A Man for the Summer

by Ruby Laska

  Hell, in his state, she could have had a third eye in the middle of her forehead and he wouldn’t have known the difference. Pain did funny things to you. He’d been riveted by the scary-looking tray of sharp objects before Junior had administered the anesthetic, barely able to tear his eyes away from the lethal-looking tools.

  On the other hand, he had a vivid recollection of glossy red curls gathered into a haphazard ponytail. Crazy-colored silk sliding along those lean, pale arms. Lips like satin flecked with tiny dots he longed to lick right off…

  Details were his business, after all. And Griff was skeptical that he would have missed a grotesque deformity.

  He made a mental note to take a closer look. And then shut his eyes and decided he might as well enjoy his little nap. Although, as he drifted off again, his thoughts were troubled by images of beautiful virgins holding power tools.

  “So, what are you going to do with him?” Rosie was finishing up her late afternoon ritual, checking the dozen or so flourishing houseplants, straightening the stacks of paper on their desks into some semblance of alignment, shutting down the computer. Their patient had finally woken up in a fairly alert state, although he seemed to have trouble building a complete sentence, much less keeping his eyes off Junior. They’d allowed their patient to make his way the three blocks to the motel only after calling over and making sure the proprietor would be standing out front waiting for him.

  There was silence for a few seconds after the door shut. Junior could feel Rosie’s gaze fixed solidly on her. She shrugged.

  “I’ll give him a call in the morning and send him on his way. I can forward the crown on wherever he’s headed. The temp ought to hold him at least a week. For being such a mess it turned out to be a pretty clean fix.”

  “Damn shame, then.”

  Junior bit her lip. In some far recess of her heart, she had to agree. It was a shame that a woman couldn’t just latch on to whatever reasonably intelligent, reasonably able-bodied man happened into her life when it was time to have a baby. If that woman didn’t have a man of her own, that is. And if her doctor had just explained in painstaking detail why fibroids had whittled her fertility down to a window that was rapidly closing.

  It wasn’t fair. That much went without saying. But who’d be naïve enough to expect life to deliver what was fair? Certainly not the youngest child of the Atkinson clan of Poplar Bluff.

  “Look, Rosie,” Junior protested, with a little more spirit than she felt. “Who says I’m even ready for a baby? I’m only twenty-eight. Hardly anyone has kids at that age any more. I know, I know—” she held up a hand defensively—”you did, and Mom and Dad, but that was different.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Rosie crossed her arms and leaned back against her desk, the familiar blue blaze in her eyes. “Seems to me the basics are still the same. You meet a fella, you fall in love—or not, in your case—and you do what comes natural. Bam! Babies.”

  “Wasn’t there supposed to be something about marriage in there?”

  Rosie stuck her fists on her hips and gave Junior a searing look. “Oh, so now you want to go all traditional on me? Well, little missy, I hardly think I need to remind you that your brother Charlie Earl and my Sandra were both love children, and your mama’s wedding dress fit me just fine because we were both five months along when we wore it.”

  “Rosie, you’re impossible.” Impulsively, Junior reached for a hug, and was rewarded with the wonderful old sensation of being held tight and cherished.

  “Not so. I’m just your devil’s advocate. Every gal needs one.” Rosie gave a final squeeze before holding Junior at arm’s length. “Besides, we make one hell of a team.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The shower felt good. He’d stayed in at least a half hour, idly counting daisies on the old avocado green tiles. The towels, if also old and a faded shade of pink, were clean and fluffy and smelled as if somebody’s grandmother had hung them out to dry in the spring air.

  In fact the sense of some benevolent grandmother was so strong that Griff found himself making the bed and wiping down the sink, making sure to clean up after himself, smiling to catch himself in the act.

  And why not smile? He felt good. No, he felt great. Nothing like getting over debilitating pain to make a man appreciate his health. Griff stretched luxuriously, rifled through his open suitcase and found a clean shirt.

