Trouble in Paradise

by Jennifer Greene

  His kiss, so swift and hard, slowed up all the blood in Susan’s veins, and encouraged her to feel limp and weak. “I missed you, too,” she admitted.

  He patted her rear end, nudging her toward the bed, and started taking off his shirt, not bothering to turn on the light. He could see by moonlight all that he wanted to look at: the wisp of satin and lace that clung alluringly to Susan’s magnolia skin, the silky cap of curls all tousled around her cheeks, the grace of her long legs in motion and the velvet-gray of her eyes as she gazed at him…

  “The manager of the motel must have thought I was crazy,” he whispered as he turned to the closet to hang up his pants. “I checked in at eight-thirty and then out again an hour later. I should have called you then, Susan. I knew there was no point in my trying to sleep there.”

  In the luminous glow of moonlight that spilled into the room, Susan caught a glimpse of the weary shadows beneath his eyes, a white-gray tiredness on his face that she didn’t like at all. “Griff, did everything go all right?”

  “It went fine. Except that I kept thinking you should be there, breathing in the scent of the pines. You’ve been working so damn hard in this house, Susan. We both have, and it’s not as though there’s a rush. At least for one long weekend, we’ve got to take a trip up north this fall.”

  Griff yawned sleepily as he scooted Susan over on the mattress and immediately dropped down next to her. “I want to make love with you,” he murmured huskily. “I’ve been wanting to make love to you since five minutes after I left the house on Friday. Do you have any idea how good you feel?”

  Susan obligingly slid closer to him, until their limbs were irretrievably tangled together, her cheek nestled against his bare chest. She suddenly felt warm again, reassured, well loved…and sleepy. A sensual call whispered in her head, but she knew with affectionate amusement that it would have to wait until tomorrow, whatever Griff’s intentions. His eyes were already closing.

  “Did it go okay with Barbara?” he questioned groggily.

  She barely hesitated. This wasn’t the time for a discussion of her problems with his daughter. At any rate, no matter how much she regretted making the promise to Barbara…she had promised. “Fine.”

  He leaned over her one last time, his kiss sleepy and warm. “You didn’t tell me if you realized how good you feel,” he whispered teasingly. “Come closer.”

  She did.

  “You smell like violets,” he murmured, and fell asleep.

  ***

  With a frown, Griff rose from his desk, snatched up the September bank statement he’d been working on and went in search of Susan. After dinner, she’d retreated to the living room, surrounding herself with a cupful of tailor’s tacks, yards of embossed material, scissors and a newly refinished Queen Anne chair. The mess was still there, but Susan wasn’t.

  Nor was she upstairs, or in the kitchen. He stood there exasperated for a moment, noticing again the blazing flutter of gold leaves on the elms outside the window. That had happened almost overnight after an early October frost. On his trip north three weeks ago, the color change had not yet started… He heard a faint sound coming from the basement, strode to the cellar door and took a few steps down; if he leaned over, he could see into the huge storage room.

  She was there. On top of the dryer sat a small cage, and Susan was bending over it. In the pink ruffled blouse and cranberry skirt she’d worn to work, his wife looked alluringly feminine and distinctly unsuited to the task of cleaning an animal’s cage. With a small sigh, he folded the sheet of paper in his hand and stuck it in his back pocket. He had been irritated with Susan a moment ago, but the determination to express his annoyance seemed to have vanished.

  She winced suddenly and jumped back, away from the cage. Rapidly shaking her hand, she suddenly turned and spotted Griff halfway down the stairs. A guilty smile hovered on her lips. “Hi. I thought you were busy doing paperwork.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  “You mean the cage?” She motioned vaguely in the direction of the animal who’d just taken such a nasty little nip out of her finger. “That’s a hamster for Tiger, a special type of hamster from Peru…or is it Venezuela? I was going to tell you about it when you were in a good mood.” She peered up at him with dancing eyes. “Are you in a good mood?”

