Sex & Sensibility (17 page)

Smart Ramon. Evidently he had left it standing wide open.

Stupid Tessa. Why couldn’t she learn to pick her moments better and keep her mouth shut? No wonder all her relationship prospects got frightened away.

Tessa pushed open the front door of the cottage and went in. The windows had been thrown open and the purple T-shirt she’d tossed on the bed had been hung up in the closet. There were new towels in the bathroom.

She dropped her purse on the computer table, slumped on the window seat and gazed absently at the view. Even though she was convinced she was right, she had hurt him with the mention of Sheryl. If he wouldn’t let her make it up to him, it might take him a while to bandage his wounds and put his armor on again. It hadn’t been fair to toss his ex-wife’s name at him as if she’d read his mind when actually she’d done some fact-checking of her own. That was the next thing to a lie, and if he’d given her the chance, she would have admitted it. But they had both lost their tempers and now things were going to be awkward.

No, that was a lie, too. It was more than awkward.

She had hurt him and because of that, she hurt. And why did she hurt? Because she cared about his feelings.

Come on, it’s more than that. The truth is, you care about him. Griffin Knox, the guy who makes you smile and want to wear see-through clothes. The guy who takes better care of his truck than he does of himself.

The guy who probably won’t let you within touching distance ever again.

W
ITH A SIGH
, Tessa got her cell phone from her purse and came back to the window seat. She keyed in the first number on autodial, and when she got voice mail at Linn’s office, dialed the second one.

Her sister answered on the second ring. “Oh, hey, Tessa.”

“What are you doing home?”

“I pulled night shift this week. I have to go in about an hour.”

“Kellan, too?”

“Nah. He’s a corporal now. He gets dibs on days. But we manage to meet for supper. Except for tonight. We have to go pick a tux for him. But I bet you didn’t call to talk about my shift or tuxes.”

“No.” The word was a disconsolate plea for help.

“Uh-oh. That sound means one of two things—either you got evicted or it’s man trouble.”

“The second.”

“That’s a relief. It’s easier to find a man than it is to find a decent rent-controlled apartment. So, who is it? Surely you can’t have met someone at Jay Singleton’s holy of holies. Unless maybe you’ve got a thing for the chauffeur.”

“He’s, like, nineteen, so no. It’s Griffin.”

Silence breathed down the line. “Griffin.”

“Yeah, you know. Fort Knox.”

“You’re having man trouble with Griffin Knox? Is that even possible?” Linn sounded a little winded.

“At the moment, nothing is possible with him. We had fabulous sex this afternoon on the table in Mandy Singleton’s beach house and the next thing you know, he’s shouting at me and roaring out of here in his truck.”

“Sex. On a table. With Griffin Knox, who arrested you,” Linn repeated, as if to make sure she’d heard correctly and they were talking about the same person.

“Yes. But Natalie Wong was right. He’s not emotionally available. We enjoyed the heck out of each other and practically as soon as it was over, he was backing away, then walking away, then driving away at a high rate of speed.” She sighed. “I just don’t know what to do, Linn.”

“My God. Tessa, have you fallen in love with that guy?”

Deep inside, Tessa felt a deep knell of confirmation, as if something she’d always needed to know had finally been answered.

This was it. This was why the cards had said to wait.

“I…I hope not,” she said at last.

“I hope not, too. He’s a one-way ticket to a broken heart, which has to be a line from a country western song somewhere.”

“I don’t listen to country western.”

“Well, listen to your big sister, then. There can’t be two people on the planet more different than you and Griffin. You were thrown together for a job, you had a little fun, now he’s decided he can’t handle it and it’s over.” Linn’s voice softened. “Don’t throw your heart away on him, honey. Natalie is right. She called and told me you were doing background on him, by the way, and I wondered what was up.”

“Nothing’s up, I guess. I thought I could open a door for him, but he’s locked down tight.”

“It happens,” Linn said sympathetically. “Look at me and Jordan. Remember him? The pilot? I tried to open up his door for three years.”

“Jordan was a jerk.”

“I know, and if you’ve fallen for Griffin he must not be one, but sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses.”

Tessa supposed that was true, but the optimist in her always hoped that every problem had a solution. Some didn’t. Maybe some problems just wanted to be left alone.

