“I’m roughin’ it with Uncle Griff,” Jeb said confidently. “I’m growin’ up. Uncle Griff said so.”
That hadn’t worked well at all. Tessa turned back to her car to get the quilt she’d brought to sleep on out while Griff worked on the mattress and put it in the back of his truck. It wasn’t long before Jeb was tucked into the tent on her quilt and sleeping. That left Tessa and Griff sitting on the open tailgate of his truck.
“You know, I was serious when I said the three of us could squeeze into the tent,” Griff said. “Wouldn’t want you to get scared.”
“I doubt if I’ll get scared. But thanks for the offer.” She shifted position, and her sleeve brushed his. She shivered, and he reached back for a light flannel blanket and wrapped it around her. It was the same one he’d had seven years ago, the time they’d been there. The last time they’d made love, before he’d gone on to live his life, and she hers.
Gazing out over the pond that was dimly lit with lantern light, she tried to understand why she was almost wishing for the old days to be back. They’d been wrapped up in pain, as she spent hours praying for Griff to want to stay home, and hours more trying to accept that their marriage would never work. They were just too different.
Yet, there was no denying that it felt wonderful to be sitting here next to Griff again. She just had to fight her desire to lean into him and pretend that they were still lovers, and it was seven years ago.…
“This feels good, doesn’t it?” Griff asked softly. She remembered too late how easily he’d always read her, and she gazed up at him. His dark blue eyes met hers, and he leaned forward, and she forgot that it wasn’t seven years ago. His lips met hers, and the second they did, she felt the same feeling that she’d always felt around Griff, right down through her body—delightful, sensual desire. For a few long seconds, she forgot everything and just basked in the feeling of being close to a man she had once loved more than anyone else in the whole world as she kissed him back.
Loved, before he’d decided his way was the only way.
The thought brought her back to reality, and she jerked away from him, stiffening up and pulling the flannel around her as though it were a shield to keep him from getting to her heart. She stared at him.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why?” he asked quietly. “Because you liked it so much it’s giving you second thoughts about what you’re getting into? Because you’re worried that the yearning you just felt is the way you’re supposed to feel about the man you’re marrying—plus a whole lot more?”
More that she and Griff did not have together, she thought, annoyed at his persistence. “How do you know I don’t feel that way about Clay?”
“Because you didn’t kiss him when he came into Casey’s. Because the whole time you were with him, you hardly looked at him and barely touched him.”
“So?”
“So you used to touch me all the time.” He paused to let that sink in. “And you never said goodbye to him when you left the restaurant.”
“It was an awkward situation.”
“You always said goodbye to me.” The corner of his mouth turned upward. “With a long kiss.”
Like the one they’d just shared. She couldn’t let him see how it had affected her. “Yes, and that didn’t help us to stay together, did it?”
He looked away and braced his hands on either side of the truck, as though he hadn’t like what she’d said, but couldn’t deny it, either.
“Which just goes to show you sexual compatibility has nothing to do with marriage compatibility,” she added. “Clay and I are very alike in our thinking when it comes to marriage, settling down, and stability for the family.”
“Stability as in staying in one place,” Griff said stiffly.
“Exactly.”
“You really hated traveling all over the country when you were a kid, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “And I hated having Mom get sick and Dad walking out and not having anyone who cared around to help her—and me.” She’d turned twelve the day after her mother had died, in a temporary care facility, with no cake, no friends, no anything. Alone. Marrying Griff would have meant more loneliness. Being by herself when he was on missions for days at a time, and losing friends and having to make a new life for herself and their children every time he was reassigned. No. She couldn’t do that. Ever.
“I want to make sure any children I have will be totally secure, with lots of relatives and friends who will be right there for them if they need them,” she told him. “And Clay wants exactly what I want—family and stability. They’re important to him, and to me. That’s something you never understood.”
“Sure I did.”
“Then why have you practically ignored your parents, your brother and your nephew while you’ve been in the Air Force?” Tessa knew she was playing on dangerous ground, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I have to know,” she insisted. There was more at stake here than just herself—there was Jeb’s happiness.
“Because I couldn’t stand seeing you and not having you—my way.” He gazed at her.
“Your way, as in having me traipse after you wherever you decided to go.”
“If that’s the way you want to look at it.”
She shook her head. “That’s the way it would be. No thanks.”
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t offering it.”
“Well, it’s good, then, that’s there’s nothing between us at all, isn’t it?”
“Exactly.” Nothing between them. Sure, Griff thought.
“Then stop blaming me for your not keeping in contact with your family,” she told him. “It’s not fair.” Hopping down off the back of the truck, she retrieved a lantern from the picnic table Griff’s father kept by the pond for barbecues, and walked down to the water’s edge where she set down the light, reached into her pocket and threw something across the water.
Griff remained where he was. Was there another reason he didn’t want to see his folks more often? Was there something wrong with him, that he didn’t want to stay in one place for the rest of his life? It would be something to think about. Later. Right now, he had other things he needed to discuss with Tessa.
Pushing himself down off the truck, he joined her at the pond’s edge.
