by Ruby Laska
“But last night—”
“Last night I made a mistake. And I don’t want to compound it by making another one. I’m going to honor my responsibilities,” he added hastily as he saw the fire die in her eyes.
“I know,” Junior said softly, “You’re right, I don’t know what I was thinking. Here, let me help.”
And though her fingers were magic as they twined around him, the heat and the need were gone, and Griff stilled her. He took her hands in his and pressed them to his chest.
“Look,” he said. “If you’re not, if this isn’t—”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” Junior said, and then she smiled, a lovely smile but with too much sadness around the edges, and the last of Griff’s pounding desire began to subside.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
It was true. He was sorry he’d ever stopped in Poplar Bluff, sorry he’d had that damn toothache, but most of all he was sorry that he’d ever put that sadness in her eyes.
It was Junior who pulled away, gently, gracefully, winding her long legs out from under him and somehow wrapping herself in the sheet so that she sat like a robe-draped goddess at the edge of the bed.
“Hey, these things happen,” she said brightly. “Better luck next time, right?”
Griff realized that she was waiting for him to go. He saw how tightly she clutched the white sheet, how the mask of cheerfulness had settled down on her face.
It tore at him. He didn’t want her to be the one in pain. He wanted to shoulder the whole burden, he wanted that happiness back in her eyes.
Even if it wasn’t him that put it there.
“I—I’ll go fix us some tea,” he said. He’d give her the solitude he wanted, even though he suspected she’d use the time to retreat further into herself.
“Oh. That sounds great.”
Griff hesitated at the door. “You were wonderful,” he said softly, but the words weren’t adequate for what he was feeling. “You are wonderful. This is all going to turn out—you’re going to get the happiness you deserve. You’ll see.”
But as he slipped away, he remembered that look of sadness etched on her face, and he wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Junior’s heart started beating a little faster as she reached the steps, and her feet slowed down. She paused and looked at her house.
It had been three days since Griff moved his things over, three days since that disastrous night of the party. Griff had been painfully polite.
And busy.
She could hear him at the computer when she woke up, and the empty coffeepot in the kitchen let her know he’d been up for a while. When she left in the mornings, he barely glanced up to say goodbye.
But early in the afternoon, he put his work on the book aside. She knew this because all of her neighbors made a point of bumping into her to tell her they heard her handsome boarder making all kinds of noise after lunch.
Pounding. Clanking. Things being moved around.
Today, it appeared, he’d fixed the front steps. Fresh wood supported the old, and Junior breathed deep of its piney smell. A good smell, and she smiled, briefly.
Yesterday he’d painted her mailbox, of all things. It had been peeling, and listing to the left, for as long as she could remember. He’d pounded it straight and shored up its supports.
And painted it periwinkle. With a yellow flag.
Junior smiled again, a little wider.
“What, like Junior Atkinson would have a black mailbox like everyone else?” he’d shrugged innocently.
That had been a good moment. She’d wanted to touch him, to hug him.
Hell, she’d wanted to rip his clothes off. Little smudges of paint on his strong forearms, on that dumb rayon shirt—something about the paint smudges made her want to get naked with him in the shower and slowly, painstakingly, scrub them away.
But most of the time they were just polite with each other. Griff left soon after she got home, offered to bring her something from the café. She declined. And though she made a point of being in the living room, showered, touched up, and pretending to read a book when he got back, he claimed exhaustion and went up to his room.
Not tonight.
Junior hefted the grocery sacks and resolutely pulled open the front door.
“I’m home!” she shouted.
And nearly tripped over him.
Griff looked up from the floor, where he was doing something to the outlet. She recognized most of the tools spread out on the floor, but the gizmo in his hand was definitely new.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Testing for current,” he said, turning his attention back to his work.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to get electrocuted. Because your fuse box looks like it was run by a third grader. Or rather, a series of them, and none of them consulted with any of the others.”
“Um.”
“And, because did you realize you had exposed wire hanging out of here?” His voice was gently exasperated, and at last he did look her full in the face. He rose, stretching his cramped limbs. “You could have set the whole place on fire, Junior.”
“I have a smoke alarm,” she said defensively.
“Huh. A lot of good it’s going to do you when the whole place goes up in flames at once. I’m fixing up a few of the bad ones, but you need some serious work done in here.”
He sounded serious. Stern.
She giggled.
She couldn’t help it. His hair was going the wrong way, and the patch that always looked so cool, so GQ, was standing pretty much straight up. And he’d finally given up on his expensive shirts and had taken one of her T-shirts from her drawer.
PowderPuff Football 2001, it read.
It was pink.
“You look…cute,” she said.
“This is serious, Junior,” Griff said, but his own face relaxed a little, and he set his tools down. “Just promise me you’ll call an electrician.”
“Okay, I’ll call an electrician. Although unless he’s willing to work for free, it’s going to be a short conversation.”
Griff’s shoulders lifted in exasperation. “How is it that you’re living hand to mouth when it seems like just about everyone I bump into says you’re working on their teeth?”