She said goodbye to Linn and put the phone back in her purse. If ever there was a time to consult the cards, it was now.

The Queen of Wands smiled at her from the front of the little velvet bag as she shook the cards into her hand. “I could use some help from you,” Tessa told her. Then she sat on the rug in a long beam of sunshine and shuffled and cut, then chose one.

The Magician.

Tessa caught her breath. She should have consulted the cards before she’d called Linn and gotten all depressed. The Magician was her kind of card. He meant concentrating on what you wanted, committing to it, and then going after it. People often thought he pulled off miracles, but it was the power of his focus and simply doing what needed to be done that accomplished the seemingly impossible.

So there you were.

She needed to focus on doing what needed to be done, and that would help get her what she wanted. The seemingly impossible.

But what was that, exactly? Was it to return to her old life and focus on her thesis, so she could graduate—yep, that fell under “seemingly impossible”—and get on with the scary business of making a living?

Face it, Tessa, sensible people don’t change their major four times. You stay in school because it’s safe there. You don’t actually have to get out and grow up and be useful. Or if not useful, then at least a benefit of some kind, helping people who need your skills.

And if she didn’t want to focus on that, then how about the other impossible? How about Griffin?

Again, that deep sense of recognition sounded inside her, like the vibration of a bell that you can feel but not hear. Her instincts told her this was what she wanted, whether it was logical or practical or not. And Tessa had learned to listen to her instincts.

Her brain told her that Linn had all the facts right. But her heart and her internal sense told her that there was more to caring about someone than facts. There was action. There was sex. And there was opening up to one another and being honest.

Okay, so two out of three wasn’t bad.

Through the open window, she heard the purr of a couple of very expensive engines, and then voices. Jay and Mandy were home.

Well, in the absence of Griffin, she was going to have to check in and add a report of some kind to the one-word text message she presumed Griffin had gotten around to sending once he’d slowed down.

She crossed the patio and went around to the front door, which was closest to Jay’s office. But for once the inner sanctum was empty. It felt just like Jay, though—big and full of importance and stress. A hundred years and
half a dozen owners from now, it would probably still feel that way.

Tessa followed the sound of voices down the hall to the kitchen, where it seemed Mandy was making Jay a snack. Big shot meetings must make a guy hungry.

“I told you, I don’t know anything more than that one word—oh, Tessa.” Jay put down his cheese-and-croissant sandwich and motioned for her to come in. “All I know from Griffin is ‘no.’ What does that mean? And where the hell is he?”

“It means no, she wasn’t at the beach house this morning.” Tessa pulled up a stool and sat opposite him at the huge butcher-block table. “And Griffin drove out of here about twenty minutes ago. I don’t know where he went.”

“Oh, I passed him when I was coming back from Santa Rita,” Mandy told him. “I got him on the walkie-talkie. He’s on his way back.”

That wasn’t enough time for a guy to cool off and find his equilibrium. Tessa wished Mandy’s timing had been off just a little so that they might have missed each other. Or that the battery had gone dead in her phone. It was hard to prepare herself to talk to him when she had no idea what frame of mind he’d be in.

“Well, you can tell us as well as he can,” Jay said, chomping into his sandwich. “Start at the top. Don’t leave anything out.”

Yeah, right.
She started at the top and left whole paragraphs of things out. And by the time she got to the end, Griffin was leaning on the kitchen doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest and his gaze fixed on her. She lost her train of thought and stumbled to a halt.

“Can you add anything to that, Griffin?” Jay asked.

“Just a few opinions.”

“Let’s hear ’em.”

“Why doesn’t Mandy update us first?” Griffin suggested.

“Come on in and sit.” Mandy waved him to a stool next to Tessa, but he took the one on the end instead. Mandy shrugged and brought her own croissant to the table, taking the stool he had rejected.

He won’t sit next to me. Not a good sign
.

Mandy took a fortifying nibble of her sandwich. “I went to Oraia to get a facial and see what I could learn.” She glanced at Tessa. “They do a great facial. You should go there. Ask for Bonita.”

“But did you talk to Michelle?” Griffin wanted to know. “She’s the one who said Christina and Trey had plans to go away.”

