Beach House No. 9 (15 page)

Griffin had learned the lesson about honesty when it came to women, but there was no guarantee that Teague White was the kind of man who would be up-front with her. He might take what she offered without being straightforward about his own intentions. By insisting she leave the cove tonight, Griffin figured he’d prevented Jane from being hurt.

Though why he was going all hero about this, he wasn’t quite sure. Maybe she was starting to feel like a little sister to him.

He ran his gaze around the room, trying to catch sight of her. They’d checked in to a nearby hotel earlier in the day, a few hours before leaving for the party. While he’d gone for a run, she’d borrowed his car to swing by her place for some clothing.

Her apartment was an hour from the party and she’d made noises about staying there overnight, but he wasn’t having it. The suite he’d booked had two bedrooms, and that way there’d be no concerns about drinking and driving. Upon her return, they’d ordered room service for an early dinner and then she’d retired to her room to change.

She’d come out in a deep violet dress of some swishy fabric that fluttered and swirled a few inches above her knees. The neckline skimmed her throat, and she had a matching long-sleeved, waist-length jacket on top of it. Her shoes were Jane all the way, lavender-colored and ultrafeminine, the wide straps across the toes and the tops of her feet securing her onto a provocative tiptoe.

He should keep tabs on her for those chichi high heels alone, he thought, continuing to survey the room. As practical as Jane’s nature might be, her choice of footwear meant the slightest stumble could take her down. It played out in his mind’s eye, a small slip, a tumble to the ground, her skirt flying up to reveal a pair of panties. What would they be this time—

Stop.
He clamped down on the mental movie reel. She was a little sister to him.

Or something like that.

To his left, he caught a flash of color among a small knot of dark leather dress shoes and black stilettos. Pushing off from the wall, he ambled toward the bright spot, then froze as her feet shifted, and he caught a glimpse of the backs of her shoes.

Hell. Before, he hadn’t seen them from behind. Now that he could, he noticed that each heel bore a distinctive, one-and-a-half-inch brass zipper. You’d have to unzip her to get her out of them! His mind made an instant leap to nakedness. Jane’s nakedness, of course. Before he could control the urge, his gaze traced from those fascinating shoe fastenings to the backs of Jane’s bare calves. After her days at the beach, her legs had a tinge of creamy gold tan, a color repeated where the dress revealed a slice of skin right over her spine.

More nakedness.

She’d taken off the jacket. It dangled from her fingers, and its removal showed him another rear view that he’d missed when she’d been covered up. While the dress was beyond modest from the front, in the back it was open from neck to waist. The sleeveless top of the garment was held up by—what else?—a long-tailed bow, its ends trailing to tickle her delicate vertebrae.

He hoped he wasn’t doing something stupid like drooling. As if she sensed his regard, Jane’s head suddenly turned over her bare shoulder. Her silvery eyes picked up the deep hue of the dress, and his breath hitched. He dropped his gaze to the prissy, plump mouth that she’d glossed the color of a ripe plum, but that didn’t help.

The whole package made him so hungry he could barely breathe.

Christ, he’d insisted on the party to save her, but who the hell was going to resuscitate him?

She didn’t look away from him as he started forward with some vague plan of getting her out of here. Then getting her out of those clothes— No! Well, yes, getting her out of those provocative clothes and into something dull and Skye-sloppy. Following that, they’d repair to their individual rooms, where she would study grammar and he would take a subzero shower.

Otherwise he couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences.

Upon reaching her, he stroked the back of her slender arm, and then he had to curse himself and her for the little shiver he watched roll down her naked back. She pulled her elbow close to her body and held it there with her opposite hand. “What?” she asked, sounding truculent.

“We should go.”

Her brows pinched together. “We just got here. And I haven’t had a chance to say hello to Frank.”

“I know.” Griffin glanced toward a corner of the room where he could see the agent. The literary mystery had already been optioned and Frank was huddled with movie types. You could pick them out by their watches and their overwhitened teeth. “We’ll have to talk with him another time.”

“This entire excursion was your idea. I’m sure you just want to avoid explaining your nonprogress to him.”

He ignored both her points. “Look, we can spend the evening studying Strunk and White’s
Elements of Style.
” In separate corners of their spacious suite. “Won’t that make you happy?”

She leaned close enough for him to breathe in her flower fragrance. Her brows came together. “Is there an actual problem?”

“A gut feeling,” he lied. “We need to go.”

