He’d wait forever, if that’s what it took. He’d turn to stone, right here in this place, and not move an inch until that bright blue gaze set him free from the spell.
Almost as if she’d heard his fervent wish, she looked up at him now. She froze, her eyes wide and stunned, maybe a bit afraid. Then he heard her sharp intake of breath, saw her eyes narrow as if taking aim, felt her confusion and anger move towards him like a molten wave.
Slowly, she reached up and removed her earbuds, then set them carefully on the table with deliberate movements. She shut her laptop, moved it away from her a bit, got to her feet. Then and only then did she look at Griff again, her head angled in a gorgeous, sassy tilt that exposed that smooth neck that his lips loved.
“Hi, Claire,” he said.
“What the hell do you want?” she said coldly.
“To talk to you.”
“What makes you think that I want to talk to you?”
“Oh, I’m working on the assumption that you don’t,” he said. “That’s why I said that I want to talk to you. Because I do want that. Very much, actually.”
Wrong-footed, she stared at him. He just stood there some more, waiting for the verdict.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” she said at last.
“I wanted to –”
“Hey, Claire… you OK?”
Annoyed at the untimely interruption, Griff spun to give a baleful glare at the person who’d just lumbered into this terrifically-crucial conversation. When he saw a young woman who was maybe all of twenty years old, he toned down the balefulness a bit. No sense scaring a kind near-to-death, he figured, especially if he wanted Claire to see him as a decent guy.
“Hi, Tanya,” Claire said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Really?” Tanya said, looking Griff up and down. “Hi. I’m Tanya.”
“John Griffin,” he said. “But everyone calls me Griff.”
“Oh, do they now?” Claire said with heavy sarcasm. “I had no idea.”
“Uh,” Tanya said, noting Claire’s simmering anger. “Is everything alright here? I mean… should I get some help?” She looked at Griff’s height and width, and privately thought that her boyfriend Donnie who worked the coffee counter wasn’t anywhere near up to shifting this guy out of the café, if that’s what it came down to, but she still felt like she had to ask. “Who is this guy, Claire?”
“He’s an asshole,” she said crisply, and Griff had the sudden urge to kiss her smart little mouth. “A complete and total asshole.”
“I am,” Griff agreed, totally amiable and laid-back. “I am a complete and total asshole. But I’m an asshole who wants five minutes of your time, Claire. That’s it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously. I came all the way up here to Nova Scotia to talk to you, and I’m not leaving until I do.”
Claire huffed, shook her head.
“Claire, please. Five minutes, I swear to you. That’s it. That’s all. I say what I have to say, then I go unless you ask me to stay.”
She furrowed her brow at him, thinking. “Really? Five minutes, then you get the hell out of my life?”
“Unless you ask me to stay in it. Yes.”
“Well, I won’t be asking,” she said tightly. “But if this is the only way to see the back of you once and for all, I’ll listen.”
Griff glanced around. They were attracting some attention and curiosity now, and even though he didn’t care, he didn’t want Claire to feel embarrassed or exposed. Hell, he’d say what he had to say on the Super Bowl field at half-time live on TV, but he knew she’d want to keep this between them.
“Can we go someplace private?” he asked her. “Maybe a back room?”
“Ellie’s office!” Tanya offered. “Back there.” She pointed.
Claire glared. “Thanks, Tanya.”
“Sorry.” Tanya looked abashed. “I thought that you wanted to talk to him, though?”
“I –” Claire stopped, wondering why she was being so snippy with Tanya, especially since the younger woman wasn’t wrong. Claire had agreed to listen to Griff, so maybe she needed to ramp down the bitch factor slightly. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right… I did agree to listen to the asshole.”
Tanya beamed. “So… Ellie’s office? I know she’s out today.”
Claire sighed. “That’ll be great. Thanks.”
“I’ll get the key from Donnie,” Tanya offered, already dying to start the speculation about all of this with her boyfriend. “Two seconds!”
Claire and Griff stood in silence, him staring at her, her looking everywhere but at him. Tanya was back quickly and to Claire’s annoyance, she handed the key to Griff with a smile. Gritting her teeth against the sharp comment that was longing to burst out of her throat, Claire just took a deep breath and followed Griff to the office.
He unlocked the door, stood aside for her to enter first. She swept in without so much as a glance at him, then she turned with her arms crossed and her mouth set in a line.
“You look good, kitten,” he said quietly. “So damn beautiful.”
“Save it,” she gritted out. “Say what you have to say, then get the hell back to Denver.”
“OK.” Griff took a deep breath, knowing that this was his one shot at getting Claire back in his life. Even a little bit, like maybe a phone call now and then. “I went back to see you the morning after the whole blow-up with Leeza, and Cole told me that you were gone.”
She stared at him coldly, made no comment whatsoever. Yeah, she’d gotten drunk with Cole, and told him everything, and bawled like an idiot, and then at about three o’clock in the morning, she’d started packing. To his credit, Cole hadn’t made a move to stop her – though he hadn’t made a move to help her, either.
