Beach House No. 9 Part 7

Griffin grunted. Jane. She'd worn this silly hat the other day, lowered all the way to her eyebrows. For a few moments, on the deck of Captain Crow's, he'd thought she was going to prove cooperative. She'd been close at his side as he'd approached Tess, all compliant and cuddly. That should have been the tip-off. How long could the librarian last like that? But h.e.l.l, what was wrong with her, having a sudden attack of the truth?

"Jane bugs the c.r.a.p out of me," Griffin said, ripping a dandelion out by its roots. Its fluffy head reminded him of Jane's fluffy hair. He liked her hair; it twisted and turned, making him want to bury his fingers in it and then... Gah! With a jerk, he tossed the stupid weed away. She was like that, rooting into his head where she didn't belong and wasn't wanted. Messing with his cool equilibrium.

"I guess your sister gets the credit for your good mood, then."

"Oh, right," Griffin said. "Like I want to get involved with her and her domestic dilemmas."

"Looks like you won't," the ancient one said, his voice mild. "Since you've found a way to palm it all off on poor Jane."

"What, you got a spy camera installed around here? And poor Jane, my a.s.s. Poor Jane is actually Annoying Jane who does not follow instructions. If she'd stuck with the program and told my sister that we were...that we had a thing happening here, then Tess would have left me my privacy. She's big on people falling in love."

"Skye says she's had a change of heart about that."

Skye. So she was the codger's source. He'd been nosy and meddlesome from the very beginning, and that hadn't changed, even after all these years. "Did our friendly property manager drop off your monthly allotment of Metamucil today? Followed by a big dose of gossip?"

"Gossip or not, don't you wonder what happened to Tess's marriage?"

Private flopped onto his back on the gra.s.s beside Griffin, which required him to perform the obligatory belly rub. "Yeah, I..." he started, then heard himself. "No, I do not wonder what happened. It's none of my business. That's between her and her husband, Deadly Dull David, which right there probably says it all."

"I met him at their wedding reception. He seemed very nice," the old scold replied.

"Gage came up with the name," Griffin mumbled. "You know Gage, he can't imagine anyone enjoying the suburban nine-to-five."

"People change. Grow up. Or down, as the case may be, like when they make their own sister someone else's problem."

Griffin threw up his hands. "Jane again! Why do you keep bringing her up?"

"I'm not the one keeping her around indefinitely. She's a very pretty young woman. Is that why you don't cut her loose?"

Griffin didn't need to explain himself. And not just because the explanation wouldn't put him in a very good light. On second thought, maybe if he disgusted his elderly neighbor he'd go home. "Think about it, old man. If I kicked Jane out of the cove, who would keep my sister out of my hair? This way, Jane is the gatekeeper. I tell her I'm working and she makes sure Tess and her tribe keep their distance."

And it also meant he needn't give his agent some excuse about why he'd gotten rid of her. Frank might legitimately object to that, since he was the one who'd engaged her services in the first place.

"You've kept your distance from Tess and her kids since you returned from overseas," Monroe pressed. "She told Skye you've stayed away from them for months."

"And Skye just had to go running to you with the news," he said darkly. But he couldn't deny the accusation. He looked down at his feet and then muttered the first thing that came into his head. "Russ smells like Afghanistan."

"Eh?"

"The small one is Russ. The one still in diapers. He smells like Afghanistan, okay?" As stupid as it sounded, it was true. "It's the baby wipes-you know those wet cloths people use to wipe a kid's a.s.s? That's what we had between our too-seldom encounters with running water." Upon his return to California, the first time he'd gotten close enough to get a whiff of his youngest nephew, he'd left Tess's house and never been back. Being at her home, breathing in that smell, made it nauseatingly easy for him to imagine Russ-and his siblings-too soon grown. Too soon experiencing that intoxicating c.o.c.ktail of danger and adrenaline that he'd sucked down with an eagerness that had both ashamed and enticed him. Those were thoughts he didn't want in his head.

There was a moment's silence, and he was sure he'd shut the old guy up, but then his neighbor waved a hand. "In World War Two, I once went seventy-two days without was.h.i.+ng up. You ever get lice in your beard? Now, that's deprivation."

Annoyed by his dismissive tone, Griffin crossed his arms over his chest. "Let me call the waa-ambulance, old man. You know what was in the best care packages from home? Flea collars. Flea collars for dogs. We fought over 'em to wear around our necks and wind around our ankles."

Monroe's eyes narrowed under his beetled brows. "In my war, our meals came with fleas and we were glad for the extra protein."

"Yeah?" Griffin said, scornful. "Well, I can beat that because-"

From the direction of No. 9's back door came the sound of a throat clearing. "Pardon me for interrupting this illuminating p.i.s.sing contest," Jane said.

The crank ignored her intrusion. "I have two words for you, Griffin: trench foot."

"I..." He wouldn't have let the other man have the last word, except he glanced over and was distracted by the sight of her. She was wearing rhinestone-studded sandals, jeans cut off at the knees and a loose sleeveless top, the hem of which fluttered in the breeze. The wind caught her wavy hair too, setting the sandy tendrils dancing around her face. "You're sunburned," he said. Pink color splashed her nose, cheeks, the tops of her shoulders. Her mouth looked redder too.

