Asking For It

by Alyssa Kress

  All the same, Griffith felt like there was a rock in his mattress. Grimacing, he rose onto his elbows to readjust his weight. If only Kate would admit he was a failure as a counselor, he could go back home and get to the dastardly business of closing this place down. By God, then the woman would respect him.

  Griffith had to shift his weight yet again. Hell, there had to be three rocks in his mattress. And a few in his head. Orlando was right. Kate wasn't poison. Even if she beheld Griffith in all his glory, platinum card, Porsche, water-stealing bulldozers and all, she still wouldn't respect him.

  Not that it mattered, Griffith assured himself, lowering to the mattress and determinedly closing his eyes. He breathed slowly in and out.

  All that mattered was that in the end he was going to win.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kate didn't like it.

  On Saturday night she edged her spoon over the paper cover of the supper table and frowned across the room at Bert. In his usual spot by the big double doors of the dining hall, ready to run, he hunched over his meal and glanced stealthily around, as if nobody had already noticed him helping himself to a free meal courtesy of Camp Wild Hills. Ha. Wearing jeans that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in a year and a ripped T-shirt, Bert's appearance was wildly at odds with the bright clothes and energetic movements of the campers around him. He stood out like a rock in a basket of cherries.

  It was a cinch Griffith would notice the man.

  Kate sliced her spoon impotently across the paper tablecloth. She hadn't previously considered the problem Bert posed. He knew the way down the hill. He lived down the hill, at the foot of Wild Tail Creek.

  And, unlike Kate's counselors, Bert would be highly amenable to a bribe. It wouldn't even have to be a very big one.

  Slowly, carefully, Kate shifted her gaze from the dangerous Bert. How close was Griffith to the cadger? Would her unwilling counselor see the fellow? Would he be curious enough to approach him?

  Griffith's nine-year-olds were an exuberant mess three tables away from Bert. Paper plates and napkins were flying across the table in an impromptu dogfight. Half the kids weren't even sitting down, and two of them were actually chasing each other around the table, stepping in a puddle of spilled applesauce and spreading it in the process.

  Frowning, Kate made a close inspection of the table. What she thought she'd seen at first glance — but hadn't believed — was true. Griffith was not there. Her brows snapped down. No wonder the kids were acting like monkeys at a zoo. He was supposed to be with them, supervising.

  Kate looked around the rest of the room. She even stood up, stepping one leg behind her bench seat. No Griffith. Her nine-year-olds' counselor wasn't even in the dining hall.

  So much for worrying about him contacting Bert.

  Kate drew her other leg over the bench. "Jimmy, you're head of the table while I'm gone," she told the teenager sitting to her right.

  "Uh...sure thing, Miss Kate." Jimmy's glance toward her was uncertain. "Everything okay?"

  Kate gave him a reassuring smile. "Everything is just fine. I'm simply going to...fetch a truant." On her way out of the room she stopped to tell Arnie she had to check something by the bunkhouses.

  "You want I should start the movie right after clean-up?" Arnie asked her.

  "Sure. That'd be a good idea." Kate gave his shoulder an absent pat before stalking out the back way through the kitchen, the fastest route to the bunkhouses.

  She found Griffith in the first place she looked. Rather, she heard the hiss of the shower behind the wall adjacent to Bunkhouse Three.

  Kate knew exactly what he was up to. The hot water only lasted for twenty minutes. Anyone who jumped into the locker-room style shower after that got a bracingly cold shower. This worked out to include seventy-five percent of the camp population.

  Griffith Blaine was making sure he got a hot shower.

  A snort of mingled contempt and amusement escaped Kate. She stalked around to the front of the bunkhouse and walked in through the open door.

  She stopped on the verge of crossing the threshold, though. Exactly what did she intend to do here? Interrupt Griffith in the shower?

  Kate bit her lower lip. In her mind flashed an image of Griffith naked in the shower, water sliding down that elegant torso of his. In fact, with the sound of the shower louder now, she could hear the subtle gradations of sound as his body moved through the spray.

