“It’s yours now, Rosie. Take it and put him to the test. That way you can know for sure what he’ll do.” He patted her shoulder gently. “For today, at least.”
Chapter Fifteen
Driving home, Rose considered her options carefully.
She could use the rare bird figurine safely tucked in her tote bag to—as Gus had put it—test Griff. Except, she hated just the thought of it. It made her feel…Machiavellian. Of course, the other obvious solution, thwarting Griff’s plan to sell the house by keeping the bird herself, would make her feel like a thief, which she liked even less.
She was still grappling with the choice as she parked the truck and started down the brick walk. A stop sign was one thing; she would have to be more than preoccupied to miss the sign hanging on her back door. She would have to be blind.
In block letters, on the blank side of a four-foot piece of wrapping paper, she read, I HAVE GLADYS. COOPERATE AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO HER. COME TO THE SHOP RIGHT AWAY. COME ALONE. Below that, on a line by itself, was the word PLEASE. It was signed Griff.
“I don’t believe it,” she muttered, hurrying inside to find that poor Gladys was indeed gone from her place on the hearth. Rose didn’t bother looking anywhere else. Obviously, Griff had broken in and stolen…no, kidnapped…her flamingo. Her cherished flamingo.
She had a good mind to call the police, except that the way her luck was running, they’d send out Lyle Rancourt, who would remember Griff and her from the night he caught them necking in the truck, parked in front of the same shop where Gladys was being held captive, and fail to take the matter seriously. She sighed. She’d give a lot to see Griff being led away in handcuffs, charged with bird-napping and trifling with a woman’s affections.
Rose’s brows shot up. Trifling with a woman’s affections? Where had that come from? The same place as the Piping Plover, she realized. Devora. That is precisely how Devora would regard the way her nephew had behaved toward Rose. She would consider him a devious, deceitful…scoundrel. And she would let him know about it in no uncertain terms.
And so would she, Rose decided.
Parking the truck behind the shop, she entered through the back door. Her first thought as she stepped inside was that the bowls of rose potpourri she’d scattered about were really doing their job. They smelled wonderful, almost like real roses.
Her second thought was the realization that the way her bones liquified and her tummy flip-flopped at her first sight of Griff in days was probably not a good sign.
He was sitting in a straight chair, tipped back on its rear legs, cradling Gladys in his arms.
Were his bones melting? she wondered. He smiled as soon as she walked in, and looked at her the way she’d seen couples look at each other when saying goodbye at an airport, as if soaking in enough of the other person to get them through the time they’d be apart.
Which signified nothing, she told herself firmly.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“Did I have a choice?” Rose retorted, remaining by the door.
“Not really,” he admitted without a smidgen of remorse. “I planned it that way.”
“All right, I’m here. Hand her over,” she ordered.
“Not until we’ve talked this out.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Good, that will leave more time for what I have to say.”
“You cannot possibly say anything I’m interested in hearing.”
“In that case, close the door, have a seat and prepare to be bored.”
She stared at him with all the disdain she could muster.
“Please, Rose.”
Moving slowly, and only after a long, exasperated sigh, she did as he requested. “I want Gladys now.”
He regarded her dubiously. “Forget it.”
“Why? You wanted me to sit and listen, I’m sitting and listening.”
“Why? Because I’d rather not have to chase you. Something tells me that even hauling a flamingo, you’re faster than I am.”
Rose leaned back, folded her arms and rolled her eyes. “I hope this isn’t going to take long.”
“That’s up to you. I’m desperate enough to keep talking until you see things my way.”
“We’ll starve to death before that happens.”
His mouth turned up at one corner in a manner so familiar and adorable, Rose had to struggle to maintain what she hoped was an aura of aloofness.
“Maybe that was a poor choice of words,” he allowed. “I’m going to talk until you understand why I made all the mistakes I did, and agree to give me another chance.”
“Heaven help us.”
His smile deepened. “For my part, I’m counting heavily on exactly that.”
Rose waited.
Griff gazed at her in silence.
Maryann’s words wound through her head. He moons at you…he moons and you flutter.
She wasn’t absolutely certain he was mooning at her now, but if mooning was made up of equal parts tenderness and raw hunger, he definitely was mooning. What’s more, she was fluttering…her pulse, her muscles, the damn palms of her hands. Quickly clasping her hands together, she placed them on her knees and waited.
Nothing.
“Did you actually have something to say?” she asked finally. “Or can I go now?”
“I love you, Rose.”
His voice was pitched low, like distant thunder, but the effect was more like a lightning bolt striking her heart, branding it with his words, whether she wanted them there or not.
