CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GRIFFIN FOUND Jane standing at the shoreline, her toes being teased by the foamy outermost hem of the incoming surf. Approaching her from behind, he sighed a little at how very Jane she looked in a lemon-colored two-piece bathing suit. Petal-like ruffles cut high on her tush, and he knew there were matching ones edging the deep vee of the halter-style top. She looked both sweet and tart, like a lemonade Popsicle.
She made him hungry.
He slid one arm around her waist, and she squealed. He growled in her ear as he pulled her back against him. “The eels have landed.”
With a twist, she squirmed out of his hold. “You scared me!” But before he could respond, she clutched his arm with one hand and pointed with the other. “But I’m glad you’re here. You need to rescue the boys.”
Duncan and Oliver stood in the surf, the water swirling around the flapping hems of their hibiscus-print swim trunks. They were tan despite the sunscreen his sister slathered on them. Oliver, the fairer of the two miscreants, had a white triangle of goop on his nose. Between them they held an inflatable raft, but they were having trouble keeping it steady. Every time they tried to throw themselves on it, belly down, it popped free of their weight and dumped them in the shallow water.
“Sweetheart, they’re fine.” The breeze blew a piece of her golden-hued hair across her face, and he caught it with his hand and tucked it behind her ear. “Where’s your lotion? Your nose is turning pink again.”
She cast another anxious look toward the water. “Are you sure? I told Tess I’d keep an eye on them while she gets Russ some juice. The baby’s been very fussy today.”
“You have to stop involving yourself with my sister’s kids.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Thanks to you, I had to suffer through an hour-long meeting with Old Man Monroe about the presentation to Rebecca’s class. He was so cantankerous I let Private dig for bones in his flower beds before we left.”
Not only had the antique been his usual curmudgeonly self, he’d been his usual nosy curmudgeonly self. “What’s changed?” he’d demanded. “You look rested, son, like you might actually be sleeping.”
Griffin had shrugged a shoulder. “You’re my worst nightmare. Guess I’m just getting used to you being next door.”
The coot had slapped one age-speckled hand on the tabletop. “It’s that pretty woman. She’s smart, so I don’t know what she can see in you, but Jane’s doing you some good.”
He hadn’t denied it. Jane was smoothing some of his rough spots, and he wasn’t going to feel guilty about it either. They both understood the situation was temporary. Though very satisfying.
“Hell’s bells, boy,” Rex had said, his mouth dropping open. “You’re smiling.”
“So?” he’d countered, not even bothering to scowl.
“So don’t screw this up,” the old man had cautioned. “You’ve got a good reason to beat back that darkness inside you now. Don’t use it to shove her away instead.”
“Griffin?”
Jane’s voice jerked him back to the present. “What?”
“The boys,” she said, “I’m worried about your nephews.”
“You need to stop that,” he said, putting Rex and his ramblings from his head. “I’m going to make a rule. No more contact between you and the devil’s minions.”
“You and your rules,” she scoffed, with a little flounce that fluttered the ruffles at her ass.
“Don’t you forget them, either,” he said, enjoying the way her cheeks went as pink as her nose as he pointed his finger at her. They’d come to an understanding three days before, and he didn’t mind mentioning it again because it always made her blush and shiver. “You must be the first to get naked. You must be the first to—”
“I get it, I get it.”
He grinned. “So you do, honey-pie. Each and every time, by my hand or my mouth or by my—”
She clapped a hand over his lips. “Stop.”
“Not gonna,” he said against her palm. Then he grabbed her wrist and drew it low, twisting it so her body was brought flush to his. “Not as long as we’re living together at Beach House No. 9.”
His kiss took the sass out of her, and he reveled in her pliant warmth. His free hand cupped the back of her head as he took the kiss deeper.
She broke away, breathing hard.
He grinned at her and the hard points of her nipples that were pressing against her swimsuit. “Oh,” she said, glancing down. Clearly flustered, she crossed her arms over her chest. They covered the little buds but plumped the tantalizing curves of her cleavage.
