It’d been a week and two days, and I still couldn’t get those words out of my head.
And to make matters worse, I saw Griffin everywhere.
I saw him at the bank.
I saw him when I was coming out of the dog shelter…two towns over.
I saw him when I was leaving work.
It was like every time I turned around, there he was.
Which made it nearly impossible to stop thinking about him.
And I kept replaying our time together in a continuous loop in my brain.
The way his hands felt when they touched the sensitive skin at the inside of my thighs.
The way he smelled.
The way he filled me up when…
“Jesus Lenore, stop!” I admonished myself.
“At least you’re not totally inept. Maybe you can use that knowledge to get a life,” Diane McDermott said disdainfully at my side.
I wanted to punch her in the throat.
I hated Diane.
She was Remy’s wife’s best friend, and not any nicer than Jenna.
If you added Jenna and Diane together, you had a lethal combination of beauty, no brains, bad attitudes and smuttiness.
They were like Cinderella’s evil stepsisters: self-centered jerks who only cared about themselves.
“Hello, Diane,” I said as I walked down the street.
Diane kept pace with me.
“Where are you going? To help those geezers at the old folk’s home? Trying to make up for what you did to your papa?” Diane smiled deviously.
My heart pinched at the mention of my Pap.
He’d been my best friend in the whole entire world, and when he’d needed me I wasn’t there.
“Yes, Diane. That’s where I’m going. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late,” I said, trying my hardest not to engage in anything with her.
“Or are you going to see Remy? You know, Jenna thinks you and Remy have a friends with benefits kind of relationship, although she’s never been able to prove it,” Diane said viciously.
I glared at her.
“Let me ask you something, Diane. Do you want to have relations with Jackson?” I asked.
Jackson was her baby brother.
He owned Uncertain Motors, the only mechanic shop in Uncertain.
He also didn’t forget to tell Diane on a daily basis just how annoying she was.
Which I loved.
“No!” Diane said, voice raising about eight octaves.
“Really? Because that’s the kind of relationship I have with Remy. It’ll never be anything more than that. I love him, but I’m not in love with him. Those are two totally different things, and you should really figure that out. You should be focusing on your own problems with your so-called boyfriend. I’m sure he loves you, he’s still with you after all. But he’s obviously not in love with you seeing as he’s in my shop every few days with a different girl, buying toys and using them in my parking lot,” I hissed
I knew I overstepped my bounds nearly the instant those words came out of my mouth.
Dammit, I really shouldn’t give any information out about my customers.
Not what they purchased or how often they shopped, and definitely not what they did in my parking lot with those purchases. But the bitch pushed me, and she had it coming. Diane brought out the worst in me, and had since high school.
Her and Jenna had bullied me every chance they got. I was at the point that I no longer had a civil thing left to say to either of them.
“I’m sorry, Diane. I shouldn’t have said that,” I apologized when Diane still hadn’t spoken.
Diane’s eyes went from being wounded to calculating.
“Don’t apologize to me, bitch. Just stay the fuck out of my way.”
I closed my eyes in remorse as Diane walked away from me, and when I opened them again, I saw Griffin, on his bike, staring at me.
He was across the street and in front of the diner – well out of earshot – but I still had the feeling that he knew exactly what had just happened.
I’d gone and pissed off an angry bear.
And we all know what angry bears do.
They strike back.
***
The next day, I woke up with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.
From the moment I walked out of my duplex to grab my paper, I knew I shouldn’t have said what I had said to Diane yesterday.
I shouldn’t have provoked her.
I knew it’d come back and bite me in the ass.
And the article on the front page of the paper was enough to make my blood boil.
Uncertain Pleasure Boutique a disgrace to this fine town.
I almost died.
When I’d first opened Uncertain Pleasure, it was because of the many sex toy parties I had attended throughout college.
I’d learned that the sex toy market was a quite profitable and well-selling one.
And to my business oriented mind, it was the perfect thing to open when I got out of college.
During the last two years of my MBA studies, I started hosting my own sex toy parties, and I’d done so well with them, that by the time I graduated, I’d had quite the nest egg saved to use for startup capital.
Uncertain wasn’t my first choice of locations to open my new business, but it has been one of the few places I could afford.
Why?
Because people in the south are prudes…mostly.
A lot of the surrounding towns didn’t even allow alcohol sales.
You had to travel to the bigger cities.
Uncertain was smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt.
Where God comes first.
And apparently God doesn’t want you to open a sex toy shop, at least according to nearly all of the bankers that had turned me down for a loan.
So when the opportunity to open up my shop in Uncertain had presented itself, I’d jumped on it.
I’d had Uncertain Pleasures open for nearly four years now, and although I wasn’t doing magnificent, I also wasn’t doing ‘bad’ either.
