by Alyssa Kress
Griffith handed over the envelope. "I'll want to talk to them about it myself, of course, but you could give them a heads up. We're settling this one."
Deirdre's head came up. "We are? I mean, uh, the impression I got of Ms. Darby over the phone... I don't think she'd be willing to compromise, for any price."
Griffith smiled. "Who said I'm going to ask her to compromise?"
Deirdre blinked again. Between Ricky and now Griffith, she wondered if any male made sense.
Still grinning, Griffith clapped her shoulder. "I'm just one surprise after another lately, aren't I? Well, brace yourself. There are a few more coming."
Deirdre held on to the back of her chair as Griffith directed her to send two dozen premium quality, long-stemmed roses to Simon Grolier.
"Write 'Thanks' on the card," Griffith told her, and smiled broadly. "Thanks, from the bottom of my heart."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"Tell me again why we have to do this." In the dry September heat, Kate tugged on the bottom of her Yves Saint Laurent jacket, something she normally only dragged out for grant interviews. Eighty miles from Camp Wild Hills, she clipped in her high-heeled pumps beside Ricky up the wide walkway to the San Luis Obispo Courthouse. It was the courthouse where Ricky had filed the camp's lawsuit against Griffith. Kate's stomach was one big knot. She never thought she'd have to see him again.
"Our opposing party asked for a settlement conference," Ricky explained. He sounded patient, although Kate had made him explain already. "It would look bad to the judge if we didn't attend."
Kate walked through the heavy door Ricky held open for her. The nerves whirling around in her stomach were from disgust, she told herself. They had nothing to do with her soft focus memories. She was about to behold the real Griffith Blaine. The idea filled her with disgust, not excitement.
Oh, boy. She wasn't supposed to have been tested this way. The lawsuit was supposed to have prevented it.
Upstairs, Ricky stopped before a door of pebbled glass. "This is the room." He looked over at Kate. "You ready?"
Her whirling nerves — no, disgust — made her stomach twist, but Kate gave a curt nod.
Ricky opened the door.
Griffith was sitting behind a plain table next to a grave-looking man with glasses and gray hair. Both men stood when the door opened. In clothes that were actually tailored to fit, Griffith looked amazing.
Kate's heart did a stupid flip-flop.
But she made herself walk in. The smile that was beginning to form on Griffith's face froze. He was either affected by the sight of her, or simply surprised at how well she cleaned up. Not only was she wearing the fancy skirt suit, but pearl drop earrings pierced her ears, and a classic chignon tamed her hair.
Kate saw Griffith swallow before he retrieved his smile. The swallow told her much more than the wide, false smile did.
His sexual attraction to her, at least, had been very real. And for one insane instant, the thought thrilled her.
"Kate," Griffith said. "And Mr. Ascensios." His big smile quirked. "Good to see you again."
"Mr. Blaine." Ricky reached across the table to shake Griffith's hand, and then that of the gray-haired stranger, who introduced himself as Don Granger and who was apparently Griffith's lawyer.
Kate felt a fine sweat break out under her ivory silk shell. Despite the fact they were here about a lawsuit, she'd somehow not imagined Griffith having a lawyer. But of course he had a lawyer. He probably had a team of lawyers. And had need of them on a regular basis.
Or maybe what was making her sweat was the way Griffith was holding out his hand, as if she would touch him.
Kate gave him the sort of smile that was more of a venomous bite, and took one of the gray, industrial-style chairs.
Lowering his rejected hand, Griffith only smiled wider. Kate felt her cheeks grow warm. What would it take to pop this man's bubble? Did he think relentless good cheer was going to win her over? Did he think her that naïve?
Probably. Kate had given Griffith reason to believe she was one dumb cookie. It had been pathetically easy for him to dupe her last month.
"A little bookkeeping, first," the gray-haired man said, once everyone had taken seats. He looked toward Ricky. "Did you receive my Form Interrogatories?"
Ricky answered, and for a few minutes the lawyers went on in this vein, using words of which Kate could only understand one in ten.
