Trouble in Paradise

by Jennifer Greene

  She felt like booty to his pirate as he swung her out of that luminous light and carried her through the chilled black hall. He paused only once, as if suddenly realizing that her face was totally covered by the towel. His chin nudged it aside. Gray eyes flecked with silver were waiting for him, still drugged by their sensual play, but dancing just a little. He brushed a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. “We’re getting a new bathtub,” he murmured. “A larger one.”

  “Are we?”

  He took three and a half seconds to dry them both off, then cool skin met cool skin: a new game. The mattress yielded to their combined weights, and all Susan could think was, Hurry, hurry. Nothing had ever felt as good as his full length against hers; the first rush of freedom to stretch and slide around him exploded a frantic desire within her. It wasn’t really her, of course. Susan was reserved, wary of intimacy… It was all Griff’s fault. From the very beginning, he’d cut through her shyness with a silken machete…

  Moonlight suddenly played light and shadow on his face as Griff loomed over her. His own dark eyes on fire, he saw the soft, vulnerable gray eyes beneath his. Her skin was moist and seemed to glow in the dark. Firm, supple breasts ached against his chest, already well loved, cheek roughened and comforted with his tongue and lips. Her whole body talked to him: he knew her ribs, the slim span of her waist, the incredible erotic tension that could grip her thighs when a passion was released in her that she still didn’t understand…

  They had years to go. Each time they loved, he had a searing need to show her that. She was so full of love; she gave and gave, yet always expected so little in return.

  Her heart was pounding against his, her hands roving his back in increasingly restless movements. “Griff,” she murmured desperately.

  He wasted no more time, taking her with exactly the sweet, fierce momentum she was asking for. Abandonment was her goal; she wanted only to present him with her richness, with a love he wanted to return to her tenfold. Her spine arched beneath him, and he cradled the shuddering explosion that took her body, a release all silver and satin, the essence of his life inside her.

  ***

  Griff rested on his side. Beneath the comforter, he still held Susan captive, her warmth something he refused to let go of yet, even for sleep. Her tousled hair looked like dark satin on the pillow, and his calloused palm smoothed the sleek strands back, loving the serene, smooth beauty of her face after loving.

  Her hands were nestled between them, one palm resting over his heartbeat, waiting for it to slow to normal. “Can you tell me about it now?” she asked softly.

  He kissed her forehead. “Tell you about what, lovely one?”

  She propped herself up, leaning on one elbow, and slowly stroked the hair back from his forehead before she tried to speak. “You were different this afternoon, Griff. Unhappy. Closed in a way you’ve never seemed before. I’m supposed to be the inhibited one in this relationship, remember?”

  His dark eyes glinted up at her. “Not so that you’d notice,” he said gravely.

  But she saw the quick, bleak sadness that touched his eyes again, and she didn’t smile in return. “What’s wrong, Griff?” she insisted quietly. “You’re so good with Tiger. He adores you. He’s a well-adjusted little bundle of energy…”

  She waited, patiently. Griff was silent for a long time, but she could see the sudden tension in his profile by moonlight, in the eyes that darted away from her, in the tightness that was so rarely a part of him. Her perception came from feminine instincts that pursued him into those dark corners where he crouched away from her. Gently, her fingers stroked the furrow between his eyebrows.

  “None of them took the divorce well,” he said finally. “Tiger’s the most resilient, but it hit him at a vulnerable time, too.”

  She stroked, over and over, her touch lighter than a feather.

  “I have always been against divorce where children are concerned,” he said flatly. “Maybe you make mistakes, even as an adult, but don’t, for God’s sake, take them out on innocents. The marriage had been wrong for years, but the kids didn’t know it. There were no arguments in front of them.”

  “And you still feel guilty as hell,” she whispered.

  “I am guilty as hell,” Griff corrected. He shifted a pillow behind himself and moved up; she knew he moved to avoid her touch. There were certain kinds of pain he was used to bearing alone. And in response to that, she shifted with him, pushing her pillow up, keeping her hand on his arm.