That mouth. Every time he looked at the d.a.m.n thing he got a jolt.

It pursed at him now, signaling she was in a mood. "That's what happens when I spend the day entertaining kids on the beach. Make that two days."

He knew he should feel both guilt and grat.i.tude. But instead he was riveted by the duffel bag in her hand and the soft-sided laptop case that was slung across her chest. She was leaving. From the moment she'd first arrived on the scene that had been his goal-getting rid of her. So this outcome shouldn't surprise him. And Tess or no Tess, it shouldn't bother him in the least either.

He remembered the delicate frame of those shoulders under his hands. Their telltale tremor. Her rosebud mouth parting under his lips in surprise. Her taste heating him up. All that was leaving the cove.

Good. He didn't need the complication...didn't want the connection.

Pinning him with her gaze, she dropped the duffel and placed her hand on her hip. "I should have made something clear two days ago."

"Made what clear?" Her skin had been silky under his hands. That he couldn't forget.

"I'm not a babysitter. Nor am I an *a.s.sistant,' in the way you spoke of me to your sister," she said.

Now guilt did manage to give him a poke. "You said you'd do anything I needed," he reminded her, hating his defensive tone.

She just stared at him, her clear eyes managing to send out a burn.

Oh, yeah, in a mood. He shuffled his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets, tried not to think how cute she looked with that pink nose and silvery glare. She'd kill him if he said that now.

Now that she was leaving.

He took a breath. "Hey, I am sorry about that, Jane. I was an a.s.s." She threw him a Gee, that wasn't so bad sort of look. "I understand you're a professional."

"Thank you."

He thought he could add even more to that, now that she was saying her goodbyes. "As a matter of fact, I picked up the phone when Frank called this morning. He was singing your praises."

"That's nice to hear. We go back a ways."

"Yeah. Well, I'm sure he's not wrong."

A smile bloomed on her face. "So, an actual vote of confidence from you, chili-dog? Even better."

He'd miss being chili-dog, just a little. The unexpected pang of sentiment convinced him to give her a bit more. "Frank is sending some packages. I said I'd accept them. A laptop, printer, other supplies. I'm actually planning to set up an office." Not that he was going to do anything inside it, but he figured Jane would take the information as the friendly farewell gift it was. A sign of truce between two former combatants.

Except she wasn't looking at him with gratification. "You don't have a laptop here? No computer whatsoever?"

"Uh..."

She was glaring again. "I thought Ted was wrong, you know. I thought you must have something to write on over here or else you wouldn't have told your sister you needed privacy two days ago because you'd be working."

Oh, s.h.i.+t.

"While you were over here basking in slothful solitude, I was out there-" she jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sand "-for two solid days building sand castles with your nephews, who might be adorable, but are definitely exhausting."

Old Man Monroe cackled. "You're in the doghouse, boy."

Jane gathered up the bag at her feet, then spun on her flashy sandals, heading back inside his house. The last he'd ever see of her, Griffin thought, was her cute a.s.s. Not a bad way to go, but he didn't like the idea of her going away-forever-mad. "No goodbye?"

Her feet halted. She glanced over her shoulder. "Why? I'll be back in a minute. I'm just going to put my things in one of the guest rooms."

His jaw dropped. The coot started cackling again.

"Now that you'll have a computer, you're ready to work, Griffin. And since you claim you have confidence in my ability to do my job, it will be much easier for us with me living over here."

"But...but..." Jesus. He couldn't think. Living here? "What, uh, what about Tess and the kids?"

"They'll have more room next door without me underfoot." She started walking again, then took another look back. "Oh, and they'll be coming over tonight for dinner."

The coot's cackling only got louder.

Jane smiled at him. "Why don't you join us, Mr. Monroe? Griffin will be barbecuing."

And the day had started out so happy, Griffin thought, when his reeling brain finally settled. But she'd once again upended him, and he was no longer confident he had the skills to either wait her out or keep her out.

d.a.m.n. The enemy had infiltrated, putting the heart of the camp at risk.

FROM HER PLACE beneath the shade of a tropical umbrella, Tess Quincy made a bargain with herself. Twenty more minutes. That's how much longer she'd wait for her husband to meet her as she'd requested. She'd specified "lunchtime" and "on the beach" in her text to his phone, and had-wrongly-a.s.sumed he'd show up just minutes after noon. That had been two hours ago. If he didn't appear before the big hand touched the six on her wrist.w.a.tch-worn in an effort to teach Duncan and Oliver about a.n.a.log time-she'd retreat back to her cottage. Waiting a second more than that would only be another blow to her ego. It had taken enough hits.

Closing her eyes, she settled more deeply into the old-fas.h.i.+oned beach chair she'd found in a closet at No. 8. A tripod of light wood strung with striped canvas, it didn't lift her rear end off the sand, but it supported her back at the perfect angle for magazine-reading. As a girl, she'd spent hours just like this, paging through People and Us Weekly, imagining herself as one of the SoCal celebrities so often pictured on the glossy pages.

