You said you needed honesty, and I can’t handle secrets. So if we’re gonna give this a go, there can’t be secrets between us and you need to understand why.” He looked into her eyes and saw hers bouncing back and forth between his.

“And that has to do with the note?”

“It’s the only explanation for the words they used.”

“Why?”

“Because the only girl I dated in high school turned into the town whore.”

“What?”

“My senior year in high school I dated Ruby Mae Johnson. Now she just goes by Ruby.”

“Did you love her?”

“I thought I did at the time. Did you love David?”

“I don’t know. I think I was just caught up in the excitement, but I did enjoy spending time with him. Tell me about Ruby Mae,” she said with a sad smile.

He stared off into space before he started talking. “She was assigned to tutor me in history so the coach wouldn’t bench me for a big game. Our deal was if I made a ‘B’ on the test, I’d take her out to celebrate. I made the grade, so true to my word we planned to go out after the game.

“We’d been seeing each other for a month before she let me pick her up and take her home because she was embarrassed about where she lived. I enjoyed being with her so it never mattered to me, but people talked because her family situation was the exact opposite of mine. Their house was little more than a shack with electricity. Anyway, the first night I took her home, one of our married teachers was leaving her house when we drove up, and that’s when I understood what the people at school were talking about. When I passed our teacher on the way to open Ruby Mae’s door he said, ‘I hope the daughter is as good as her mother’. I didn’t know what to say. Hell, I was barely eighteen years old.”

He rubbed his hand down his face and slowly shook his head before he continued, “We’d dated for a while and even talked about sex. We’d agreed to wait until graduation, but as her birthday got closer she told me she didn’t think she could wait that long. I thought she just wanted to be with me, but later I found out differently.”

A look of disgust rolled across his face as he squeezed Ginger’s hand. “The night of her eighteenth birthday we made out. She begged me, but I stopped. I didn’t take it farther because it felt forced that night, and I didn’t want our first time to be that way so I took her home. She was pissed to say the least and told me I’d regret it. Then, I may have. But now I don’t.

“The next week got crazy and I didn’t see her much. I knew she wasn’t doing well in calculus, and Ms. Johnson arranged for her teacher to tutor Ruby Mae at home. I thought her mother was fucking the teacher for her to pass the class, but a few weeks later I heard talk about Ruby Mae so I offered to take her home from school. She was so excited because she’d made an ‘A’ on her last calculus test, and I was just as happy for her. I remember making a comment about all of her hard work paying off, and that’s when she looked me straight in the eye and told me just what that ‘A’ cost.” Evan locked eyes with Ginger as he said, “The payment was her virginity. The moment she told me I thought I was gonna be sick.”

“That’s why she didn’t think she’d be able to wait that night. She knew what her mother expected her to do,” Ginger whispered.

Evan closed his eyes and nodded. “The worst part was Ruby Mae was happy about it. She said she liked the power it gave her over men. I dropped her off that night and ended things. In that moment, all the questions and rumors made sense because everyone thought we were sleeping together too, but I hadn’t touched her since her birthday and never would again. It had been going on behind my back for weeks. Hell, even a couple guys around here hinted about it.”

Ginger placed both of her hands on Evan’s face so he was forced to look at her. “Evan, Kayla told me about you dating a girl in high school, but she didn’t tell me the details. I think she wanted me to hear them from you.”

“Kayla doesn’t know the details. Hell, Mitchell doesn’t even know. You’re the first person I’ve told the whole ugly truth.”

“Do you still have feelings for her?”

Evan shook his head. “I felt pity for a while, but that’s it.”

“I can see that. I don’t think I felt anything but anger.”

“I can understand that, too,” he said.

“If her mother was whoring her out, why would people assume it was you?”

“The Riverton Crossing grapevine is speedy, but not accurate. Everyone knew we were dating, and when I didn’t break up with her immediately they assumed I was okay with it. To my knowledge, it was just her teacher until we broke up. I don’t know, maybe there were more.” He shrugged.

“So you think the writer had to know about Ruby Mae?”

“With the choice of words, I’d say yes.”

“Did you see anyone that night from your childhood?”

“I hadn’t taken my eyes off you all night. I have no clue who was in that restaurant.”

“So it could’ve just been someone pulling your chain because you were there with someone they don’t know.”

Evan sighed. “The valet said the man came from the road, not the restaurant. He walked up so the valet didn’t see what he drove. It had to be someone that knew we went into the restaurant.”

“Or he could’ve given the valet a big tip to be forgetful.”

“There was a vehicle following us there. It stayed approximately the same distance behind us from the time it pulled onto the road. It wasn’t harassing us, but stayed back far enough I couldn’t tell anything about it. When we pulled into the restaurant, it went straight so I thought I was being paranoid. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I need to stay here at least until Mitchell gets back. Is your house rented?”

“Yeah through the following Sunday then the cleaners will be there Monday. We can go Monday afternoon if you want.”

“A little over a week. Do you want anything special to eat? I can send Daniel to the store tomorrow so we don’t have to leave.” Evan paused for a moment to mentally switch gears. “What did you find out with your research?”

“Not as much as I’d hoped. It said if a patch falls off not to use another one until after my next cycle and call my doctor. It also said use other forms of birth control until I know for sure.”

“If you’re already pregnant, why would it matter?”

“Until we know if I’m pregnant, we should use condoms. If I’m not, I’m not protected until I have my period.”

“I told you I see this as forever.”

“I remember.” She rubbed her hand on his chest. “If I’m pregnant I’m okay with it, but if I’m not I’d like just you and me for a while. You know, maybe actually get married before we have a child.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “Let’s just wait until I can talk to the doctor on Monday.”

“Promise me you’ll call them first thing.”

“I promise.”

It was already after midnight, and they moved to a more comfortable position. Evan was behind Ginger with his arm over her and his hand on her belly. When his hand rested right where their baby would be, he heard Ginger sniffle.