Jane’s hint-of-violet eyes studied his face for a long moment. Then she shrugged. “All right.” At her half turn, her small nose just missed the chest of a man on fast approach.

She stumbled—Griffin knew those shoes were trouble—and he steadied her with a hand on each shoulder, pulling her back to his front. “Ian!” Jane exclaimed.

Ian? Could the man before them be
Ian Stone?

Griffin figured it had to be him, because Skye’s description matched. There was the gold hair, the green eyes, the smile—though to him it looked more smarmy than seductive. His precise haircut, tailored clothes and overshouldered physique screamed a guy who’d spent too many years as the pip-squeak in prep school and now sweated too many mornings with his Bowflex machine in a mirrored home gym to make up for it.

“Jane,” Ian replied, his gaze running from her mouth to her bare toes, then back to her mouth. Leaning forward, he went for a kiss, but because Griffin didn’t release his clasp, Jane couldn’t meet him halfway. The guy ended up sort of smooching the air.

It wouldn’t be polite to snicker.

But maybe he made some kind of sound, because the other man glanced at Griffin’s hands on Jane’s smooth skin, then at Griffin himself. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said.

Jane’s posture was stiff, her voice only more so. “Ian Stone, this is Griffin Lowell. Griffin, Ian.”

Their right hands met in the required shake, but he kept his left on the librarian. Tension was humming through her, so he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Are you ready to go?” He pretended to smile at Ian. “We were just on our way out.”

“Oh, but Jane and I haven’t been able to catch up yet,” he protested. “And we were so very…close for those happy productive years.” His gaze transferred back to her, and he made another almost-rude inspection. “But now you look different. I’ve never seen your hair appear so…unruly.”

Wearing a small frown, she raised a self-conscious hand to it. “I’m living by the ocean,” she said, touching the soft waves.

Griffin loved her hair. It was natural-looking, the half-tousled strands reflecting every color of sand from wet to dry. Here and there glinted highlights the sun of his cove had coaxed out.

“You don’t like it at the beach. You’re afraid of the ocean.”

“I’m afraid to
swim
in the ocean.”

It was Griffin’s turn to frown. He couldn’t imagine the governess being afraid of anything. But it was true he hadn’t seen her set a toe in the water.

Now Ian’s eyes flicked upward once again, taking Griffin’s measure. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”

“He’s a client,” she said, her voice clipped.

“A client!” Ian’s brows rose.

Jane’s tone was icy. “Yes, I managed to find another one. So I’m pretty busy these days.” And then her voice turned scary-sweet. “How’s your latest book coming?”

Ian Stone ignored the question to address Griffin. “She’s a treasure, Janie is. But slippery. We worked so well together, then one day…poof!”

Griffin wished he and his gut had hustled her out of the party sooner. The undercurrents between his librarian and this other man were murky, and he didn’t want the dirt getting anywhere near her or her pretty shoes.
Janie,
the man had called her.
We were so very…close for those happy productive years.
Christ, she’d been more than the author’s muse.

Much more.

“And here I didn’t think you’d miss me at all,” Jane said, the edge in her voice sharp. She tilted her head to look beyond Ian. “You were so busy with… I don’t think I ever learned your name.”

She was addressing a woman that Griffin now realized was standing slightly behind the bestselling author. The man brought her forward with a small flourish, as if presenting a prize. “Deandra.”

Apparently Deandra didn’t require a last name, or it had slipped Ian Stone’s mind. The lady was red-haired, brown-eyed and so thin you could slip her between a door and its jamb, then wiggle her like a credit card to jimmy the lock. Griffin reached out to acknowledge the introduction, and it was like shaking hands with a skeleton.

She might be perfectly nice, but Griffin didn’t care to find out either way because Jane’s body was finely trembling again. Her skin was cool, too cool under his palm, and he wished they were back at Crescent Cove.

Tee-Wee White couldn’t hurt her there, Griffin realized now. Because Jane was romantically wounded already, injured by none other than this arrogant, irritating “literary superstar.” Damn! While he’d been smugly congratulating himself on saving her by commanding her to come to this party, he’d managed instead to bring her face-to-face with the man who’d apparently broken her heart.

Jane was going to kill him.

The tense silence that followed seemed to reinforce the idea. But someone had to end the standoff, and so he broke the quiet by announcing they were leaving. Jane didn’t protest, but clutched his forearm as they made the short walk to their hotel situated across the street from the museum. Her body seemed to go more brittle with each step and Griffin eyed her with concern. Would she make it back to their suite before she fell apart?