“That meeting with the old man still has me all wound up,” he lied. “Think we could go inside and find some way to take the edge off? I’m pretty certain I need to relax.”
“No.” Her head tilted toward the surf. “Little boys? Unpredictable surf?”
“Whale snot. Green-scaled eels.” When she frowned at him, he caught her hand and carried it to his mouth. The woman had given him hours of pleasure in bed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t tease you.”
“I shouldn’t be so easy to tease.”
They both watched Duncan and Oliver for a few more minutes, and when they finally got a good ride into shore, Jane clapped her hands. The boys grinned at her, then dashed back into the water.
“They make my fear seem even more ridiculous,” she murmured.
“Do you want to get over it?”
She raised an eyebrow at him, her expression suspicious.
It was the cutest damn thing. “Honey-pie…” He’d forgotten what he meant to say.
“Chili-dog?”
He was never going to think of that menu item without thinking of Jane. The governess had changed him and he wanted to return the favor. His fingers tightened on hers, and he stepped toward the water. “Come in with me, sweetheart.”
Biting her lip, she dug her heels in the sand. “I don’t know.”
“I won’t let go of you, I promise.”
Her head wagged back and forth. “Your kind always lets go. That’s how I learned to stay afloat in the first place. My father carried me out in the deep end of the pool. When we were far from where I could stand up, he released me. I had my arms around his neck, and he just went under, slipping out of my grasp. So it was up to me alone. Sink or swim.”
Griffin had to look away from her earnest, unsmiling face. When his temper had cooled a little, he tugged her toward him again. “Trust me, Jane. We won’t go too far. When you’re done, you say so and I’ll get you right back to shore.” It was suddenly important to him that he do this, that he be different than the others of his “kind.”
She hesitated another moment, then took a step forward, wincing when the Pacific washed over the top of her foot. “Cold.”
“Bracing,” he said, walking backward. “Now don’t forget to do the stingray shuffle.”
“Stingray shuffle?”
“They bury themselves in the sand and if you step directly on them, they’ll strike with their tail. So you do the stingray shuffle to avoid the less dignified—and pretty painful—stingray hop.”
Doubt creased her forehead and she eyed the water around her. “Maybe my brothers weren’t so wrong.”
“The eels are much farther offshore.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
He laughed, once again tugging on her hand. “Come closer and say that to me.”
To his satisfaction, she kept pace as he waded backward into the surf, checking over his shoulder every so often to make sure a wave wouldn’t catch him unawares. They made it past shins and knees, and were approaching the tops of her thighs when she froze up. She peered into the water around her. “Something touched me. This is why I don’t like the ocean. There are things in here with me.”
“Probably a piece of kelp,” he said, his voice soothing. The sound of an approaching wave had him glancing back again. It was tall enough to hit her belly. “Heads up.”
She did the girlie shriek when the water struck her midsection. “It’s freezing.”
“Bracing,” he repeated.
They were getting in deep enough water that she could float, if she wanted, and hold on to him. When he suggested it, she hesitated a moment, then took a breath and went prone on the water, stroking toward him. He caught her, and she circled her arms around his neck. He drew in her silky legs so they wound his waist.
He gave a maniacal laugh. “You fell right in with my plot.” Then he hitched her closer and kissed her. In contrast to their ocean-cooled skin, their mouths burned. Griffin slipped one of the hands propping up her bottom beneath the elastic of her swimsuit. He palmed the round cheek, and she wiggled closer. The kiss turned feverish.
Then Jane jerked her mouth away. “We forgot the boys!”
“They’re fine,” he said, quarter-turning their twined bodies so she could see them on the shore, engaged in some kind of behavior that was likely preparing them for a life of crime. Really, those two little kids made him nervous.
With a wet hand, she brushed back his hair. “Thank you,” she said.
“No, thank you.” He grinned at her and bent his head, intent on another kiss. “Now where were we?”
