Never Let You Down: The Connaghers, Book 4 by Joely Sue Burkhart

to go. I never could tell you no.”
    She shifted her cast restlessly. “If my arm wasn’t busted, I’d reach over and punch you.”
    He had to swallow to try and get some moisture back in his mouth. “A fate worse than death, surely.”
    “If I’d told you to jump off a cliff I guess you would have just broken your fool neck.”
    He couldn’t help but grin. “Yes ma’am.”
    “With a smile on your face,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What am I going to do with you? Are you still that gullible?”
    Oh I have only a million or so suggestions. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wondering if he could reach down and adjust himself without her noticing. “Probably. You ought to tell me do something stupid and see if I’ll actually do it.”
    “You’d do it all right.” She sighed but her lips were soft, the hard, guarded lines of her face erased by the walk down memory lane. “Can I ask you something?”
    “Anything.” He said it too quickly, ardently, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted her questions as much as he wanted her orders, her deliberate commands, her touch.
    “Was I ever…?” She sighed again, her right hand opening and clenching in her lap. It made him want to reach over and take her hand, but he didn’t want to risk hurting her injured arm. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry if I ever took advantage of our friendship. I got you in a lot of trouble and I know people talked. About us.” She laughed, but it sounded forced and uncomfortable. “Like we were a couple.”
    It was almost a question. Could she really not know how he’d felt about her all those years? He wasn’t sure how to respond. The Westwood Inn appeared ahead and though he’d regretted the long drive before, now he wished he had another half hour or so in the car with her. It felt like they were on the verge of a breakthrough where she might finally understand what she’d meant to him. What she still meant to him.
    He parked the car and turned off the ignition, but didn’t immediately open the door. “I would have asked you to my senior prom. In fact, I’d already worked out how I was going to make it a joke, a dare, to make sure you’d go with me, because I sure knew Virginia Healy wouldn’t ever back down from a challenge. But then you made it into the jumping finals in Dallas the same weekend.”
    “I didn’t know,” she said softly, her voice quivering, but she didn’t lift her head. “I didn’t—”
    “I bought a ring,” he said in a rush, determined to get it all out in the open. He started to touch the box again, but he made himself squeeze the wheel instead. It’s too early. You ask her now and you’ll blow everything. “I know it was stupid. How was I going to ask you to marry me when I couldn’t seem to even ask you on a real date? But I had it all planned in my head. Every weekend I came home, I was going to ask you, but somehow always managed to go back to College Station banging my fist on the steering wheel all the way to the dorm. I finally decided I’d come back for your senior prom and ask you, but then Sissy told me you were dating Tyrell. I’d missed my chance.”
    She finally turned and faced him but he didn’t have the courage to meet her gaze. “Why? Why didn’t you ever ask me? Tell me? Give me any kind of hint that…”
    “That I loved you,” he whispered harshly, gripping the wheel hard to keep from reaching out to her. “Because you were my best friend, Ginny. I didn’t want to mess that up. I didn’t want to risk losing you. I thought that maybe someday if I was always there for you that you’d look at me and see not just a friend, but a man. A man that you might care for. Even love. Then you met Ty and it was all over. All I had to do was look into your eyes and I knew you loved him. You never looked at me with that kind of longing. You never wanted me like that.”
    His voice broke but he couldn’t stop. Now that the dam had opened, he couldn’t