Griffith didn't even pretend to pay attention. He gazed across the table at Kate with stupid pleasure. "Gee, it's good to see you, Kate. How was the drive over here?"
Kate shot him a glare and tried to turn her attention back to the lawyers, but now that she'd lost the thread she didn't even have a ten percent comprehension of the conversation.
"You know — " Griffith raised his voice. "I've been thinking about you, and about Camp Wild Hills."
Oh, yeah, Kate thought. Sure. Once he'd gotten the lawsuit he'd been reminded there was a camp he was screwing. This was the real Griffith Blaine talking, not a false memory.
"Hey, you guys." Griffith raised his voice again, this time addressing the lawyers. "You two seem to have a lot to discuss. It so happens Kate and I have a lot to talk about, too. Perhaps we should form two different groups."
Griffith's lawyer stared at him in almost comical dismay. "What?"
Griffith indicated Kate, sitting stiff and incredulous across the table from him. Exactly what did he think they had to discuss? But Griffith went on. "I think Kate and I would be able to accomplish more to settle this case if we could talk alone...without attorneys."
"Are you cra — ?" Griffith's attorney made a visible effort to control himself. "Mr. Blaine, I can't recommend that course of action. The whole point of this conference is to — "
"The point is to settle this dispute." Griffith gave his attorney the kind of look Kate had seen him give her once or twice. Pure steel.
Griffith's attorney pressed his lips together. He looked like he would have been happy to say more, and adamantly, but that was when Ricky, in a bright tone, spoke up. "I think a private conference straight between the parties would be a great idea."
Kate turned on him. "What?"
Ricky didn't quite meet her eyes. "Griffith has a point. More could be accomplished if you two had a chance to talk...informally."
"What?" Kate asked again. She didn't want to be alone with Griffith. Hadn't that been the whole point of bringing along an attorney? Those inappropriate longings of hers — No!
"It would be highly irregular," Griffith's attorney said.
"But we're agreeable," Ricky replied, despite the sharp stab he received from Kate's heel under the table.
"Let's do it." Griffith gave his attorney another meaning-laden stare.
Kate, meanwhile, gripped Ricky's wrist. Under her breath, she hissed, "What are you doing?"
Ricky used Kate's hand on his wrist to guide her up from her chair. With a raised finger meaning, 'give us a minute,' he led her to the far corner of the room. There he took both of her hands and leaned down to whisper. "Arnie was right, he's a sucker for you."
"What?"
"It's as plain as day," Ricky whispered back. "Just hear what he has to say."
Griffith was a sucker for her? First Arnie, and now Ricky. How deluded could the men in her life get? Couldn't either of them see Griffith for who he was — a man just like her old boyfriend, Eric? "No way," Kate said.
"Look, nothing dire can happen. Even if he gets you to agree to something you later don't like, it isn't set in stone, not until we lawyers take a stab at it."
"I don't want to — "
"Kate." Her one-time camper gripped her hands, looking stern. "The point is to keep Camp Wild Hills open, correct?"
Kate felt her temperature rise beneath her cool-looking suit. "Of course that's correct." But talking to Griffith wouldn't accomplish that. And besides, seeing him, being so close to him, was doing things to her that shamed her. She had so missed him.
"Then just — talk to him. I'm not asking you to do anything more than that."
Kate ground her teeth. She saw no point in a private talk with Griffith. But Ricky had driven up here to help her, taking a day off of work he could ill afford. Even if he was completely wrong and misguided, she couldn't refuse his request. "Under protest," she muttered. She would have to be careful. Oh, so careful. Watch her own grip on reality.
Ricky beamed and gave her hands one last squeeze. "All right, then." He turned to the two waiting men. "Mr. Granger, let's go check out the cafeteria. I'll buy."
"As well you might," Griffith's attorney muttered.
From her corner, Kate watched with dread as Ricky opened the door for Mr. Granger, and they both walked out of the room. But she wasn't going to put on a weak front. As soon as the door closed, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stalked straight up to the table where Griffith still sat.