Before lip met lip, they were tossed over by a wave. Damn, he thought as she tumbled out of his grip. Then a second wave struck, and he was submerged again.
Eyes open, he looked for Jane in the swirling green world of rising bubbles and undulating seaweed. He saw something yellow, but it was a garibaldi fish and not Jane’s swimsuit. Hope she has her eyes closed, he thought. Then he popped up, and immediately began surveying the surface of the water. “Jane?” he called as he regained his footing.
Alarm squeezed his chest. “Jane?”
Then, a few feet away, thrashing arms and legs rose from the water. He rushed toward her, hampered by yet another, smaller wave. When he caught hold of one of her arms, the other smacked him in the shoulder.
“Sweetheart.” Her eyes were tightly closed, and she didn’t seem to hear him. “Honey-pie!”
Her wet lashes blinked open. He yanked her against him, and she latched onto his body. “You’re okay,” he said, keeping her close. “You’re fine.”
“I almost died!” she said, in Rebecca-like tones.
“Not even close.” Her hair was sodden, and he finger combed it off her forehead.
Her breath was sawing in and out, and he just held her, waiting for her to calm as he kept one eye on the incoming waves. Finally, she shuddered, and her head dipped, her forehead against his chin. “I feel like an idiot.”
“It was my fault,” he said, moving a little closer to shore, Jane still in his arms. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I was thrashing.”
“More like floundering.”
Her head lifted. “Gee, thanks, I feel so much better now.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“I don’t like looking foolish,” she said. “You didn’t panic.”
Only when I thought I might have lost you. He shook the words out of his head. “You don’t have to corner the market on competence, Jane.”
“Funny you should say that.” She wrinkled her nose, then her pretty, clear eyes gazed past his shoulder at the horizon. “My father told me not long ago it was better to be competent than lovable.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, then he drew her head to his shoulder, holding her cheek to his salty skin. “You’re a pain in the ass, Jane, you know that? But somebody’s going to find that lovable about you. Somebody’s coming along real soon and you’ll know just how lovable you are.”
She was still for a moment, her mouth touching his wet shoulder, pressing it there in the semblance of a kiss.
The water, the world, swirled about them for a quiet few moments. Then Griffin cleared his throat. “Want to go any farther, Jane?”
“No.” She had begun to shiver, but he didn’t think it was from the sixty-eight-degree water. “I’m afraid I’m already out of my depth.”
* * *
EVERY PARENT KNEW the worst day in a normal family household was the day when all the kids were hit with the flu at the same time—and then the mom was struck down too. Tess tried telling herself that wasn’t happening, though. It was the washing out of the barf bowl for the tenth time that was making her nauseous. She was only burning up one moment, then shivering with cold the next because one minute she was running to her room where she’d placed the two middle boys in her own bed, and the next she was sitting with the baby on her shoulder, trying to console his unhappy whimpers.
She and Russ were the only ones who hadn’t disgorged the contents of their stomachs. But she had a terrible feeling it was only a matter of time.
The sounds of retching reached her. Duncan or Oliver—too sick to be counted on to make it to the bathroom—was making use of the big plastic bowl that she planned to never see again once this was over. Closing her eyes, Tess willed her legs to move. When they didn’t obey, she raised her voice. “Rebecca, do you think you could—”
The remainder of her sentence was drowned out by the pitter-patter of her daughter’s feet on a mad dash from her “bower of death”—the teen’s own words—to the bathroom across the hall.
There would be no help there.
She pushed off with her bare feet and managed to stand. A short spin of her head later, she stumbled toward her needy children. Women manage alone all the time, she reminded herself. It’s good preparation for your life ahead.
Tears gathered, but she blinked them away. She needed to be clear-eyed to wash the despicable bowl. Next she wiped down Duncan’s and Oliver’s faces with a cool, wet cloth. When she asked them if they could take a sip of water, they didn’t bother answering. She was a little more forceful about offering the pediatric drink that she tried to foist off as “juice,” but they both turned their faces away.