Yes, he could leave her to deal with the aftermath alone, but tonight’s event had been his idea. So he resigned himself to doling out tissues and considered offering a drink to combat an emotional collapse. What kind of booze mixed well with tears?

At the door to their rooms, he let go of her to reach for the key card. On his first try, he fumbled it. Jane snatched it out of his hand. Uh-oh, he thought, she was clearly eager to commence the weeping.

In another second they were inside. Wary, he walked backward into the living room, watching her as he braced for the first whimper.

She stood against the door, her palms flattened on the wooden surface. Her gaze hopped and skipped around the room, then finally settled on his face. “What do you have on hand that I can use as a murder weapon?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

J
ANE
SAW
G
RIFFIN
flinch, but in her hot and bothered state she didn’t try interpreting the reaction. As she stalked into the room, he kept a cautious eye on her. “I’m really sorry,” he said as she passed him by to head for the desk placed against the far wall.

“Huh? Only be sorry if you can’t find me a way to maim him.” Yanking open the drawer, she scooped up a letter opener and brandished it. She needed some way to work off her terrible temper. “Will this do?”

“Maim
him?
Not, uh, maim me?”

She turned to look at Griffin. “What are you talking about?”

“Attending the party was my idea.” He shoved his hands into the elegant, angled front pockets of vanilla-colored trousers. He wore them with a vertical-pleated Mexican wedding shirt in pale turquoise linen and gleaming leather loafers. At the cove, she’d seen him in nothing other than shorts or jeans and ragged Hawaiian shirts or tees. If she’d had to guess, she would have claimed his best pair of shoes had a swoosh on their sides.

She wasn’t sure this cleaned-up stranger was any more attractive than the bronzed guy at the beach, however. For whatever reason, both managed to ring her sexual bell. Yet he was confusing her now, looking at her in a strange way that she couldn’t decipher.

“Why don’t you put down your instrument of death,” Griffin suggested, crossing to her. He placed gentle hands on her shoulders, just as he had at the party. “Let me take your jacket.”

Leaving the book launch, she’d shrugged it on, but she was happy to shed it now. The mad she’d worked up on the way back to the hotel was like a fire under her skin. Griffin hung the garment over a chair, taking an extra moment to straighten the lapels.

Aware he was usually a flinger, her eyebrows rose at his uncharacteristic fastidiousness. He was operating with the slow, careful movements of someone defusing a bomb. From the corners of his eyes, he sent her a sidelong glance. “Can I get you a drink?”

She’d sipped at a quarter glass of champagne before Ian had arrived, and the liquid had soured in her belly after their meeting. “I have a rule against raiding the minibar.”

Griffin gave a smile. “Sure you do. But lucky enough, at times our moral codes take quite divergent paths. White wine?”

“All right.” However, she’d lay the blame for her lapse not at Griffin’s door, but Ian’s. He made her so angry she just barely resisted stomping a foot—because she’d missed her opportunity to kick him with it where it counted. “Are you going to have something too?”

“Definitely.” She saw him withdraw a bottle of wine from the mini fridge. For himself he poured some sort of amber liquid in a glass, neat. Then he crossed to the couch, setting down the two glasses on the nearby table. As he took a seat on the cushions, he grabbed up a box of tissues.

She frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” He patted the place beside him. “I’m ready.”

For what?
But before she could voice the question, he patted the cushion again and sent her an encouraging smile.

She couldn’t figure him out. Sitting wasn’t exactly appealing at the moment, not when she needed to work off some righteous anger. Call her silly and emotional, but seeing Ian had brought up a roiling combination of insult, disappointment and humiliation.

She would
never
fall in love again. Look what could happen.

“Those shoes must be killing you,” Griffin said with another encouraging smile. “Though they’re sexy as hell.”

The compliment took her ire down a tick, so she made her way to the place beside him. Once she sank onto the seat, he reached for one shoe and brought it to his lap. His fingers found the zipper tab at the heel of the sandal and tugged it down. “Very sexy,” he murmured, slipping it off.

He left that foot on his hard thigh and bent for the other. With the same tender care, he removed the shoe. With one big hand draped over the tops of her feet, he reached for a handful of tissues that he then offered to her, the odd expression back on his face. “Go ahead, honey-pie. It was my fault we were there tonight. I guess it’s fair that you cry on my shoulder.”