But it was people like Diane that were really hurting me.
It was one step forward and two steps back.
“Oh no,” I breathed, eyes closing as tears threatened my eyes.
I walked inside moments later, stiff and sick.
What was I going to do?
And why would the paper publish such an article?
The more I thought about it, the madder I got.
What in the world gave them the right to judge what I was doing?
Just because I owned the only sex toy shop in the area didn’t make me a bad person!
I’d really worked myself into a good lather as I got dressed and made my way out the door.
But by the time I arrived at the newspaper offices, I wasn’t quite so sure of myself.
I opened the front door to Uncertain Times, and immediately winced.
Why?
Because Griffin was in Orlando, the copy editors, face.
And he was bellowing at him.
“Doesn’t your reporter ever do her fucking homework?” Griffin snarled at the copyright editor. “Because if she had, she would’ve known that Lenore has fucking cancer. That she volunteers at a fucking animal shelter every Tuesday and Friday. That she reads to the goddamned kids at the library in Jefferson every Wednesday. That she volunteer’s at Ted’s House every Saturday to watch over Alzheimer patients, like her own grandfather, so their families can go out and get things done for a few hours without having to worry about watching their loved one’s every step.
“Had she done her homework, she would’ve known Lenore wasn’t a ‘plague amongst society’ like her article made her out to be. She’s a fucking saint that deserves a fucking commendation. Not censure over what she does for a living which, let me tell you, isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. She could be pedaling drugs
to school age kids. She could be prostituting her body like the ladies on Tenth Street. She could be selling organs on the black market like the case I’m working on right now. So no,” he snarled, getting further into the Orlando’s face. “She isn’t a fucking menace, and what you’ve allowed her,” he pointed at Diane, “to publish is slander. It’s against the law, and if Lenore wanted to, she could sue you. And she’d motherfuckin’ win!”
Oh boy, I’d never seen Griffin so mad.
Even that time I’d had the stupid urge to go check on him after seeing him storm out of the coffee shop, he wasn’t this mad.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Everything coming out of his mouth didn’t scream ‘leave me alone’ like he wanted me to believe. It screamed, ‘I care about her. And I watch over her.’
I couldn’t breathe.
“Now, I want a retraction printed in tomorrow’s paper. And I want a public apology to her by Monday. I don’t care what or how you have to do it, just make sure you do it,” Griffin hissed.
He looked so fucking yummy.
He was in faded jeans, motorcycle boots, a button up black long sleeved shirt, with a cowboy hat.
I’d never seen a cowboy biker before, but he was totally working it and I loved it.
And seeing him so incredibly mad on my behalf was more of a turn on than the cowboy hat sitting atop of his head.
Then, without another word to either of them or a passing glance to the crowd that has amassed to witness his little speech, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.
He only stopped to push the door open.
“Coming?” He asked.
I blinked, turning to him to see him holding the door open. For me.
“Me?” I asked.
He grinned…and my panties melted.
“Yeah, you,” he confirmed. “Let’s go get some lunch.”
Without a word, I followed him out, ducking underneath his arm as I passed through the open door, and stopped once I got outside on the sidewalk.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked softly.
I was nervous.
Why had he done that?
“Just to the diner, I guess. Unless you want Taco Bell?” He gave me a sketchy look.
I snorted. “No. I don’t want Taco Bell.”
Yuck. Taco Bell was the worst, at least that was what it was considered here anyway.
He grinned. “Good.”
We walked in silence to the diner.
The whole time I was very aware of him beside me.
He was still angry; it was rolling off of him.
His long strides ate up the sidewalk, and I had to practically power walk just to keep up with him.
His hand brushed mine, and my heart sped up in response.
I kept my eyes forward, even when I felt him studying my face.
What I was wearing.
My shoes.
My hair.
He took in everything about me, and my nipples pebbled in reaction.
He noticed those, too.
“You read the paper?” He asked finally.
I nodded.
“Yeah, I read the freakin’ paper,” I sighed.
“I’m sorry. Knew the moment I watched her storm off yesterday that she was going to do something stupid. I was ready for it, but I didn’t think she’d be so stupid about it,” he said.
I shrugged. “Diane doesn’t like me very much.”
He laughed. “No, I don’t bet she does. What’s her problem?”
“She’s best friends with Remy’s wife, Jenna. Jenna and Diane were as thick as thieves in high school and still are. They’ve made it their life’s mission to make sure that I’m miserable as hell,” I explained.
“Sounds like a bunch of bitches to me,” he countered.
The diner came into view, and I was suddenly nervous.
The diner was the social hub of Uncertain.
If you were seen in the diner with someone, especially someone of the opposite sex when you were very single, everyone in the town would know it within thirty minutes.
It was one of the “perks” of living in a small town.