“So what is this thing that’s between you and Clay?”
Her mouth dropped open. She slammed it shut. Griff would have grinned, but by her reaction, he figured whatever her secret was, it was pretty serious. He also was fairly sure he wasn’t going to get it out of her voluntarily.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“That’s what else it said in the e-mail. That the something between you is not love.” He gave her a minute to think about that, but she said nothing, just kicked at the grass beneath her feet.
“If you don’t want to let me in on your secrets, at least tell me why Clay sent you traipsing after Jeb and me.”
Not seeing any way out of telling him, Tessa took a deep breath. “Jeb’s been pretty vulnerable since Lindy died. We’re worried he’ll get attached to you, start expecting things out of you, and then you’ll leave like you always do, and he won’t know how to cope. So I’m here to keep reminding Jeb that you’re going away soon.”
“So he doesn’t get too fond of me,” Griff said.
She nodded. The disappointed, hurt look on his face in the lantern light was enough to break her heart. But then he shrugged, and the hurt left his face abruptly. “That’s the way it’s got to be, I guess. Doesn’t bother me any.”
He was lying. But the fact was, she was holding something back from him, too, so she didn’t feel as if she could challenge him. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved another couple of pennies and handed one to him. “Remember our game?”
“Whoever gets the penny farthest gets his wish.”
“Her wish,” she said, which was part of their old game.
“Promise?”
“Sure.” Reaching back, he let his penny fly, the same time she did, and they both skimmed the water so far out into the dark neither of them could tell who won.
“You’ve been practicing,” he said in admiration.
“Nope. I’ve just gotten stronger.”
“I guess you have. Life does that to a person.”
“Life…and kneading bread dough for Sadie’s ‘To Die For’ bread,” she said. Thinking of Sadie reminded her of her own mission she needed to do—get Griff to leave town. While it still seemed to be a good solution, after their kiss, it had taken on more urgency. Which meant she should get moving on it as soon as possible.
“Speaking of Sadie, you know that first good deed that we’re going to do tomorrow?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s helping me at the bakery so Grandma can have a day off.”
About to throw another penny in, Griff let it drop into the grass near his feet. The only thing he might wish for he wasn’t going to get anyway—Tessa wanting to go with him. “Clay was not going to work in a bakery on his honeymoon.”
“Sure he was.” She lifted her eyebrows at him. “You promised to fill in for him, Griff. You can’t back out.”
Griff guessed the bakery was as good a place as any to make him accessible to whoever had written him. But the very thought of all that boring work for the whole morning was not his idea of how to spend his vacation. Tessa and Clay’s happiness notwithstanding, his first inclination was to pack his bag and start driving away before the town started roping him back in like a wayward calf, and he was once again facing a boring life on the prairie.
But leaving, he thought with a feeling of sudden awareness, was probably just what Clay hoped he would do. And Tessa was in on it. They both wanted him to run, just as he would have before, and the only reason could be that whatever they were hiding did have to do with him.
He gazed at Tessa, who had a smug smile on her delicate mouth, as though she knew what he was going to say. “Sure, let’s make Sadie’s day. Why not? You said eight, right?”
Tessa felt her smile fading. He wasn’t supposed to be this willing. “Right.”
“Just enough time to get home and take a shower after breakfast, if we get up early enough. Better call it a night.” He picked up the lantern and headed back up the hill to the tent.
She scurried up after him.
“Sure you don’t want to share the tent?” he asked without turning around. “It’ll be kind of snug, but we’ve done snug before.”
She blushed. “I’ll manage in the back of the truck,” she assured him.
“Okay, but my offer’s still open. If you get scared, just come on in.”
“I won’t get scared.”
“Remember, there could be bobcats out here, what with the woods and all.”
“That worked the last time we went camping, but it won’t work this time.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t even know you anymore, Griff. We’re strangers, and I’m not getting in that tent with you.”
Griff had to admit that was true. When they weren’t strangers, she never hid anything from him, as she was doing now. But what was also true is that he wanted her just as desperately as he had before they’d broken up. Maybe even more, with a kind of desire that made him feel like a stupid fool, since he’d been down that road with her one time before, and she’d left him eating dust.
When Griff went into the tent, silently, Tessa felt a feeling come over her that was unsettlingly familiar. Loneliness, the loss of warmth. Since she had nothing to do but stand in the lantern light, staring up at the stars, she was able to finally recognize the feeling.
It was the same feeling she’d had when her mother had died and she’d been left alone, left with empty arms and no one to hug.
It was the one that had been there when Griff had gone back to school and she’d realized she couldn’t ever marry and leave Claiborne Landing with him, and she’d been left with empty arms, and no one to hug.
It was the one that had been there when she’d gone through nine months of carrying Griff’s child, only to give her baby up and be left with empty arms.
And no one to love.
