A shadow loomed in the doorway. Griffin stood there, with Private at his side. She glanced toward him as his gaze trained on the glossy paper. All expression on his handsome face was wiped clean and his fingers curled in the dog’s dark fur.
“Erica and I had been embedded about six months when they sent a photographer,” he said. His expression remained closed off, but his voice was matter-of-fact. “Believe it or not, we’d had a chance to clean up when those were snapped. Still look a little worse for wear.”
Jane gazed back at the photos. Some were posed, some were candid. In each, Griffin and his colleague were front and center. You couldn’t miss the effects of their half a year at war. They were both thinner than the “On Our Way” image. Their clothes were ragged.
One shot pictured Griffin from behind. He stood on the edge of a ravine, his arm around Erica’s shoulders. Her face was turned in profile, her expression clearly one of…
Love.
There was no doubt in Jane’s mind that the woman reporter had been in love with Griffin. Glancing at him now, taking in his tense pose and rigid expression, she realized he must have reciprocated her feelings. Jane didn’t know why she hadn’t come to this conclusion before…it made perfect sense. Two intelligent, good-looking people with common interests and a common goal. Add to that the intense atmosphere of war, and falling in love seemed inevitable. Ernest Hemingway was famous for a novel with similar elements.
From the beginning, Jane had known Griffin’s memoir would include stories of people he’d lived and breathed beside. Some who had been wounded. Some who had died. From the beginning, Jane had known the project would be difficult for him.
A chill washed over her skin as all her happy mood dissipated. She didn’t want to think it had anything to do with this new revelation regarding Griffin’s heart. They didn’t have feelings for each other, after all. They’d been clear about the boundaries. It must be that the fog was returning to the beach early.
But as the room went darker, for the first time Jane was forced to recognize that—even without any particular attachment to Griffin—his project might also be tough on her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER THAT INTERLUDE in the pop-up tent, David had hoped that he and Tess had reached a turning point. The point where she turned around and moved back home. But she’d remained at Crescent Cove, and he remained stymied.
It seemed apropos that he was once again slowed by sand filling his shoes as he trudged behind Duncan and Oliver on their way to the beach bungalow. Soccer practice had finished early, but the boys were still red-faced, and their hair was sweaty around the edges. Racing toward the surf, they shed shirts, shoes, long socks and shin guards. “No going into the water unless your mom is watching,” he cautioned them, bending down to swipe up the discards.
Ahead was the patch of sand where he’d pitched the tent. She’d busted him that night. First, by discovering him on his secret mission. Then she’d shattered his vow to keep distant with her talk about sleeping with someone else. But he’d thought the resulting fiery act might have put some points on his side of the scoreboard. She couldn’t deny how good they were together in bed, and he’d hoped that reminder might bring her home to him.
Of course, in the preceding months, he hadn’t been available between the sheets, either. But that he could change, he decided. Men separated lovemaking from emotion all the time. His pace picked up as he approached No. 8 with new hope. He’d find them some privacy. He’d promise regular sex. Would that get her home by nightfall?
But privacy wasn’t an immediate option. As he neared the house from the rear, he caught sight of three pairs of feminine legs propped on the porch railing. The boys, now dressed only in nylon sports shorts, were tussling in the sand at the bottom of the steps, distracted from their initial plan for a wade in the ocean by a rubber ball they both wanted to claim. Just out of sight of his wife and the others, David paused, listening to the women’s conversation.
Rebecca was brainstorming ideas for her final assignment for the history seminar she was taking. It apparently included an in-class presentation. “One of my friends can trace her lineage back to the Mayflower, and she has a family tree all mapped out. This other boy is going to talk about slavery. He’s going to bring in the scrap of a dress an ancestor wore when she was auctioned at eight years old. In comparison, everything I’ve thought of is boring.” With an agitated movement, she crossed and uncrossed her legs, the ankle bracelet they’d bought her for her thirteenth birthday winking in the sunlight.
David shook his head. How could she be a teenager already? But she was; even her voice sounded nearly adult to him now. She’d be moving on from their family so soon. And before that, moving on to high school in the fall, where they could lose her in other insidious ways.
The thought tightened a vise around his chest, and he couldn’t catch his breath. His tongue felt thick, and there were black spots at the edges of his vision. It felt like a heart attack, it felt just like that morning on his fortieth birthday when his across-the-street neighbor, Mac Kearney, had called his cell phone. Breathe, David ordered himself now. Breathe. If he keeled over in the soft sand, no one would hear him fall.
As he tried sucking in air, another voice started talking. It belonged to the woman who was giving Griffin trouble. Jane. “Can your project cover more modern history?”
“I guess,” said Rebecca, in the tones of a teen beleaguered.
David’s vision cleared as more oxygen infused his bloodstream. His anxiety ratcheted down a notch, and he leaned against the side of the house, clutching the soccer apparatus to his gut.
“How about World War Two?” Jane was suggesting. “You could interview Mr. Monroe. Find out what it was like to be a foreign correspondent. Maybe as part of your presentation he could come speak to your class.”
