A Man for the Summer

by Ruby Laska

  “G’up,” she managed, and was rewarded with a flutter of his eyelids. She left him for a minute to spit in the sink, rinsing out her mouth with water from her cupped hand. She didn’t bother to dry her hands, but ran back to Griff, who was sitting up, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

  “What time is it?”

  “5:30. In the morning. Gotta go,” she said quickly. “One of the twins fell out of bed and knocked out an incisor. We might be able to get it back in if we can get to it quick enough. I’m meeting Teddy over at the office.”

  “Oh….okay,” Griff said, giving her a warm, sweet smile. “Sorry to hear it, hope the kid’s all right.”

  “The thing is,” Junior went on, rummaging in her purse for her car key, “Ginny’s over in Idaho visiting her sister and Teddy’s going to meet me. So I need to ask you a favor if you could just please, please watch Margaret.”

  That seemed to wake him up. She saw his eyes widen in surprise and his mouth sort of fall open, but managed to head him off with a short but sloppy kiss before he could say anything.

  “Look,” she said, breaking the kiss and standing, “Carlton’s on his way over to help. And it’s just one kid.”

  Junior watched the panic loom in his eyes. She knew how he felt about kids. It wasn’t fair to demand this of him—but it still hurt, seeing how horrified he was at the idea of spending time with two of the finest kids in Missouri.

  “Uh, look, I don’t need Carlton,” he said. “Call him and—”

  “Too late,” Junior said and headed for the door. “He’s on his way over with Margaret. He’s had his license for a good month or so now and he loves that child like a sister. He’ll take good care of her. You probably won’t have to do a thing all day. Uh, not that I’m going to be gone all day or anything.”

  “Well, good, because—”

  “Except when people see me in there on a Saturday, they tend to wander in. And I hate to turn ‘em away because that’s when you get some of your reluctant types—”

  She skidded at the door, turned and saw him trying to stand up, but he was tangled in a crocheted afghan. He looked so pathetic and frightened she raced back to kiss him once more.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get back quick as I can and Carlton’s great. Margaret’s great. You’ll love her.”

  It was a lie, and that fact made her heart ache a little. Luckily she had somewhere to be, and she stuffed that ache firmly back where it came from.

  She pecked his cheek, and even in that brief contact felt the stubbly warmth of his skin. It drew her closer and made her want to roll up tight with this man and stay there. Possibly forever.

  “Bye. Love—”

  Junior froze mid-stride, stricken. She was about to say “love you” as easy as you please, like she was saying “good morning” or “decaf, with cream”, and the thought nearly laid her flat.

  She glanced at Griff and he’d heard it too, and if his eyebrows shot up any higher they’d disappear into his hairline.

  “Love to have dinner with you later,” she mumbled lamely, even as she flew out the door like an Olympic sprinter.

  Didn’t matter. She knew she wasn’t fooling either one of them.

  Nailing a tooth back into a set of gums, or however they did it, apparently didn’t take all that long. Griff saw Teddy making his way up the porch steps, taking them two at a time, and it wasn’t even 9:30.

  He’d have gotten out off the couch to get the door for Teddy, but he couldn’t. He sighed heavily and watched, helpless, as Teddy knocked, rocked back and forth on his heels once or twice, shrugged, and opened the door.

  “Oh—hey,” he said, stopping short when he noticed Griff on the couch. “The two of you look pretty cozy.”

  Griff felt himself redden. The little girl was draped in his arms, and she was snoring gently, but he himself was far from cozy. He had been holding this position for what felt like hours, though it hadn’t been more than twenty minutes. The five-year-old weighed astonishingly much, and he hadn’t dared shift an inch for fear that he would wake her up. After the first minute the muscles in his forearm had begun to scream with pain; after five minutes he no longer had any sensation in his fingers.