Cry on his shoulder? The tissues slipped from her hand as Jane stared at him. Then the pieces came together—his tender consideration, his careful movements, that look on his face that was part kindness, part resignation and part pity. For a moment she went speechless, then her anger started to boil again.

“You think I still care about that…that…”

“Norm Scrogman?” Griffin suggested.

How Griffin knew Ian’s real name, she couldn’t say. But it was as good a pejorative as any. “I despise him.”

“Sure you do.”

He didn’t believe her. Jane slid her feet from his lap and gave him the evil eye. “Listen to me. The man is a selfish, egotistical, unabashed and unashamed user.”

Maybe he mistook her tight voice for a tear-clogged throat. He picked up the tissue box and pressed it into her hands. “Go ahead. Get it all out.”

She threw the cardboard carton at him. He ducked, and it bounced off the cushion and fell to the floor. “Hey!” he protested.

“Just be glad I’m not holding the letter opener,” she said. “Don’t you get it? I won’t cry over that man. Any man.” Ever again.

“Still, you’re shaking.”

“From rage. Do you know what he did to me?”

“I’m pretty curious now, I must admit.”

Jane swiped up her wineglass and took a healthy swallow. Griffin, his gaze still wary, reached for his own beverage. “Let’s agree not to throw anything else, okay?”

“I’m just so mad!” Jane declared. “Seeing him again brought it all back. I feel as if I’ve swallowed a balloon and it’s inflating inside me.”

He made a go-ahead gesture with his glass. “Then by all means let out some of the pressure, Jane. Though I find the idea of you exploding…uh, never mind.”

More heat shot over her skin and she glared at him. “Did you have to bring that up now?”

“I probably shouldn’t,” he admitted. “It’s just that you’re kind of red-faced and your breath is coming too fast and—”

He broke off as she half cocked her wineglass. “—and I’m going to be very quiet now and let you get your feelings off your chest—” his glance dropped to her heaving breasts and then jerked back to her face “—I mean off your, um, mind.”

Her gaze narrowed on him. “I think you’re trying to distract me. Tease me out of my temper.”

“A little. Is it working?”

His semihopeful and too-charming smile didn’t move her. “No. Because that means you’re still feeling sorry for me.”

“Shouldn’t I? Apparently the two of you had something going, some sort of…understanding and then he was a jerk to you.”

“Jerk doesn’t cover it,” she muttered. “Have you ever read one of his books?”

“Not really my thing. I was on a plane or two when the movie adaptations played, but though I usually slept or read through them, I caught the gist.” Griffin looked down at his drink, then back up. “I admit I heard Skye mention his name, so I checked out his website. I read some reviews of his books.”

Jane tilted her head. “What’d you think?”

“That you might have guessed your association wasn’t going to be happy-ever-after when the romantic relationship in every one of his novels ends in death by lingering disease or natural disaster.”

Despite herself, Jane laughed. “Now I feel an even bigger fool.”

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to rub salt in the wound.”

“You’re not listening. I’m past being wounded when it comes to Ian.” She took another swallow of wine. “He called me his muse, you know. In print.”

“Three times.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“You can learn a lot online.”

“He was my client for almost three years. His output was amazing, but he needed someone to help keep things straight. He usually had two or more books going at a time, and he’d bounce ideas off me every morning. We’d polish the pages he’d written every evening.”

“Was he your only client?”

She shrugged. “He took up most of my time the last two years we were together. Evening work sessions turned into dinners. We started getting together weekends too. Then all indications were that we were headed for…”

“An ending unlike those in his bestselling novels.”

“Yes.” Like her father never failed to mention, she had been that silly and emotional. “He said such pretty things—and knew exactly when to say them. I’m annoyed to admit I soaked it all up.”

“Why shouldn’t you—”

“Because I should have been smarter. More wary.” But the male attention and approval had been heady. “Looking back, I realize it was just too…studied.”

Griffin frowned. “Meaning?”

“I think it was kind of a first draft. That Ian was working out relationship moves to use in a future book.”

“Oh, God.” Griffin looked away.

“Maybe he finally got all he needed from me. I only know that one day he said he wanted to start working on something new. And work on it in a different way—this time he was going to write without my assistance.”

Griffin groaned. “I can see where this is going.”

