Almost Always AMAZON

by Christie Ridgway

  He ran a hand over his hair. “I’ve lost track of time.”

  With the whole dispassionate thing going on now, he strolled farther into the room, surveying the fifty or so photos she’d arranged. Most of them were five-by-sevens or eight-by-tens. They showed soldiers tussling, sleeping, eating. Walking on patrol, shooting weapons, standing guard. From across the room, he glanced over at Jane. “You didn’t include any of Erica.”

  Yeah. Well. She’d been trying to spare his feelings, of course. “It’s because—”

  “She’s dead?” he suggested, cool as you please.

  The chill ran down Jane’s spine as she shrugged.

  Griffin turned back to the photos. After another moment’s study, he reached out and yanked one from the wall. The kid in it was sitting on his bunk, playing a guitar. “So’s he. Dead.” In two steps he was before another. This young man was flexing his bicep, showing off a vicious tattoo. “Him too.”

  Oh, God.

  Another step. “Also gone.” He snatched away an image of a soldier mugging for the camera.

  More cold trickled down Jane’s back as she stared at his hand clutching the pictures. His shoulders were stiff, and she could feel the tension emanating from him. She hadn’t seen this side of him before, and it made her want to both exit the room and enfold him in a comforting embrace. But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she couldn’t imagine he’d allow her to touch him now. It wouldn’t be what he wanted.

  She didn’t have, she thought, anything he needed.

  Feeling helpless, she saw him on the move again. “Griffin—”

  “Lost an arm.” Another photo ripped away. “Shot in the stomach. This officer—” he indicated a photo of a dusty figure, distinguishing features hidden by helmet, flak jacket and sunglasses “—I heard was shot and killed a month ago. A full-bird colonel. I’d told him all about the cove before I left Afghanistan. He loved the sound of the place and booked No. 9 for himself and his daughter, Layla, in July.”

  “Oh, the poor girl,” Jane murmured.

  “This guy’s bringing her instead.” Griffin moved to stand before another picture, this one of a golden-haired man whose vivid blue eyes stood out in a sweat- and dirt-stained face. “Vance Smith, our combat medic. We bonded over the crazy shit we did as kids.”

  Jane took a step closer, because this sounded like someone who had been close to Griffin. Vance Smith looked older than some of the other soldiers, near thirty, and she could see a hint of recklessness in his grin. But his gaze was steady, and she could imagine he was reassuring in a crisis. “He knows the colonel’s daughter?”

  “The colonel was dying in Vance’s arms when he made him promise to bring Layla to Crescent Cove. They were both shot in an ambush, and Vance has injuries of his own that need to heal.”

  Injuries on the outside, Jane thought, while Griffin’s wounds were hidden away. Her chest aching, she watched him move on, then pause again. His back to her, his breathing turned heavy. He stared at the photo of another young man hefting a futuristic-looking gun that would have been right at home in a video game. He stared at it a long time. “Then there’s Whitman.”

  Jane swallowed again. Since it had been her great idea to tape these images around the room, she supposed she couldn’t duck the consequences, however much she cursed herself for the stupid notion now. “Whitman?”

  “Cocky asshole stole the supply of Twinkies I’d brought from home.”

  Whitman looked like a prankster, Jane decided, his expression unabashedly mischievous. Her heart turned to lead in her chest. “What happened to him?”

  “Oh, I got revenge.” Griffin didn’t look toward her, but there was a new note in his voice. “He had a much beloved stash of raunchy porn magazines that I ‘accidentally’ dropped into the latrine.”

  She stared at Griffin’s back, trying to interpret the new facet to his current frame of mind. “He…he didn’t die?”

  Griffin shook his head. “No. He did, however, instigate a series of petty burglaries between us that lasted the rest of the deployment.” Then he started to laugh—really laugh, from the belly. “You should have seen his face when he realized the fate of his Raunchy Babes Collector’s Edition. Never knew a man could cry over bleached blondes in bustiers and dog collars.”

