“Jump!” Jeb yelled.
Just as her head started to turn to see whom Jeb was talking to, a mini tidal wave of water covered her, and then she and her raft tipped right into the spot next to her where Griff had belly flopped. In seconds, she felt her flesh pressed against Griff’s warm, wet body and, given the nature of her suit’s material, she might as well have been naked. A surge of desire went through her, and she almost reached out to pull him closer. Before she could, though, he was hoisting her up out of the water in his arms. She clung to his neck for dear life.
“Look what I caught, Jeb!”
Jeb collapsed in giggles. “A whale!”
Tessa sputtered. “Jeb Ledoux, you’re going to be so sorry when I catch you.”
Griff easily hoisted her higher. “No, Jeb, not a whale. She’s as light as a feather. You want me to drop her and see if she floats?”
All too aware of her how hot her body was becoming where it was pressed into Griff’s, Tessa reached over to right where she knew his vulnerable spot was about two inches above his waist and tickled him.
“Hey!” He dropped her feet into the water and stepped back from her, a fake pout on his lips. “I can’t have any fun.”
“That’ll teach you to pick me up!” she told him, giggling.
“Pick her up again, Uncle Griff,” Jeb called out from the other side of the pool. “Throw her into the water.”
“Not unless he wants more like you’re going to get,” she said, lunging forward for the child, picking him up and putting him on the raft. She tickled him on his belly as they both laughed from deep inside of them. The laugh of the carefree.
And it had been Griff who started it.
With that thought, her hand dropped down to rest on the raft. Seizing his opportunity, Jeb rolled off the other side into the water, but that was all right. Turning, she sliced her hand through the water and splashed Griff, right when he wasn’t expecting it.
He yelped and started splashing her back. Jeb joined in, and pretty soon the three of them were having water fights using a toy bucket, water pistols, and the oldest method of all—hanging on to the side of the pool and kicking with their feet to drench each other.
“Y’all can get out of the pool and come and eat,” Mary called from the patio table, where she had laid out sandwiches, chips and drinks.
“Aw, Mamaw!” Jeb said.
“Aw, Ma!” Griff echoed.
“I, for one, will be happy to get out of this mess of men,” Tessa said, laughing again as she started to climb the ladder.
“Did you hear what she called us, Jeb?” Griff asked. “She called us messy men!”
“Let’s get her!” Jeb’s voice rang out.
Tessa glanced over her shoulder to see Griff opening his arms to grab her, and she kicked backward, splashing him. He grabbed her foot, and she was giggling so hard she pushed away, let go and slid into the water. The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her and picked her up again into his arms, and she was laughing and sputtering, and when her eyes cleared, all she saw was his face, so near to hers her breath caught. They gazed at each other as though they were the only two people in the world, and Tessa thought he was going to kiss her. She wished he would. His lips got closer, and she closed her eyes, and forgot everything else…
And then Jeb’s call stopped both of them cold.
“Daddy!”
Chapter Seven
The adoring, gleeful greeting coming from Jeb for his adopted father hit Tessa hard, shattering the crystal-beautiful world that had been hers in the pool and reminding her of what really was her whole world—becoming Jeb’s mother, Griff or no Griff. Sloshing past them, the child at stake climbed out of the pool and ran toward Clay.
“We didn’t do anything,” Griff whispered consolingly as he put her back on her feet.
“Not even what was right,” she told him, trying to regain her composure and mentally ice over the heat in her limbs that had come from rubbing bodies with Griff again. Climbing out of the pool, she saw Mary catch her grandson and wrap a towel around him before he hugged his father, who was in uniform. Quickly drying herself off and slipping her cover-up back on, she walked into the house barefoot, slipping past Clay, who moved aside to avoid touching her. In the front room, she figured they wouldn’t be overheard by those still outside, and she waited there. Just as she thought he would, Clay followed.
“Nothing happened,” she told him the second he entered the room.
Clay’s gaze, for a change, settled on her. “Maybe you’d better think on that for a while.”
“We’re still getting married, right?” They had to get married. Jeb needed her. She needed him. “Our first priority is still Jeb, isn’t it?”
His chest expanding with a deep breath, Clay opened his mouth to say something, shut it and shook his head slowly, and a sense of dread filled her. “Maybe you should tell me what you really want, Tessa.”
“To be Jeb’s mother,” she said, but her voice shook a little. “I really want that more than anything.”
“Or anyone?” Clay’s long look told her he thought otherwise, but then he sighed. “You might want to redouble your efforts to get Griff to leave, then, because it was obvious to everyone who saw you and Griff together that there’s something going on between you two, whether you want to admit it or not. And that’s not good for my son to see, not if you’re still planning on being his new mama.”
He walked out. Through the picture window, she watched him get into his police unit and drive away, and she dabbed at her eyes to hold back her tears.
Clay was correct. Either her feelings for Griff were being newly aroused, or she had never quite lost them to begin with. Whichever the case, showing them to everyone wasn’t right. It could only confuse Jeb. She couldn’t let emotions rule her life, as they had her father’s. He’d never had a minute’s peace—and neither had she, as his daughter. Almost kissing Griff today had been an emotional act, and staying away from him from this point on would be the right thing to do. Just as getting him to leave town so he would never find out he was Jeb’s father from anyone was the right thing to do.