  She twisted her lips to one side. Weird that she'd be imagining that. She lived with fifty-odd males every summer, but had never pictured a single one of them naked. Strange...and definitely irritating that Griffith should have this mysterious effect on her. Particularly when she was feeling more and more like chewing him out.

  Okay, so she wasn't going to walk in on Griffith in the shower. But she could scold him through the door. With a bemused huff, she stepped into the bunkhouse.

  It was a good thing she was focused on the floor, where a line of light from beneath the shower room door outlined Griffith's sin. Looking there, she saw a scaly shape slide beneath one of the beds.

  Kate froze. But the snake had seen her, and obviously felt threatened. The sound of dry rattles, a macabre maraca, shook the air. Fear rushed through Kate, followed closely by a wave of fury.

  The door. Griffith had left it open. This was strictly against the rules, and for this very reason. Snakes were rampant in the brush, rattlesnakes included.

  And now one was hiding beneath the bed of one of her campers.

  Kate backed away slowly. Her jaw tightened with anger. So, Griffith didn't think he had to follow the rules, did he? He thought it was okay to let his kids sabotage the peach harvest rather than pick it. He thought it was okay to skip dinner so he could have a hot shower. And he thought it didn't matter if he closed the bunkhouse door.

  Briefly, it occurred to her Griffith wasn't here of his own free will. But so what? A snake didn't care about Griffith's precious liberty.

  If it wasn't for the fact that a camper could walk in before Griffith came out of the shower, she would have left the rattler right where it was, for Griffith to handle while naked and defenseless.

  But Kate wasn't like Griffith; she couldn't be that irresponsible. She turned and went for a shovel.

  Mad enough to spit fire.

  ~~~

  Griffith came out of the shower whistling. Yes, he was feeling pretty good. Not only had he played hooky with his dinner duties, but he'd nabbed the first hot water of the evening.

  Killed two birds with one stone. And Griffith did like efficiency.

  Then he saw Kate sitting on his bunk bed. With nothing but a cheap towel wrapped around his hips, Griffith felt an unexpected rush of adrenaline.

  Her chin lifted. She looked stubborn and bossy. It made Griffith blaze. He had a brainless urge to join up with that feisty female energy.

  He was stupidly wondering if some sort of joining was her goal, too, when Kate held up an object that shriveled his burgeoning libido.

  "What is that?" Griffith asked, though the shiny triangular scales he could see gave him a pretty good idea.

  "A rattlesnake," Kate said.

  Okay, fine. But what was she doing holding the thing?

  "Don't worry, it's dead." Her mouth twisted.

  Griffith tried to cough the dryness out of his throat. "Oh?"

  Her eyes were like twin spikes of ice. "You're lucky it's dead. Because if you'd come out of the shower ten minutes ago when I walked in here looking for you, it would still have been alive."

  Griffith couldn't take his eyes from the thick, muscular shape in Kate's hand. "It...was slithering around in the bunkhouse?"

  "That it was," Kate spat. "Thanks to you."

  "Me?" Griffith dared to flick his gaze from the dead snake to Kate's face.

  "You left the door open," Kate explained. "Wide open. Doors are supposed to be kept closed, so that unpleasant wildlife like this don't get in. You know that. You were told."

  "I left
the door open?" With his heart pounding, Griffith tried to remember. He'd wanted to get into the shower before anybody realized he wasn't at dinner. Had he left the door open?

  "We're lucky it was me who walked in on it," Kate said, her voice dripping with venom. "And not one of the campers." Still holding the dead snake, she stood up from the bunk bed. "But you don't think about that, do you? You don't think about how your disrespect for the camp might affect anybody but yourself."

  Griffith was speechless. Had he left the door open? He really didn't think so, but an unpleasant weight formed in his stomach. "Do you think any more snakes got in?"

  Her expression dripping with contempt, Kate merely took her dead snake and stalked out of the bunkhouse.

  Griffith was left to stand there, undressed, barefoot, and still wondering if there were any more snakes.