  “I—uh—I don’t mean to alarm you but I think she might have a fever,” Griff said hoarsely. “After she fell asleep she got kind of red and her skin got all, well, sweaty, kind of, and…”

  He checked Teddy out sideways, fearful that the child’s father would think he’d somehow made his daughter sick while her sister underwent some sort of medieval dental procedure, but to his surprise saw that Teddy was giving him an easy grin.

  “Oh, don’t worry, they all do that. Little kids. Turn into ovens when they fall asleep. You wouldn’t think it would be comfortable, would you? But they don’t mind. Heck, she’ll sleep there for hours.”

  Hours? Griff gulped in horror. The tingling sensation had traveled up his arm and was now overtaking his shoulder and neck. He’d probably have to spend a week at the chiropractor’s after this.

  “She give you any trouble?” Teddy asked, settling down in a chair and putting his feet up on Junior’s coffee table, right on top of a stack of magazines.

  If he didn’t shift soon, Griff suspected, he might lose all sensation and drop the child. “Uh, no. No trouble.”

  It was a lie. From the moment they arrived, Margaret had latched onto him with sheer delight, refusing to let him out of her sight for even a minute. Carlton had tried a few times to intervene, but each time he reached for her Margaret would stamp her feet and wail until Carlton got out of the way. And then she’d return to trailing Griff around, every couple of seconds asking “What are you doing?”

  The first few times he’d tried to answer her, but she never seemed satisfied with what he had to say, interrupting him constantly. So he quit trying.

  “I’m not really good with kids,” he added.

  “Looks to me like you’re doing fine.”

  Yeah, right.

  “Um, how did it go? With Jayce?”

  “Aw, we weren’t able to get the tooth back in. It’s okay, though. She looks kind of cute without it, and she probably would have lost it anyway in the next few years.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I mean good.”

  The silence between them stretched, but Teddy didn’t seem to mind. He kept a trace of a grin on his face and watched his daughter in Griff’s lap with what appeared to be satisfaction.

  “Look,” Griff finally said. “I, uh, don’t have very much feeling left in this arm. Would you mind—”

  “Oh!” Teddy jumped up and lifted his daughter out of Griff’s arms.

  He nearly cried with relief. He circled his shoulder and felt the blood rushing back into his arm.

  And then Teddy plopped Margaret right back down, reversed, so she was now draped over his other arm.

  “Don’t be afraid to move her,” Teddy said. “She won’t wake up. Sleeps like a rock.”

  He returned to his chair as Griff’s heart sank. He cautiously wiggled his recovering arm. Teddy was right; Margaret hardly stirred even as his motion rocked her back and forth. He sighed, hesitated, and then picked up her bulk and laid her across his shoulder so that her head lolled against his ear, but much more comfortably than a moment ago.

  “Yeah,” Teddy said approvingly. “Now you’re getting the hang of it. So what exactly do you have in mind where Junior is concerned?”

  That stopped Griff’s thoughts in their tracks. Teddy was flashing him that same easy grin, but there was an edge to it now, an unmistakably protective edge.

  “Are you asking me if my intentions are…good?” Griff asked slowly.

  “Sure, you want to put it like that.”

  The seconds ticked by and Griff felt like he was at the edge of an abyss, about to fall in, hanging on with his fingernails.

  “Uh, yeah,” he finally said.

  “You seem to have moved yourself in.”

  “Oh, that? It’s a convenience thing, rea
lly, I needed access to wireless, and there wasn’t anywhere else I could find it—”

  “Nowhere else in Poplar Bluff, you mean,” Teddy said helpfully.

  Griff perspired. What was the right answer here? Was he being warned off or driven closer? For all his friendliness, Teddy Atkinson was a hard one to read.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You’re working on a book, right?”

  “A travel book—”

  “Which you could wrap up just about anywhere, right? I mean, I’m just trying to establish that there must be a damn good reason why you’re sticking around.”

  Griff nodded, dumbly.

  He liked Teddy, even as the man and his daughter were subjecting him to a kind of torture he’d never even imagined possible.