She knew it was—she’d just let herself slip for a minute there. Seeing Clay’s irritation had reminded her of just how much she stood to lose if she gave in to her emotions once more where Griff was concerned, and she wouldn’t forget again.
Griff considered getting into the middle of whatever Clay was discussing with Tessa, but it was none of his business. He did realize Clay had probably guessed he had been about to kiss Tessa in the pool—certainly his mother and father had. Even while smiling for Jeb’s sake, their eyes mirrored their disapproval. Having already eaten, his father took off toward the barn again, alone. His mother, after she got Jeb squared away out of earshot at a child’s size picnic table, sat down next to him.
“I guess I just wore out my welcome in Claiborne Landing,” Griff said to her.
“I’ve seen better timing on cheap watches,” she acknowledged, reaching over and grabbing a sandwich off the serving platter. “Eat. When you’re done, you can join your father back up on the roof—away from Tessa.”
“Okay.”
“Good. It’ll appease him. And to appease me, you can come clean with just what you thought you were doing in the pool.”
Griff managed to eat half of his ham and cheese on a hard roll before he came up with something to say.
“I don’t rightly know,” he admitted. He studied her and the way she’d fixed her black hair in stylish waves around her face. “You don’t look a day older than when I left for school, Mom. How did you manage that?”
His mother laughed. “Amazing how the more trouble you boys get into, the prettier I get.” She drank some tea, wiped her lips with a paper napkin and leaned forward. “But all the compliments in the world aren’t going to lift you off the hook that easily. If you two are still in love, why on earth did you break up years ago?”
He filled her in on Tessa’s miserable ch
ildhood. “The third year I was away, Tessa told me she was happy right here, that this was her home, and she was never going to leave it or her grandmother. Nor was she going to spend her days alone in some strange city while I worked, having to rebuild her life every time I got restationed. That didn’t fit in with what I’d spent all that time training for.”
“And you weren’t going to give up your dream of flying, not even for love.”
Griff wished his mother hadn’t said it so bluntly. He shifted uncomfortably. “Flying is all I ever wanted.”
“And having a family and a home that she never had to leave must be all Tessa ever wanted,” Mary countered. “I guess I can understand why she wants to marry Clay, then.”
She fell silent for a minute, eating, but then her eyes squinted. “But that doesn’t make sense,” she said, almost to herself. “If she wanted to stay right here, and even broke up with you over it, the man she obviously is still in love with, whether she knows it or not—why on earth did she then spend a year in Dallas?”
Griff put down his drink and stared at her. As his mother gave him the details, how Tessa had needed to get away after their breakup and then stayed to help Lindy with Jeb, something inside him twisted, tightly. His mother had asked a danged good question, he thought, one that he was going to ask Tessa at his earliest possible convenience.
That afternoon, Tessa took Jeb and Griff home, and to be honest, he was too worn-out from roofing to confront her about Dallas. Besides, Jeb was right there, sitting between them. The following three mornings, he drove Jeb to the farm straight from Clay’s, and Tessa went to work, and he didn’t even see her until she showed up in the afternoons to spend a couple of hours with Jeb. He was too busy trying to help his father to really talk to her, although he found himself watching her whenever he could.
He had a tense feeling in his gut that was building to an ache. She could go to Dallas for a year, but she couldn’t even try to leave with him? What the hell had that been all about?
Tessa went home each day before he finished work, leaving him to bring Jeb home and feed him supper. It was as if she was still keeping an eye on him, but avoiding him at the same time. He could understand her staying away after what had almost happened in the pool—obviously she’d realized she was risking her chances of marrying Clay. But nevertheless, he wanted answers about Dallas, and he became determined to confront her so he could get them.
The evening before the “Welcome Back, Griff” barbecue, as his mother had termed it, Sadie called him, said she had a surprise planned for the next day and asked him to stick around town for another day or so. He had no idea why she wanted him to stay, but there was something he’d learned long ago growing up in Louisiana—when an older lady asked you to do something, you obeyed. With respect. He just hoped it wasn’t some matchmaking scheme. He wasn’t in the mood right then.
The next morning, he went to Tessa’s apartment, only to find out from Sadie that she’d already left for his parents’ farm to help his mother out.
“Talk some sense into her, Griff,” Sadie called from her own, half-open door.
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “But about what?”
“You know,” Sadie said. He had barely registered that she seemed to be in an awful hurry, when she gave him a quick, cheery wave of her fingertips and closed the door.
Another mystery. From there, he went over to his parents’ farm where he found his brother and nephew outside admiring the roofing job, and, seizing his chance, he went inside to find Tessa, get her alone, and make her explain about Dallas. After that, his only plan was to set a time to leave town, because he really thought he’d go crazy if he didn’t go soon. The odd jobs weren’t pushing him away—he’d enjoyed the novelty and the way he’d felt as if he was fitting into his family and community again, even though his brother was keeping his emotional distance. No, it was Tessa. It had always been Tessa keeping him away.