“I didn’t suspect a thing. I even thought it was a good idea—good for our personal relationship—as a matter of fact.” Her jaw tightened. “A couple of mornings later, when he’d told me he was going to be at a meeting, I let myself into his house because I’d left some papers I needed beside his computer. That’s when I encountered a woman…Deandra. She was wearing the long cardigan sweater I left there for chilly mornings.”

“And nothing else, I presume.”

It came back to her now, the other woman’s startled excuse, her own initial and ridiculous inclination to disbelieve her lying eyes. Then cold had washed over her, followed by an unnatural heat burning outward from her chest. “Ian was stepping into his pants when I walked into his office.”

Griffin tossed back the rest of the liquid in his glass. “His reaction?”

“In two words: somewhat sheepish.” She was reliving her own reaction now, the curdling contents of her stomach, the dizzying speed of her pulse, the taste of metal in her mouth.

“He asked that I come back at four that afternoon.” Her fingers curled into fists. “I was leaching dignity by the second, so I agreed. I assumed we’d made the appointment to give me time to pack up my things—I had books there, my extra laptop—”

“Your favorite cardigan.”

“You can’t imagine I’d want
that
back.” He shook his head and she picked up the story. “When I returned later, he was sitting at his desk, and he proceeded as if nothing had happened. He thought now that the truth was out, we could continue working together as before. Though he needed a new romantic muse, he still appreciated my professional skills.”

“Jesus.” Griffin laughed. “Even I know there are rules.”

“Yes. The fact that he wrote bestsellers didn’t give him a pass on lying and cheating. I told him so.”

He nodded. “Of course you did. Followed up, I assume, by a dramatic rending of his manuscript-in-progress.”

Shocked, Jane blinked, then set the wineglass on the table with a firm clack. “No.
That
would be against the rules too.”

“Jane,” Griffin said on a sigh.

“Huh?” Closing her eyes, she flopped back to the cushions. How she wished she could pluck that piece of her past out of her head and toss it away, she thought, forking her hands through her hair. Her muscles tight with tension, she stretched for the table with her bare toes, extending her legs as long as they would go. The hem of her dress tickled the top of her thighs as it rose. “He made me feel so naive. So needy.”

The air suddenly shifted, and she felt Griffin rear off the couch. She opened her eyes to see him stalking toward the windows, a beautiful male figure in his stylish clothes. His shoulders looked a mile wide as he placed the inner surface of one forearm against the glass and stared into the night. “Maybe we should go to b—I mean to sleep.”

“Are you kidding?” Her gaze idly ran down the length of his spine. She was accustomed to seeing him shirtless, and she imagined him that way now—that bronze swath of skin that stretched from neck to hips, the shallow valley of his spine, the play of muscles as he pulled himself up the cliff at the lower tip of the cove. “I’m too wound up for sleep.”

He swung around. That laser gaze of his fixed on her face, and she felt herself going hot. Had he sensed her checking him out? She shot straight in her seat, yanking down the hem of her dress as far as it would go. Her gaze shifted aside and caught on her reflection in a mirror across the room. Her hair was tousled and wild. Remembering her conversation with Ian all over again, she touched the disordered waves.

“Why wasn’t he honest with me back then?” she asked the woman in the glass as she yanked her fingers through the curling locks. “Tonight he didn’t have trouble communicating this new hair wasn’t to his taste. Why couldn’t he have talked to me before humiliating me by fooling around behind my back?”

Griffin started back across the room, and she shifted to address him. He’d unfastened the top two buttons on his shirt, and her eyes stalled on the wedge of revealed skin. She cleared her throat and lifted her gaze to his face. “Couldn’t he have said, ‘Jane, it’s been nice, but we’re over’?”

When her companion didn’t answer, a frisson of concern tickled her neck. She licked her lips and pressed farther into the cushions and then found herself talking again, as she always did when she was nervous. “Or he could have left a message on my phone.” Her voice lowered, and she tried intoning in an Ian-serious imitation. “‘Jane, I’m sorry, but it’s time I move on.’”

A still-silent Griffin was standing over her now, the fierce expression on his face making him seem more pirate than that afternoon when she’d found him in eye patches and an earring. Her brain seemed to be stuck on babble. “Even a text would have—”

“Jane,” Griffin interrupted, voice tight and matter-of-fact. “I’m sorry, but I’m having one of those inexplicable man-lust moments. Meaning if you don’t get behind a locked door in the next seven seconds, I’m going to be all over you like coconut oil at a nudist colony.”