Instead, he’d just sat on her sofa and watched her, then he’d called her a taxi when she’d told him that she was ready to go to the airport to try to catch a standby flight to fucking anywhere that wasn’t Colorado. He’d hugged her so close and tight, and it was then that he’d whispered what had been on his mind the whole time she’d been burning down her entire life.
“You sure, sweetheart?” he’d said as he held her. “Totally sure?”
“Yes.”
He’d paused. “You don’t want to talk to the man? Hear his side of the story?”
“No.”
“He’ll come here looking for you. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“What do I tell him when he does?”
She had shrugged, starting to feel the beginnings of a crunching whisky hangover, reminded herself to grab the aspirin from the bathroom. “Tell him that you put me in a taxi to the airport, and that you don’t have a clue where I went from there.”
“Will I know?” His dark eyes had been so soft as he’d looked down at her. “Will you tell me where you end up?”
“Will you tell him, if he keeps coming around and asking?”
“Never,” Cole swore, and she’d believed him. “Never, babe. Not unless and not before you say it’s OK for him to know.”
She’d heard the crunch of tires in the snow outside, and she’d seen that the taxi had arrived. She picked up her backpack – the bag that now contained her entire life in a whole new way – and turned to Cole.
“That’ll never happen, Cole,” she’d told him, and it hadn’t been a lie then, and it still wasn’t a lie now. “I’ll never say that John Griffin is to know one damn thing about me after today.”
“Got it, sweetheart,” he’d said. “Take care. You get in touch when you feel ready. I’m gonna be right here waiting. Alright?”
She had nodded, gone down to the bathroom to get her bottle of aspirin, then headed out the door into the dark winter chill. She’d given the Rockies one last, long long, then she’d turned her face away from them. And she’d just left Denver. Left behind the memories and the hope, left behind his smile and gentle hands.
Except that she hadn’t, ha
d she?
She stared hard at John Griffin now, sure that Cole hadn’t ratted her out. They e-mailed twice a week or so, and she knew that Griff had more or less harassed Cole for her whereabouts ever since she’d walked away from her life, but Cole had stayed tough.
Then again, if this guy was something in investigations or spying or whatever-the-hell it was, then she supposed that he had ways of finding people, if he set his mind to it. And it certainly looked as though he’d set his mind to it, seeing as he was in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, which was not exactly on most people’s radars.
“Yeah, I left Denver that same night,” she said to him, wishing that he wasn’t so damn gorgeous. “I had no desire to ever see you again, frankly, and I decided that I’d start all over again, if it meant that that happened.”
“Claire… baby…”
“Five minutes,” she snapped, horrified that the endearment touched her someplace deep and sweet, someplace that made her feel teary and vulnerable. “Starting now, so don’t waste your time.”
Griff nodded.
This is it, man. This is it.
“Claire,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.” He stopped.
She stared at him, dumbstruck. “That’s – that’s it? Hardly five minutes’ worth of talking. Unless you plan to repeat it five hundred more times?”
“No, I don’t. But it was the most important thing to say, because that night when it all fell apart, I didn’t say it. I had to say it to you now, and it had to be the first thing that I said.”
“Oh.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Right.”
“I fucked up, baby,” he said suddenly. “I knew from the beginning that I was attracted to you, and I knew that I was compromised professionally, and I should have handed the op off to someone else, right there and then.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, totally baffled by this part.
“Because when I was close to you…” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “It felt – right. I felt like despite the fake name and the lies you were telling me… I felt like I was still seeing the real you. Like the real Claire was just shining on through, and I was dazzled and amazed by her. No way I was letting her go, not for anything, even my own sanity and reputation. If I had, my life would have been darker, colder. You warmed me, kitten, you made me feel and want and just – be. Be in a way that I haven’t been in a long, long time.”
She froze. God, those words – they were the ones that she’d wanted so long to hear, needed so much to believe. They were her deepest, most longed-for wish come to life… and they were being uttered by the one man that she couldn’t even begin to trust.
“And about handing off the op,” Griff continued. “If it were any other woman, I would have, and no debate. What I should have done was waited for all the information and final report to come back from the surveillance, and if you’d been cleared and declared uninvolved in what your ex had been up to, then I should have found a way to meet you. I should have done it right, kitten, and I should have been honest about who I was and what I was all about… I should have earned your trust, and then hopefully, you’d have wanted to tell me the truth.”
“And if I had told you?”
“Then I’d have accepted you with open arms and an open heart. I’d have been nothing but supportive and loving.”
“Would you have told me about the op?”
“Yes,” he said without any hesitation at all. “I’d absolutely have told you. I’d have taken that chance and been honest with you.”
She fell silent again, and he took the opportunity to speak again.
“So what I came here to tell you is that I’m sorry. I’m so, so damn sorry. Sorry for misleading you, sorry for lying to you, sorry for hurting you. Most of all for that, I think, because I know that your ex hurt you with his lies and his dishonesty, and it took so much faith and strength for you to let me in, even the little bit that you did. It took guts, baby, to start to trust me, and considering what Wilbur had put you through, I know that it wasn’t an easy thing for you to do. You were so open and so beautiful in that courage, and you took a leap with me – and I let you fall. I let you crash. I let you get hurt.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You did.”