  “Try telling me about her,” she suggested.

  “Sheila?”

  No, the lady in the moon. Susan was already too sensitive about his ex-wife, yet she knew Griff needed to say certain things out loud. He had coaxed her out of her own defensive shells, and she would coax him from his. “Just tell me,” she insisted.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Talk, Griff.”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed when he turned his head on the pillow. Dark eyes glittered on her softer gray ones. At this moment, Griff was not so very pleased with his too-perceptive wife. “She’s a good-looking woman,” he said flatly.

  “That hurts. Naturally. Go right ahead, but when you’re all through—”

  Aaah. He gathered her close, shutting her up, burying her face in his shoulder, arching a leg around her to drag her nearer yet. He kissed her hard on her temples, and Susan relaxed, silent, waiting.

  “We married too damn young,” he admitted finally. “Sheila had been raised to ‘catch a man.’ That was the game. So she loved campfires and kids and quiet evenings, because those were the things I loved. Until she got the ring on her finger. Then she was so damned unhappy…” He took a breath. “Restless all the time. Moody with the kids, taking on causes with incredible enthusiasm, flitting from one thing to another… I don’t know what she wanted from me. I never knew. Oh …money, of course. The Anderson name…”

  Susan wound her arms around his waist and snuggled closer, wanting desperately to cushion him from some of those memories. How many years had Griff been without love? But she knew, every time he touched her.

  “For the kids, I kept trying. There was no love between Sheila and me, but I had the kids’ love, and the five of us were surviving. Until Sheila stepped out with someone else. Then something just clicked inside me, an awareness of how little I really did care. From that point on, I just couldn’t pretend with her anymore.”

  He took a breath. “We called it ‘irretrievable breakdown of a marriage.’ I never mentioned adultery in court. Neither of us wanted to sling the kids through that kind of mud. But Sheila, for some reason, balked at the end and wanted the marriage to stand. The big fight came when we were talking custody in front of the judge. I wanted the kids, and I knew that she really didn’t. She was just worried that people might say she was a bad woman and a terrible mother if she didn’t fight for the kids. Maybe I could have won custody if I’d mentioned her affair to the judge. At the time, all I could think of was that we were hurting the children enough without bringing that up. I knew I’d claim my share of time with them, and since I had to work all week anyway and they were in school—”

  “Which is all true, Griff,” Susan interjected.

  His jaws clamped together and then relaxed slightly. “She doesn’t love them. She never did. She loves the child-support money, but she’s still off and running twelve hours of the day, never there. I’ve been back to my lawyer countless times, but there’s nothing I can take to court. I can’t prove she’s done anything that shows her to be an unfit parent. Hers isn’t the kind of neglect that shows… There was a time when I even felt sorry for her. She’s incapable of loving anyone. Even herself. But the point is what she’s doing to them—the kids. Tiger and Barbara and Tom. And I’m the one who initiated the divorce proceedings, who tore their lives apart.”

  “Listen to me.” Susan extricated herself from his hold, and leaned up on one elbow to glare at him. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she said furio
usly. “You love those kids like hell. You give them so much of yourself. Surely you don’t think you’re the only divorced father in this country? You know so many kids who’ve had a perfect, ideal upbringing? Your kids have had it a little tough, Griff, but they’ve never suffered from lack of care, lack of love, lack of anything they needed from you. It’s the tough times that build character…or can build it. And don’t you ever tell me you didn’t have the right to fight for your own needs, dammit.”

  She was a cougar in the wild, so fierce in her defenses, so furious when her own were attacked… Griff sighed, feeling something released inside him that had been locked up for a very long time. In the four years since the divorce, he’d never discussed or even admitted to himself any of the lingering guilt he felt about it. Susan was somehow his mentor. Minx, mentor…lover, wife…

  He turned, rearranged Susan’s pillow and dragged her down and flat beneath him, smiling into her startled eyes. In a tough business world, he inspired respect; he knew that. Even a little fear. A few people even jumped when he walked into a room, and no one had scolded Griff Anderson in at least two decades.