  ~~~

  He tossed aside the towel and got dressed in a big hurry, too big a hurry to bemoan the oversize and low-fashion clothes lent by Arnie Meadowlark. Then, armed with a straw broom, he conducted a thorough search of the bunkhouse. He poked under every bunk bed, checked behind every door, and went through all the closets.

  His ears were ringing the whole time with Kate's blistering set-down. You don't think about anybody but yourself.

  Meanwhile, not a snake was to be found.

  Griffith carefully set the broom in its place in the front utility closet. He spent half a second thinking about it before going to find Kate.

  It was stupid, really. Didn't he want her to think he was a fuck-up?

  ~~~

  She ought to get rid of him. The idea sang through Kate's head as she stomped off to the dumpster, where she threw the dead snake, and all the way past the dining room, which had been converted into a movie house full of children watching Despicable Me. She stalked up to her office on the second floor.

  Griffith was not only a goof-off, but a hazard. Through his thoughtlessness somebody could have been seriously hurt.

  It had been a mistake to make him stay, to try turning him into a real counselor. It would have been better, and safer, to find eight kids to send home.

  Kate swept behind her desk and dropped into her springy wheeled chair. The idea of seeing Griffith leave was like bubbles in her blood. She leaned back in her chair, steepled her fingers, and thought with bliss and satisfaction about seeing him gone.

  Perhaps too much bliss and satisfaction.

  Her fingers trembled where they tapped against each other. She was still...reacting, she realized. The reaction had been far more vigorous earlier, when Griffith had walked out of the shower. His chest had been bare, little rivulets of water zigzagging over curved muscle and glittering on a virile field of dark curling hair. Worst of all, though, had been his face, wearing a look of sensual contentment.

  Something had leaped in her belly, something...hungry and curious.

  She'd nearly dropped the stupid snake. She'd nearly dropped her righteous anger.

  And now she had to wonder... Why had she gotten so angry in the first place? Had it been righteous? Anyone could forget to close the door. She'd done it herself. It had simply been very bad luck that in the five or ten minutes the door had been open, a deadly rattlesnake had decided to wriggle inside.

  Kate pulled her hands apart and poised them on the edge of her desk. She hadn't blown up at Griffith about the snake. She'd blown up at him because she'd nearly melted at the sight of him. She'd had a physical response to him, as if — as if —

  God. It made no earthly sense. She didn't have physical responses to anybody, not for years. Griffith, of all men, shouldn't have been the one to change that. He was nothing she admired in a person. He was materialistic, self-centered, and shallow. He was Eric turned inside out, with all the bad qualities sitting in the open where anyone could see them.

  Yet the fact remained. She'd responded to him. Physically. She still was responding. To make matters worse, she now heard the sound of heavy, male footsteps approaching from the hall. She sat up straight in her chair.

  Griffith, looking disheveled and dangerous, appeared in her doorway.

  For one taut moment they stared at each other. He looked every inch the danger she'd so vaguely sensed in him, his eyes a stormy gray, a short length of brown beard roughening the planes and angles of his jaw.

  Kate willed her heart to settle down. This was ridiculous. "Yes?" she asked, determined at least to sound cool.

  "There are no more snakes," Griffith told her.

  Kate raised her eyebrows.

  Griffith took a step into her office. "I checked everywhere. The one you found was the only one that got in."

  Kate tilted her head. "You checked?"

  "I did." He took several more steps into the room, approaching her desk.

  Kate lamented the fact her heart sped faster.

  "I believe I closed the door," he said, "but maybe I didn't. I wasn't paying very much attention, I'll grant you. But it was an oversight, an accident, not a deliberate attempt to hurt anybody."

  Exactly what Kate had been telling herself, dammit.

  "And anyway," Griffith went on, "as I was the only one in the bunkhouse at the time, it was only me who was in any danger."

  His eyes were intent, serious...authoritative. Kate's stomach did a belly roll. She hadn't known Griffith could look like this, as if he had some integrity behind his steel. For a moment she felt deeply frightened.

  But then his gaze shifted. Kate didn't know what caused him to break the contact, but she was glad. This was all strange, stupid — wrong.

