Sex & Sensibility (20 page)

“The guy who really cares here is your dad.”

Christina shrugged and dug her bare toes into the bedspread.

Tessa thought about the cards she’d thrown that first day, when she was trying to figure out what the visions of Christina meant. “Part of what I do is read tarot. You know, the cards?” Christina looked at her as though she were a lunatic. Tessa pushed on. “When I read them for you, they told me you wanted to start something new, that you had put yourself on a course and you meant to see it through. Is that true?”

“Yeah.” Her tone was dismal. “So much for that.”

“Well, what if it didn’t mean Trey? What if it meant your relationship with your dad, or even getting into UC Santa Rita? I saw the applications in your room. You can do more with your life than give it to Trey Ludovic, Christina. The cards say you can plant the seeds and they’ll grow.”

Christina cocked an eyebrow at her. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re weird?”

Tessa smiled, and nodded with wry acknowledgement. “Yeah, lots of times. But you know what? A lot more people tell me I’m right.”

Except Griffin. The pain needled its way into her heart. She absolutely would not think about Griffin when there was a girl who needed someone to talk to right here. A girl who needed her family and a safe place while she recovered.

“So what do the cards say now?” Christina’s tone was challenging.

Tessa reached for her purse. “It just so happens that I brought them with me.” She took the velvet bag out and sat on the floor, her back against the footboard of the bed so that Christina could look over her shoulder and see the pattern the cards made on the rug. “I’m going to do a Hero’s Journey spread for you. See, this is how it works. Kinda like
Star Wars,
you know, where Luke starts off in the Ordinary World…”

And that was how Griffin Knox found them when he arrived ten minutes later.

From the private journal of Jay Singleton

The saints be praised, it’s enough to make a man go back to the Church. I never really believed in anything except myself, but this could almost convince me.

Christina is home.

She’s well, unharmed, no bruises, scratches or anything else. I thought she’d be royally pissed that I had the cavalry out after her, but she seemed almost touched instead.

Ding-ding, Jay. Remember what Tessa told you. “She just needs to be with you,” she said. “Needs to know that you appreciate her.”

Okay, so maybe I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t show it all that much. But Xena, who runs my office—I mean, Catherine, never seems to complain, especially when I give her another massive performance bonus. Mandy seems to be happy with the money and the sex. And redecorating rooms every time I walk out of them. But with kids it’s different.

I only got to see Christina once a year after she was eight. It’s hard to keep a relationship going, but I suppose I was hurt and figured Ocean Tech needed me more than she did. Despite my feelings about her mother, I can’t deny she puts Christina first and does a fine job at parenting.

Is it too late to parent a young woman? Probably. But I don’t think it’s too late to learn to be a dad over again. If she’s willing to let me fumble at it, I’m willing to try.

Jeez. Maybe I should quit writing it and just go tell her.

That’s another thing Tessa said. “Say it out loud, Jay. She really doesn’t know you love her.”

For someone so young she’s really wise. I don’t know why Griffin isn’t all over her like a dirty shirt. If I were his age and single, I might think about it, though I do wonder if she can read minds during sex. But he’s acting like a bear fresh out of hibernation. Not that he was ever Mister Congeniality to start with.

I hear her voice in the hall.

Practice, Jay:
I love you, Christina.

There. You can do it.

T
HE BONUS CHECK
would pay the bills for the rest of the school year, with a little left over for a cap and gown. But that was less important to Tessa than the apology that came with it.

“I was wrong to have fired you,” Jay Singleton said simply. Instead of sitting behind his massive desk like the corporate kingpin he was, he leaned on the front of it like a normal guy, with his ankles crossed and his shoulders relaxed. Even the volume of his voice was out of the red zone. Evidently having Christina back safe and sound was better than a dozen bottles of vitamin B.

“I know,” she replied with a grin.

“Let me put that another way. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. What I should have done is followed the facts logically, the way I’d do with software code. Then I would have seen there was more than one interpretation when they weren’t at the beach house the first time.”

“Maybe.” Tessa folded the check and tucked it in her handbag. “Or maybe what you should have done is trusted me. See how simple it can be?”

Jay smiled, and it wasn’t a sarcastic smile, either. “There is that. So. What are your plans now?”

She shrugged. “Go home again, I guess. Pick a thesis topic. Be maid of honor at my sister’s insane wedding. The usual.”

“I have a feeling that life with you is never ‘the usual.’ If I ever need the services of a sensitive again, I know who to call.”

“Thanks. I take referrals.”