At the time, she had thought about telling Griff she was pregnant, but she knew he would have come home and done the right thing, married her and maybe gone to work on his father’s farm, the very future he’d tried to escape. His father was certainly hoping for that, since Clay, the elder of the two brothers, had already gone into law enforcement in Dallas. But Tessa had been all too well aware of Griff’s views on starting marriage on the wrong foot, with no money in the bank, and with their dreams on hold. He’d felt as if it would lead to disaster, and being in that position would make him terribly unhappy. She had worried that he would grow to hate his life, the baby—and her.
So when she’d been three months along, with Sadie sworn to secrecy about her pregnancy, she’d told everyone she needed to get away after her breakup with Griff, and gone to Dallas with an idea. Knowing Clay’s wife Lindy, her good friend, desperately wanted children but couldn’t have them, she’d approached Lindy and offered to let her and Clay adopt her baby. Although sympathetic to Tessa, Lindy had also been ecstatic about the idea and somehow convinced a skeptical Clay. They’d agreed to Tessa’s provisos that they move back to Claiborne Landing after the adoption was finalized so that Tessa could be around her grandmother and be a close “family friend” to the baby, and that none of them would ever tell a soul it wasn’t Clay and Lindy’s baby, not even Clay and Griff’s parents.
Tessa had stayed with them in Dallas for the rest of her pregnancy, and for the six months after the birth that Clay and Lindy had been required to remain in Texas until the adoption was finalized, telling everyone back home Tessa was helping with the baby. The only sticky point had come when Tessa needed the father’s consent for the adoption, but that had been taken care of legally—if not morally—with a thirty-day notice in the largest newspaper in Colorado Springs, attempting to contact Griff, which Griff never responded to. She’d held back his address, for the same reasons she’d decided this baby had to be adopted. As wrapped up as Griff was in school, Tessa hadn’t been surprised he wouldn’t have had time to look through every page of a newspaper, but still, she’d breathed a sigh of relief when the notice had been officially withdrawn and the adoption had gone forward.
When they’d returned to Claiborne Landing, everyone had welcomed Jeb as Clay and Lindy’s child, and Tessa had been merely a smiling onlooker. It had been hard—was still hard—knowing Jeb was hers, but having empty arms.
Yes, she was good friends with this feeling of emptiness. But soon she would be marrying Clay and getting her son back. And her arms wouldn’t be empty again. A stab of guilt went through her that she wasn’t telling Griff the truth, but she couldn’t. Clay was the only father Jeb had ever known. Griff’s heart was still elsewhere, not at home, and she had no reason to think he would stay for a son any sooner then he would have stayed for the woman he claimed to have loved. But he might try to take Jeb with him, and she couldn’t stand that.
It was better he just never know. It was better all around if he continued to chase his happiness elsewhere.
Even if she always would have an empty spot in her heart where he was concerned.
A noise somewhere out in the trees, sounding like a large cat, startled her. But Griff hadn’t come out of the tent—she was certain of that because her gaze had remained intently on the zippered front after he’d gone inside—so she knew he wasn’t playing some sort of trick on her. It occurred to her that it might not be a cat at all, but a person, which made her wonder who might have been watching her and Griff talking from the copse of trees not so far away. She had to admit now she’d been so occupied with Griff she wouldn’t have noticed if someone had been behind them in full sight, close enough to hear what they’d said.
Bringing the lantern, she marched directly
toward the quarter mile or so of trees between her and the highway, and could hear the elderly voices before she saw the women they belonged to.
“Oh, dear, I told you to leave that darned cat in the car! Now we’ll never know if she was fixin’ to sleep in the tent or not.”
“I wasn’t, Grandma,” Tessa called out.
“I couldn’t leave the cat behind!” Miss Reba protested, warbling out the words. “The woods are crawling with critters. It was either bring Thor or my gun.”
“No gun! The last time you went loose with your pistol, you about blew off Jasper’s peck—”
“Grandma!” Tessa called sternly toward the woods.
“Don’t know how I even got that close,” Reba sniffed. “It’s not like it was that big a target.”
“I did not need to know that,” Tessa said, close enough now that she could see Sadie and her friend, Reba, side by side, Reba holding a huge, furry yellow cat, and her grandmother holding…binoculars.
“You were spying on us!”
Reba had the grace to look embarrassed, but Sadie stuck her chin out defiantly. “How else could I find out if you ended up sharing the tent with Griffin?”
“I’m not out here for that, Grandma.” Tessa suddenly felt very, very tired. Exhausted even. The only thing keeping her going was that Sadie couldn’t have seen her kiss Griff, or she would have said something immediately. “I’m just helping to keep an eye on Jeb.”
“How was I to know that? You looked at that tent for so long I thought for sure you were about to go crawling into it. I knew it. I just knew this thing with you and Clay was odd.”
“Grandma, I don’t have to defend myself. I’m twenty-seven years old.”
“That’s a baby in adult years,” Sadie said.
Only one sure fire way existed to stop this conversation dead in its tracks, Tessa thought. Changing the subject. “As long as you’re out here,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”
The cat in Reba’s arms lurched again and gave another long screech, reminding Tessa that she and Sadie weren’t alone, and she would probably be better off choosing her words carefully.
Kidnapping His Bride (Silhouette Romance) Page 6