Junior was interested. “Like who? Who have you been talking to?”
Griff sighed. “Don’t change the subject. And, like, everyone. I get around, you know. Research.”
“Mmmm.”
They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Junior was certain that the deepening hunger in Griff’s eyes was the same as her own. Her need surged as it had a few times in the last few days.
The way he’d touched her that night—before she’d messed everything up—well, she had to have it again. Had to have him, at least once, before reality came crashing down and made all kinds of decisions for them.
She wasn’t about to think of that right now, though.
“I’m cooking,” she announced.
Griff smiled. “You sure that’s a good idea? Speaking of fire danger—”
“Hey, smartass, why don’t you haul yourself in here and help instead of flap-jawing. I’m actually a decent cook when I haven’t been putting away the champagne.”
He followed her into the kitchen and took her bags, unpacking them onto the counter.
“Huh,” he said, his voice teasing. “I guess I’m never going to know if you can cook or not, since it looks like you got somebody else to do the job already.”
Junior shrugged. “Hey, delegating is a skill, too.”
There was cold roast chicken, marinated grilled vegetables, crusty bread. There were lemon squares for dessert and a pretty good bottle of pinot gris. The best she could afford, anyway.
“So,” she said. “How about a picnic?”
Griff carried the food, the plates and glasses, out back. As he set them down on the picnic table, he turned to get her reaction.
He hadn’t been able to do much, but he’d pruned back the trees and shrubs and piled the cuttings out in the back. He needed a good week or two to get this yard into shape, but with some work, it could be incredible.
“Wow,” she said, looking around. “You’ve been a busy little bee.”
“Like it?”
“Are you kidding?” Junior reached a hand up to the lilac hedge, traced the groomed branches. “It’s like the damn Luxembourg gardens. How does a city boy learn how to do this?”
Griff shrugged. “My mother always had someone working on our garden. It was small, but—”
Perfect. It was perfect, like everything in his parents’ lives. On either side of the massive carved door to their townhouse, sculpted ivy topiary grew in Italian pots, no sprig allowed to grow an inch off course. And that was just the entrance. In back, exotic trees rubbed shoulders with rare flowers and carefully tended shrubs. Though large by city standards, the yard was small enough that it took clever maneuvering to fit his mother’s gazebo, the fountain, the arbors. The furniture was housed in the carriage house, and for her outdoor occasions his mother retained the gardener to set it up and take it down. She trusted no one else among the imported slate stepping stones, the pruned branches. No one, that is, except her son. Although Griff suspected that she rarely noticed Ricardo’s slender shadow.
“Your garden?” Junior prompted. “When you were growing up?”
Griff smiled. “Not so much the garden. It wasn’t really my taste. Very formal. But the gardener, Ricardo, well, he let me hang around with him a lot. Taught me a few things.”
Junior was eyeing him closely.
“That wouldn’t be most kids’ idea of a good time, I wouldn’t think.”
Griff blinked a couple of times, and Junior felt as though an invisible barrier had slipped between them. She had seen it a few times, enough to recognize the tightness around his lips, the slight narrowing of his eyes.
The way he didn’t meet her gaze.
“I guess I wasn’t most kids.”
“But what did you do for fun? Did you play any sports?”
Griff’s smile thinned even more.
“Actually, I was a damn good golfer. Tennis too. Anything that could be done off site, preferably with some paid adult companion, with no annoying obligation to attend games—well, I guess they came to my tennis matches, but they were at the club so they could get a martini, which made it more palatable…”
Griff’s voice drifted slowly to a halt, and she could see the ghost of memories in his steely eyes. Painful ones.
“My folks didn’t get to many of my games,” she said softly. “When you’re kid number four, there are a lot of distractions, I suppose. Still, it hurt sometimes.”
Griff shrugged. “I didn’t miss them.”
She didn’t believe that. “What about, I don’t know, skateboarding—”
“Down Dearborn Avenue?”
“—or drama or chess club or, you know, the school paper or something?”
Griff finally met her gaze with his own. The glint in his gray eyes was sharp, dangerous.
“I did whatever I could to stay out of the way, Junior,” he said. “I wasn’t too picky. When I was home, when I was a little kid, anyway, I was always in the way. Mom didn’t want me underfoot when she was entertaining, and Dad needed quiet to work, and believe me, he worked night and day. Came home from work and went right to the den, and I wasn’t welcome in there.”
“That’s criminal,” Junior said, her eyes blazing. Her own father had worked irregular hours as a veterinarian, particularly when he was called out to distant farms, sometimes overnight. But the whole house knew when he came home, because no matter how tired he was, Bill Atkinson didn’t rest until he’d checked in with each of his four kids—tossed a ball, asked how school went, tried out one of his corny jokes—and kissed his wife.
“It paid the mortgage,” Griff said drily.
“No offense, Griff, but why did they have a kid if, you know, they didn’t like what came with it?”
Griff made a sound deep in his throat.