Nowadays, if she had time for any reading, it was for her moms' book group. They read about tiger mothers and free-range mothers and mothers who managed to start up s.e.xy small businesses. Tess wondered now if she should have been studying up on husbands and wives or how to survive a failed marriage.

A breeze blew her hair across her face. As she fingered it behind her ear, she became aware of someone's gaze on her. At the weight of it, her heart stuttered, then kicked into a rapid beat. Him? Swallowing hard, she lifted her lashes and glanced right.

Her pulse decelerated like a motorboat brought to a sudden halt. It was a stranger who stared at her from his place eight feet away on the sand. A stranger staring at her, she realized now, with a look of blatant interest. Her heart gave another-though milder-kick. And she didn't look away.

Before this week, Tess Quincy, mother of four and wife of more than thirteen years, would have ignored the man. But Tess Quincy, woman with a shambles-or was that a sham?-of a marriage, found herself unwilling to pretend she didn't notice his speculative-and yes, admiring-gaze.

So sue her, it felt good.

The man appeared to be around thirty, which made him a little younger than Tess, and his faint smile topped lean muscles and knee-length swim trunks in bright green. "It is you, isn't it?"

For a moment she was speechless, then words spilled easily from her own now-smiling lips. "It depends on who you think I am." With a little thrill, she registered the flirtatious note in her voice and wasn't ashamed of it. It had been months since she'd been noticed as a woman.

"The gum," he said, certain enough now that he strolled closer to her. "Brand name, OM. The green tea gum. You're her."

You're her. Another man had said those words to her once. She glanced down at the sleeping child beside her and fussed with the fish-patterned towel covering his napping body. The man who'd said those words originally had hardly looked at her since the precious ten-month-old was born.

The stranger came yet closer and took to one knee, holding out a hand. "Teague White."

She didn't linger on the handshake, but her smile stayed in place. "Tess Quincy. I was Tess Lowell when I made those commercials."

"After all these years, they still play."

Her shoulders lifted, expressing her own surprise over it. She'd filmed them at eighteen, and they'd hit the small screen as she turned nineteen, a long-legged girl in belly-baring yoga pants and a tiny tank, leading a cla.s.s in meditation. The cause of the ad campaign's sustained popularity wasn't clear. It could have been her nubile teenage body, the gleam of mischief in her eyes when she told the camera that "OM will tame a wild mind," or, more likely, the continued heavy airplay. Frequency plus reach had meant success for both OM and Tess. She still sank residuals into her kids' college funds.

If she and David divorced, she supposed she'd be using those checks to help support herself.

Teague White's appreciative expression took some of the sting out of the thought. "You look exactly the same."

"I've had four kids since then."

"No," he said, shaking his head.

She felt her dimples dig deep in her cheeks. "Yes." Maybe that last pregnancy hadn't completely taken her out of the realm of attractiveness, after all. She plugged the Pilates DVD into the player twice a week and ran with Russ in the jogging stroller every other day. Night and morning, she brushed, she flossed, she glossed what she could gloss and she moisturized the rest.

Yet her husband, David, didn't look at her the way this stranger did. Her husband, David, barely looked at her at all anymore. This unknown man recognized that eighteen-year-old girl in the wifely sh.e.l.l, and he seemed pretty pleased about it. She c.o.c.ked her head, the moves not so hard to remember now. "What is it you do, Teague?"

"I'm with the fire department," he said.

"Doing...?" Not that she couldn't guess.

A grin popped out, as if he couldn't hold it back. "I'm a firefighter."

She figured then that he got his own share of appreciative glances with all those manly muscles and the studly occupation. "Day off?"

He nodded. "We wanted surf and sand. You're an added bonus."

It was heady stuff, the attention of an attractive member of the opposite s.e.x. She had plenty of close encounters with males in her daily life, but mostly they wanted to wipe their noses on the tails of her s.h.i.+rt or use her limbs for climbing like a jungle gym at the park.

Down the beach, someone yelled the handsome stranger's name. Both he and Tess looked toward the surf, where a handful of equally muscled men were tossing around a football. They gestured to him and one threw the ball, a perfect spiral that landed at Teague's feet. With a show of reluctance, he picked it up, then clambered to a stand. "You going to be here awhile?"

"I..." If she agreed, she could tell herself she wasn't staying put for David. She could pretend to herself that she was instead waiting for the handsome stranger to return and make her feel desirable again. "Maybe."

His grin flashed on. "And later this week? My friends and I have some time off. We'll be here again."

"I...I have those four kids." Her palm caressed the tuft of Russ's dark hair that was the only part of him visible beneath the towel.

"So? I like kids. And I have a wild mind that maybe only you can tame."

That little thrill buzzed through her veins again. Still... "Four kids and a husband."

She liked him more for not losing the smile. "Lucky guy. Unlucky me." Tossing the football up and down in one hand, he walked backward, his gaze still on her face. "Does that mean you won't run away with me? We could go to Arizona."

"I thought people ran away to Tahiti," she said, laughing.

"The kids'll like the Grand Canyon. Train ride's not to be missed."