Didn’t he know what this would say to folks? Even if that’s not what it means, that’s what they’d think.
“You do realize that by going in there and sitting down at a table together, you’ll be sending a message, whether you mean to or not. You’ll be involving me in your life, something you said you didn’t want to happen just a few weeks ago,” I told him.
He stopped at the front door and turned to face me.
I studied his face. His eyes. The way his beard had appeared to have grown out.
He was so handsome.
Not clean-cut, movie-star handsome, but rugged, rough-around-the-edges handsome.
“I know exactly what it’ll say the moment we walk in there together. But the truth is that I’m tired of being away from you. Tired of fighting feelings that I’ve never had before,” he answered honestly. “Tired of staying away from you.”
My mouth went dry.
“You…what?”
He smiled. “You heard me.”
I blinked, but before I could get my wits about me, he opened the door of the diner and said, “Get in.”
I ‘got in.’
Fran, the only waitress to work the diner at this time of day, gaped at us.
“Two,” Griffin’s deep voice blasted through the quiet diner.
The rest of the patrons turned to look at us, and I blushed.
Jesus, you would think these people didn’t have anything else better to do!
Fran jumped to attention and smiled at the two of us.
“Take the one in the back,” she replied.
Griffin took my hand and led me to the back booth, sitting me with my back to the door so he could see it and whoever came in through it.
I sat and stared at him.
Waiting.
He didn’t disappoint.
“Why’d she write that article?” He asked. “I saw you both yesterday. What did you two fight about that pissed her off so much?”
“She said some cruel things to me about my Pap, and I couldn’t help myself from informing her that her boyfriend was cheating on her,” I answered tiredly.
He blinked.
I turned to look out the window.
He was sitting across from me at the busiest eatery in town, which happened to be directly on the banks of the lake.
Most people accessed it from the bayou side.
I never went on the lake.
Ever.
And although it was a quietly beautiful view, I didn’t find it calming like most everyone else did.
“Tell me about your Pap,” he rumbled softly, surprising me.
“He was my best friend. Confidant,” I said. “He used to live at home with my family. When I moved out, he decided to move closer to where I was going to college. He was in a retirement community about twenty minutes from my campus.”
“I was supposed to go out to lunch with my Pap. But when I got out of class, my stomach had started hurting, and I ended up throwing up for two hours straight once I got back to the dorm and completely forgot about everything but myself,” I said. “When I realized I missed the lunch date, I called him right away. But he’d already left because he was worried about me since I never missed any of our lunches. He pulled out onto the highway that led to the campus and was struck by a hit and run driver. He was killed instantly.”
Griffin’s eyes closed, and my head tilted as I studied him.
He looked torn.
Like he wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know how to say it.
“I’m sorry to hear about your Pap,” he said, finally opening his eyes.
I smiled sadly.
“It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t actually my fault. I stayed in school. Finished my d
egree a year later…then moved home,” I explained.
Uncertain had always been home for me.
We’d lived about ten miles outside of town for the majority of my life.
“But I came home and I just couldn’t stay there. Reminders of my grandfather were everywhere. About a month after I moved back home, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I moved out. Got my duplex and have been there ever since,” I said softly.
“You two know what you want?” Fran asked.
I opened my mouth, but a rude voice interrupted what I was about to say.
“So, Lenore, I see that you’re the star of the newspaper,” Jenna said loudly from the corner of the room.
I’d seen her there when I walked in, I just didn’t think she’d be ballsy enough to bring it up with Griffin here.
Apparently she was.
Griffin stiffened at the mention of the newspaper article, then, slowly…oh so fucking slowly, got up.
He turned his massive body until he was standing directly in front of me, then addressed Jenna.
“I think,” he said softly, “that you should carefully consider what you say to her from now on. You wouldn’t want to upset your children’s godmother, now would you?”
I was fairly positive I hadn’t mentioned I was Remy’s children’s godmother.
But it didn’t surprise me that he knew.
He could’ve picked it up from almost anyone.
Everyone in Uncertain knew my business. Just like I knew Fran had liver cirrhosis because she drank from the time she got up to the time she went to bed.
And how Judge Kubrick, the local grocery store owner, cheated on his wife every Tuesday and Thursday while his wife was playing Bunco.
And also how Remy and Jenna were having marital problems.
He was working his ass off to keep her in the lifestyle that she wanted, which meant he wasn’t home like she wanted him to be.
She had gotten drunk at The Cloud, the only bar in town, and she had a habit of gabbing about all of her woes to anyone that would listen whenever she was drunk.
“You can’t threaten me,” Jenna smiled at him.
If she were my friend, I would’ve smacked some sense into her. Since I didn’t like her all that much, I didn’t.
I believe that Remy would be so much better off with a woman who would appreciate all of him, and not just his wallet.
Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1) Page 6