  As he continued chuckling, Jane thought she might cry. But she fluttered her lashes to blink back the moisture, standing where she was while Griffin approached the desk and the waiting laptop. He placed the photos of the dead and wounded in a drawer. Only then did she step close enough to slide the manuscript pages onto the surface.

  His hand caught her shoulder as she started to move away. “Jane.” There was still a faint smile on his face. He reached up with his other hand to cup her cheek. “Thank you for bringing back other memories.”

  When he kissed the tip of her nose, blinking couldn’t hold back the new sting of tears. So she turned away to the workstation she’d set up for herself by the office’s love seat. “You’re welcome,” she managed to choke out, as if he were just any client, one who was writing a treatise on racehorses, say, or a fictional account of lovers doomed by an incoming tornado. “Now let’s get to work.”

  They came up with a plan. As he read through each page he’d written before, he handed it off to Jane, his thoughts and corrections jotted in the margins. She made her own on sticky notes. Though they stopped for lunch, Jane figured he had to be about as cross-eyed and muscle-cramped as she was by four in the afternoon.

  That was when he reached over his head to stretch his arms, groaning. “I’m out of gas for the day.” He stood, then stretched again.

  She let her lashes fall to half-mast as she checked out the slice of taut abs revealed by the rising hem of his shirt.

  “None of that,” he said, crossing the floor to grab her hand.

  “None of what?” she replied, aware of her guilty flush as he tugged her to her feet.

  “You were starting to fall asleep on me. Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

  She didn’t tell him any different. While it was part of her job to keep up the client’s spirits, she didn’t believe she needed to feed his ego. And anyway, Griffin hadn’t made a sexual move on her since their return to the beach house. It was as if what had happened in the hotel suite hadn’t happened at all. Which was fine. Preferable. Her own idea. A place out of time.

  But as they stepped onto the sand, the fresh air seemed to bring out some honesty in her. They were strolling away from their end of the cove and the beach was dotted with a sand architect here and there, building everything from a rudimentary igloo to a multilevel castle. But she and Griffin stuck to the damp sand near the shoreline so that the crash of the incoming waves muffled all the voices but their own.

  She slid him a sidelong look. “You don’t really need me, you know.” It was her reputation that needed the work, and that thought just made her feel more guilty. It seemed only right to be truthful. “I’m serious. Before, I didn’t know you had any kind of draft.”

  He didn’t answer. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans, and the lowering sun limned his handsome profile. He looked gorgeous edged in gold.

  “I’m reading what you have, and it’s good,” she continued. He had a knack for delivering telling details. She could taste the pasty corn-bread stuffing that came with the Mediterranean Chicken MRE, hear the rattle of gunfire across the sunbaked valley and smell the coming winter snow. The various relationships between the platoon brothers breathed on the page. “I can do the editing, which you claim to despise, catch a grammar mistake or two. But—”

  “I won’t do it without you, Jane.”

  “Griffin—”

  “That’s final. You told me from the first you were here to provide me with everything I need. Everything I ask for.”

  Had she gone that far? “I know I said—”

  “So I want you working with me on the book. And answering the questions I ask.”

  Her relief—yes
, her rep needed this job!—made it take a moment for his second sentence to sink in. “Wait. What questions?”

  “You know a hell of a lot about me from reading those pages, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s a memoir, after all.” Early in the book he talked about his initial excitement over the assignment, the tempering trepidation once he’d been handed body armor and a combat medical pack, his keen interest in what drove the young men around him to risk their lives as they did. There’d been no mention, as yet, of the bloodshed she knew was coming. “You are telling it in first person.”

  “Exactly. And I find myself uncomfortable that my ‘doctor’ knows more about me than I know about her. So I think you should tell me about the person who is Jane. Turnabout is fair play.”

  She frowned at him. “You know about her. It’s all there in the four letters. J-A-N-E.”

  “We’re both aware there’s more to you than that.”

  Not many had chosen to discover it. She couldn’t recall anyone just asking about her like this, and it worried her a little. “I don’t get where you’re going here.”