  He was, she decided. Maybe a wee bit on the impatient side, but he’d had that kind of work week. She scampered up the stairs to offer him a kiss to make up for going against his wishes on the subject of hamsters. Her palms lingered unnecessarily long on his jeaned hips. She did like the look of Griff in jeans.

  “You were right,” she said cheerfully. “They smell terrible. The cage has to be cleaned all the time, and the little stinker bites. So if you really insist, I’ll take him back where he came from. I just thought that Tiger would enjoy him. Especially since he’s so much bigger and more colorful than plain old American hamsters, and so fierce.”

  She waited. Griff removed her hands from dangerous territory and placed them on his shoulders, bending his forehead to hers. “That meek, submissive line sounds pretty good,” he growled.

  “You like that?”

  “I like that. I just can’t imagine why I have the feeling that you’re going to keep the hamster no matter what I say.”

  Susan grinned. “But I’ll be much smarter next time,” she assured him.

  He shook his head. “I doubt that.” He trailed her lithe hips as they darted up the stairs ahead of him, a burst of love shooting through him as he watched her. Susan refused to acknowledge that she was doing too much and worrying too much about his kids. Take last night, when she’d dragged him outside to practice catching baseballs. His wife was not totally unathletic, but she had the worst depth perception of anyone he’d ever met. If they hadn’t had so much fun laughing, he would have called her on her maternal worries then. Now just didn’t seem to be the time.

  “What are you up to for the moment?” he asked.

  Susan made a vague motion in the direction of the living room and then huddled over the refrigerator. She poured them both fruit juice, added ice cubes, and handed Griff his glass. He understood her to mean that she wanted to finish reupholstering the Queen Anne chair. “You’re doing too much,” he complained. “Thirty more minutes, lady, while I finish my paperwork. Then we’ll make a fire and warm some cider. Sound good?”

  “Sounds very good,” she agreed, as she set down her glass. “What was wrong?” she asked curiously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you came downstairs to the basement, I had the feeling you were about to say something.”

  “I was.” Griff sighed, having difficulty trying to dredge up the annoyance he had felt earlier. “Honey, you’re still wearing jeans you had in high school, you suffer over every lightbulb left burning in the house unattended and if I remember correctly, you dragged me to a total of seven stores before you found an acceptable price for the carpeting in the library.”

  She remembered that shopping expedition. They’d had a terrific time, testing carpeting in their stockinged feet—obviously a major consideration, how carpeting felt on bare feet—as the salesman had ranted on about the number of fibers per square inch. “Are you tactfully trying to suggest I might be stingy with a dollar?”

  “Tight as a fist. And on that basis, I’d normally invite you to overdraw the checking account anytime, Susan. Actually, I was rather pleased to see you splurge…”

  Wheels clicked in her head. Last weekend, Tom was supposed to finally make up his postponed weekend alone with them. He hadn’t come—something about a party, although Susan was afraid the real reason Tom had canceled for the third time was more complex than the boy’s unusually busy social schedule. He’d called her specially…but Tiger and Barbara had both come in his stead that weekend. Knowing a few days ahead about the change in plans, Susan had had the brilliant, impromptu idea of trying another time to take on Barbara in a one-on-one situation. “Actually, I spent a li
ttle money on Barbara,” Susan admitted quietly, a troubled look in her eyes before she quickly reached for Griff’s glass, to wash it out.

  “Barbara?”

  “I just forgot to tell you, Griff.”

  “Susan. My daughter has three times more clothes than you do, and since that episode with Tiger, you know damn well that each of my children has an adequate clothing allowance.”

  “More than adequate,” Susan agreed, setting the clean glasses back in the cupboard. “And I certainly wasn’t trying to buy her, Griff. But she wears such damn tight jeans, along with all the other faddish horrors she feels she needs to be popular with her crowd. And girls do like shopping, so I thought I could kind of subtly show her there were alternatives. You know. Being part of the crowd, but still keeping one’s own sense of style.” Susan hesitated, remembering all too well the shopping spree with Barbara. For a time, the excursion had seemed to go swimmingly…until Barbara saw a spangly T-shirt that seemed perfect…for a hooker. End of rapport. Susan glanced up at her husband, to find Griff’s eyes intensely pinning hers, a frown grooved into his forehead.

