Susan admitted honestly, “The cost is part of it. Why should we pay some stranger to break that first cup? Men never understand about a brand-new set of china. This one happens to be hand-painted.”
“It’s something like lining cupboards?”
“You’re getting smarter with age,” Susan said with relief.
Griff chuckled, the darling, and leaned forward to hiss, “Put your shoes on, sassy.”
They were leaving? But Griff motioned to the far corner where a handkerchief-sized dance floor was occupied by only one other couple. An ideal chance to get Griff off the subject of hiring a housekeeper, Susan thought fleetingly…
Griff’s mind was not so easily diverted. Susan was like a mother hen where his chicks were concerned, but having the kids move in was still going to be a major transition for her.
The kids… He’d expected a traumatic, emotional week that just hadn’t happened, thanks to Susan’s gentle takeover and his offspring’s intrinsic response to her warmth, even if no one else had taken the time to analyze how very well it had gone, despite the chaos of moving. Still, there would be rough spots ahead, and Griff was sorry that the custody hearing was to be followed by two solid weeks of labor negotiations at the plant. And Susan’s own work did matter to her, whatever she said. So, if he saw the first sign of stress in her, he intended to bring in outside help right over her stubborn, delectable little body.
Griff led his wife to the dance floor, the pulse in his throat suddenly reminding him of how long it had been since he had held her in his arms. The pianist, uncannily sensitive to his mood, began playing a ballad designed to keep thigh locked to thigh. Her hair smelled like sunshine, next to his cheek. The music seemed to wrap around them both and soothe away all the hectic tension of the past few days.
Gradually, he could feel her body melt closer into his, her small sigh catching his heart. He doubted Susan was even aware of her unconscious tension…or its release. For days now, there had been so much to do, so much that needed talking over. They’d both individually taken time with each child, to try to work out any mixed or confused feelings the kids might have over the transition. Susan had taken on Tom until three in the morning one night, with a rapport Griff only wished he had with his son. There had been a great many reasons—not excuses—for crashing into bed and instantly falling asleep, or for going to bed at different times.
For not making love.
Griff was not fooled by all those reasons-not-excuses.
Susan’s head slowly lifted from his shoulder, and he found himself looking down into those soft, lustrous eyes of hers. Her lips unconsciously parted, but she said nothing. His thumb grazed the nape of her neck, and her hands slipped around his waist beneath his jacket in response; then she curled close again. “I need you, Susan,” he whispered. “I need you more than you know.”
He felt that faint tremor of anticipation run through her body, and his lips touched lightly down on the crown of her head, but there was no risking anything else. Not here, not in his present mood. In his present mood, all he wanted to do was make lush, long love to the woman with the sleepy pewter eyes.
He held her closer than a whisper, moving with the seductive rhythm of the love song. It would happen tonight. Susan had been oversensitive to him ever since he’d been a fool enough to snap at her. She’d done a thousand things to convince him she had completely forgotten the incident…except that she’d shied away from real intimacy. Not from lack of love or desire, he knew, but from vulnerability.
And he understood so much more about his elusive wife now; he knew he would try his damndest never again to tread on that vulnerable spot where she was so sensitive. They bickered occasionally. Of course they did. That was part of marriage, and so was unwittingly touching each other’s Achilles’ heels. He hated hurting her. It made him feel sick inside with a feeling of loss.
“Let’s go home,” she whispered.
His smile was faint. He paid the waiter and slipped her coat over her shoulders and led her out into a crisp, clear night. She slid into the seat beside him, and once they were out on the highway he lifted his arm and she curled into his shoulder. “I love you,” she murmured.
“And I love you, Susan,” he whispered back. “So very, very much.”
It was a twenty-minute drive home. With a sleepy sigh, she relaxed like a kitten next to him, but when he pulled into the driveway he looked down at her and unconsciously stiffened.
In the shadows, her sooty lashes nestled like lace against her cheeks. Her lips were just slightly parted, one arm curled around his waist. She had experienced so much anxiety in the past few days…and her sleep was as deep as a baby’s.
