by Deb Kastner
“Can we just not talk about my financial concerns right now?” she asked in a husky voice, her smile wavering. “We’re here to try to settle your affairs. Right?”
“Of course,” he agreed, though privately he wondered how she could set aside her own issues so easily. It was as if she was able to compartmentalize her life and had simply chosen to stuff the bad segments somewhere in the back of her mind.
The part that concerned him was the certainty that her problems weren’t going to dissolve simply by ignoring them. Eventually she’d have to deal with her issues. Still, he supposed she knew that and he envied her ability to see the bright side of life, especially since he was the worst kind of pessimist.
The conversation turned inconsequential. Alexis kept up a stream of the mundane and Griff was relieved to follow her lead.
As promised, Jo returned with dessert. Griff was saved from having to make the choice himself because Jo, in a warmly imperious way, had decided for him. He certainly couldn’t complain about her choice: a mouthwatering peach cobbler with crumbles of brown sugar on top. She served Alexis and Griff and then brought a square for herself and pulled up a chair to join them at their table.
Griff took a bite of the cobbler and groaned in ecstasy. “I’ve got to agree completely about Phoebe’s baking skills. This is the best cobbler I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting. Please give her my compliments.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt about Phoebe’s talent, my dear, and I’ll be sure to tell her you enjoyed her handiwork,” Jo agreed with a boisterous nod of her head that sent her red curls bobbing. “Phoebe was a well-known chef in New York City before she made her home in Serendipity. Now she just blesses us here in town with her God-given talent.”
Griff let the “God-given” part slide, since it appeared folks around here just talked that way, but he did wonder why a successful big-city chef would make her home in Serendipity.
“She met my nephew Chance—the fellow who made that scrumptious cheeseburger you just chowed down. Then she fell in love, and that’s how it happened.”
Jo was practically reading his mind. It was a little disconcerting for her to be so completely spot-on with her observations. Alexis hadn’t been kidding when she’d said Jo had an uncanny ability to read people.
“Enough about my family,” Jo continued, slapping her palms flat against the tabletop. “Let’s get to the good stuff. I understand you’re looking to settle down in this great town of ours. Good choice, by the way. We’re happy to have you.”
“Thank you,” Griff responded automatically, although he really wasn’t interested in whether or not the townsfolk cared about what he did. He did like Jo, though. Who wouldn’t?
“He’s looking to buy a spread of land. For horses, right, Griff?” Alexis asked.
“Large? Medium? Small?” Jo queried right on Alexis’s heels.
“I, uh, don’t really know for sure,” he reluctantly admitted. He didn’t want these women to think he was impetuous, leaping before he looked. But wasn’t that exactly what he’d done? Just as Alexis consciously ignored her problems, Griff had ditched his sensible life in Houston to chase after a vague pipedream.
“Yes on the horses,” he said after a moment’s thought. “A small herd, just for my own benefit. So I’m probably not looking at needing too big of a spread.”
“You don’t plan on making a living off the land?” Jo asked.
Griff’s gaze met Alexis’s. She smiled and nodded her encouragement.
“I don’t… That is…” he stammered. How was he going to explain that he didn’t really need or want a working ranch, and that he was set financially and didn’t need to be making a yearly income? His investments provided more than enough for what he needed to live.
If he blurted out that kind of information, and if people became aware of his affluence, they would change. He was willing to venture that even Alexis would become a different person around him if she knew the whole truth.
“Let’s just start you off by finding you some horses and a small spread of land,” Jo said, taking the heat off of Griff, almost as if she sensed his distress. “The rest of it is just details, right?” She waved her arm dismissively.
“We were hoping maybe you had a few leads for us,” Alexis said. “We’ll be stopping by Marge’s, of course, but we thought we’d ask you first.”
“I’m glad you did, dear. Now, I haven’t heard of anything as of yet, but I’ll keep my ears open and start spreading the word that Griff is looking for land.”
Griff groaned inwardly. This conversation was going downhill fast. He didn’t want the whole town up in his business. He supposed he’d pictured simply investigating on his own and arranging a quiet deal.
“I’m not sure if—” he started, but Alexis interrupted him.
“Tell everyone they can contact me directly and I’ll pass on the information to Griff, since he’s staying at Redemption Ranch—in the bunkhouse, with the wranglers.”
Griff wanted to bang his head against a wall. By mistake he’d involved a couple of females with his challenge and in a matter of seconds they’d managed to completely take it out of his hands.
Could this get any worse?
Chapter Six
Alexis sneezed repeatedly as she opened the rickety wooden door to the little-used shed where she stored her seasonal decorations. Samantha and Will had promised to come over and help her organize the mess, but they’d been busy remodeling Sam’s Grocery and Alexis hadn’t wanted to push the issue. It was just a bunch of old boxes. And most of the time they were out of sight, out of mind.
Except now, when she needed something.