  Staring beyond Kate, Griffith blinked. With an indrawn breath he stiffened. "What's that?" he asked.

  "Excuse me?"

  Griffith was staring at the wall beyond Kate. He pointed. "That."

  Kate turned in her chair. He was pointing to the plot plan the architect had given her, the big two-by-three-foot blueprint. "It's a map of the camp."

  "No, it isn't." Griffith's pointing finger waved to Kate's right. "There are only three bunkhouses in the camp. This map shows six."

  "Ah, yes." Kate relaxed. He wasn't looking all serious and dangerous any more. She wasn't feeling quite so stupid. Concentrating on the confusion now in Griffith's expression, Kate explained, "This is a map of our proposed expansion. Really, it's a renovation. Two of our bunkhouses washed out in some big rains a few years ago. I'm replacing them and adding a sixth. All I need is a building permit and we can have a hundred campers per session next summer."

  "A hundred campers," Griffith repeated, under his breath. He walked around Kate's desk toward the map, staring at it almost angrily.

  "I won't count on you to be helping out then; you don't have to look so worried," Kate remarked.

  But he didn't respond to the bait, just kept glaring at the map. Lips flat, he tapped his index finger on one of the new bunkhouses.

  It suddenly occurred to Kate that the route down the hill was delineated on the site map. Was he staring at the proposed bunkhouses even while memorizing the path down?

  Half of her jumped to get him away from the map, to protect her campers from being sent home if he managed to escape. The other half of her sat like a lump on a log, thinking it might be a very good thing if he did figure out how to leave.

  She didn't like the way he'd made her feel a few minutes ago, subject to urges she'd thought dormant, if not dead. Out of control.

  But as she sat there unmoving, Kate felt more and more ashamed. She should not have a physical response to Griffith — of all men — but she did. Was she going to handle it, for the sake of the campers, or was she going to act like a complete craven — like Griffith, himself, in fact?

  She made herself move. Griffith had to be distracted from the map.

  "You were right about the snake," she told him.

  He started, and turned to stare at her.

  Her heart suddenly sped. His gray eyes had way too much impact on her, so she chattered quickly on. "It was an accident, and a darned unlucky o
ne at that. I mean, who could predict a snake would wander in during the few minutes you were in the shower?"

  Griffith continued to stare.

  Her heart pounded heavily. "I overreacted." Kate spread her hands. "My apologies."

  Far from looking mollified by this about-face on Kate's part, Griffith appeared incensed. "You apologize." He took a long, brisk step away from the map. "I — You — Never mind. I have to go." He appeared to search for a place he had to go to. "My campers must be all over creation by now."

  "They're downstairs, watching a movie," Kate said, bemused.

  "Like I said, who knows where they've gone to," Griffith returned. "I have to go." He swiveled and banged furiously out her office door.

  Kate gazed at her now open door, still baffled by her own response, but even more mystified by Griffith's.

  ~~~

  Deirdre kept thinking she was going to wake up. Ricky couldn't really have asked her to go away with him for the weekend. They couldn't really have set out together late Friday night, laughing and chattering, her overnight bag stashed in the trunk of his car. It was too difficult to believe that when they'd reached the hotel in Santa Barbara, Ricky had gone up to the front desk and confidently asked for one room, then turned to Deirdre with a smile that said they were really together: a couple, an item, real lovers.

  But Deirdre didn't wake up. The dream continued. They made love as soon as the hotel room door closed behind them. It was a beautiful room, spacious and tastefully decorated, but it was the notion they were alone, together, and utterly private that added an extra zest to their customary sensuality.

  Afterward, they'd talked; insignificant murmurs, stray thoughts, and low chuckles. It had been easy and close and wonderful.

  It hadn't hurt that Deirdre's worries about Griffith had been at least temporarily allayed by a conversation with Helen in Blaine Development's accounting department.

  "Oh, he's done this before." Helen had waved a carefree hand, artificial fingernails flashing. "He found out some possible lessee was doing a fishing vacation in the Caribbean. Grif took off to go romance the fellow. We didn't hear from him for five days. Came back sunburned, beaming — and with a check for five mil."