by Parks, AL
Sure, he wanted to make money, be able to live without the constant worry of what bills were coming due, and how much he had saved up in the bank to cover emergencies. But the type of money that Clarissa was sporting was excessive and put her in a league of people that he had nothing in common with except for the occasional millionaire going through a mid-life crisis wanting one of his bikes.
Still, there was something about the woman that enticed him and excited him. And that shit had to stop. Getting involved with Clarissa Beckett had bad news written all over it.
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. If it isn’t my new partner.” He didn’t need to look up to see who had slid onto the bar stool next to him. No other woman sent intense, sexually-sparked waves through him. Her intoxicating scent filled his nose making his groin stand up and take notice.
“Just when I thought it was safe to grab a beer.” He took a swig from his glass, giving her a sideways glance. She had a smile across her face, and a flush hit her cheeks.
“Didn’t I warn you that I turn up like a bad penny just when you think you've gotten rid of me?” She bumped her shoulder into his and left it there, surprising him. They had been on such a roller coaster lately - one minute laughing, then next snipping at each other. But there was no denying the amount of heat between the two of them, and it was damn near unbearable. Griff wasn’t about to break the physical connection he had with her, though. No matter how loudly his brain was yelling at him to finish his beer and get the hell out of there. She smelled too good, felt too good against him, and he couldn't break the spell she had over him.
“So, what are you doing here, my favorite little heiress?”
“Drinking. You?” She glanced at the near empty beer on the bar in front of him. She looked up and caught Sam at the end of the bar. He made his way over to them. “Sam, my bartender extraordinaire, would you be so kind as to get another beer for my business partner, and I’ll have whatever he’s having?”
“Sure thing,” Sam answered, a shit-eating grin all over his face. He placed the two glasses in front of them and headed off to help another couple that had sat down a few stools away from them.
“Thanks.” Griff lifted his glass.
“Cheers,” Clarissa said, clinking the rim of her beer against his before taking a large gulp. Her tongue shot out of her mouth, the tip of her tongue licking the foam from her top lip. Jesus, she gonna kill me doing that shit. His body hummed with need.
He looked past her over her shoulder to the pool tables. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to your friends?”
“Why, are you embarrassed to be seen with me, Griff?” Her eyes pierced him, and he detected something sad, as if she worried he might answer yes.
“Just didn’t want you to have to explain what you’re doing with a lowly bike mechanic.” He took a drink, holding on to his glass.
“Wow, you really have a low opinion of me, huh? So, why do you hate me so much, Griff? It can’t just be the money. I mean, it’s the same money my dad had, and you seemed to like him. So, perhaps you feel as if I don’t deserve it. Maybe you think I’m a bitch for not falling to pieces over his death? Getting close on any of these, or is it something completely different?”
“Who says I hate you?” He downed the rest of his beer, and lifted his empty towards Sam, who gave him a nod.
“Well, if this is how you act when you like someone, I can see why you’re still single.” Clarissa snorted and popped a pretzel in her mouth.
“Yeah, and why are you still single, then?” The heat between them was turning to something dangerous. He could feel a sense of outrage growing in him, but all he could think about was grabbing her, backing her into a dark corner, and kissing her until she was begging for more.
“Because I’m a bitch,” she said. “And I’m too fucked up to be a good match for anyone.” She swirled her glass in the water that encircled the base and was quiet. When she lifted her head, she had a forced smile on her face. “I don’t really have a lifestyle that’s conducive to having a relationship. Just ask my ex-boyfriend.”
“So, what made you so fucked up? All the money?”
She snickered. “The money was the least of my problems. No, my issues came from my father and his selfishness. He took what he wanted, when he wanted. He didn’t care about who he hurt in the process, as long as his needs and wants were met.”
Griff turned in his seat to face her. “What did he take from you?”
She stiffened, and the air around them became stagnant. Finally she took in a breath, and he watched her shoulders fall as she exhaled. “My childhood.”
She stared at the bar and Griff wasn’t sure if he should push her any farther. The conversation seemed to upset her more than he had wanted it to. He was just hoping for a little bit of insight into his former, and new, partners. She lifted her head, and chuckled without any feeling. “It’s a pathetically sad story, father has affair with younger woman, knocks her up. Leaves his family and marries the slut he’s been sleeping with right under his wife’s nose. Wife - sorry, ex-wife - falls into a deep depression and becomes a woman her children don’t recognize.”
