by Deb Kastner
That kid was him.
Just seeing Devon slumped in his seat avoiding eye contact with everyone, mad at the world and everything in it—it was too much for Griff to handle.
He knew that feeling. He’d lived it. Devon seemed to come from money, which was the polar opposite of Griff’s childhood, but the frustration, the isolation—all of that was far too familiar.
It had been all he could do to keep his mind from tunneling back to the past. He had broken into a sweat trying to consciously remind himself that he wasn’t a vulnerable teenager anymore. He’d grown beyond needing the acceptance of his peers. He didn’t care what anyone thought about him, and he was better off that way. But reminding himself didn’t make it any easier to sit by Devon and watch the unhappiness pour off the kid in waves.
Getting out of there? Self-preservation, pure and simple.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself. So why was his conscience niggling at him and not giving him a moment’s rest?
Maybe because Alexis had been especially kind and generous to him. She’d extended her hospitality even when she was under no obligation to do so; invited him to be a guest at her table.
And what had he done? Rudely packed up and marched off.
She should have been furious with him for the way he’d stormed off in the middle of a supper she’d clearly spent all day preparing—and maybe she had been, at first. Yet while there was no doubt she was still confused by his behavior, he’d actually read kindness and compassion in her gaze.
How could she find anything in him or this situation to have sympathy for?
His dander rose once again. He didn’t want her pity. And he most certainly didn’t need her prying into his personal business. He couldn’t and wouldn’t explain why seeing the teenagers ganging up on Devon had set him off, but he couldn’t deny one fact—he did owe Alexis an apology. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d say to her when the time came, but there had to be something he could do to put things to right. He had to try.
A quick glance at his cell phone told him he’d been walking for well over an hour. He hadn’t realized how deeply lost in his own musings he’d been. This whole situation had really thrown him for a major loop.
It was time for him to stop feeling sorry for himself and act like a man and not one of those snotty kids Alexis was apparently fond of. Straightening his shoulders, he turned around and took long, purposeful strides toward the house.
By the time he returned to the ranch, Alexis’s young guests would hopefully have gone back to wherever it was that they were staying—Griff guessed the two structures located on the opposite side of the main house from where the wranglers bunked.
If the kids were still lingering over supper, he’d hold off and remain outside until he’d seen them leave, but he didn’t want to wait until morning to resolve this problem. He’d made up his mind about speaking to Alexis and wasn’t the kind of man to put off doing what needed to be done.
Especially when it involved eating crow. In his opinion, the sooner this was over with, the better.
Relief surged through him when he realized the house was dark, which meant the kids had probably moved on. The porch light beckoned, reminding him of the first time he’d seen the place, pulling up in front of what he’d believed was an unoccupied house. Instead, he’d frightened Alexis into confronting him with her curling iron. He chuckled under his breath. She wasn’t timid, that one. The fire in her gaze was enough to daunt this accidental intruder.
For a moment he debated whether or not to bother her. He opened the porch screen and was about to knock when he realized the door was cracked open. A dim light flickered from a room to the left of the living area.
“Alexis?” he called softly, feeling uncomfortable disturbing the silence. “It’s Griff. I need to speak with you. Do you have a second?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t hear him. He tried again, raising his voice slightly louder. “Alexis? Are you in there?”
“I’m in the office, Griff.” Her usually confident and upbeat voice had an odd hitch to it. Curious as to what that meant, he let himself in, following the sound and the light.
Her office was lit only by the fire glowing in the hearth—a real wood fire, not the flip-the-switch gas type he’d had in his apartment in Houston. The whole place smelled of smoke and pine. The room was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves carrying haphazard piles of books boasting ragged spines that had clearly been cracked open, some many times. Scanning the titles, he determined there was no rhyme or reason to the setup. She wasn’t flaunting anything. It wasn’t about prestige or scholarship or even decor. As with everything else he knew about Alexis, her library was the real thing.
Alexis sat slumped behind her mahogany desk, nearly hidden by the high stacks of paper and ledgers scattered across the desktop. Unlike the rest of her tidy house, her desk looked as though a dog had chased a cat over it. Her forehead was propped on her hand and her face was hidden behind her palm, almost as if she was nursing a headache. When she raised her head, Griff was surprised to find her luminous blue eyes brimming with moisture.
His gut clenched. Was she crying because of him?
Women and tears were a bad mix. Granted, in his experience, the tears were often faked and usually accompanied by whiny demands. But he had absolutely no doubt that the tears in Alexis’s eyes were all too sincere. She hadn’t been expecting his arrival, so she couldn’t possibly have an agenda. In fact, he felt rather as if he’d caught her completely off guard. From the frantic way she dashed the moisture from her cheeks, she wasn’t trying to be the least bit manipulative. She didn’t even want to acknowledge she was crying.
“I’m sorry,” she offered in a soft, sweet soprano voice. Again he noticed the tight, odd hitch in her tone. “I wasn’t expecting company. I—”
“Please. Don’t apologize to me. I’m the one who should be saying I’m sorry.”
