Asking For It (12 page)

Couldn't Kate see that everybody hated him? — Not only the kids, but the counselors, too? Even Arnie didn't seem to like Griffith so much as find amusement in his situation. And Kate, of course, loathed him.

It was just like being back at Dorchester Prep. Griffith was the unwanted, unadept butt of everybody's jokes. It was only once he'd started to make money that people had begun to like Griffith, or at least act nice. Yeah, now, when Griffith drove his Porsche or whipped out his platinum card, people acted nice to him all over the place.

Not having his Porsche or his platinum card at the moment, Griffith had no advantages.

He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Never mind, didn't matter. Time was working on his side. Even if Kate never saw reason, he was going to get out of here. People back in L.A. would realize he'd disappeared. A search would be undertaken — probably had begun already. Any day now — any minute — someone would drive up to rescue him.

Griffith took several more breaths, but he couldn't block out the chaos and the noise in the narrow wooden cabin. Was there anything in the world less conducive to sleep than a child? That would be nine children, he supposed. Nine energetic, noisy, over-athletic children who, if they didn't shut up and settle down were going to drive. Him. Wild.

With one furious burst of motion, Griffith threw off his sheets. Wearing the pajamas Arnie had lent him, rolled up at the wrists and ankles, he leaped from the bed.

There was a surprised cessation of movement on the part of the children. Everyone turned to look at him.

It wouldn't hurt to take charge, Griffith told himself, glaring back at them. Kate obviously wasn't coming by to check on them tonight. So there would be no harm, just this once. God, he wanted some sleep.

"Everyone," he said, using the opportunity of silence to pitch his voice low. "It is time to go to bed."

A chorus of protests met this announcement.

"But — "

"You said — "

"It
isn't
time — "

"Enough!" Griffith raised his voice now, just enough to rise above the melee. It worked. They all quieted, eyes blinking in disbelief. "You have five minutes," he said. "And then I'm coming around to check. Anybody who isn't in bed, under the covers, will be deducted five points."

"Five points?" somebody asked. "Five points from what?"

"Never you mind," grumbled Griffith, who'd borrowed the threat from prep school. He pointedly raised his left wrist and looked down at the dime store watch Kate had given him. "Starting now."

There was a moment of obvious indecision. In that moment, Griffith moved toward the closest bed. "In you go," he told the boy, a short, scrawny specimen. The boy gave him one flashing glare of defiance before receding in the face of Griffith's stalwart approach. Griffith pulled the sheets over the kid's legs and tucked him in. He moved to the next bed.

Slowly, but surely, bodies began moving onto beds. Limbs that had been hanging from the beds above withdrew. Griffith went from one bed to the next, skipping nobody, and quietly tucking in sheets.

Voices, thank God, stilled. Griffith began to hope he might be able to get some sleep, after all. Then he came to the last bunk, the one at the opposite end of the cabin from his own. Orlando sat on the bottom bunk, cross-legged on top of his blankets. In his eyes gleamed the same alert watchfulness he'd worn all day.

They hadn't spoken of their little deal gone awry. But Orlando's vigilant expression told Griffith the boy expected the older man to go for his pound of flesh, to use his position to get back at the kid who hadn't agreed to an I.O.U. to guide him down the hill.

Griffith admitted the temptation had been there. It had been almost too marvelous Kate had decided to give him Orlando as 'helper.' But then he'd seen the way Orlando was looking at him, like a dog waiting to be whipped, and he hadn't felt like giving the kid such satisfaction.

Now Griffith jerked his head at the boy. "Go to sleep."

"I'm not tired."

"You must be kidding."

"I'm never tired." Orlando's fine black brows drew together. "Why is she keeping you?"

Griffith's motion, turning back to bed, checked. He swiveled toward Orlando. He didn't bother asking to whom Orlando referred. Considering, and discarding, a variety of colorful answers, he settled on giving Orlando a shrug and, "Beats me."

"No." Orlando's gaze was shrewd. "You know why."

Once again, he'd stopped Griffith in his tracks. The thought of the water he was going to divert from the camp flashed through Griffith's mind. But although that would be an excellent reason to have imprisoned and enslaved him, Kate didn't even know about the water yet. On the contrary, her reasons for making his life miserable were not logical, they were completely irrational, bursting with — with wild emotion.

She'd seen he wanted her. He hadn't meant for her to see. He hadn't even meant to
want
her. And from that one accident everything had just...escalated. Griffith, himself, couldn't explain how or why. "She doesn't have to have a reason," he claimed. Bending under the bunk above so no one else could hear, Griffith felt his injured pride wax. "The woman is pure poison."

Orlando's dark eyes flared at him. "Not Miss Kate."

Griffith had to draw back from the blaze in the kid's eyes. "What? You
like
her?"

Impossible. Orlando, Griffith had soon discovered, was known as the biggest trouble-maker in camp.

Nevertheless his thin face now went hard. "Miss Kate is the best," he said, fiercely.

Griffith didn't dare try arguing that one. He backed away, his palms out. "Okay, fine. Whatever."

"Better than
you
."

"No doubt," Griffith muttered. "Good night."

Orlando didn't answer. Griffith turned from the kid's furious eyes to trudge back down the aisle, checking that everyone was still in bed as he went. At last he got to his own bed, crawled in, and struggled to find a comfortable position on the tiny mattress.

Orlando's words came back to him. So Kate wasn't poison but he was, huh? Griffith's triumph at restoring order turned to gall. He assured himself he was not feeling even the tiniest bit guilty. He had every right to that water. It was all perfectly legal. And anyway, a fifty-unit luxury housing development was a bigger public benefit than a summer camp. Any tax accountant would agree. His housing project
ought
to be the one using the water.

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.