“Well, that’s the funny thing.” Mandy took another bite. “Bonita doesn’t know Trey or Christina. I guess she’s new. But what she does know is that Michelle hasn’t been in the shop for two weeks. Apparently she’s on vacation, diving in the Catalinas.”

“What?” Griffin looked blank.

“That’s impossible.” Tessa stared from Jay to Mandy and back. “She must have come back.”

“Not according to Bonita. I asked around. No one has seen her since the day she left.”

“Which one of you talked to her?” Jay demanded, glaring at Griffin.

“I did,” Tessa said, and the glare turned on her like a bad-tempered searchlight. “I pretended I was Christina’s friend Ashley.”

“Was Griffin with you?”

“Of course he was. He’s been with me every waking hour since I got here, per your orders.”

Don’t lose your temper.
Up until now she hardly knew
she had a temper. But there was something about these men that just rubbed her the wrong way. Separately, she could deal with them. Together? Bad news.

Jay looked at Griffin. “And you believe she talked to this Michelle.”

Griffin nodded. “At the time, I did.”

“What do you mean, ‘at the time’?” Tessa demanded. “You were sitting right there. We called early, so she was there before the shop opened and people saw her. And then we went and looked Trey up at Stellar Memory. That’s how we found him.”

“It couldn’t have been her,” Mandy observed. “The Catalinas are a long way from here.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it was or not,” Tessa said. “The point is, we got the name we needed. We found out who Christina’s boyfriend is.”

“For all the good that did us,” Griffin put in. “Let’s just say it wasn’t Michelle who answered the phone. Who could it have been? Someone who figured out you were playing games and decided to play one of her own? Trey’s name is all over the papers in this neck of the woods. Maybe this person saw it and decided to pull your leg right back.”

“It was Michelle!”

“But how do you know?” Jay asked.

“That’s the point!” Tessa’s frustration increased. “I
did
know. It was Michelle Oraia, who owns the shop. I sensed it.”

“Just like you sensed they were at the beach house last night?” Jay said, and looked to Griffin for confirmation.

He shook his head. “There was no evidence at all that they were there. No trash, no damp in the shower, nothing.”

“She said that they were very neat.” Jay put his sand
wich down. “I didn’t know she meant so neat they weren’t even there.”

“They were there,” Tessa said, but even as the words came out of her mouth, she knew it was pointless. “I saw them there, last night. I just don’t know where they are now. I need to go and get the blue sweater and find somewhere quiet, so I can—”

“That won’t be necessary.” Jay’s tone was flat.

Tessa glanced at Mandy, but her face was as smooth as it probably was in the courtroom, right before she made her closing argument. No help there.

Griffin?
With her eyes, she appealed to him to help her out. He had believed her when she’d called Michelle before. And they had identified Trey together. The guy was in the Christmas party picture. Why was Griffin doing this?

“Thank you for your time, Tessa,” Jay said. “But I believe we’ve been a little misled.”

“I haven’t misled you! In fact, I’ve—”

“I didn’t say it was you who misled us. Though these discrepancies between your visions and reality are a little disturbing. I think now that it’s time we pursued a more—shall we say, realistic line of investigation.”

“But it is real!”

“I’m going to disagree with you.”

“We’re not sure how you define
real
.” Mandy smiled, as if to indicate that these were the facts, but she wasn’t holding them against Tessa. “In the beginning Jay and I agreed to overlook this business about Griffin’s arresting you for fraud. But since we don’t seem to be seeing any results, here, I’m feeling very uneasy about you working with us.”

Tessa felt as if she’d been thrown to the ground. She
tried to drag a breath into her lungs that were suddenly having trouble working. “Remember that I was not convicted, or even charged.” One breath. Good. Try another. Now, talk. “He arrested me by mistake. You can ask him.”

Jay waved an arm, as if to get their attention. “Arrested, charged, it’s all the same to me. The point is, we need to try something else. While you’re packing up your things, I’ll be in my office writing you a check. I’ll meet you there in, say, ten minutes.” Jay pushed himself back from the table with an air of finality.

“Mr. Singleton, it’s you who’s making a mistake now,” Tessa said desperately. “We’re only half a day behind Christina. If you’d just let me—”

“Ten minutes, Tessa,” he said from the doorway. “And I suggest that this time, you don’t keep me waiting.”