  When he finished dressing Griff made a last sweep of the tired motel room. He was constantly forgetting things. He’d left so many razors behind in hotel showers that he’d finally given up and switched to disposables.

  He turned up nothing this time, though. Zipping up his suitcase he grabbed his courier bag, the black ballistic nylon he used instead of a briefcase.

  A sheaf of papers fell out. The stuff from the dentist.

  Picking them up, Griff hesitated before replacing them. On top was an incomprehensible series of instructions, notes written in the margins. Damn, even the woman’s handwriting was outlandish. It meandered in a crooked line, some of the t’s crossed and I’s dotted, some not. Her signature was rendered in a loopy scrawl, finished with a flourish.

  Junior T. Atkinson.

  Griff shook his head. A crazy woman with a crazy name and a crazy set of problems. Problems that had nothing to do with him. Problems he’d soon be leaving behind in his rear view mirror.

  He sighed heavily and sat down on the bed. Junior. Don’t go there, the warning voice in his head signaled, but it was already too late. His mind was full of her, the red hair and the translucent skin and the freckles, and he could almost smell her, the mixture of the drug smell and her perfume, something flowery and spicy at the same time.

  And all she wanted was to have sex.

  Griff felt himself respond to the thought, perspiration beading at his brow as he considered Junior’s problem. And how it might work out if he was the one to solve it. Just to be nice. It would be the decent thing to do to help her out, that’s all, he tried, but the inner voice chided him. Griff had the conscience of the altar boy he’d once been, and as hard as tried to shake it off, it was always there.

  And it was his pesky conscience that caused the lovely image of Junior to slowly fade to another, the red hair giving way to dirty-blond shag, the luminous blue eyes morphing into a set of huge Granny Smith green ones, one of which sported a mean shiner.

  Yes, he’d given Maggie Goldman that black eye, but it was nothing compared to what she’d done to him. They’d known each other for every damn one of their eleven years and been at each other’s throats the entire time. When they couldn’t fight in person they just leaned over the fence separating their back yards and yelled.

  She’d taunted him from the top of the jungle gym at school that afternoon, standing with her bare sunburned feet precariously set on the gray metal bars, swinging her skinny hips back and forth and calling his middle name for the whole damn world to hear.

  “Maurice! Mauriiiiiice!” she shouted, delighted to have discovered his most closely-guarded secret. She’d learned it from Ruby, his family’s housekeeper, to add insult to injury, over a glass of lemonade that very morning. What could he expect—he’d long suspected that Ruby loved Maggie every bit as much as she loved him.

  He went after Maggie, fueled by rage and embarrassment. He was up the monkey bars in about two seconds flat, but Maggie waited until he was at the top before she knelt down. Light as a cat, she kept her balance as she gave him a huge shove and sent him crashing to earth, bruising just about every bone in his body and opening up a four-inch gash on his shin.

  Even then he wouldn’t have hit her, except as he was sitting there, rubbing his elbows, tasting blood where he bit his lip, she scrambled down and regarded him with hands fisted at her hips and challenge in her eyes.

  “Dang, Griff, are you gonna cry?” she yelled.

  So he’d had no choice.

  That argument didn’t wash with Ruby, though.

  As she jabbed him with an excruc
iating stream of Bactine and bandaged up his gash, she didn’t let him get a word in. Just let him know in no uncertain terms that she expected her boy to be a gentleman. And now he was facing the greatest humiliation of his life, sitting on Maggie’s front porch, trying to work up the apology he’d promised he’d make, and nearly choking on it.

  It wasn’t fair. Anyone could see that. Even Maggie. He could tell from the way she waited with a half-smile on her face. Her eye was just going purple, and it wasn’t even swelling up all that bad. He’d seen worse. Way worse.

  “Hey, Griff,” she finally said. “It’s okay. I know Ruby made you come here.”

  Griff shrugged, but relief flooded him and his hatred of Maggie Gold lifted just like that. Just as it had a hundred times before. After all, it was kind of tough to hate your best friend. Not that he would ever, ever admit to anyone that’s what Maggie was.