  “We only have two more weeks at the cove. Two more weeks as collaborators. And I don’t see how we can collaborate when it’s so one-sided.”

  Okay, this was yet another of his moods she didn’t know. He was being stubborn and unreasonable and she couldn’t figure out what he wanted from her. “Griffin—”

  “I’m curious. Are you really scared of the ocean, Jane?” he asked, halting to face her.

  She froze, the question catching her by surprise. It made her wary again too, because, though it seemed like such a small thing to admit, her father had taught her to conceal her weaknesses. Don’t be so soft, Jane, he’d say, when she was seven years old and trembling at the idea of swimming in such a big body of water. People will take advantage of your fears. Use your brain to get beyond them.

  Her silence hung between them until Griffin scooped her up in his arms. “Wha—” she began, startled.

  “Will you really be afraid if I wade into the surf?”

  “Yes.” She clung to his neck, for a moment that second-grader again. “I mean no.”

  His pant legs had to be wet as he strode farther into the ocean. It swirled around them, a mix of green water and white foam and golden sand. “We’ve got to mine the emotions, honey-pie,” he said, and that ridiculous endearment told her he was attempting to be playful.

  Playful. She did her best to mimic the tone. “Chili-dog…” Then her breath disappeared as he swung her away from his body in preparation for tossing her in.

  “No!” she shrieked, clinging tighter. She buried her head in his neck, panic rising like an incoming tide. “No.”

  A second later they were on drier, higher ground. Jane found herself sitting on the soft sand, Griffin’s arms enclosing her from behind, his legs on either side of hers. “I’m sorry,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were really afraid. I didn’t think you actually were afraid of anything.”

  It was still embarrassing to admit she was. “I can swim. I’m fine in a pool. It’s just… My father always says I’m silly and emotional, but this ocean phobia I would like to blame on my brothers.”

  “Then we definitely should.”

  She sighed. “Byron told me that the foamy stuff on the waves was whale snot. Phillip said the sea is green due to the sun’s reflection off the scales of giant, lurking eels. It was that scientific sound bite that made it all the more believable, of course. But frankly, it wasn’t really them. I always had the kind of imagination that could turn an oven mitt into a monster paw. They were just enjoying getting a rise out of me.”

  His arms tightened around her. It shouldn’t please her so much. She shouldn’t lean back against his chest, as she was doing. He made another sound in her ear—suspiciously like a muffled curse.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “You told me nobody has ever put you first. I can’t get that out of my mind.”

  Another flush of heat ran over her body. How embarrassing! She’d forgotten confessing such a thing, and it meant he knew her better than anyone. She shivered. Ever.

  His breath was hot on her ear. “You so tempt me to do something about that, Jane. For the next fourteen days.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE MORNING AFTER the embarrassing scene on the beach, Griffin showed up in the office and began work without incident—and without reference to his little “tempt me” remark. She began to think she might have imagined it altogether. When they finished for the day, they took another walk on the shore, this time Griffin keeping himself between Jane and the surf, which she found absurdly sweet and completely unnecessary. When she mentioned that to him, he ruffled her hair and said when it came to lurking green-scaled eels, you could never be too careful.

  The touch, though casual, somehow struck her heart, like a mallet to a gong. Her insides quivered for a moment, then the vibrato quieted to a hum that kept her nerve endings alert. Aware. That alert awareness didn’t go away.

  The day following that, the walls surrounding them seemed too close. Every squeak of Griffin’s office chair had her jumping out of her skin. She caught herself staring at him as he kicked back, his bare feet on the desktop, his computer in his lap. There was a spot on the back of his neck, just below the edge of his hairline, that fascinated her.

  She imagined herself licking it.

  Griffin suddenly turned his head, his gaze finding her over his shoulder. “What are you doing back there?”

  “Uh.” She squirmed, her linen cropped pants abrading her too-sensitive flesh.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Jane?”