  “She’s giving you a hard time, isn’t she?” he demanded, very quietly.

  “No.”

  “She’s turned incredibly sassy since she became a teenager. Don’t protect her, Susan. If she’s giving you trouble—”

  “She isn’t,” Susan denied emphatically, and willed sincerity to radiate from her clear gray eyes.

  “We were so close when she was little. But after the divorce, she acted as if I had deserted her.” He took a breath. “Her mother doesn’t put any limits on her behavior. She just lets Barbara run free, and I’ve seen her becoming more and more spoiled. But at the same time…”

  At the same time, he desperately wanted to give his daughter love, not discipline. Susan understood, so very clearly that she blinked back tears. No, she was not going to add to Griff’s worries about his children by burdening him with her own. The thing to do, she’d decided weeks ago, was simply to try harder herself.

  “Barbara will be fine,” she assured him. “She’s smart and pretty, and I haven’t met a happy teenager yet, Griff. It’s absolutely no fun being well adjusted when everyone else is suffering growing pains and has a wealth of trouble to complain about. She’ll turn out fine.”

  Susan honestly believed that. The issue only became clouded when she thought of herself in relation to Griff’s daughter. As she headed back to the living room, her upholstering project seemed a lesser priority. When Griff walked in a half hour later, he found her ensconced on the couch with a book. That she was relaxing pleased him, though he was mildly surprised at the refuse of upholstery trimmings still scattered on the floor. Susan was normally a confirmed neatnik.

  She murmured a greeting but didn’t look up as Griff opened the flue of the fireplace and started stacking cherry logs on the andirons. He glanced back at her, perhaps unconsciously expecting her to join him. It was past nine. It had been a long day away from her, in which he found himself frequently anticipating her smile, her lazy laughter, those private moments they shared in an evening.

  She turned the page, but didn’t look up. He struck a match and stayed crouched by the hearth until the flames were shooting up the chimney, then retreated to the kitchen to heat up a little cider. Mulled cider on a crisp evening with a hot little yellow fire glowing… Griff walked back into the living room with the two mugs; Susan murmured a protest when he set one down next to her, but didn’t move.

  Both amused and exasperated, Griff replaced the pillow under her head with his lap, rearranged her just a little so he knew her head and shoulders were comfortable, and watched her turn another page.

  She was engrossed in Tough Love, a popular seller in the bookstore among parents of adolescents. The book’s basic message was that a show of discipline was a show of love, that it was perfectly all right for a parent to say no, and that exercising control was probably tougher on the parent than it was on the child… It sounded so right…for a parent. But Susan was a stepparent.

  With Tiger, tough love wasn’t the issue. Balls were the issue—as in foot, base and basket. Susan was a hiker and a canoer and a swimmer. Hand her a ball and she was lost. Griff found it very funny that she lacked depth perception; so did she. What difference did it really make? But it had made a difference last weekend when Tiger had totally given up playing with her because she couldn’t catch a single ball.

  But how could she say no to Barbara? The philosophy in the book was very appealing, but the writers weren’t dealing with the stereotype of the Wicked Stepmother. Sheila gave Barbara no rules, and now Susan was supposed to jump in and convince Barbara that she was acting out of love? It wasn’t just the spangled T-shirt. It was the sass she handed Susan behind Griff’s back; it was worrying about whom the child was socializing with…

  “Susan.”

  She tilted her head back, looking up at her husband gravely. “Listen. Do you have some sort of organized philosophy about the discipline of children?”

  “God in heaven.”

  He confiscated the book, set down his glass of cider for the second time and turned off the lamp over their heads. “We need to have a little talk,” he informed her.

  “Griff—”

  He hauled her up just that little bit farther so she was sitting on his lap, a captive audience. “I think it’s time I took you away from here.”