She had grand dreams of color-coded plastic bins neatly spaced and carefully labeled and stored on shelving units. She’d be able to walk in and select the correct bins within seconds. No muss, no fuss. Her current mode of organization, such as it was, consisted of a bunch of old apple boxes labeled with hand-drawn scribbles in colored markers. The whole lot was haphazardly tossed into unsorted piles.
It would take her half a day just to plow through the clutter and find the items she was searching for.
Vivian was due this weekend. She didn’t usually visit in the middle of a Mission Month, but this was a special occasion—at least to Vivian, who always snapped up a reason to celebrate.
Alexis usually completely agreed with her twin in this. She was a people person who loved community events and gatherings to rejoice with others over milestones. However, the milestone in question this time was their birthday, and Vivian expected a party. A large celebration, filled to the brim with merry friends and neighbors.
Alexis would just as soon have ignored this particular occasion. After all, once a woman hit a certain age, birthdays took on an entirely different significance. She would rather forget she was growing older, especially this year, when everything she had to show for what she’d accomplished in her life was threatening to crash and burn around her.
But for Vivian’s sake, Alexis would put aside her own reticence and go to whatever effort was necessary to make their birthday a special celebration. Despite their differences and whatever difficulties they may have had with each other over the years, her twin was the dearest person in the world to her. To see Vivian’s face glowing with joy and delight was worth whatever discomfort Alexis might glean from the occasion.
She pulled at the boxes stacked in front, reading the labels aloud. “Christmas. Christmas. Easter. Winter.”
Now where were the boxes marked Birthday? Alexis groaned. “Probably stuck in a back corner somewhere, lodged under a dozen other boxes.”
The front boxes kind-of, sort-of formed a ladder. Maybe if she gingerly stepped up a few notches she would be able to see—
“Do you always mutter to yourself?” Griff’s amused voice came from behind her, send
ing her reeling.
Literally.
Her arms wind-milled as she sought to keep her balance. She reached for something to steady herself and caught nothing but air. Then large hands encompassed her waist as Griff gently lifted her to the ground. He continued to hold her while she found her feet, his breath warm at the nape of her neck.
The air left her lungs in a whoosh as if her whole body had made contact with the earth. Her sight tunneled as dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. She suspected her reaction had little to do with her near fall and significantly more to do with the man who still had his arms around her waist.
She forced herself to breathe. What a silly goose she was being. Vivian was right. She’d been too long without a date if the mere presence of a man could send her reeling like a teenager with her first crush.
No, attraction couldn’t possibly be what she was feeling. It was the catastrophe of a near disaster that had her pulse threading rapidly, not the fact that Griff had still not stepped away from her.
“You don’t ever talk to yourself?” she challenged, turning in his arms. Her heart galloped when her gaze met his, for she knew in that instant that he was just as affected by her nearness as she was by his. His gray-blue eyes were glowing.
Which was wrong in more ways than she could count, starting with the fact that he was a guest on her ranch. And he was a close friend of Vivian’s. And he wasn’t a died-in-the-wool rancher. And—
Eep!
“You don’t sing with the radio in your car?” she suggested.
“I wouldn’t subject anyone in this world to my complete inability to carry a tune, least of all me.”
“Well, I do. Like the sound of my own voice, that is—whether singing or talking.” A woman needed the ability to laugh at herself, and that was exactly what Alexis did. “I find if I speak aloud I come to conclusions I might not otherwise have drawn.”
Griff gestured toward the boxes. “And what conclusions have you reached today with your self-chatter?”
Alexis grinned up at him and sighed dramatically. “That the boxes I’m looking for are probably hiding in the shadows somewhere out of sight. At the very bottom of the pile, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” he agreed with a dry chuckle.
She realized only afterward that her actions might be interpreted as being flirtatious. If she read the gleam in Griff’s eyes correctly, he thought so, too. Oh, boy.
He saved her from the humiliation of frantically grasping for a safe avenue of conversation by asking, “What can I do to help you?”
“That’s kind of you to offer, but I’ve got this under control.” Back away from the danger. Back slowly away.
“I’m sure you do,” Griff drawled, one side of his mouth crooking up at the corner. He leaned his elbow on one of the stacks of boxes. “But as the old saying goes, two heads are better than one. Or in this case, the strength of two pairs of shoulders. I’d hate to see you have to move all these boxes on your own when I’m standing right here with the muscle to help you.”
He flexed for her, and even though she really, really didn’t want him to notice, she couldn’t help the way her appreciative gaze followed the path of his biceps.
His grin widened. Yep. He’d noticed that she’d noticed.
“Why don’t you tell me what exactly you’re looking for and I’ll move the boxes,” he persisted.
“Oh, all right, then. It appears all my Christmas stuff is stored in front, and I’m looking for the boxes marked Birthday.”
“Whose birthday?” he asked, going right to work.
She sighed again, for real this time. “Mine and Viv’s. She’s coming up this weekend to celebrate.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Happy birthday,” he exclaimed, pausing for a moment before slinging another box aside.