“What? Why?” She sounded genuinely perplexed, as if she’d completely forgotten what an oaf he’d been at supper and the confrontation that had followed.
“I can’t believe you have to ask,” he replied with a low groan. “Look. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, and I won’t stay. I just stopped by to apologize for how shoddily I acted tonight at supper.”
“Oh.” Their eyes met and for a moment he forgot to breathe. She didn’t look at him, she looked into him, as if she were able to read the very depths of his soul.
Disconcerted, he broke his gaze away and walked over to the nearest bookshelf, breathing heavily. Steady, Haddon.
“You like reading the classics?” he asked, noting Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.
“I like reading everything,” she said, stepping out from behind her desk and moving to his side. She offered him a tentative smile. “As long as it has a happy ending.”
“Ah. A romantic at heart,” he teased with a low chuckle.
“Guilty as charged.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised.” And he wasn’t. Of course Alexis thought in those fanciful terms. Happily ever after. As if that existed. It was all he could do to keep from scoffing aloud. But he couldn’t fault her. From what he could gather, she’d led a fairly sheltered existence in this little town. She probably didn’t realize how nice she had it, never having had to experience the not so happily ever after.
“You sound like you don’t believe in happy endings.” Her statement could have come out accusatory or condescending, but actually, it sounded as if she pitied him. That was the last thing he wanted.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said, his shoulders tightening. His voice sounded a little harsher than he’d intended.
“I don’t,” she assured him. “I just wonder—that is, something must have happened to make you feel that way.”
Their gazes met and his skin
prickled all over, as though a million fire ants were crawling on him. He strode to the fireplace and picked up the iron poker, jabbing into the largest piece of firewood in the hearth and sending up a shower of sparks.
“When I came in it looked like you were crying. I don’t mean to pry, but do you want to talk about what’s got you so upset?” he asked. It wasn’t his business, and if he had any sense at all he really shouldn’t get involved, but he was desperate to turn her attention away from him and the happily-ever-after nonsense, and so he grabbed at the most obvious diversion.
“You really want to know?” She sounded surprised.
As well she should be. But she couldn’t be nearly as shocked as he was. It was disconcerting to realize he really did want to know what had this beautiful woman so distressed. He should know better than to pry, but there it was again. His Achilles’ heel staring right at him. Why did he have so much trouble saying no to a pretty face?
“Well, sure I do. If you want to tell me,” he replied, clearing his throat of the low, husky tone.
She sighed and moved to the small green sofa by the fireplace, slinking onto the cushion and pulling her knees up. She gestured to an armchair opposite her. “You may as well sit down. It’s a long story.”
Even as he seated himself, he wondered at the wisdom of staying. What a fool he was. He knew better than to stick his nose where it didn’t belong—and he had a sinking feeling he was about to get in deep. He shouldn’t care.
But he did—at least enough to stay. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs. “Go on.”
She chuckled drily, but it wasn’t a happy sound.
“Once upon a time… Or maybe I ought to be starting with I have a dream…”
Chapter Four
Alexis was surprised and impressed by Griff’s willingness to acknowledge his boorish behavior at the supper table. Not every man was mature enough to admit when he was wrong. But she was even more astounded by the apparent interest he was taking in hearing about her problems. He’d seemed so closed off earlier, not wanting to talk about his own issues, that she hadn’t expected him to be so sympathetic to hers.
She shook off the feeling and pressed it behind her. She knew better than to judge a man’s outer actions without knowing what was in his heart.
“I’ll begin at the beginning,” she said, smiling at her handsome and attentive houseguest.
He returned her smile stiffly and leaned back into the cushion, curling his arm across the top of the armchair and inadvertently calling attention to the bulge of his biceps.
Alexis quickly averted her gaze. “As you may have gathered, I minister to troubled teens.”
He exhaled sharply. “Hmm. Yeah. I got the ‘troubled teen’ part of it, all right. Is that why you were upset when I came in? They giving you trouble?”
She chuckled at his attempt at a joke. “The kids? No, not at all.”
He raised a brow.
“Well, no more than usual, anyway. This is the first night here for this new batch of teenagers. They have some big adjustments to make. You may not have seen them at their best this evening.”
He scoffed. “That’s a charitable way of putting it.”
“Charitable? No. Give them a couple of weeks. They’re here for a full month, what I’ve termed a Mission Month. They’ll be put to work learning the inner workings of ranch life. They just need a little love and something worthwhile to do with their time. Redemption Ranch provides both. And as an added plus, they get so much exercise that they’re too tired to bicker with each other.”
“I see,” he said, but he certainly didn’t sound as though he understood what she was trying to say. Or else he didn’t believe her.
“For the most part, these kids are just misunderstood.”
Griff grunted. There were those rose-colored glasses again. The woman lived in Wonderland, not the real world. He’d watched the interplay over the supper table. What these kids were was mean.
She sighed. “I know that to the casual onlooker, they might have come off as being a little harsh tonight.”