  Except Susan, who could barely shoo away a fly without worrying about having done the creature harm.

  “I love you, Susan,” he told her tenderly.

  The fires in her eyes softened as if cooled by a gentle rain. “I love you, too.”

  “Yes. Well. I don’t want you starting any more nonsense like those acrobatics in the bathtub,” he said sternly. His lips dipped down to taste the hollow between her shoulder and neck. A most vulnerable hollow. “And just a few days ago, there was that episode on the new dining room carpet.” Edging lower, his palm gently cradled her right breast. Susan’s breath suddenly caught when his tongue touched down. “Hours before that, you wanted to christen the kitchen. Susan, we are never again going to try to make love in a kitchen. Any kitchen…”

  So very, very stern. “Griff.” She could not possibly be feeling the renewal of fire again. Her head was spinning with Griff’s memories, still. Her own insecurities, which Tiger’s visit had triggered, had faded in a renewed understanding of why and how much Griff wanted his children with him. Beyond that, she was annoyed with Griff for harboring unnecessary guilt. All those emotions from the heart…yet her breasts went strangely taut under his lazy ministrations.

  He suddenly turned them both on their sides, his brown eyes meeting hers in the dark room—full of the devil. Not to mention the devil’s advocate pressed deliberately against her stomach. “You knew when we married that I was more than a decade older than you,” he continued with mock gravity. “I hope you outgrow this…insatiable tendency of yours, Susan. I simply can’t keep this up. Just because you have this irresistible, luscious little body…”

  She lifted up her body and planted her lips on his. There was obviously a time for soul-searing discussions as well as a time…to give in. She’d wanted credit for the kitchen episode, anyway. And tomorrow was Sunday. They could nap all afternoon.

  Chapter 5

  As Susan sat across the dinner table from Barbara, she was rather startlingly aware of how different the fourteen-year-old was from her gregarious younger brother. A week had passed since Tiger’s brief visit. Susan and Griff had packed up the whole brood and taken them out to dinner on Wednesday; his ex-wife had raised no objection, even though it wasn’t their “assigned time.” Barbara had been distinctly cool that evening, though no one else seemed to notice. Susan had scolded herself that she was just looking to make mountains out of molehills as a result of her fear that the girl wouldn’t accept her, but she wasn’t making any mountains now as she and Barbara ate dinner alone together. Passing the plate of ham, she felt the tense silence between them. Someone at the table was sending out distinctly hostile messages. It wasn’t Susan.

  Tall and slim, Barbara had rich sable hair, worn long with a heavy fringe of bangs. Most teenagers would have killed for that porcelain complexion. Barbara was a beauty, give or take the adolescent garb. Newly budding breasts were concealed under a voluminous old sweatshirt; the jeans, by contrast, undoubtedly took her a half hour to get out of; she had probably put them on wet and let them dry. The only feature of Griff’s that Barbara had inherited was a pair of beautiful dark eyes, accented—five minutes after her father had left the house—with four coats of mascara.

  Those eyes kept darting over to Susan, slipping past her favorite dinner, dancing past Susan’s utterly innocuous gray wool pants and bright red sweater, glancing into Susan’s compassionate gray eyes, flitting around the dining room, taking in the deacon’s bench and long oak table and crystal chandelier…and apparently disdaining all of it.

  Susan made every effort to send over her own share of silent messages: Honey, I’m sorry Griff isn’t here; you know how much he values time with you. Yes, I know the last thing you want is to be stuck here alone with me. I’ve seen all those intimidating looks you keep giving me, but I’m not raising any white flags yet. And, yes, you little vixen, I’ve noticed the eye shadow and mascara, but you’re going to have to wait until hell freezes over before I make any comments about the appropriate age at which to wear makeup. First of all, I have no interest in playing Wicked Stepmother, and second, if I’d had an asset like those big, beautiful eyes I would probably have worn mascara when I was five. Perhaps not quite that thick, but…

  “Want some chocolate cake?” Susan stood up with her plate in her hand.