In a last-ditch effort, she dangled the image of cold cola—a rare treat—and it was testament to how ill they felt that neither gave a twitch.
Rebecca’s footsteps sounded zombielike as she moved from the bathroom back to her bed. Tess wet another washcloth and bathed her daughter’s face as she lay sprawled on the mattress. The cell phone on the small table beside Rebecca’s pillow started a little dance. Things were serious when the teenager didn’t even reach for the device to check the sender of the text.
“I want Daddy,” Rebecca moaned, her eyes squeezed shut.
Things were serious indeed. Her daughter hadn’t called her father “Daddy” since her thirteenth birthday. David, Tess thought, then pinched off the fruitless longing. He was somewhere pushing pedals in circles or lifting a weight that wasn’t the weight of their family’s situation.
She stood over her daughter, rocking the baby back and forth. Perhaps the movement would counterbalance the seasick feeling in her stomach. Her decision-making process felt just as unbalanced as she pondered her options. “Maybe I should call Uncle Griff,” she said.
One of Rebecca’s eyes opened. “You called Uncle Griff. He said he was rushing right over…to put a quarantine sign on the door.”
“I didn’t tell him we needed help.” That had been eight hours ago, when she’d thought the kids were suffering from a mild tummy bug.
“If you call next door again,” Rebecca said, “ask for Jane. Men aren’t any good at caretaking.”
More tears burned behind Tess’s eyes. Her lovely, sweet, trusting little girl had already been disappointed enough to internalize that message. Men aren’t any good at caretaking. Hadn’t her father given up on that job during the past few months?
Anger added itself to Tess’s mix of sickness and sadness. David had done this! David had fractured Rebecca’s faith. The thought put a bit of steel in her spine, and she sought to reassure her teenager. “I’m here to take care of us. We don’t need anyone but me.”
One-handed, she pulled up the covers around Rebecca’s neck while the other hand balanced Russ, draped over her shoulder. Then she put the drowsing baby down in his crib and ignored her own queasiness to gather the clothes and towels strewn around the house. She filled the washing machine and pressed Start, just as she heard yet another round of retching.
Duncan or Oliver or possibly both had missed the bowl. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom, holding on to the jamb to keep herself upright, she stared at the miserable children and the messed sheets. For just a moment she envisioned that other life she’d stopped fantasizing about the night David had dropped by with his carton of files. It beckoned more seductively than before. Shared custody—and they’d be sick on David’s watch. Hours of blissful alone time. A different man with whom she could play on the beach while her children were someone else’s responsibility.
“Mommy,” Duncan whispered.
The plaintive word broke her heart. She hurried toward her little guy. “Mommy’s here,” she assured him, as she moved forward to tackle the task of changing sheets and pajamas. “Mommy will always be here.”
A couple of hours later a knock roused her. She’d been half-asleep on the living room couch, the baby slumbering on her chest. Her movement woke him, and he started to cry a little.
Tess just managed not to join him as she pulled open the door. Her brother stood on the doorstep. “Plague over?” he asked. “I’ve brought provisions for you and the minions.” He waved a greasy bag in her face that was branded with the golden arches.
The smell of the burgers and fries—usually one of her favorites in the whole world—wafted in on a briny breeze.
Tess felt herself go green. Then, Russ still in her arms, she slammed the door in Griffin’s face and ran to the kitchen sink where she left the contents of her stomach and entered the eighth circle of hell. According to Dante, the eighth circle was the provenance of Fraud, which made perfect sense because she’d have brief moments of elated good health following a trip to the bathroom before queasiness rose up once again.
Now she was glad she was alone with the kids because she couldn’t imagine wanting anyone to see her like this: worn down, lank-haired and sweaty around the edges.
There wasn’t a name for the next level of hell, the one in which the baby finally caught up with the rest of them and started throwing up too. It was his first experience with the oh-so-unpleasant activity, and clearly it frightened him, even though Tess had been prepared enough to unearth another plastic bowl.
