his life. What Woodman wanted—more than anything else in the entire world—was to make Ginger McHuid happy.
He’d been there the day her heart had gone haywire, seven years ago. He’d been giving her a piggyback ride around her living room after an Easter egg hunt when she suddenly said she didn’t feel good. Helping her slide down his back onto the couch, he turned to find her slumped against the cushions, her eyes rolled back, her body limp. He’d touched her cheek to find it cold despite a deep flush of red, and he could see the terrifyingly rapid flutter of her pulse in her neck.
“Miz Magnolia!” he’d screamed toward the dining room, cupping his trembling, clammy hands over his mouth. “Somethin’s wrong with Ginger!”
An ambulance was called, and later that evening five-year-old Ginger was airlifted from Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee, where there was a doctor who specialized in pediatric heart surgery.
She was diagnosed with SVT and underwent a catheter ablation procedure to permanently eliminate the dangerous racing of her heart. After a week at Vandy, she was discharged, and Woodman was waiting on the front porch of McHuid Manor the day she came home.
As soon as she exited the car that day, Miz Magnolia pulled Woodman into her Chanel-scented embrace and kissed the top of his head over and over again, blessing him for being “my baby’s very own guardian angel” and thanking him for saving Ginger’s life. Exiting the car behind her mother, Ginger beamed up at him like he hung the moon and all the stars, and from that moment on, Woodman had made it his personal mission to protect, love, and serve Miss Virginia Laire McHuid.
Their parents were best friends, so Woodman checked up on her at every family dinner and party, celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter with the McHuids and spending lazy summer afternoons at barbecues together. Miz Magnolia heartily approved of his affection for her daughter, and throughout his childhood, Woodman had preened whenever he overheard her say to one of his parents, “God blessed this family when he gave our Ginger your Josiah.” He was her protector, her watchdog, the big brother she’d never had.
But recently, so very recently, Woodman’s feelings for Ginger had taken a turn. Not that he loved her any less than he always had, but he started loving her . . . differently. Not so much as a brother loves a sister, but more how a boy loves a girl.
And yes, he knew she was only twelve and he was barely fifteen, and no, of course he wouldn’t do anything about his feelings until she was ready to return them, but he couldn’t help the way he felt. He couldn’t help it that he wished Ginger would stop seeing him as a big brother figure and look at him with the same yearning she reserved for Cain.
She frowned up at him now and said, “He’s gonna catch somethin’ nasty from Big Tits Walker.”
Huh. He’d been careful, as a boy three years older than Ginger, not to use vulgar language around her, but apparently she’d picked up a few choice words from someone else. And he had to admit, hearing something so sexual and naughty escape from her sweet lips was a little bit of a turn-on.
He chuckled softly. “I guess that’s possible.”
She turned back to watch Cain go, and Woodman felt his fleeting smile fall.
“You should go after him and . . . and, I don’t know, ask him to go for a joyride on Daddy’s tractor or—”
God damn it! No! We don’t need him, Gin! We got all we need right here, just bein’ alone together!
“I’m not goin’ after him,” he said firmly, reaching for her hand with the practiced ease of someone who’d been reaching for her hand all his life, and led her back toward the party. “First off, wouldn’t do any good. You know Cain as well as I do. He’s goin’ where he’s goin’, and nothin’s goin’ to get in his way but God or weather.”
Now, she had just made a fairly sexual observation about Mary-Louise Walker’s bosoms, hadn’t she? What if he employed the same crude style of sexual observation? Would it be okay or make things awkward between them? “Second? Pardon me, Gin, but I’m not cockblockin’ my only cousin. He might be a jackass, but that don’t mean I don’t love him.”
When she didn’t flinch at the crassness of the word he’d