Damn, he thought with frustration. He ached to make love to her, and he knew that she had been aching for him, too. Damn. Soundlessly, he pocketed the car key and opened the door. Damn. Gently and carefully, he lifted her out of the car, whispering something soothing when she started to waken. Damn. He cradled her cheek to his shoulder and held her close to the warmth of his body against the night chill, walking slowly toward the house so that his shoes made no jarring sounds on pavement. Damn, damn, damn.
Chapter 11
A poltergeist seemed to have gotten into Susan’s files at the store. Her usual fastidiousness had taken a steep nosedive in the past three weeks since the kids had moved in with them. The roller coaster that hurtled from work to housekeeping to kids kept increasing in speed instead of slowing down after that first hectic week. She seemed to be in control of absolutely nothing. Certainly not the alphabet; M didn’t usually follow B. At least it hadn’t yesterday.
She was not absolutely sure of anything today, except that the bills had to go out this morning. A nagging feeling of anxiety had been dogging her since early that morning, distracting her every time she wanted to concentrate. It was just…Barbara, with that constant list of how her mother did things. And Tiger this morning, the little monkey, had tried to make a spoon go down the disposal, though that at least had proved less chaotic than when he had somehow flushed a sock through their plumbing system. He needed some help with his math; at some point today she had to find time to look up a book on that subject. Gifted child or not, why were they teaching him algebra in fifth grade? She had barely passed it in seventh. And where was the Bonner file?
Not in the B’s or the M’s. She was trying so terribly hard to make the transition easier for the kids… Disgusted with herself for coming unglued over nothing, Susan whirled in total frustration to see if the Bonner receipt she needed to match the invoice could conceivably still be in the pile on her desk.
The Monet print on the wall suddenly swirled in exploding violet and green. The old corduroy chair, the fig tree that was valiantly trying to grow without a southern exposure, the stack of books in the far corner…all of it turned in a fast-swirling kaleidoscope.
Her hands on her stomach, Susan bent forward in her office chair, forced her head between her knees and willed the feeling to go away. All she could think of was that she’d never fainted in her life and she certainly had no time to pick up the habit now…
“Where’s Susan?”
There was no missing Julie Anderson’s voice, always sassily brusque and bubbling.
“In the office, I think,” Lanna responded absently.
Susan forced her head back up as she heard the staccato click of heels approaching. Rapidly pinching her cheeks, she swallowed back the desperate feeling of vertigo.
Her smile was all ready when a bottle of wine clattered down on her desktop along with a package of very good, but very strong cheese. Julie’s usual offerings. And just as always, Julie started talking the moment she came even vaguely within hearing range, tossing back her long blond hair and throwing herself onto the old green corduroy chair opposite Susan’s desk. “Business is absolutely terrible. Thank God I got the two of you together; otherwise Griff just might ask me to repay the money he lent me. As it is, what can he do? Without me, you and he would still be si
tting on opposite sides of the city. I hope you two are happy, Susan, because I really don’t want to show him this month’s balance sheets— What on earth are you doing under the desk?” she interrupted herself abruptly. “Did you lose an earring? I swear, ever since I got my ears pierced, I’ve lost more earrings than I ever did the whole time—”
“Julie,” Susan said patiently, “would you remove the cheese?”
“Pardon?”
“Remove,” Susan repeated succinctly, “the cheese.”
“I thought you liked sharp cheddar—Susan? For heaven’s sake…” Julie’s chair scraped the linoleum as she vaulted out of it. Susan’s eyes were closed, her lips were whispering over and over, “You will not be sick, you will not be sick…” Julie hastily removed the strong-smelling cheese.
It helped. Susan’s stomach had been flip-flopping down a deep well, but it suddenly began to lose momentum, and she knew that in just one more minute she would be fine.
“Susan…” Julie’s hand touched her shoulder.