“Are you kidding? I finished off the picture. You know, perfect family. You should have seen our Christmas card every year, mom, dad and son, everybody dressed to the nines, everybody smiling. You know what’s funny?”
Junior could see that there was nothing at all funny in Griff’s thoughts, and she longed to reach out for him, smooth away the angry lines in his forehead, make him forget the unwanted boy he’d been. But she waited expectantly.
“Here you have this ridiculous name, but—well, I don’t think my Dad ever gave a thought to making me a Junior. Harris Dean Ross the Second. Nah. He couldn’t have imagined it. He was the center of his own world, and there would never have been room for another one.”
Junior slipped a hand into his. It was warm, and though she had wanted to comfort him, she liked the way his fingers closed over hers, almost protectively.
Evening was beginning to settle into her back yard, and it looked pretty, suprisingly pretty. With the trimming Griff had done, the last of the light pooled in the grass and lit the marigolds with gold.
“I’m sorry you had such a rough go,” she said softly.
Griff forced a smile.
“Don’t feel too bad for me,” he said. “I took out my frustrations on a lot of the kids at Wabash Academy.”
“What, you fought?” Junior was incredulous.
“Yeah. Come to think of it, that was probably my best sport. Though I didn’t always fight fair. In fact, I even hit a girl once.”
Junior sighed. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“No. Bad subject. Anyway, I guess I didn’t like kids even then—even when I was one.”
Junior stiffened. He’d put his cards on the table, without giving it a second thought. He’d turned to go back through the screen door into the kitchen, and she followed him numbly, watched as he opened cabinet doors and took down plates, platters, wine glasses.
He even whistled a few tuneless bars.
All the while breaking her heart.
“Yes, but…” she slid into a chair at the old kitchen table, and watched him move around. It was a pointless argument, and one that didn’t concern her.
That didn’t stop the words from pouring out.
“Your experience wasn’t a good one, but it was your parents’ fault. Kids are great. All the kids I know, anyway. They’re—they’re—”
She waved a hand helplessly in the air, trying to think of words to describe Joe and his friends, or her twin nieces Jayce and Margaret, who toddled around at the speed of light. Carlton, Charlie Earl’s son, who was easing into puberty with the grace of an elephant.
“You know,” Griff said, pausing and setting a plate down on the counter, regarding her carefully. “My parents may not have done much of a job with me, but I think they got a few things right. For one, kids and the city don’t mix. And they are loud. You can’t deny that. And demanding. Everything has to be done on their schedule. Mom’s mistake was thinking she could fit me in to the free periods in her life, between appointments. I mean, look at you. Your Dad made you feel like you counted. He even named you after himself. And when he was working, who took care of you?”
“My mom,” Junior said.
“Yeah. I bet she baked cupcakes and read to you too. Which is great. For you. But I don’t bake, I only read detective stories for fun, and I like my world quiet and calm and predictable.”
Griff realized his voice had been steadily rising in volume, and on the last few syllables he’d actually slapped the heel of his hand down on the stack of plates for emphasis, causing them to jangle.
He hadn’t meant to go on this tirade, but it wasn’t really any surprise. Sitting not four feet away from him was a woman he’d made love to, a woman who had gotten a little too uncomfortably close too fast—and who might be carrying a baby. His baby.
The thought caused him to breathe shallowly, a thin
sweat popping at his temples.
He couldn’t have a baby. He wouldn’t know what to do with a baby. He’d do everything wrong, because if there was one lousy legacy his parents had imprinted him with—despite his effort to live his life as differently from them as he possibly could—it was their fanatic dedication to order.
Even as he gulped air, Griff noticed that he was pushing the plates back into an orderly stack, lining their edges up square. He couldn’t get away from it.
“Okay,” Junior said softly, snapping him out of his funk. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you talk about things that you would rather forget. No one’s suggesting you need to be a father and—”
She held up a palm hastily to stop him before he could object. “—and I’m hungry and there’s food and I’d like, I’d really like to just spend a nice dinner with you, you’ve done so much for me, I don’t know how to thank you, and, and…would that be okay?”
Griff felt his racing heartbeat slow. It was her voice that did it, not her words so much but just that voice, which was sort of sultry and hoarse, and had been since the first words she spoke to him. It didn’t have an accent so much as a different pace, like somebody’d turned her dial just a little slower than the rest of the world. She relished her syllables somehow, and he liked the sound.
“That would be more than okay.” He smiled and this time he didn’t have to force it. “I know I’ve been making myself scarce around here.”
Junior raised her eyebrows at him, but she didn’t jump in and contradict him, the way so many women did the minute you tried to say anything serious.
“I want to say I’m sorry. I’ve been working, and that much is true, and on a good day I put a lot into the book. It’s always like that. It sort of takes it out of you. When I get like that I have to move around, do something with my hands. I guess you can tell.”
Griff ran his fingers through his hair self-consciously, glancing around at all his half-finished projects.
“At home sometimes I lift weights, but…well, the truth is, I do this sort of thing at home too. You know, wire things, rip things out, build things. It’s gotten to be kind of a bad habit.”