“Hmm…” David’s daughter was mulling it over. “Okay. And what if…” her voice gained enthusiasm “…what if Uncle Griff could do the same about Afghanistan?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Tess put in.
Rebecca was standing now, ignoring her mother. “I’m going to ask.”
“Let’s start with Mr. Monroe first,” Jane said. “Can I take Russ along?” As she also came to her feet, David could see she had his youngest son on her hip.
It was only Tess who remained on the porch as the two other females trekked off, Duncan and Oliver on their heels like puppies sniffing out new amusement.
Even though he now had his wife alone, David hesitated, staying hidden from her. There was still a residual aching pressure in his chest, and he wasn’t sure that his dry tongue could convincingly promise great sex. He wasn’t sure it was even a wonderful idea any longer. Damn it! Though he wanted his family back at the house, he couldn’t risk getting too close to any of them.
“Did you have something you wanted to say to me?” Tess pitched her voice in his direction.
Shaking his head, he gave up on lurking and moved around the corner to mount the porch steps. When it came to the kids, she always had a sixth sense, instantly aware if one was about to catch them wrapping the Santa gifts or if another was two steps from interrupting foreplay. Apparently that ability extended to him too. He settled onto a porch chair, leaving an empty one between himself and his wife. The boys’ soccer stuff he dropped at his feet.
Glancing over, he felt yet another pang. He thought she might be thinner than before, but her skin had a light tan revealed by her tank top and sporty miniskirt. It had matching attached shorts, and she wore that kind of thing when she took the baby out for a jog in the stroller. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, the ends brushing the spot between her shoulder blades he’d kissed the other night after he’d mounted her from behind.
His cock went half-hard at the memory, and he could almost feel the sleek skin of her hips against his palms. Why was he having second thoughts? Great sex was a stupendous idea.
Except Tess didn’t seem to be
much concerned with David at all. Her beautiful blue eyes were trained on the small band of their children as they ambled up the beach. He followed her gaze, and the silence between them grew longer and more uncomfortable. Finally, he cleared his throat. “History, huh?” he said, referring to Rebecca’s project.
Her head turned to him, the bones of her face elegant. And the expression so serious. “Our history, encapsulated right there. From Rebecca to Russ.”
The vise cinched down again. David plucked at the front of his dress shirt. He’d taken off the tie as he’d left work, but now he went after the buttons. It didn’t make it much easier to breathe. It didn’t prevent him from glancing again at the kids, receding in the distance.
Over Jane’s shoulder, little Russ suddenly looked at him. He raised one chubby arm and executed a baby wave, the kind where the fingers and thumb met a few times like a tiny duck quacking.
A sharp pain shot down David’s right arm as he found himself waving back. Was this a heart attack for real, then? Or was the warning sign pain in the left arm? He let his hand fall to his lap but kept his eyes on his smallest son.
Damn it. Why wasn’t he turning into his dad? Why wasn’t the whole distance thing working? The old man had been as remote as an outer planet. If he’d ever worried over his children or suffered for the love of them, he’d managed to hide it very well.
When his father’s youngest child—David’s little brother, the first Russ—had died of leukemia, Lawrence Quincy had left the hospital and gone right back to his desk at the water authority. There’d been a funeral. David had been six and his mother had dressed him up in a cousin’s hand-me-down suit that had smelled like mothballs. His father had probably taken off work to attend, but there’d been no other vestige of mourning. Lawrence had never mentioned the dead child’s name again.
It seemed such a smart way to be now! Stoic and untouchable. That morning when he’d made that stupid, stupid mistake and almost lost his own Russ, all David could think about was the horror he would have felt if it had really happened. All he could do afterward was find some way to protect himself from possible future pain.
He just couldn’t, couldn’t love them all so damn much.
“David?” Tess’s voice grew urgent with concern. “David, what is it?”
Her sixth sense at work again. He ran a hand over his face, wiping away a cold sweat. “It goes by so fast, doesn’t it?” His gaze cut to her, then back to the kids, who were almost out of sight around the bend toward the house where the World War Two reporter lived. “That old guy they’re going to visit was at our wedding reception, right? And it seems just like yesterday, but it was a lifetime ago. Four lifetimes.”
“So that’s it, then?” Tess asked.
The sharp note in her voice had him staring back at her, suddenly wary. “That’s what?”
“You feel as if your good days are gone.”
“No! I was just…” He threw up a hand, not wanting to get into it. Wasn’t he here to promise great sex? His voice lowered, he hoped, to a seductive rasp. “I had a good night, a very, very good night, right here on this beach not long ago.”
It only took a second for him to realize it was the exact wrong tactic. Her eyes narrowed, and while her face flushed a little, it looked more angry than aroused. “Throwing that…that…purely physical response in my face is not helping matters.”
“Damn it,” he said, disgusted with himself. “You know I’m no good at this kind of thing. I was never the charming ladies’-man type and I don’t know why I’d think I’d start being that way now. You should have married one of those guys in your acting classes if you wanted smoothly scripted lines.”
“Just start being honest!” she said. “You talk about time going by fast, about four lifetimes. I don’t know what you mean by it.”