He cried through the whole procedure.
Sitting on the living room couch, she cried afterward, silently though, so as not to frighten the kids. Mom needs to be strong, she reminded herself. Mom can go it alone. While Russ kept up a low whimper, she half dozed and held him close to her heart, the bowl in her lap at the ready.
When the baby’s weight lifted from her chest, she thought the sudden change was part of a dream. Since David’s fortieth birthday, rarely had anyone taken Russ from her when he was fussy—and she’d asked for help even more rarely. An almost-fatherless baby shouldn’t have his mommy pass him off too.
Time passed. Minutes probably as she drifted into the dream where there was a male voice murmuring and a male presence moving about the small house. Occasionally a note of a child’s voice would spike through her slumber, but that couldn’t be real either, because there was no one home to take that responsible shh-shh tone of voice. She allowed herself to fall into sleep because she knew she needed her strength. And because she knew that her kids would make a riot if Mom was really needed. They only had her.
Then a new sound poked her into wakefulness. Baby Russ was retching again, and her hands registered he wasn’t with her. And that his bowl still lay in her lap. What?
Tess lurched from her sprawl on the couch. Her eyes opened as she stood and there was a figure in front of her. She blinked a few times to put it into focus. Her husband. David. He was holding her baby.
She might think it was still a dream, but little Russ’s body was moving, undulating in that way—
“The bowl,” she said, holding it out.
But David ignored her, murmuring to their baby and cradling him close as their smallest son puked all over David’s favorite high-tech, fancy-fiber, sweat-wicking spin shirt.
She stared. “The bowl.”
“It’s all right. He’s not so scared when I’m holding him like this.”
Another moment passed, then she heard sounds from her bedroom. With her hand on one wall, she made her way to her other sons. Looking more bright-eyed, Duncan and Oliver were propped up on pillows and watching cartoons on the flat-screen TV across the room. Each had a glass of what looked to be water in hand, a bent straw ready for a small mouth.
Oliver noticed her, sketched a wave. “Mommy.”
She echoed the movement. “Sweet boy.”
Duncan sipped his water and then glanced over. “Daddy’s home.”
“I see that,” she said. Then a wave of sickness slammed into her, and she ran for relief.
Bout over, she checked in on Rebecca. There was a glass of water and a bent straw beside her cell phone. The teenager was sleeping. The sound of a shower running drew her to the end of the hall. Through the half-open door, she saw her husband holding her youngest in the shower, both of them fully dressed.
“What are you doing?” she croaked out. But she realized he couldn’t hear her over the rushing water and his own crooning voice as he sang to their son.
“‘Hush little baby don’t say a word, Daddy’s goin’ to buy you a mockingbird.’” David had sung to all their children when they were small. A story, a song, and then good-night. Once Rebecca had begged for “A Hundred Bottles of Root Beer on the Wall,” and she’d made it to twenty-seven remaining before dozing off. He’d never fallen for that again.
Watching him now, Tess was absolutely positive she’d never fall for anyone else besides him.
She pushed open the door the whole way as he stepped onto the bath mat in his dripping clothes. “Give me Russ,” she said, reaching for a towel.
David shook his head and took the terry cloth out of her hand. “I’ve got him.”
With her energy at an all-time low, she could only watch as he stripped himself and the baby out of their wet clothes. Then, with a towel around his waist, he found the boys’ room and quickly diapered Russ and put him in a soft onesie. Russ’s eyes closed. Tess watched from the doorway. “He’s almost asleep. You can put him in the crib.”
“Think I’ll hold him awhile,” David said over his shoulder. “You’re almost asleep too. Go lie down.”
The suggestion was nearly irresistible. Nearly. “You’ll stay with the kids?”
He hesitated. “I’m staying with all of you. Always.”
It was enough to get her moving in the direction of an empty bed, even though the stranger of the past few months wasn’t a man she’d want with them for always. If that was who was in the house, then once she was better, he’d just have to leave again.