"So," she said. "You wanted to talk alone." Her tone said, you might as well go to hell.
Griffith's relentlessly charming smile toned down. Finally. "Why don't you have a seat?"
Kate considered that, and decided she'd look weaker standing than sitting, so she sat. With her back straight, she made herself meet Griffith's eyes.
That was a mistake. The man had...powerful eyes. And they took her back, back to the porch of Bunkhouse Three where they'd looked up at the stars, back to a kiss of yearning and tenderness, back to... Kate shuddered with a shaft of utterly forbidden longing. She had to remember: just as with Eric, none of those moments had been true.
Watching her, Griffith crossed his forearms on the tabletop. "It really is good to see you."
Kate made a rude sound.
Griffith's lips curved. "There's not a thing I could say you'd believe, is there?"
"True. So why the charade of this private conference, or any settlement conference at all?" Ricky had explained to Kate it was extremely rare for a party to actually request a settlement conference. It was seen as a sign of weakness. But, to her eye, Griffith was not looking particularly weak.
Griffith uncrossed his arms. "Okay, let's take it from where you're sitting now, disbelieving everything I say. So if I tell you I don't intend to see Camp Wild Hills close, you won't believe it."
"Not for a minute." What was he up to?
"Fine. Don't believe me." Griffith spread his fingers on the tabletop. "But...fantasize for a minute, if you will."
Kate snorted. Fantasizing was exactly what she was not going to do. She tapped a toe on the floor.
"Let's pretend," Griffith said, "that I'm not going to build the Wildwood housing project, or at least not in its present form. Let's pretend that means I won't have to divert Wild Tail Creek. I won't take your water."
Kate stared at the faded lemon color of the paint on the opposite wall. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. If they were going to pretend — ? But that was Griffith's idea, not hers. "And what, exactly, is the point of pretending?" she asked.
"The point," Griffith said softly, "is so you can start helping Camp Wild Hills, instead of hurting it."
Her gaze shot back to him. "I'm not hurting the camp." She was doing everything in her power, in fact, to prevent herself from going down that path again.
But Griffith was craven enough to go on. "Isn't it hurting the camp to waste time on a needless lawsuit, when you can be building that expansion you were planning?"
Kate's lips parted. "How can I build an expansion when you're going to close the camp?"
"But I'm not."
"Oh, please." She was getting annoyed now. "How many times can you repeat the same lie?"
"It's not a lie, Kate. Oh, I don't blame you for being skeptical. I was skeptical of myself for a while, there." Griffith shook his head. "I've been working on the Wildwood project for over two years, have several hundred grand invested in it already, but..." He stopped and laughed softly. "But it only took two weeks with those kids to convince me there was no way I could take the camp away from them. Come on, Kate. Think about it. Elroy? Little Elroy making it across the whole swimming pool for the first time. Do you remember the look on his face?"
Griffith gazed at Kate, smiling as if he truly were remembering. As if he'd gotten the kind of pride out of the moment that Kate had.
As if...he got it.
This was the man she'd been missing so badly, this one gazing straight at her.
The lurking longing inside Kate swelled. All her painful, yearning memories swirled wildly in her heart and swept up into her brain. What if he did get it? What if he was telling the truth? Then everything she thought had happened to Griffith during his time as counselor last August really had happened. Then he was actually the decent, caring man she'd fallen in love with.
She looked across the table. Her longing to believe was huge. If Griffith could possibly be who she'd thought he was last summer — life would be fantastic, a dream come true. Really good.
Too good.
Kate's huge longing turned sharp. Sharp enough to cut. In fact, her longing to believe cut through — to the memory of the other man she'd believed, and to the harm he'd done. It cut to the polished wood casket under a cold, gray sky, and the thud of the newly turned soil that she'd thrown into her brother's grave.
Her fault. His death all her fault.
The longing inside Kate abruptly transformed. It turned to horror. In horror she jumped up from her seat. The chair scraped on the linoleum floor. "No!" she shouted. Then, lowering her voice with enormous effort, she whispered hoarsely, "You want to help Camp Wild Hills? Then go away."