“I don’t mean anything. I was being nostalgic, Tess.” Or an idiot, because she didn’t appear placated. “I was thinking about the fact that I’m the father of four. I never saw—”
“You never saw yourself as being stuck with them, I get it. Well, Rebecca and Russell you can claim were oops babies, but you wanted Duncan and Oliver. You were a completely active and informed participant in the conception of them both.”
He couldn’t believe she was seriously going down this route, so he tried taking the emotion down a notch or two with a small smile. “And really, Tess, what were we thinking? I’m not sure they’re actually human children. Have you seen them feeding themselves Cheetos with their toes?”
Amused or appalled. Those were the two emotions he’d been going for. Instead she just stared at him, all expression leaving her face. “That’s the answer, then. You wish we didn’t have the children.”
“No!” Christ, he didn’t wish them away. That wasn’t it at all. “Tess, you’ve got to believe me. The kids…” His tongue was the size and consistency of one of those loofahs she used to smooth her skin in the shower.
“You got a vasectomy without telling me.”
“I…” His stomach knotted. More cold sweat broke over his skin. Fuck, he could see her point about that. “In my defense, I really thought we had agreed that four was our limit.”
“I have to know…” Her voice went very quiet. “I have to know if you’re fine with having those four.”
Oh, Tess. She was killing him here. “Of course. Good God, of course.”
She stood up, her gaze steady on his face. “It’s me, then. You don’t want me.”
“No!” He stood too, reaching out for her as she rushed to the steps, but he stumbled over Duncan and Oliver’s soccer paraphernalia, his foot catching in a loop of a shin guard’s stretchy strap. Before he could get himself untangled, she was running off down the sand.
Frustrated, he watched her retreating figure. What was he going to do now? How could he get her back without losing her by telling the truth? How would he get them all back without being crushed by the weight of loving them?
* * *
YESTERDAY, FOLLOWING their return from L.A., Jane had spent the rest of the afternoon with Tess and her kids. By tacit agreement, she and Griffin had put off getting down to work until the following morning. She’d even managed to convince Rebecca to delay her request of his help on her history project, not wanting to immerse him in thoughts of Afghanistan too soon. But it had to be done today. Stalling was over.
She’d been up since five, finally giving up on rest when all her dreams took her back to the night before. That single night she should be putting from her mind. He’d yet to stir from his bedroom, and it was closing in on eight. When she heard his door pop open, she wiped her hands on her jeans and gave a quick glance around the office. The manila envelope that Frank had passed to Griffin held a few more surprises that she’d arranged in readiness for him.
She heard him in the kitchen getting coffee. Next, his footsteps sounded in the hallway. Outside the beach house, the surf was up, because its shush shush shush was loud in her ears. Or maybe it was just the triple-timing beat of her heart, expressing the nervousness she felt about how she’d find his temperament today. The anxiety was ridiculous, really. She’d seen him in so many moods already: grim, gruff, teasing, kind. Dispassionate. Passionate. The whole gamut, actually.
More than she’d experienced with any other man, she thought. She was beginning to know Griffin very well.
So her apprehension was probably because this was her first real day on the job. It was her time to get down to work, and that’s just what she’d do. As a book doctor, beyond brainstorming, editing and fact-checking, another of her responsibilities was to keep the client in a creative mood and upbeat about the current project. So she turned to the office’s doorway and smiled as he crossed the threshold.
“Good morning,” she said. “Ready to get started?”
He stood, steaming mug in hand. Today he wore a pair of battered jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that was missing a button or two. His hair seemed to have grown inches overnight, and its gleaming d
arkness only made the blue of his eyes appear more intense. Without saying a word, his gaze roamed about the room.
Jane cleared her throat. “I used surface-safe double-sided tape.”
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
“For the photos,” she clarified. In the packet Frank had delivered had been a second set of photographs—shots of the platoon soldiers at work and at rest. She’d posted them about the room in hopes they’d help Griffin excavate his memories. “I wouldn’t take a chance on them peeling off any paint.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he murmured.
She walked to the desk and lifted a thick stack of papers. “And there was this, Griffin. You have a little over two hundred manuscript pages of the memoir already written.”
He looked at the bundle of white pages as if he’d never seen them before. “I do?”
She ruffled them with one hand. “From the date on the header, you were working on them the last couple of months you were in Afghanistan.”
He blinked. “I’d forgotten. Completely put it from my mind.” His short laugh didn’t sound all that amused. “I dumped the laptop and the memory sticks I used over there after…before I came back.”
Once Erica had been killed? It made sense that he’d take such action after losing the person he loved. She remembered him saying, It’s up to me to keep everybody safe, and realized just how shattering the loss must have been to a man who believed that. Jane swallowed. “But not before you emailed what you had to your publisher. There’s a lot to be done in the next couple of weeks, but if you can get this polished and put into shape, you’ll make your deadline.”
“The next couple of weeks?”
Oh, boy. He really had been sticking his head in the sand. “That’s what you have, Griffin, remember? Two more weeks before the first half of your memoir is due. Two more weeks with me at the beach house.”
He ran a hand over his hair. “I’ve lost track of time.”
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