“I know, baby.” His arms itched to hold her, but no way she’d permit it. Not yet. “I’m sorry.”
“So what do you want from me?” she asked, her moment of weakness over. “What did you come here hoping for?”
“For you to…” He stopped. Asking her for forgiveness was what he was really after, but he knew how much it was to ask for. So instead, he asked for something small, something that she might be able to handle as a start. “To let me into your life again. Even a tiny bit.”
“No.”
“No?” He was horrified at her flat rejection. “Just – just no?”
“Yes. Just no.”
“Claire –”
“No, John, or Griff, or whatever the fuck your name is. No. You blew up my whole life in Denver – a life that I’d worked so hard for, a life that I loved – and now you show up here, looking to destroy this one too?”
“Hey, no. Baby, no.”
“But don’t you know that that’s exactly what you’ve just done? This place was – clean. Pure. Untouched. You get me? People here accepted me as me, made me feel welcome, as Claire. And now you come here, with all your dirty history and complicated past with me, and you’ve… tainted it. You’ve sullied it, somehow. How can I ever come back to this café again without seeing you standing there in front of me? Without hearing your voice tell me how sorry you are? You think I want any of that associated with a place that I felt safe and secure in?”
“Oh, God,” Griff was stricken. “I didn’t mean to –”
“I don’t care. It’s what you’ve done. You’ve inserted yourself into this life, and now I see you here. I don’t want to see you here. I don’t want you see you anywhere near me.”
“Then I’ll go.” He knew he was defeated, and he knew that he’d known it was going to happen. His hope had been foolish and almost self-destructive… but he’d had to try. He’d had to say he was sorry. “I’ll go and leave you in your new life.”
She shook her head. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“Baby, you need to stop running every single time something that you don’t like enters your life.”
“You giving me advice how to live my life?” she snarled. “You? Really?”
“That ain’t my place, Claire, and I know that. But… well… you’re safe here, I swear it. I’ll never come back here without an invitation. Never.”
She peered up at him, hearing nothing but sincerity in his words. And she knew that despite the man’s lies and bullshit, he was telling her the God’s-honest truth in this moment. She could stay.
If she wanted. If she could look past his ghost.
“Well, my five minutes are up, so I won’t say any more,” he said. “But there is one more thing.”
“What?”
Silently, he took a cream envelope out of his coat pocket, set it on the messy desk. Then he looked at her like he was memorizing her face, and without another word, he turned and left.
He just left.
She stared at the closed office door, half-relieved that he was gone, half-disbelieving that he was actually gone. Her eyes flicked to the envelope, and she picked it up slowly, almost afraid of what might be inside. She opened it, then pulled the stiff piece of paper out carefully.
When she saw the gold and white lilies across the top of the invitation that she’d already received as an e-invite at her work e-mail, her heart stopped. It was like two parallel universes had just folded over on each other, just crashed and collided, and bits and pieces and people and events had tumbled out, fallen into the wrong life, shown up in the wrong damn world. She felt unbalanced, almost dizzy, and she clutched the desk as she stared at Beth and Jim’s wedding invitation addressed to ‘John Griffin and Guest’.
&
nbsp; Holy Lord. He knows them, the people whose rings I designed? He’s going to their wedding, the wedding that I told Beth that I couldn’t come to because no way I’m ever setting foot in Denver ever again… and he’s inviting me to go? With him? Is this a sign? Or is this a shortcut to insanity?
I swear to God, the universe has one fucked up sense of humor.
Chapter Sixteen
Four months later
The day of Beth and Jim’s wedding dawned unseasonably cool and rainy, but the forecast predicted sun by the afternoon. Not that they were especially worried, since obsessing about the weather was just about the last thing that they cared about. Besides, Beth for one was focused on something else to worry about.
She stood in the bride’s changing area in the back of the church, trying hard not to fuss with her hair. It was a losing battle, though, since it was tied back in an incredible French plait… and that was probably the one hair style that Beth had never attempted back in her days of changing her hair color and length and style every two weeks. It was the most beautiful that her thick, curly locks had ever looked, and she was wondering if she could actually pull off its elegance.
“Seriously, Beth.” Olivia rolled her brown eyes, and deftly stepped aside as Frankie crawled towards her, his fingers caked with gummy cracker crumbs. “You look gorgeous. Stop fussing.”
“I know, I know.” Beth started to fiddle with her earrings instead, as a displacement activity. “I’m just used to my hair being down.”
“Speaking of being down,” Emma said as Cordelia waddled into the room. “You and the rapidly-growing boy in there want to sit?”
“Urgh,” Cordelia said as she sank into the closest chair. “How did I forget this part of pregnancy?”
“What part?” Jenny asked. “The ‘sitting down all the time’ part?”
“No,” Cordelia said wryly. “The ‘walking like a duck’ part.”
The women laughed, then Emma spotted Frankie crawling at warp-speed for the makeup table.
Solid Gold (Unseen Enemy Book 8) Page 17