Lanna was suddenly standing in the doorway, with a look Susan had seen twice before in the past two weeks. “We’ll get you upstairs to my apartment,” she said firmly.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” Susan grumbled. “I didn’t eat any breakfast. I’ve known ever since I was six years old that I feel sick if I don’t have breakfast.”
“Susan…” Lanna started.
“Should I call a doctor?” Julie asked worriedly.
Susan promptly forced her spine straight, belted her arms tightly around her stomach and glared at both of them. “All I did was move a little too fast on an empty stomach. Let’s not make some kind of federal case out of it.”
“We won’t,” Lanna agreed. “You can just go to lunch with Julie. Immediately.” The two women exchanged glances.
“Exactly why I came here in the first place,” Julie announced.
Susan stood up then. Her knees felt skittery, but otherwise that green sensation had faded. The thing was, she reminded herself of her aunt. On her mother’s side. She’d had frequent exposure to her aunt’s hypochondria as a child, and it had caused her to develop an almost phobic loathing for illness.
“You’re not going to get a raise for the next eleven years,” she told Lanna.
“You gave me two last year. They’ll last for a while.” Lanna had her coat all ready.
Susan snatched it from her. “I’m fine. Please just leave me alone.”
The waspish tone was so out of character for Susan that both women smiled brilliantly at her. Julie didn’t stop the insane kid-gloves treatment until they were seated in a restaurant, eating homemade minestrone and wedges of warm French bread. Susan was keeping up with Julie spoonful for spoonful.
“You really were just hungry, weren’t you?” Julie conceded finally.
“I told you that.”
“You scared the devil out of your assistant.”
“Lanna’s desperate for someone to mother. She’s had the roles all wrong ever since I hired her, but I didn’t seem to realize it until the last few weeks.” Susan smiled with honest affection, feeling like herself again. “I’ve got to get her married off. She goes for the stray lambs every time. It wouldn’t be so bad if she collected children, but her strays are always over six feet tall with big blue eyes.”
Julie chuckled. Lanna’s doings always evoked her indulgent amusement. Her smile hovered a moment longer and then faded, and suddenly all her attention was riveted on the spoon in her hand. “I really did come to have lunch with you. To talk about the kids.”
“The kids?” Susan echoed in surprise.
“Come on, Susan. I’ve known my niece and my two nephews a long time. You think the problem wasn’t obvious to me when the clan came to dinner at my place last Sunday? My brother never used to be stupid.”
Susan, used to Julie’s sisterly concern for her, sighed. “Go ahead,” she said dryly. “But try to remember that I’m a big girl, Julie. The kids and I are doing just fine.”
Julie’s eyes met hers, big, blue and much more shrewd than her wine-and-cheese-shop profits would lead one to suspect. “They’re eating you up, Susan. Why haven’t you told Griff? Surely you know what Sheila’s like. She gave them nothing, so naturally, they saw you coming and held out their hands. It’s called taking advantage, darling.” She said the last two words very clearly, as if to emphasize the message to her sister-in-law.
Susan sighed and leaned back, absently regarding the busy comings and goings of the lunch crowd in the cheerful little restaurant. “Whether you can understand it or not, I happen to have a bad case of attachment to those three. I sometimes have a mad urge to glue little signs on their foreheads—Mine. And they’re not really giving me a hard time, Julie, not nearly as bad as I expected. Oh, Barbara sometimes goes a little too far. That I’ll admit. But then, she’s going through a period when she needs to test me.”
“As in every time Griff’s back is turned,” Julie interjected demurely. “She learned those tricks from a master, you must realize that.”
“Don’t,” Susan scolded bluntly. “Do you think this has been easy for Barbara? She must feel as if she’s turning her back on her mother to come and live with us—and Sheila isn’t an ogre, you know. I’m not her judge, and neither are you.”
