A Man for the Summer (16 page)

“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—”

“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.

Which was…what exactly? This wasn’t supposed to be any big thing, this relationship. It was two people under one roof with a crazy attraction for each other. It was wild loving and no promises.

And it was also a complicated problem that they had to figure out how to solve, one that could change their lives forever.

“Uh, I was just wondering. You know, you said you might know by today. At least somewhere around today. I know these things aren’t exact, but…”

He didn’t need to touch her this time to know she’d retreated into a web of tension and anxiety. It came off her in waves, and Griff reluctantly lay back on his side of the bed.

Wrong again. Damn. He’d never been with a woman who left him so unbalanced. He’d always been pretty good about reading women, knowing what they wanted when, and exactly how to give it—or a pretty good facsimile of it—to them.

Not this time.

Unless…

Griff squeezed his eyes shut and clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, but the nagging thought remained.

Pregnant
, he thought. Junior was pregnant, and now there wasn’t really any reason left for him to wait around any more. She was getting ready to kick him out.

Maybe it was for the best. Lord knew she’d already managed to get far more under his skin than he’d ever planned on. If it was going to be over, it might as well be over long before he ever had a chance to look into those green eyes and tell her he was going to walk away from a baby he had created.

Next to him, he knew that Junior was doing her best to pretend she was asleep.

He couldn’t stay there another minute, pretending along with her. Not when every inch of him was screaming
stay
. Not just for tonight, but forever.

He slid out of the bed they shared. The night air was too cool on his skin.

She knew it was morning because she could feel the warmth of the sun streaming onto the pillow, but she didn’t open her eyes. Not yet.

It had been a long night. Just as she’d finally been close to drifting off, her heart aching after Griff left, the noise started up downstairs.

Griff and his damn project.

Well, it was her fault he was trying to put it all back together in the middle of the night. She was the one who’d read him the riot act last night.

Even if it was true, he’d acted irresponsibly, she hadn’t needed to come down on him so hard.

But it was exactly the way he’d been with Carlton, so easy, so natural, that had scared her so.

Because she’d seen a man who could have been a father.

But the baby he had fathered would never have a chance to find out.

“No,” she whispered fiercely to herself, as she felt the threat of tears. And it worked. She wouldn’t cry, at least not this morning.

She did own one proper nightgown, a gift from one of her sisters-in-law. She’d never worn it before, but somehow it made her feel a little better to slide into it before brushing her teeth and running a comb through her hair. She looked at herself in the mirror, noted the thin bands of lace around the high pink neckline, and forced a smile.

It looked more like a grimace.

She made her way down the stairs, following the sounds of tapping—had he been at it all night?—and the smell of fresh coffee. The man sure made decent coffee.

At the bottom of the stairs she stopped. Stared.

“What the hell have you done!” she yelled.

Griff rounded the corner, hammer in hand. He looked terrible. His eyes bore deep purple shadows, and his beard was coming in dark and uneven. His hair stuck up on one side.

He grinned weakly at her.

“Good morning,” he said. He hesitated, and Junior barely managed to stop gaping and close her mouth before he took two more steps and wrapped her in his arms.

“What the hell,” she repeated, but his arms were warm and welcoming around her and before she knew it she’d leaned into him and let him hold her. He ran his hands over her back and rocked her, and he smelled like sawdust and good, honest, hard work.

She didn’t even realize she was crying until she felt his shirt, wet against her cheek. And still he held her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her hair. “I really was going to fix it. But then I got to that damn outlet and the thing was shredded, just shredded. I’m thinking mice maybe. So I was just going to take it back to where the damage ended, but the thing is, and I hate to tell you…”

He pulled gently back from her, and Junior quickly rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and tried to duck away from his scrutiny.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, what’s this? Is this about what I did to your house?”

Junior disentangled herself and stepped back.

“No,” she said, hating the giveaway thickness of her voice. “I have to get a Kleenex,” she added, but Griff followed her as she looked around the mess for the box, finding it under a corner of one of her favorite old sheets.

“Because I’m really sorry, but I can get it put back together in a few days and then you won’t have to worry about the whole place going up in flames. Which really if we don’t take care of this, it’s going to.”

We
. He said
we
, as if it was a problem whose outcome would affect both of them. As if he would be here tomorrow, next week, next year.

But she knew that wasn’t possible.

“I’ll call a guy I know,” she said. “A pro.”

Griff frowned, pushed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, glared at the floor.

Oh, now she’d done it, insulted his manliness, or whatever it was men equated to breaking things and fixing them.

“No offense,” she said. “But I can’t stay here with the place like this. With no electricity.”

“That’s temporary,” Griff cut in quickly. “A few days tops, and I can have it back on.”

“I’ll go stay at Teddy ‘s,” Junior went on. “Thank you anyway, but I know a guy who will do it cheap.”

“Cheap? Cheap!
I
can do it, damn it. And you’re not going to stay with Teddy.”

Junior was almost amused by the proprietary tone in his voice. Well, she’d let him use power tools on her house; no doubt he now felt he owned the place or something. So like a man.

Having her back up felt a lot better than feeling guilty about tearing into him, and way better than letting in those feelings of loss and heartache.

“I’ll stay where I want,” she countered. “You stay here, if you like it so much.”

“You’re not staying here, because we have plans.” Griff actually folded his arms across his chest and rocked back on his heels, like he was the Marlboro Man confronting a rabid bull or something.

“Plans!” Now it was her turn to gape at him.

“Yeah. We’re going to a wedding. You got anything halfway normal to wear?”

“What?!”

“You know, a decent dress that doesn’t make you look like a flower child or a space alien or something? It’s black tie,” he added calmly.

Junior stared at him intently. There was something wrong, deeply wrong, with this man. Maybe his brain was addled by lack of sleep or something.

“Listen here, I know everything about everyone in this town and I can tell you there isn’t a soul getting married today.”

“Wedding’s not here. It’s in Chicago.”

She could not think of one thing to say. Slowly, she lowered herself into one of the kitchen chairs.

“My cousin,” Griff added, “You’ll like her. She’ll like you. Etc, etc. Look, can we talk about this on the plane? We have a noon flight out of Sedalia so we kind of need to get a move on. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”