  But he couldn’t help wondering how Teddy would feel when he learned Griff had knocked up his sister. Or not. Either way, Griff was scheduled for an abrupt exit, and he doubted there would be time for him to stop by Teddy’s and explain his side of everything on his way out of town.

  “I really like Junior,” he said. It sounded like he was in grade school.

  “Me too,” said Teddy, and his grin widened. The guy looked like he was enjoying himself. “She’s a hell of a gal.”

  Griff nodded. Margaret stirred in her sleep, nestling a little closer into the crook of his neck, then sighed contentedly. “That she is. I, well, I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone quite like her.”

  “No. No, I doubt you have. Well, guess I’d better get going. Carlton!” he called as he rose from his chair and stretched.

  “He’s in the office,” Griff said. “I have League of Legends on my laptop.”

  “Oh, I like that one myself.”

  Carlton ambled into the room.

  “Hey, Uncle Teddy,” he said.

  Teddy reached for his daughter, and Griff managed to stand up despite his aches. He looked down and saw that his shirt and khakis were a nest of wrinkles. This crowd probably didn’t much care.

  “Thanks for giving me a hand, Carlton,” Griff said, breathing deeply. It wasn’t so bad; the day had barely started, really. And Margaret was kind of cute, now that he could get a look at her from a little distance.

  “Griff?”

  “Yeah?” The boy hadn’t had much to say; Griff sensed he was a little shy.

  “I thought I’d stick around today, give you a hand. With the wall, you know, like you were saying?”

  Teddy glanced between them curiously.

  “Wall?”

  Griff shrugged. “I was telling Carlton that I, uh, that Junior was thinking of taking out this wall. It would let a lot of light in through the kitchen and, you know, open up the place.”

  “Uh huh.” Teddy said it slowly, his skepticism obvious even through the grin, which now bordered on positively gleeful. Eager, no doubt, to get on the horn and call everyone in the county, Griff thought darkly.

  “And,” he went on, determined to dig himself out, “I’ve got a little experience with that kind of stuff. Construction.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So I thought I might, you know, get in there and see what we have to work with, if it’s load bearing, and so on.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s funny. I’ve never known Junior to be all that into home improvements,” he said. “Guess you must be a good influence.”

  Junior pushed her hair back against her scalp, but it just flopped forward again. Somewhere in her purse there was a hair clip, but she didn’t bother to search for it.

  Just as Teddy was leaving with Jayce, Willard Cole limped into the office, clutching his cheek and mumbling something about just being in the neighborhood.

  And after Junior finished up with him, it was the Beaufort brothers. She could never tell them apart, with their seemingly identical masses of tattoos and facial hair, but one of them was hurting bad and refused to admit it until she coaxed him into the chair.

  In fact she kept so busy that the sun was well on its way down before she remembered what day it was.

  Her period. It was due today. And she had never, ever been late.

  And now she was standing on her own doorstep giddy as a teenager, full of an unfamiliar knot of emotions, not sure whether to laugh or cry, or even how the heck she was going to tell him.

  Or what was supposed to happen next.

  Junior took a deep breath and threw open the door, but her greeting died on her lips.

  Someone had blown up her living room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

  “Easy, easy,” Griff muttered, not sure if he was talking to Carlton, or himself, or Junior.

  “We hit a few snags,” he said quickly. “Nothing big. But I’d hoped to be a little further along by now. There’s a little termite damage, old, but—”

  “What. Is. That. In. Your. Hand.”

  Her voice was cold steel. Bewildered, Griff glanced at his empty hands at his sides.

  “Uh, nothing,” Carlton muttered, his developing voice skipping. “I mean, I only had this one.”

  The beer.

  Damn. Guilt washed over Griff like an icy shower. It had been dumb, really, bad judgment, but things had been going so well with the kid. He’d opened up, he’d been talking, and to Griff’s surprise it had been really interesting and kind of sweet and had taken him back to his own awkward teenage years, but in a nice way, a sentimental way.

  And he’d just wanted to keep it going.

