Page 31 of Cursed by Death

“I think I can actually help you out with your car problem though. I was just thinking before coming here that I need to get rid of at least one of my cars. I have three of them and I really only need one. I was thinking the BMW but maybe the Jeep will be better for you with your baby and all. It’s only a couple of years old and I bought it brand new. I think she’s only got less than fifty thousand miles on her.”

Her cheeks blazed bright red. “Thank you, Ruby, but I can’t afford something like that.

I frowned at her. “I don’t want money for it. They’re just going to sit there. You can just have it.”

If possible, her cheeks got even redder. “I don’t need your charity.”

“Ginger,” Rally said quietly in a voice full of warning. He was ready to defend me. Even against one of his own people who was a brand-new mother and a grieving widow.

Blind loyalty was a beautiful thing I did not think I had yet earned or deserved from this man. But I would. I absolutely would earn it. And I would give it back to him just the same. Always. Because this very morning he had earned mine.

“It’s not charity,” I told her, completely unaffected by her reaction. “Rally told me that you all came here today because I’m his mate and his people look after their own. Well, up until last week the only person I had in the whole world was an old man who was my dead grandmother’s attorney. And he was all the family I had and my only friend to speak of.”

I gestured behind me to where his casket currently sat. “He came into my life on my eighteenth birthday when the foster care system spit me out into the streets. I told Thomas to go to hell when he found me to tell me that she was dead and she’d left me with everything that she’d had. And what she had was a lot. I didn’t want anything from some rich old bitch who’d let me get abused and live in hell in foster care simply because she didn’t like my dad or the fact that I shared a last name with him. Granted I don’t like the man either so I can kind of get it but I was just a child.”

Rally shifted closer to me so that he could wrap his arm around my waist and pull me into his body. All of the shifters were watching me with rapt attention and extreme fascination.

I blamed the twins' sudden reappearance for my current very public trauma dump and spectacle.

“So, you see, Ginger, I grew up in foster care with absolutely nothing. The only reason I have money or extra cars to give away is because it was all that old bitch had to give me. Because when she was alive she didn’t know how to love me so she left me with her fortune. I’m smart enough to know that’s not what love is. And I’m smart enough to know what’s really important in life.”

The Detective grabbed my hand and, once again, laced our fingers together. “She tried to give me a car just earlier this week,” he told the watching crowd in a voice full of humor.

“I’m smart enough to know that what’s really important in life isn’t materialistic things but it’s the people you love and care about. It’s showing up at a funeral for the friend of a woman youdon’t even know because she means something to Rally and you give a shit about him. And it’s doing that while you’re grieving your own husband and having to leave your six-month-old baby to do it. That tells me everything I need to know about you. So, please, don’t stand there and tell me that this is charity because that’s the farthest thing from the truth that there is.”

“Okay,” Ginger whispered as she wiped the tears away from her cheeks with shaking hands. “I’ll take the Jeep because I’d be a moron not to but I have to tell you this might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

I smiled softly at her, so happy she’d said yes. “Then I gotta tell you that you being here today just might be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me before. So, thank you for that, Ginger.”

“Can I hug you?” she whispered in a voice thick with her tears and raw emotions.

Rally let me go and the Detective dropped my hand. I held my arms out to her. “Of course. Just don’t freak out if you feel my knives under the dress.”

Both Rally and the Detective laughed. They knew I wasn’t joking.

Ginger was full on crying when she got to me and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tightly to me.

I looked over her shoulder at Rally who was watching me with something bright and beautiful blazing in his eyes. I didn’t even bother attempting to decipher the emotions behind that look because it scared the absolute shit out of me.

“Send them all home,” I told him authoritatively. “They’re not here to hurt me. I don’t trust them but I know they’d never hurt me. And you need to trust me on that. Your people came here to support you and attend a funeral. They did that and it was much appreciated. But they don’t need to be here for the drama with the hunters. It’s safer for them if they go.”

His eyes got even brighter as he ran the backs of his knuckles across my cheekbone. “I want you to know that I am so unbelievably proud right now to call you my mate. You looked after my people like any good leader would. You’re absolute perfection, Ruby Jane.”

Now it was me who was blushing and very uncomfortable.

Chapter 16

Icouldn’t believe I had said I was his mate in front of all of these shifters. Rally had clearly eaten that up and he’d approved.

I absolutely did not want to deal with any more feelings and emotions today. Too bad for me the twins were still here and they didn’t look like they planned on going anywhere until they got to talk to me like they’d come here to do.

I couldn’t just ignore them away.

It didn’t take me that long to get Ginger to calm down and her emotions in check.

When she pulled away from me she apologized and wiped the back of her hand over both of her cheeks in an attempt to remove the evidence of her crying.

“Don’t be sorry, babe. Just tell me you’ll take my car home with you now so that you can get back to your baby and then when you get the chance you can drive it to my place and we can swap vehicles. That way you’ll have a car."

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