“You think?” he snapped back before he could temper his response. “They played judge and jury on that kid Devon for no good reason. Just because he looked different from the rest of them. He didn’t stand a chance against those ‘misunderstood’ miscreants.”
“Talk about being both the judge and jury, Griff. You’ve already pretty much ruled on the case, and without the least bit of evidence.”
“Oh, I have evidence.” A past full of it.
“Enlighten me.”
For the briefest of moments he considered unloading his whole sorry story on her, but to his very great relief the feeling passed before it could take root. His whole body stiffened in protest. He wasn’t about to share his life with her.
“Let’s just say I have good reason for feeling the way I do.”
“But you liked Devon. Or at least, you felt protective of him. Why?”
The hair prickled on the back of Griff’s neck. The woman was observant. Far too much so. He’d have to watch himself around her.
“No reason. I just don’t like to see people giving each other trouble. Even if they’re just kids. I don’t care for mean-spirited teenagers.”
“That’s rational. But I don’t buy that that’s the only reason you stuck up for Devon the way you did. There’s got to be more to it than that.”
Griff shrugged. It was no matter to him what she thought. He was done talking.
“The teenagers will come around,” she assured him when he didn’t respond. “They always do. A couple of weeks of working together under supervision and they’ll start to bond with each other. Before you know it, they’ll all be friends. Problem solved.”
Enjoy your pipe dreams, lady.
“You seem to have it all worked out,” he said aloud.
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Countless times.”
She sounded confident. And sincere. But people could be sincerely wrong, and he was convinced this was the case with Alexis. She saw what she wanted to see and believed what she chose to believe. That didn’t make what she perceived a reality.
Griff knew better.
“How long have you been doing this…this thing with the kids?”
“I planned and dreamed for a long time before my ministry here at Redemption Ranch came to fruition. For a long time I didn’t think it would happen at all,” she explained, a faraway look clouding her eyes. “When my grandfather left me and Viv the ranch, the timing finally seemed right to try to make those dreams a reality.”
“And so you have.”
She wrapped her arms around her legs and propped her chin on her knees. “Mostly, I guess.”
“You said you’ve seen some measure of success with the kids.”
“I have. It’s just…” Her sentence drifted off.
“Just what?”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t burden you with my problems.”
“I’m a good listener. Hit me up.” Griff inhaled sharply. The words had left his mouth of their own accord and he couldn’t reel them back, no matter how much he wanted to. Why had he even said that? He was a terrible listener—or at least, he was now. It used to be his favorite part of his work as a venture capitalist, listening to people lay out their dreams, talk about what they wanted to achieve and the obstacles that lay in their paths. Then he could swoop in and make it all happen for them. After a childhood that had left him feeling constantly powerless and on the outside, it had been an unending rush to be on the ground floor of so many businesses, helping to make them come together—to make dreams come true.
Then, of course, Caro had happened. Listening to her had been the worst mistake he’d ever made. So he’d decided not to listen anymore. And if he was going to sta
rt, it wouldn’t be with someone like Alexis, given that he didn’t buy what she was saying about her ministry.
Turning teenage delinquents into model citizens? Yeah, right.
And yet…
And yet he believed that she believed in what she did. Her whole countenance shined when she spoke about the teenagers in her care.
For the moment that was enough to make him want to reach out to her, even if he didn’t personally appreciate what she was trying to do. If nothing else, it would even the score between them. She had helped him, so he would help her.
He moved across the space separating them and took a seat next to her on the couch, draping his arm across the back and laying his other hand atop both of hers, gently prying them apart.
“Talk to me,” he urged again, softly yet compellingly. “You were crying when I came in. Why? Your ministry is clearly a success. You have the opportunity to follow your passions—to do what you really want to do with your life. Are you aware of how rare that is? What could be better than that?”
When she laughed, her voice caught on a hiccup. “The people part of Redemption Ranch is going great guns. I’m thoroughly confident in the work I do here. But the finances? Not so much. I think I’m going to send my board of directors to early graves.”
Finances. Her problem was money. Not emotions. Not people.
Money.
Griff immediately felt the tension from between his shoulder blades ease. He wanted to cheer. Fixing financial dilemmas was a walk in the park for him, and solving money problems was his forte. Perhaps he could advise her.
“You’re a nonprofit, I presume?”
“That’s one way of putting it.” She laughed. “No, seriously. I receive a little bit from the parents of the teenagers for their care while they’re here, but not enough to cover my overhead. Most of them could afford to pay more, but I couldn’t possibly put the price tag out of reach of families who don’t have as much to spare. The expenses are more than I’d anticipated when I started the program. Food, the upkeep of the horses, not to mention the salaries of the wranglers and counselors involved. It really is a ministry, and I was hoping to find benefactors who’d find what I do worthwhile, but honestly, I’m having trouble finding folks to support the cause. I’m not good at advertising. I know nothing about grant writing. And I really hate asking for money. I wouldn’t, if I didn’t have to.”