She turned towards Griff, her face stoic, lips in a firm line. “That’s what the man you think was decent guy - a nice guy - did. He snuffed out the light in my mother. He took away the fun-loving mom that Amber and I loved, and forced us to grow up in this ever-present cloud of unhappiness. All the while, he was happy, showing off his new young trophy wife and her new boobs to the people who claimed to be my mother’s friends. They showed their true colors by inviting the whore into their circle, shoving her under my mother’s nose at every opportunity just so they could revel in the awkwardness. Just in case there would be a fight, something that would provide them with gossip. And my dad let it happen. Hell, he enjoyed it as much as the rest of them. And when my mom finally broke free - fell in love - father dearest did everything he could to destroy her and Jake. Not because he wanted my mother back, as he claimed. But because he could. All he wanted was to destroy everything and everyone who tried to love him. My dad was not a good man, Griff. He was not decent, or kind. He was a monster that took without any regard for those he left behind in his wake.”
Griff exhaled. His hand ran the length of his face. Jesus H. What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He had no idea Brad had caused so much pain for his daughters or ex-wife. And there was nothing he could do to make Clarissa feel any better.
“Well, damn. What a prick. Probably makes shitty fish food in his current residence at the bottom of the ocean, too.”
A crooked smile slowly formed on Clarissa’s face. She raised her glass, and touched the edge of his. “To fish food.”
***
How was this at all possible? Not only was she sharing parts of her past that she never discussed, especially with strangers, she was actually able to laugh about it. She never would’ve believed that the man who had been such a champion of her father, would actually agree he was a class-A asshole.
“Okay, enough about my sad little life.” She didn’t want to talk about her father anymore. In fact, she hated every breath she wasted on him. He meant very little to her in life, and was nothing more than a fading memory in his death. She hoped soon she would be rid of him, and the hurt, for good.
She wanted to know more about the man who was sitting next to her. A business partner she never thought she could connect with, or want to spend more than five minutes with alone. Someone who had been able to break a few barriers she had firmly in place, and get her to open up - even if it was just a little bit. It was still pretty huge for her.
“Tell me your story. What deep dark secrets does Robert Griffith have?”
Griff sat back in his bar stool and rested his hand on the back of her chair. “Not much to tell, really. I grew up here in Newport, lived with my mom for most of my life. She had some problems, so I went and lived with my grandmother.”
“Do you still see your mom? Is she in town
?” She placed her feet on his footrest, and leaned in a little closer to him.
“No, she left Newport after I moved in with my grandmother. I haven’t seen her since.”
“So, you never hear from her?”
“Only when she needs money.”
She watched him, waiting for him to expound, but nothing else came. “Okay, I just unloaded the sob story of the century. Are you seriously going to make me dig answers out of you?” This was going to be a short conversation if he didn’t open up a bit more. It was starting to piss her off that she’d given up as much as she had, and now he was going to clam up when it was his turn.
He sighed, rolled his shoulders and stared at her. “Well, my mom was not really ‘Mother of the Year’ material. She was a drug addict who spent all her money on her next fix. My grandmother pleaded with her to get help and take care of me. After a while, she would just beg my mother to let me live with her. But for some reason, my mother wanted me with her. I think she needed to make sure someone was around in case she OD’d or something, and I drew the short straw, somehow.”
“Wow, so when did you finally go to live with your grandmother?” Clarissa asked. He was clearly uncomfortable telling her about his past. After what she had just revealed, she wondered how he thought they were still so different.
“Why are you so interested in my life?” His eyes were narrowed slightly and dark. There was no expression on his face, as if he was bored with the conversation and had no interest in letting her in to any part of his life.
“You’re my business partner, and if all goes well, my long-distance business partner. I just want to get a sense of who you are. It’s obvious you’re smart and have good business sense when it comes to the shop. It’s also clear you love what you do. I just wondered how you got where you are today. Besides, I poured my sad story out to you. You at least owe me a reciprocal hard luck courtesy.” She locked onto this eyes, determined not to look away.
“It’s the same sad story as most of the kids in my neighborhood. Junkie mother, unknown father. I was lucky. I escaped before I fell into the same trap. Not something you would know about.”
“Right, because only kids in your neighborhood did drugs. Are you serious, right now? Why are you so bent on making sure we have nothing in common? Am I that repulsive to you that you want no ties to me outside our business interests?” This conversation was starting to take a nasty turn. She could feel her defenses spiraling out of control. She hated being judged for shit she had no control over. Yeah, she came from a wealthy family, but she also had a career, made her own money, and worked her ass off. And she was getting tired of people thinking she was some little prima donna only interested in how expensive her latest pair of shoes were or what type of caviar was being served.
“No, you’re not repulsive to me,” he said, and looked away. She could have sworn she heard him mutter, “far from it,” but didn’t want to question it. Obviously, he hadn’t meant for her to hear it, and she didn’t need one more thing to create tension between them. He took a deep breath and glanced over at her before he released it.