She was shaking, physically trembling with her hate for Griffith. Yes, hate. She didn't long for him — she loathed him! Of course she did. She'd loathed him all along. Not for an instant had she truly felt otherwise.
Griffith looked into Kate's burning eyes. So much for his grand plan of a reconciliation, he thought. Ever since he'd instructed Don Granger to arrange this meeting, he'd been looking forward to seeing Kate again, planning how to effect the rapprochement he was after.
They were on the same side, he and Kate. They could be together. Or so he'd believed. But it was almost...religious, the way she had to see him as evil.
All the same, he wasn't ready to give up. Calmly, choosing his words with care, he said, "I want to help. And I think I can help the camp more than by simply staying away."
Her eyes widened. "I doubt that."
"You're planning an expansion. It so happens I have some expertise in construction development. Maybe even some connections to funding."
"Ha!" Her eyes managed to get wider. "What a line! You're going to help me build a few crummy bunkhouses for charity-case kids — instead of all your mini-mansions for millionaires?"
"Actually," Griffith said. "Yes."
She lifted her head and laughed.
That grated. He hadn't earned that kind of skepticism. Beyond skepticism, it was...mockery. He'd been a good counselor, hadn't he? He'd convinced frightened Elroy to swim across the pool, he'd turned Orlando into a responsible almost-adult. She had no reason to hate him so much.
No reason except his little evasion about being her landlord.
Griffith pressed his lips together. "All right, I'm sorry I didn't tell you who I was from the beginning. But in the long run, that turned out to be for the best. I'm not who I was any more. Though still your landlord, I'm not the evil villain who's going to take your water."
Kate stopped laughing. She leaned over to press her fists on the tabletop. "It matters," she told Griffith. "Lying matters."
Her voice had an odd edge to it. Her whole self had an edge, if he could detach himself long enough from his misery to observe her. Her mouth twisted bitterly. "But it's not all your fault," she told him. "Falling for liars — and criminals — seems to be my specialty."
She might as well have impaled him. Griffith sat frozen. "I'm hardly a criminal."
"No." Kate straightened, her gaze pure scorn. "You're that much differ
ent from Eric. You make sure your dirty dealings are within the bounds of the law. Clever. And you won't go to prison, no matter how much you deserve it."
Eric? Griffith felt an odd tumbling inside. Who the hell was Eric? And what did he have to do with Griffith? But the sinking tumbling inside told him what the mysterious Eric had to do with him. They'd both been Kate's lovers.
Griffith spoke very softly. "So, I'm like Eric?"
"Exactly like Eric."
"Who went to prison?"
"He deserved worse." Kate took a step back from the table. She looked as if she wished she hadn't brought the whole thing up.
Griffith kept his voice soft and neutral. He was feeling anything but. He needed — desperately — for her to tell him more. "Why?" he asked. "Why did Eric deserve worse than prison?"
Kate's face had gone from a flushed pink to a shade so pale Griffith was afraid she might faint. "Because he took my brother down with him. My brother, who was already floundering, with a juvenile record and nothing but an idea he was no good at anything. And Johnny died."
Her voice was a mere breath by the time she'd said the last bit, and there was a spot of color, feverish, at the top of her cheekbones.
Griffith felt a weight of sick despair drop down on him. Her brother had died because of this criminal, Eric.
And she was painting Griffith in the same colors.
"So I don't want your 'help.'" Kate nearly spat the words. "I don't intend to put my trust in the wrong person, not again. No, thank you." Then, her skin flushing again, she turned on her high-fashion heels, and stalked out of the room.
The door closed after her with a well-mannered click, only prevented from slamming by its damper. Griffith sat there, feeling as if a thick, black blanket had settled over him.
She was projecting, it was as clear as day, blaming Griffith for the unforgivable sins of this fellow, Eric. She had them inextricably intertwined.
She thought Eric had killed her brother.