“Don’t you forget that the judge didn’t just look into my brother’s winsome eyes and suddenly decide to give him custody. He talked plenty to those kids and to their mother. Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Sheila, Susan. Maybe this is her chance to get her life together. Finally. At any rate, those kids weren’t forced to live with you—they had their say. They must care for you. And as far as I’m concerned, that means you should have the right to slam them against a wall occasionally when they get really out of line.”
“You’ve always had this terrible problem expressing yourself,” Susan said with mock compassion. “You never speak your own mind, never come out and say what you’re thinking.”
Julie burst out laughing. “You’re the one who got me started—at least on this subject. Telling me about that book.”
“What book?”
“Tough Love. Wasn’t that the title? Something about kids testing you because they want you to set limits on their behavior, because it’s a natural human need to establish rules. Well, if that’s true, then you’ve got the right to say no to them, Susan. That won’t stop them from loving you.”
“So wise,” Susan marveled. “Remind me of this conversation if we ever get you married off and you have your own children, will you?” Susan gathered up her purse and coat and snatched the bill from the table. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got a thousand things to do this afternoon…”
Julie stood up reluctantly, casting Susan a rueful look as they made their way to the front of the restaurant. “Tell Griff the kids are bugging you,” she murmured as they walked outside.
“You were a perfect darling to invite me to lunch,” Susan said warmly. “Normally, I would have holed up in the back room with peanut butter and stale bread.”
“Tell Griff,” Julie repeated ominously.
“This has been a perfectly delightful conversation,” Susan assured her.
Julie didn’t usually admit that some mountains are just too high to climb, but this time she gave up on her sister-in-law, threw up her arms in defeat and climbed into her car.
Susan found a shop full of customers when she walked in the door, and had no time during the busy afternoon to mull over Julie’s lecture. Griff had been busy as hell the past three weeks; he couldn’t possibly see what was going on between her and the kids. If he did see, he seemed happy with the chaotic transition from honeymooners to a family of five. And essentially, the kids seemed just as happy. None of the arguments and resentments she had worried about had materialized.
She was the only one floundering. Was she the right kind of stepmother for them? She was not usurping Sheila’s role, not coming on too strong, not pushing any closeness
before the kids wanted it… Oh, tough love had sounded good in principle. But Barbara seemed to need a full-time chauffeur, demanding that Susan drop whatever she was doing on the instant; yes, Susan could get tough and request a little consideration. She knew Barbara was using every excuse to test her, but that didn’t change Susan’s feeling that Barbara was having the hardest time in the transition and needed love and understanding. She would soon tire of a one-sided battle…wouldn’t she?
Tiger and the football that broke her grandmother’s vase…Susan could have yelled. It would be easy to yell at Tiger as she followed the urchin from room to room, picking up disasters, along with socks, shoes, school bags and crumbled cookies. But his own mother had never forced a single rule on him, and suddenly Susan was supposed to step in and play the heavy? The psychologists said it was all right to yell, as long as you directed your anger at the behavior rather than at the child—but would a divorce-torn ten-year-old really make the distinction? It probably hadn’t been all that long since Sheila had read him Grimm’s fairy tales, with all those wicked stepmothers…
And Tom…she’d made the mistake of telling him that he should feel free to play the stereo. A mature seventeen-year-old would be into jazz, or maybe even classical music, right? Wrong! Try hard rock, at earsplitting volume from the moment she walked in the door until dinnertime…and after dinner until Lord knew when. Of course she could tell him to turn it down. That wasn’t even a minor deal, but it was rather a major one that they were getting along so well. Three strikes and you’re out, remember? At least Tom was her success story. But that wasn’t really the issue. It was all the thousands of things at once, so sudden, so overwhelming…
Tell Griff, Julie had insisted. But tell him what? That she was less and less sure where she stood with her husband, how he expected her to deal with his kids, what he valued in her as a woman? A bedmate? A mother? But the role of wife seemed to be steadily sinking in a morass of confusing adjustments. Griff was becoming the stranger across the crowded room, but the song had a lot less romance when the crowd was made up of children.
Trouble in Paradise Page 13