“And you can call me anytime. I mean that.” Jay held out a buff-colored business card. “This is my private number, the one that doesn’t route through the company phone system and my assistant doesn’t answer. If you ever need anything—a job, a tow, whatever—you call me on that line.”

“I don’t suppose Human Resources would have much use for a psychology major at a computer company, would they?”

“Maybe not, but some days I need a shrink just for myself.”

Laughing, Tessa wished him well and stepped out into the sunshine. There was no sign of Griffin anywhere—not that she’d expected him to be loitering around, asking for another chance. Not the King of Swords.

When he’d walked in on her and Christina at the beach house, she’d half expected a smile, a hug, some indication that he was happy about her success. But no. He’d merely asked Christina if she were all right and then called Jay on his cell phone. He hadn’t asked Tessa why she hadn’t done that in the first place, but she felt the question in the air as
he’d placed the call and held her gaze while he’d ended Jay’s misery.

So fine, she’d sacrificed the dad’s peace of mind for the daughter’s. On the whole, she felt she’d made the right choice, and Jay seemed pretty happy about the outcome if the check in her purse was any indication.

She’d parked the Mustang next to Griffin’s truck when they’d brought Christina home. Pulling the keys out of her purse, she rounded the corner of the garage.

Griffin leaned on the Mustang’s rear fender, looking as loose as a garage mechanic with nothing to do on a slow summer day. In her experience, though, garage mechanics never wore jeans that fit like that. Or had a body under them that was literally good enough to eat.

Tessa had a sudden visual of the last time they had made love and how he had tasted as he shuddered and came into her mouth. Her breath hitched and a pulse of desire darted through her belly to her groin.

Thoughts like this are not going to get you back to your normal life. Keep it low-key. Be cool.

“What’s up?” she asked, tossing her purse in the passenger seat as casually as if the past two days had never happened. Or the past week, for that matter.

“Heading home?” he asked.

Some devil inside her goaded her to reply, “Well, if I were a detective I’d look at the resolved case and the car keys and come to the conclusion that yes, I am heading home.”

If she had hoped for some kind of reaction, a nettled tone, a flash in the eyes, she was disappointed. He merely nodded. “How are you with plants?”

“Plants?” She stared at him, mystified.

“Yeah, you know, things that grow.”

She tried to figure out why on earth it mattered now that she was never going to see him again. “Okay, I guess. I know about fertilizer and talking to them and stuff.”

“Because I have this banana tree that’s probably dying. I thought if you had nothing going on this afternoon you might come over and give me an opinion.”

Banana tree. He wanted her to diagnose his banana tree. And men thought women were a mystery. Sheesh.

She wasn’t quite finished with the King of Swords, anyway. She wanted to see him lower that blade. She wanted to hear “I was wrong not to believe you” coming out of those beautifully cut lips. She wanted to make him smile just once before she got back in the Mustang and left town in a cloud of dust, just like in the movies.

Okay, rewind.

She wanted to make him smile just once before he lost it and made love to her again. And for that she’d go and diagnose his banana tree.

“Okay,” she said. “Lead on.”

She followed him up the highway and into Santa Rita. He lived in a postwar community with houses painted terracotta and yellow and pale pink, with hibiscus and bougainvillea thriving in yards next to tricycles and the odd wheelchair. He slowed and pulled into the driveway of a house that was neatly kept, with a carved wood door that set off walls painted in a shade somewhere between cantaloupe and rust. Not what she would have picked for him, she thought, parking behind the pickup and switching off the engine. Maybe he’d bought it that way.

“Come on in.” He unlocked the front door and stood aside to let her pass. The walls of the house were thick, allowing the interior to stay cool even when the temperatures nudged triple digits. The room was painted cream, and
there were a few pictures of—were those chickens?—hanging on them. What the place needed, she thought, was a few of Mandy’s bright cushions and striped slipcovers. This was the house of a man who furnished because he needed something to sit on, not because he needed something nice to look at while he spent time there.

Ooh, what she couldn’t do with a house like this. Her student apartment was the house of a woman on hold, she realized. Everything was cheap, portable and fit easily in the back of a single truck, so she wouldn’t inconvenience more than one friend when she needed a driver. The only things that said, “An individual lives here,” were her plants.

Speaking of which…

“So, where’s this poor tree?”

“In the back.” He slid open the glass door behind the kitchen table. “Yesterday it was—” He stopped in the middle of the brick patio, gazing at something to the left. “Hey.”