Standing next to Mary, chopping celery for a macaroni salad for the barbecue at noon, Tessa saw Griff coming up to the back door. The past three days of seeing him but barely speaking to him had been terrible, but necessary. She knew Clay was right. Jeb couldn’t be exposed to anything like she’d almost exposed him to. Every time she was close to Griff, she wanted him all over again, even though she knew it could never work between them, and she was worried about controlling herself. So she stayed away.
She dropped her knife onto the cutting board. “I’ll be upstairs looking at those toys you wanted me to go through.”
“We aren’t done here—” Mary protested, but stopped when she saw the stricken expression on Tessa’s face. Tessa hurriedly wiped her hands, took off her apron and tossed it toward a chair on her way out of the kitchen. As she entered the hallway, she heard the back door open, but she didn’t stop until she was in Griff’s old room, standing next to the bed and looking down at a large cardboard box marked Griff’s Toys. Mary had asked her two days ago to sort through them for any Jeb might want to keep. The rest would be going to charity. But because they had been Griff’s, and because she’d be giving them to his child, Tessa had been reluctant to tackle the task.
She picked up a fire truck that, except for the dust, was in excellent shape, for being over twenty years old.
“I never played with that.”
She spun around, surprised his mother had told him where she was. In fact, she was shocked Mary would even let him up the stairs near her after having witnessed them nearly kissing. She held the truck in her hands, not knowing what to say.
“I never went through a fireman stage, so I kept it on top of that dresser.” He stepped inside the room and indicated the bare oak dresser behind her. “Some kid would probably really like it.”
Some kid…like his own son. She held it to her almost protectively and regarded him with a tiny smile, trying to act as though nothing at all was bothering her about being there, in his bedroom by his bed, alone with him, with part of his past in her hand, and with his almost kiss on her mind. “I think Jeb would love it. He adores fire trucks.”
“You spend a lot of time with him, so I guess you would know.” He shrugged and stepped closer to her, so that they were shoulder to shoulder, making her all the more aware of him—as if she needed any help.
He had dressed up a bit for his “Welcome back” barbecue, with a green sports shirt and tailored, tan trousers. As he leaned forward to shift around the toys in the box, the way his shirt went snug against his back made her desperately want to trace the lines of his muscles with her fingertips. She gripped the fire truck more tightly to keep herself from touching him.
Fishing a model World War II airplane out of the box, he lit up with that half-curved grin of his that always made her feel a little dizzy. He looked like Jeb on Christmas morning. “My P-51. I thought this was gone forever. I made it in the third grade when I started studying everything I could about planes.”
“But you would have only been about eight. You knew you wanted to be a pilot that early?” She hadn’t even been thinking about the future when she was that age, just surviving the present.
He nodded, studying the details of the plane as though seeing it for the first time. Then he put it down on the white chenille bedspread and examined her with the same intensity he’d used on his toy. “Speaking of the past, I came up here to ask why it was so easy for you to leave Claiborne Landing for Dallas, when you couldn’t even try to leave for me.”
Tessa froze. What to say? Who had told him? The e-mailer? Did Griff now know about Jeb? No. He couldn’t, or he would have said it right out.
“Tessa? I want an answer on this one.”
Keep it simple, she told herself. She leaned forward and pulled something else from the box. “I needed to get away after we broke up.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Griff said. She wasn’t looking him in the eyes, and she seemed shaken. “Why did you stay away so long?”
She straightened up, but her focus was on hi
s old catcher’s mitt.
“I was visiting Lindy and Clay, and then she asked for my help after Jeb was born, and so I stayed until they returned here.” She put the catcher’s mitt down alongside the fire truck. “I always intended on coming back, but for a time, it was easier to be away.”
Reaching out, Griff gently turned her to face him. For a second their eyes met, and held, and he read all kinds of wishes and hopes in them, or thought he did. But then her face masked over, and she left his side to go to the window and gazed down at the yard. “People are arriving for the picnic. We should go downstairs.”
“Not yet. What do you mean it was easier to be away?” he asked, and the question made her turn around again.
“Griff, of all people, I figured you’d be the one person who would already know the answer to that.”
She had a point. He took a deep breath. “I feel like there’s a wall between us since Clay caught us almost kissing.”
“Of course there is. I shouldn’t have forgotten I’m getting married to someone else.”
“It’s not that, and you know it.”
He saw a flash of guilt in her eyes. But it fled swiftly and was replaced by irritation. “The wall really went up,” she said pointedly, “a long time ago when I figured out you didn’t love me.”
“Of course I loved you,” he said, opening his palms in frustration that she could believe he hadn’t.
“Love is putting the other person first over your own desires. You didn’t.”
“Neither did you.” He’d been so angry when she’d called off their engagement and told him not to bother her anymore, as though she’d never mattered to him. He’d thought he’d gotten over that feeling a long time ago, but it was all flooding back now. Reminded of his father’s former, automatic responses to just about everything that annoyed him, Griff purposely worked on quelling it.
“You knew what my dreams were from the moment you met me,” he said evenly, but his jaw was tense. “I never changed. You always acted like what I wanted was what you wanted, too.”
Kidnapping His Bride (Silhouette Romance) Page 10