  “Away from here?”

  “Honey, as much as I love them, I do not need to talk about my children every minute of the day. I just might even be interested in hearing what you did every minute of the day. Imagine that?” His mouth teased at her lower lip when she started to protest. “We’re about to put the children on hold. And the house. And our work. And drop back five for a little solid time together. Capisce?”

  He was the only Norwegian she knew who flaunted his sole Italian word. She answered in French, since that seemed to be the kind of kiss he was looking for.

  Chapter 7

  Susan dipped her paddle into the water once, then twice, finally lifting the dripping oar to let it rest across the gunwales of the canoe. Griff was leaning back against the bow, facing her, his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed, a hat tipped lazily over his forehead to block out the rays of the still-potent sun. The canoe made no sound as it traveled through the still, clear waters.

  They’d been following the narrow stream all day. Like the lace of a spider’s web, the maze of rushing water pivoted and curled in endless, intricate patterns. As they rounded a bend, Susan saw the trees that regally crowded the back of the stream. Birch and elm, aspen, maple and locust, all arched for the sky, their leaves seemingly painted in brilliant fall colors. The late-afternoon sun glinted on apricot and scarlet, gold and russet. Not a leaf stirred, not a sound troubled the forest.

  A mile farther upstream and another quarter-turn, suddenly huge boulders crowded the shoreline, as though a giant had whimsically stashed his marbles in this private niche of northern Minnesota. Certainly no one would intrude on his treasures here. At a single splash of the canoe paddle, a dozen ducks would flutter skyward in alarm, honking and squawking at the first hint of an intruder.

  One more mile, one more turn, and the stream widened slightly, its current growing swifter. Vertical cliffs jutted sharply up from the banks. A sharp eye could see a cave or the thin diamond spill of a waterfall, both possessively concealed by nature among foliage and rock.

  “Tired?” Griff murmured.

  “Impossible.”

  “Hungry, then?”

  Susan was starving, but when she didn’t answer, Griff raised his head to look at her, his eyes as warm as that lazy late sun. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who’s as greedy for this country as I am. You realize that you refused to stop for lunch?”

  “I refused? You had the paddle at noon.”

  “You took over when I wanted to go ashore on that island.”

  “You were fed,” Susan protested.<
br />
  “Granola bars. Baby food.”

  The canoe rocked precariously when Susan tipped off his hat with her toe; then she had to pick up the paddle again or risk running into the stream bank. They both fell silent, listening to the sudden mournful cry of a loon in the distance. Night was coming; the bird announced it.

  Primitive wilderness, some called these boundary waters of the north. More water than land, thousands of acres completely inaccessible by car. A moose had made them laugh that morning; such a regal, magnificent half ton of a beast, chomping on a mouthful of dripping weeds. Squirrels and foxes and beavers had posed on the stream bank all day, too astonished at the sight of human intruders to be afraid. White-tailed deer had lapped thirstily at the crystal waters, bolting if the paddle made a splash.

  Griff reached out toward her, and with a grin Susan handed him the paddle and watched him settle down to work. They didn’t need words. Being alone with Griff had intensified that private communication they had, that feeling of love that didn’t need explanations. His children had nothing to do with it, nor did her working life or his.

  “Hear it?” Griff murmured.

  The whispered gush of the rapids was a distance away, but Susan couldn’t mistake it. Already Griff was carefully shifting to a kneeling position. Sunlight glinted on his muscled forearms as he claimed a more definite grip on the paddle. “Susan…”

  “Take it, Griff.” All day they’d been searching for white water, a whim of Susan’s. She’d always wanted to shoot a rapids. Shivering suddenly, she took up the second paddle. Their food and sleeping bags were sealed in plastic, well protected from a dunking. Adrenaline streaked through her blood as Griff sure-stroked silently, faster and faster, toward yet another bend in the stream.

  Suddenly, ahead she could see whipped-cream foam on the water and the fast rush of silver around golden rocks in the sun.