Tessa joined him, and looked in the same direction. “Griffin, there’s nothing wrong with that tree that a little bit of water and some mulch wouldn’t fix.”

The tree was yellow around the edges and a little droopy, but other than that it looked pretty good. And here she’d been prepared to give it last rites.

“I gave it some of that yesterday. It must’ve liked it.”

“When I was a kid my mom did a series of paintings of banana trees. Really sexual and over-the-top, you know? Big fruit and languid, serrated leaves in brilliant greens, reds and yellows. They sold like crazy. Anyway, she got a bunch of the trees in pots and it was my job to keep them alive in the studio until the series was done. I learned a lot that summer.”

“About care and feeding of bananas?”

“No.” She grinned at him. “About how sexy they can be. I was fourteen. What else do you think I was thinking about?”

T
HE SAME THING
he and any boy his age had thought about when they were fourteen. The same thing he had forced himself not to think about between the time Sheryl had told him she was leaving and Tessa had come breezing into his life in her ’66 Mustang and shot his beliefs about himself and his future all to hell.

Her gaze was still twinkling at him. “Come on, Griffin. You didn’t ask me over here to doctor your banana. Or did you?”

Ninety percent of him had. The other ten percent—the part that craved the sight of that dimple in her right cheek and got tight in the chest over where the bows were tied on her blouse—would be delirious if she stayed to er, doctor his banana.

God, had he really asked her over here to do that? Could he get any more transparent?

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “That was pretty lame.”

The sparkle drained out of her eyes like a slow leak. What had she been expecting? She’d driven away without a care in the world, just as Sheryl had, leaving him with nothing but pain and guilt. Even if it were self-inflicted in this case.

“Then what?” she asked.

There were so many reasons, not the least of which was that she was standing in the sun in those little pants that ended just below the knee, with two—he counted—thin knit tops with spaghetti straps in pink and lime green over that. He’d been trying to figure out for the last five
minutes where her bra straps were. Maybe they were the skinny pale purple ones that—

“Griffin?”

Jeez. Could he for once focus on something besides her body when he was with her?

“I wanted to thank you, at least,” she said. “For telling that detective to call me for information. That was nice of you.”

“It wasn’t nice at all,” he said, his voice rough in his throat. “You send your investigator to the principal witness.”

“She didn’t believe me, but it still felt good. Like maybe you didn’t think I was a fraud after all.”

She was handing him his opportunity on a plate. “I don’t think you’re a fraud.”

“Then why didn’t you back me up in front of Jay?”

Ah, that was the question he’d been trying to answer all this time himself. He was silent for a moment, trying to arrange the words so they’d make some kind of sense. She bit her lip.

“Never mind.” Chin up, she turned and walked into the house. “I can live without knowing.”

“Tessa, wait.”

In the kitchen, she faced him. “For what? For you to tell me you didn’t really mean to humiliate me in public—again? Just because it turned out well doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Or maybe you’d just like me to take care of your banana for you and get out of your life, like your other girlfriends?”

His mouth opened but no words came out.

“We had something special, Griffin, but as I told you before, until you quit pasting Sheryl’s face on any woman who cares about you, you’re just going to keep warding them off and being alone.”

“I don’t—” He cut himself off.

“Yes, you do. Then when they leave just like she did, you can tell yourself you were right after all not to get too close.”

“The psychology major strikes again.”

Brilliant comeback, Griffin. Guaranteed to make her stick around and go all warm and fuzzy on you
.

“No, just a woman,” Tessa retorted. “A woman who thought you might be able to drop that sword of yours and quit fighting long enough to get some joy out of life.”

His sword? “What are you talking about?”

“That’s your card, you know. The King of Swords. But if you’re not careful you’re just going to end up falling on it and living the rest of your life with a permanent injury. Is that what you want?”

The King of Swords. Now he’d heard everything. “You’re not bad with a sword yourself. Are you having fun ripping me to pieces?”

His gut hurt, as if someone really had stuck something sharp under his heart. But was she doing it, or had he been doing it to himself all this time, and she’d just prodded a self-inflicted wound? Just how much pain could a man take before he realized something had to change or there would be no hope of healing?

“It’s my job to tell the truth,” she reminded him. “You should know that by now.”

He did know it. And he’d come to depend on it, hadn’t he, during their investigation. Why should he expect that she’d be any different now, when the case was over?

“The truth is a tough pill to swallow,” he finally admitted.

“But isn’t that what you spent your whole career looking for and trying to prove? So I bring it to you in a pack
age that looks different. Maybe it has a few pieces missing. It’s still the truth.”