  “I’m…uh…lost in thought.” Lost in lust. Oh, God, and it wasn’t getting any better when she was looking at his face. He was all blue eyes and dark stubble, and she had the intense urge to take a bite out of his lower lip. She found herself on her feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  Her gesture was vague, verging on wild. “Out…away. Be back soon.” She scrambled from the room and headed for fresh air. It was only when she was standing in the sand that she realized the entire day had passed. The sun was heading for the horizon, and she couldn’t remember accomplishing anything beyond not nipping Griffin’s bottom lip.

  That wasn’t good.

  “Jane!” She looked toward the sound of her name and saw Tess and Skye sitting on the front porch of No. 8. Griffin’s sister waved. “Come talk to us.”

  It was as good an excuse as any to avoid returning to the office. She refused the offer of a cold drink and took the empty chair. A little fresh air, a little girl talk, could clear the dangerous images from her mind. She’d cut herself off from friends for much too long, she realized, relaxing into her seat.

  Skye, in boyish chinos and a short-sleeved sweatshirt with a kangaroo pouch pocket, sent her a smile. “I haven’t seen you around much.”

  “Sorry. Doing work.”

  “Me too,” the other woman said. She drew out some mail from the oversize pocket. “Want to save me a delivery?”

  A postcard. Jane reached for it. “For Griffin?” The back was covered in a slapdash of dark-inked handwriting.

  Skye nodded. “From Gage. Everybody got mail from him today.”

  “Including you?” Tess asked the younger woman, looking up from a sheet of paper in her lap, covered in the same distinctive lettering.

  Her face turned pink. “That’s right. You know we correspond.” She worried the ribbing on the hem of her sweatshirt, then turned to Jane. “It’s really nice of him to answer my letters.”

  Tess snorted. “Nice? Skye, Gage is not a nice man.”

  “Of course he is!” Skye protested. “I mean, well, he’s nice to me.”

  “He’s a reckless daredevil who cares about his next adventure more than any woman in his life.”

  “I’m not just any woman in his life,” Skye said, then her face went redder. “What
I’m trying to say is that I’m not a woman in his eyes. I’m a friend from home, that’s all.”

  “You keep reminding yourself of that, okay? The Lowell boys are not good romantic bets.” Tess’s gaze touched Jane. “Isn’t that right?”

  Especially the Lowell boy who was in love with a dead woman. Jane lowered her eyes. “You know Griffin better than I do.”

  “And I know my romantic bets gone wrong too,” Tess muttered. “It’s men that I don’t understand at all. Do you know my sons have been practicing eating Cheetos with their toes? Why would they want to do that?”

  “Maybe for some reason we don’t understand.” Jane’s gaze moved to the cliff at the end of the cove. Jumping from it had seemed inexplicable to her until she’d been told that the resulting adrenaline shot had an anesthetic effect. It made some sense now. “Though Griffin tells me that the best part of an Oreo is the white stuff in the middle, which does not compute and never will.”

  It gratified her that the other two women concurred. The female companionship calmed her, and she was able to relax a little and think about something other than dark hair and broad shoulders. She sighed.

  Tess glanced over. “Uh-oh. From the sound of that, do I take it that my bro is still evading the task at hand?”

  Jane wished she hadn’t used that word. It made her think of Griffin’s hands. All day, she’d been watching them move on the laptop, the long, nimble fingers working the keyboard like a piano. It reminded her of his fingers playing along her skin, stroking her hips and opening her thighs. She swallowed a little whimper and remembered the question hanging in the air. “He’s actually knuckling—”

  Grr. She stopped herself, plagued by more images. She remembered him running the back of his hand along her cheek. One of his curled fingers stroking the slope of her nose.

  “He would never talk about it with me, you know,” Tess said. “That year in Afghanistan.”

  Jane looked over. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

  “Since he came back he’s avoided his entire family, which I don’t like at all. David and I tried to get him over a dozen times when he first returned, but he’s given excuse after excuse. Mom and Dad are living in Hawaii, yet he’s resisted even a short tropical visit.” She glanced down at the letter in her lap. “I’ve been thinking of sending an SOS to Gage. Getting him to the cove for some kind of intervention.”