  He seized the near-empty bottle from Carlton’s unresisting hand and set it on the floor behind him, as though maybe Junior would forget about it.

  “My fault,” he said quickly. “It won’t happen again. It was just the one, don’t worry.”

  “Carlton is barely sixteen years old,” Junior spat out. “A boy. You’re supposed to be the adult here.”

  Griff held up his hands in a show of defeat. She was right, and he was repentant.

  He’d never seen her this angry before, not even when she’d tried to kick him out after their first night together. Her face was flushed and her narrowed eyes shot emerald sparks at him.

  And repentant as he was he couldn’t help noticing that she was very, very beautiful.

  “Aunt Junior, I’m not a boy,” Carlton said, his voice edged with frustration. Griff remembered that well, hovering on the edge of manhood and feeling like no one around him noticed or cared. “It was one crummy beer. Dad lets me have one sometimes at home.”

  “You’re not home, right now, young man. You are in my home.”

  “You always say your house is my home.”

  Griff had to give the boy credit; his jaw jutted out in a challenge, even if he was backing slowly away from his aunt. Brave kid.

  Junior glared at the two of them, taking shallow breaths, and then suddenly Griff noticed the corners of her mouth trembling.

  “All right,” she said firmly. “You got me there. I never could win an argument with your Daddy either. But let me tell you if I ever catch you with a beer in your hand again before your twenty-first birthday, I will personally hold you down and pull every tooth from your head, you hear?”

  Carlton grinned, clearly aware that he’d won.

  “I hear. Sorry, Junior. I made a mistake. But look what me and Griff did!”

  Excitedly, he gestured at the gaping hole where the wall had been, the chunks of plaster and piles of two-by-fours on the floor. All the furniture was pushed to the side, covered with sheets.

  Griff felt the blood rush to his face. He had second thoughts. Maybe he should have told her after all.

  Junior took her time surveying the scene, which Griff had to admit did kind of resemble hurricane debris.

  “I’ll fix it,” he said, feeling lame. “The light—see how much light it brings to the rest of the house?”

  “Mmmmm,” Junior muttered, her tone noncommittal. “Okay, Carlton, get your butt in my car. Griff, you drive Carlton’s.”

  “Aww—”
<
br />   “You’ve been drinking, and you’re not about to get behind the wheel.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” Griff said meekly, as Carlton handed him the keys. It flashed through his mind that it was sort of funny, the two of them flat-out intimidated by Junior.

  Carlton headed out the front door, but as Griff began to follow, Junior laid a cool hand on his arm. As he turned to look, he saw that any trace of a smile he thought he’d spotted was long gone now.

  “You were the adult here,” she said. “I can forgive him, because he was just following your lead.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. For ever thinking you might learn how to be in a child’s life. Until you learn to think like an adult, you’ll never be able to be a parent, not in any meaningful way.”

  Junior strode out after Carlton, leaving Griff alone in the ruined room.

  Suddenly, he doubted whether anything would seem funny again for a very, very long while.

  She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her skin, warm under the old quilt, tense under his touch. Reluctantly, he drew back his hand.

  She was only on the other side of the bed, but she seemed miles and miles away. They’d driven back from Teddy’s in stony silence, and she’d locked the door to the bathroom as she got ready for bed. Griff had waited a long time before joining her there.

  “Junior?” he whispered.

  For a long time, she didn’t answer. Then he heard her sigh, and turn over on her back.

  “I’m tired, Griff. I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Yeah, me too. I thought we could—”

  “I need to sleep. I was up early.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s been a long day. With Jayce and all. And I guess my surprise didn’t exactly turn out the way I’d hoped.”

  “Mmmm.”

  Griff didn’t like these neutral murmurs. It wasn’t her style, and he’d become accustomed to her blurting out everything on her mind.

  “Honey?” he tried. He’d never called her that, never called her anything but Junior, but he felt like she was slipping away, and he longed to get her back, to get her just to look at him, to see for herself how he felt.