“I love you, and I’m sorry for hurting you. It’s funny, I thought I had a lot to say, but when I look at you, I realize that’s all that matters. I love you more than I knew it was possible to love, and in ways I never knew existed. You’re like…” He hesitated, a look of pain in his eyes. “Like part of me. The best part.”
Rose’s lungs ached from holding her breath; every muscle was taut. For the first time since she’d walked in, she allowed herself to really look at Griff, at his face, thinner than she remembered, lines etched around his mouth, dark shadows beneath his eyes. He looked both familiar and different. He looked, she realized, the way he had the first time he walked into her shop. Lost.
She felt shaky, inside and out.
“I should have told you I was in love with you that last night we were together. I wanted to. Badly. But I couldn’t get the words out…just like I couldn’t go on making love to you without telling you the truth, about everything. I knew if I didn’t tell you then, it would be a repeat of my first mistake. It would be easier to let it go another day, and another, and then one day it would be too late to tell you and it would be between us forever.” He shook his head, his grip on Gladys white-knuckled. “That’s not the way I want it to be for us.”
“We agree on one thing—you should have told me the truth a lot sooner,” declared Rose, trying to hold on to the wrath and determination she’d walked in with. “You should have been honest with me from the start.”
“If I had, would you have agreed to help me?”
She shrugged. “Probably not.”
“Definitely not. You’re nearly as attached to that house as Devora was. You’d have shot me down faster than the speed of sound.”
“All right, I would have. That only proves that you intentionally set out to use me.”
He whipped his fingers through his hair impatiently. “It wasn’t like that…or maybe it was and I just didn’t see it that way. Not at first, anyway.”
“How did you see it?”
He thought it over, then shook his head resignedly. “The way I saw everything up until a few weeks ago…the way it suited me to see it, whatever way best served my purpose at the moment. I figured it was harmless since you were a stranger, it was none of your business what I did with the house, and I was paying you well.” He gave her a small, quick, rueful smile. “I guess that pretty much describes using someone.”
“I guess. And even if it was all
right to use a stranger, I didn’t stay a stranger for long.”
“Exactly,” Griff countered, becoming more animated. He placed Gladys carefully on the table beside him and leaned forward. “When you became a friend, it become harder to tell you. By the time you became my lover, it was impossible. I felt trapped…you know, the old tangled web routine.”
Rose wanted to smile, but didn’t.
“I woke up one day and realized I wasn’t so sure I still wanted to sell. I wasn’t sure of a lot of things. So, I simply didn’t think about any of it. It was amazingly easy to do, because all I wanted to think about was you.”
He kept his eyes on her face, silently begging for a small sign of understanding, which Rose refused to give him.
“When you told me that bizarre story about the last bird, all I could think was…I’m off the hook, home free. It was out of my hands. I could never sell, so I never had to know what I would do if faced with that decision…and you would never have to know any of it.”
“That’s true,” she acknowledged, acutely aware of the weight of her tote bag against her leg, and the opportunity it held. Anytime she wanted, she could put Griff back on that hook. Then he would for sure know what he would do, and so would she.
“And I guess you figured that as long as you were forced to keep the house, you might as well get the summer out of it, and have some fun with the silly woman next door. I hope you weren’t looking for a challenge, since I turned out to be so pitifully easy to seduce.”
“There’s nothing pitiful about you,” he declared. “And I never thought of you as silly, either. A little wacky now and then, but ironically, that’s one of the first things about you that I fell in love with. There are at least a million others, most of which will sound pretty cliché and corny…like the way your smile lights up a room, and the way you can transform some worthless piece of junk into something beautiful and the way you manage to find magic in every moment of your life.”
Almost absently, he kneaded the spot just above his left knee with the heel of his hand.
“Why don’t you stand up and stretch your leg if it’s bothering you?” she ventured, trying to appear uninterested.
There was a hint of satisfaction in his smile, which Rose chose to ignore. “Thank you for caring.”
“I don’t,” she retorted. “I just hate it when you clench your teeth and get beads of sweat on your forehead, so I thought I’d head it off.”
He got to his feet without commenting, stretching his left leg before taking a few steps. In her direction, unfortunately. She was holding her own so far, but if he touched her, all bets were off.
“From the beginning, it seemed to me as if you lived in a different world than the one I lived in—a better world somehow—and when I was with you, I got to live there, too.” He shrugged. “How was I to know I’d like driving senior citizens to auctions, and learning from Gus how to plant a garden, and hanging out at the hardware store on Saturday morning, discussing drill bits and pine bark mulch.”
He moved closer, leaning against the wall beside her so that the only thing between them was her tote bag. Fitting, she thought.
“I’ve changed my mind about almost everything since I met you, Rose. Of course, I have no way to prove that.”