“Why would I bring it up?” Alexis parried. “Believe me, it’s something I’d rather forget. There comes a time in a woman’s life when birthdays are better skimmed over than celebrated—and don’t you dare ask me how old that is.”
Griff swallowed a chuckle. “I don’t have a death wish, thank you.”
“Wise man. Your mama taught you well.”
His lips twisted. “My mother didn’t teach me much of anything, except to stay out of her way.”
Alexis met his gaze and the pain registered in their gray-blue depths hit her like a strike to the gut. For maybe the first time since she’d known him, he was being completely honest with her, and she didn’t know how to react.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He scoffed and forced a crooked grin. “It’s nothing.”
It wasn’t “nothing,” but she couldn’t force the issue. After what she’d glimpsed in Griff’s eyes, she felt even less like celebrating now than she had before.
“I’ll bet Viv enjoys a party, huh?”
Not knowing how to offer him comfort, she allowed him to change the subject. “She does. So do I, as a matter of fact. I didn’t say I don’t enjoy celebrating special events. I love a good party as much as anyone. Just not so much when it comes to my birthday.”
“That’s dumb.”
“Well, thank you,” she responded drily.
“No, I don’t mean to imply that you’re dumb,” he said, grunting as he attempted to lift a particularly unwieldy box. “I get it. Your birthday gives you cause to reflect on life, and sometimes that’s a painful thing. I expect all of us feel we could have done better in one way or another.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, her heart aching.
“But I’ll bet there are a lot of folks who’ve been blessed by you and Viv over the years. You’re both special women. That’s something to celebrate.”
“Nice save,” she teased, ticking her index finger in the air, but internally she was grateful for the way he’d turned it around.
He shot a grin over his shoulder. “Thank you. I try.”
Their gazes met and her breath lodged uncomfortably in her throat. The shed suddenly felt way too small for the two of them.
He disappeared behind a pile of boxes and then exclaimed in triumph. “I found it. The birthday box.”
Alexis laughed. “Nice try. I hate to break it to you, but there’s more than one. Three, to be exact. Keep looking. I’m sure they’re close together. Or at least, I hope they are. I apologize for my lack of a system.”
“What are you going to do with three boxes of birthday decorations?”
“Host a party, of course.”
“Well, yeah, I figured, but I had no idea…” His voice turned low and husky and then his sentence dropped off completely.
“Griff? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” came his curt reply.
But he wasn’t. No matter how off-hand he tried to sound about it, something was wrong.
“We may be a small town, but we do birthdays big around here.” She wanted to offer her sympathy, vague as that might be, but how, when she didn’t know what, exactly, was wrong? “Do you just have a small family affair where you’re from?”
She realized as soon as she asked the question that she didn’t even know where he was from. He’d shared precious little information about himself in the two weeks he’d been in Serendipity, and most of what she knew about him either came secondhand from Vivian or from what she’d overheard him share with Devon.
“I don’t do birthdays,” he admitted in a monotone. “Never have.”
Alexis opened her mouth to ask him why not but then closed it again without speaking, realizing it wasn’t some silly women-of-a-certain-age explanation with Griff. He made it sound as if he’d never celebrated a birthday, and then there was that comment about his mother. She suddenly felt very, very sad.
She hoped he’d
offer more of his own volition, but when he did not, she felt compelled to shift the focus away from him, as he had done for her.
“The other two birthday boxes have got to be back there somewhere. I hope.”
“Yeah, I found them.” Griff sounded relieved, and Alexis knew it wasn’t because he’d been successful in locating the boxes, but because of the shift in conversation. “Let me maneuver them out for you.”
“The party is Saturday night,” she said, taking one of the boxes from him. “You are absolutely invited to be our guest.”
He hesitated and shifted the remaining box he was holding to one arm.
“I don’t know. I’m not much of a party kind of guy.”
This was why Alexis suddenly felt it imperative that she get him to come to this one. Though she hadn’t a clue what or who had so injured him in the past aside from his mother and the ex-girlfriend Vivian had mentioned, she wanted him to see a glimpse of his future here in Serendipity—a future full of life, and hope, and friends and neighbors who really cared about him. Maybe eventually he might find it in his heart to celebrate a birthday of his own, but in the meantime, she was determined to share her joy with him.
“I could really use your help.” Maybe it wasn’t fair, but Griff had already stepped up several times when she’d needed assistance, including today. Hopefully she could goad him into accepting her invitation if he thought he was needed.
He was needed. She just had to prove it to him.
“How so?” Was there interest gleaming from his eyes?
“I’ve enlisted the kids to help Vivian and me decorate the house. It could either be a blessing or a total disaster.”
He chuckled drily. “You want my opinion?”
“I want your help. I’ve seen how good you are with the teenagers.”
“Me?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Yes, you.”
“I don’t even like kids.”
She tilted her chin up at him and narrowed her gaze. “Is that right? Now, why don’t I believe you?”