  “No, thank you,” Barbara said stiffly.

  Susan juggled a few more dishes in her arms before heading toward the kitchen, ignoring Barbara’s glacial voice. “Your dad said he’d call around eight. Barbara, you know he had no idea until four this afternoon that he was going to be anywhere but right here with you. It wasn’t his fault that—”

  “You told me.”

  “He’s still hoping to be here by noon tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” Barbara unfolded her long legs from under the table, a very odd mixture of feminine grace and early teenage clumsiness. She followed Susan, taking no dishes, and stood in the doorway while her stepmother started storing the leftovers. “Dad’s probably just as happy anyway. Like I was expecting something like this. A setup, you know?”

  Susan turned startled eyes to her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on, Susan. Here we are, getting to know each other. I mean, like, you’re supposed to be part of my family now, too, right? So you’re taking us on, one at a time. First Tiger, now me. Then Tom.”

  Susan closed the refrigerator with a little thump, well aware what the girl thought of that particular program. An elephant couldn’t have missed the sarcasm. She ran the sink full of hot water and added enough soap to wash the dishes forty times over. “It’s rough for you, isn’t it?” She briskly put the dishes into the sink. “You were used to having a lot of private time with your dad. Naturally, you’re afraid I’m going to cut into that and interfere in your relationship with him in other ways, too. On top of that, of course, you have a mother already, you don’t need two. I think if I were in your shoes, I’d feel just as uptight as you do.” She added casually, “I don’t mind washing, but I hate drying.”

  Barbara’s stricken look might or might not have resulted from her resentment at being expected to dry the dishes, but she took up the towel anyway. Silence returned like an unwanted friend. Susan thought with wry desperation that she must have scored at least a minor hit; what fun is it to attack an enemy who won’t fight back? The silence was no fun, either, though.

  For Susan, the worst part of being stared at was that she couldn’t dry her hands and finish off the single fingernail she’d started unobtrusively biting five minutes after Barbara walked in. Having beaten the horrible habit when she was fifteen, Susan suddenly clearly remembered what it felt like to have a half-gnawed nail that craved to be evened up.

  Griff called a few minutes later from Duluth, only to tell them he couldn’t possibly be home until late Sunday morning. He talked to his da
ughter for more than twenty minutes, while Susan finished the dishes, desperately missed her husband and sweated out how on earth she was going to entertain Barbara for two evenings and an entire day.

  “Darling, is it going all right?” he asked Susan when his daughter finally handed her the phone.

  “Just fine,” she told him blithely.

  As they walked out of the kitchen a few minutes later, Barbara complained, “I don’t understand what’s so important to Dad about that stupid land, anyway. It’s not like it’s worth anything. Mom told me ages ago that all the real money comes from the plants in St. Paul. There’s no reason why Dad still has to go up there all the time.”

  “It’s the land your great-grandfather homesteaded,” Susan answered. And that he destroyed, Griff had told her. He and the others of his generation pillaged the forests, and no one had thought to replant them until thirty years ago. Griff’s father had planted jack pine, a tree that grew fast enough to provide a regular income, yet Griff had different dreams for the land. He was meeting forestry people over the weekend. Busy people, like him. There was no other time.

  “So what does that have to do with anything?” Barbara insisted petulantly. “If it doesn’t make money, what’s the point of it?”

  Susan sighed. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt like giving Griff’s ex-wife a good kick in the chops for engraining in her offspring such a materialistic attitude. “The love of the forest is the point,” she said patiently.

  Barbara seemed momentarily diverted as she started roaming from room to room. Susan followed, hoping the girl would find some of the spirit of “home” that she and Griff saw in the house. Not everything was finished, of course. They’d hurried through the big jobs, the repairing and painting and tearing up that were needed to make the house livable. Tiger’s and then Barbara’s room had been Susan’s top priorities, and the downstairs was still skimpily furnished. But there was enough, surely, so that Barbara could see that the goal was comfort and space? A place she might want to come home to…