I do, she thought, half wanting to pull the Piping Plover from her bag and let him prove it right that instant. Half of her not wanting to… What? Know the truth? Or put him to the test?
“I’ve worn out millions of brain cells trying to think of some way to make you believe I’m telling the truth,” he continued. “This is the best I could come up with.”
He reached behind him for a manila envelope and handed it to her.
Rose stared at it, her expression wary. “What is this?”
“Open it and find out.”
She opened it as if it were one of those toy boxes containing a coiled wire snake, waiting to spring. No snake. Only a couple of papers—one new, one very old, yellowed and brittle.
“What…?” Her voice trailed off as she read the statement dated the day before, then glanced at the older document just long enough to realize that it was the deed to Fairfield House.
“It’s yours,” Griff told her. “Lock, stock and windowpane. All legal and notarized. You see, I can’t sell the house, but I am free to give it away if I choose to. And I do.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” she asked, utterly astounded.
Griff grinned and shrugged easily, as if he’d shaken off the weight of the world…or at least an acre or so of it. “Whatever you please…live in it, sell it—though the attorney suggests you hold off on that until he does some more checking into it—turn it into a museum if you like.”
“This is absurd,” she declared, carefully returning the documents to the envelope and standing to hand it back to him. “You can’t give someone a house. I can’t accept it. And even if I could, I wouldn’t do any of those things. You still don’t get it, do you? Devora wanted Fairfield House to stay in your family forever.”
“I do get it…now.” His smile was dauntless. “And I’ve got it covered. Marry me, Rose. Marry me and help add to the Fairfield ranks.”
Rose was speechless, panicked, trembling, thrilled.
“I intended to do a better job of proposing,” he told her, taking her hand, kissing it tenderly and pulling her toward the front room of the shop. “The Guide for Grooms recommended—”
She had to interrupt. “Guide for Grooms? Where in the world…?”
“The bookstore in North Kingston. Go ahead and laugh,” he urged, as she did exactly that, the panic and trembling giving way to a feeling that was like fireworks going off all through her. “There’s a lot of valuable information in that little book. Such as making sure to use both poetic language and the Grand Gesture if you want your proposal to be fool-proof…and memorable.”
They’d slowly made their way in the darkness to the center of the shop. Still holding her hand, Griff turned on a light, and Rose’s shock at being handed the deed to Fairfield House was dwarfed by a new one.
“What is all this?” she asked, gazing around, wide-eyed. She inhaled deeply, suddenly understanding why the scent of roses had been so strong, and so authentic, when she first walked in.
“This,” Griff said, pointing to the bed where they had made love for the first time, now completely covered with long-stem red roses, “is a bed of roses.” Waving his hand at more roses in what looked like every vase in the shop, he added, “the rest is because I wasn’t sure how many roses you needed to make a bed of them. I didn’t want to run short and ruin the Grand Gesture.”
As Rose stared at the bed in amazement, he put his arm around her shoulders, lightly. When she didn’t resist, he pulled her close to his side. “I can’t promise you that living with me will always be a bed of roses, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to start out in one.”
That drew her attention from the blanket of lush, velvety crimson. Griff wrapped both arms around her as she looked up at him, laughing, tears running down her face, feeling so overwhelmed with happiness that it was an effort to speak.
“I have…one word…for you,” she said, swiping the back of her hand across her eyes until he stopped her and kissed her tears, instead. “Thorns.”
He flashed a grin worthy of the devil himself and held up his hands for her to see the dozens of tiny puncture wounds. “I swear to you, I didn’t miss a single one.”
Her gaze shifted to the bed of roses, her smile unfurling slowly. “In that case…”
They landed on the bed still holding each other. It felt decadent and smelled glorious.
Griff cradled her face in his hands and kissed her as if they’d been apart for years instead of a little more than a week. When he paused, Rose turned her head to rain kisses on his palms.
“Does this mean—?”
“Yes,” she interjected. “Yes, yes, yes. Yes to adding to your family ranks and to Grand Gestures and to spending the rest o
f my life with you…in whatever bed is handy.”
“Starting with this one.”
“Starting with this one,” she concurred. “I love you, Griff.”
“I love you, Rose.” He touched her cheek, a look of wonder on his face, then he turned out the light.
Only once, for a matter of seconds, did Rose give any thought to the contents of her tote bag. First chance she got, she would drive out to Willow Haven and return the bird to Gus—and invite him to the wedding. He could decide what to do with the Piping Plover, as Devora had intended. Maybe someday he would bequeath it to Griff or directly to the Audubon Society. It didn’t really matter. It was beautiful and rare and the stuff of legends, but it couldn’t tell her anything her heart didn’t already know.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4397-2
TALL, DARK AND DIFFICULT
Copyright © 2001 by Patricia Madden Coughlin
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