“Okay, so ‘round about my freshman year in high school, I started following in my mother’s footsteps. I would get drunk, miss school. Then I just starting drinking all the time and rarely went to school. Once the alcohol didn’t work it’s magic, my loving mother introduced me to weed, ‘shrooms, and then meth. Eventually, the school called my grandmother when they couldn’t get a hold of my mother, and said that I had missed most of the semester. Gram drove over to our house, packed my clothes while my mom and I sat on the couch, high off our asses. I don’t remember much until I woke up in rehab going through withdrawals. It sucked, but I got clean.”
“Was your mom there, also? At rehab?”
“No. Gram said she had wasted enough money on trying to get Mom clean and was determined to it towards someone that had a fighting chance of success. While I was in rehab, my mother took off with her dealer.”
His eyes drooped a little, and his shoulders slouched. Clarissa wanted desperately to wrap her arms around him, but she had a feeling he didn’t want sympathy, especially from her. It didn’t stop her from wanting to make him feel better, and she wished like hell he would ever want comfort - or any other type of physical connection - with her. Though the thought of being intimate with him, with any man, made her break out into a sweat.
“Did you stay clean? Or is that a stupid question, since you don’t have that dark circle, sullen appearance of the career druggie?” It was a lame attempt at lightening the mood when the topic was anything but light. She inwardly cringed and prayed he wasn’t insulted by her ineptness.
“I slipped one time, and one time only.” He pulled his finger through the puddle of water on the bar around his beer mug.
“Did you go back to rehab?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Nope, Grams took control and forced my head out of my ass. The woman is small but fierce. And to tell the truth, she scared the crap out of me. It was like an episode of Scared Straight without the jail, cops, or convicts. It was plenty terrifying, though.”
Clarissa laughed. She had never met either of her grandparents, so she had nothing to compare the story to as far as whether or not it was the norm for grand-parenting. Didn’t matter. Clarissa figured Gram was someone she would get along great with, and wondered if she would ever be able to meet the woman. Chances were pretty slim for that to happen. It was a pretty good bet that Griff would not be inviting her over to meet his family during the remainder of her stay.
“She sounds like my mother. Tough as nails, but still soft and warm.” Clarissa smiled thinking about the last time she had spoken to her mother before her father died. Jake had just proposed and the party going on in the background made Clarissa long for family.
“Do you and your mother get along?” Griff asked.
“Yeah, we always have, to some degree. It was hard to watch her try to maintain some type of normalcy when everything was FUBAR with her and my father, but she was still trying the best way she knew how. Now that she is away from Newport and found Jake, she is the mother I remember. The mother I missed. Only now, she is the new and improved Eve Carlisle. She and Jake have something special, and rare.” Clarissa sighed. It was born partly from the happiness she held for her mother, and a bit of sadness that she would never have that type of love. She would never let a man get that close to her. Intimacy scared the shit out of her. And while she knew that intimacy and making love was an expression of the depth of feelings for another person, she would never see it as more than a way to control someone weaker.
She had been weak once. She would never be that weak again. Would never allow a man to have that type of control over her. Never believe there was more to men than lust and a need to quench a thirst within them.
“Clarissa?” Griff’s voice pierced the visions of the past that continued to haunt her since she had returned to this town. She looked up at him, embarrassed that she had drifted off into her own waking nightmare during their conversation.
“Sorry, got lost in thought for a minute. What were you saying?” She mentally shook herself, forcing her mind to concentrate on Griff. He gazed at her for a moment, as if he was trying to read her thoughts. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out if she was crazy.
He emptied the last of his beer, and tossed some cash on the bar. “I need to get going. Do you need a lift home?”
“No, thanks. I’m good. I’ll call a cab if I become impaired.”
“What? No limo at your disposal?” Griff had a grin across his face. Smart ass.
“No, Brandi scored that in the division of my dad’s estate. Joke’s on her…my dad had a female driver. Although, I wouldn’t put it past Brandi to hit on the woman and try sampling the other side.” Clarissa put her finger to her chin and squinted in faux contemplation.
“Normally that would be a cool bedtime story that would evoke some interesting dreams. But you’ve ruined the who
le girl-on-girl mystique in a single sentence.”
Clarissa threw her head back and laughed. God, it felt good to laugh. No worries, no cares. No dead father. No secrets that needed to be guarded.
“Go home, Robert,” she chided, smacking him on his upper arm. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She watched as he sauntered toward the door, and some schoolgirl desire wondered if he would turn to her before he walked out. Her heart skipped a beat when his head swiveled around and she caught a glimpse of the cocky grin on his face.