  “Thanks,” he said. “And, you know, I probably shouldn’t have hit you in the face and all.”

  Maggie shrugged.

  “It’s all right. I know you didn’t mean it. Friends, right?”

  Relief made Griff feel magnanimous.

  “Yeah Maggie. Friends.”

  He held out his hand and when he took hers to shake, it was warm and soft.

  A girl hand.

  He gave it a shake anyway, gave her his best grin. She was all right.

  Maggie didn’t give his hand back right away. She held on a second extra and then let go reluctantly.

  “I was wondering, Griff. We known each other forever, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh huh. I thought, well, there’s something I want you to do.”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

  Maggie’s gaze dipped down, and her hands gripped each other in her lap.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  Griff was too stunned to speak.

  It wasn’t like he’d never thought of kissing a girl. Only, it sure hadn’t been Maggie. More like Claudia Schiffer, wearing a bikini. But…Maggie?

  The seconds ticked by, and Griff was frozen, trying to get his mind around the idea, when Maggie looked him full in the eye and sighed.

  “Forget it, just forget it, Griff. I’m sorry I asked.”

  She bounded to her feet and ran inside, letting the screen door slam behind her, while Griff slowly stood up and dusted off the seat of his jeans before making his way slowly home, his body aching from all his bruises.

  And those were the last words she ever said to him, because the next day Maggie Gold was killed when a bread truck rounded the corner too fast right into the path of her bike.

  Griff dropped the papers on the motel bed and pressed his palms to his ears, squeezing his eyes shut tight just as he had two decades earlier when he heard the news. Ruby had cried in the kitchen, wiping her eyes on the hem of her apron as she worked. Maggie’s mother cried for weeks. You could tell because she wore her sunglasses all day long, even if she was just walking down the sidewalk for the paper. Everyone at the funeral cried, hundreds of people, it seemed to Griff, as he held on to Ruby’s hand for dear life, not caring for once that he was almost twelve and too old.

  But Griff hadn’t been able to cry. He just covered his ears, trying to drown out the sobs that wouldn’t come, and Maggie’s voice as she asked him, over and over in his mind, to kiss her.

  And gradually, as the years went by, he didn’t forget exactly, but he put Maggie on a shelf in the deepest recesses in his mind, and moved on to other girls. Girls who didn’t have a mean left hook, girls whose knees weren’t permanently scabbed—girls who weren’t his best friend, and never would be.

  Junior stood on the stack of phone books on the armchair, stretching as far as she could, and still she couldn’t quite reach the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling.

  Rosie looked on, amused.

  “You know, Dottie Johnson would just love to come clean this place up for you,” Rosie said. “She’s got an opening Thursdays. I saw her at the grocery.”

  Junior took careful aim, and launched the feather duster through the air. It managed to entangle half the cobwebs before it fell into a pot of African violets.

  “You know I don’t believe in paying people to do chores I can perfectly well do myself.”

  Rosie snorted with laughter. “Yeah, right. First of all, there’s no indication that you are capable of doing it yourself, since I don’t believe you know the first thing about housekeeping. And second, the only time you ever even try is when you’re procrastinating.”

  Junior leapt lightly down from her chair and replaced the phone books on the shelf.

  “What makes you think I’m procrastinating?”

  “Well, I saw that pile of overdue accounts on your desk. You hate those. You let them pile up all year, I know you. And, I might point out, that’s yet another task that there are perfectly competent professionals just waiting to do them.”

  “I thought that’s what I’m paying you for.”

  Rosie laughed again. “Honey, I’d have those taken care of in ten minutes. You just keep ‘em to yourself because you’re afraid I’d actually make some poor soul pay their bill. Remember I keep the books, sugar. I know all about who you’re floating around here.”

  Junior shot her a look of reproof.

  “A lot of those families are struggling to make ends meet, Rosie, you know that.”

  Rosie held up her hands in mock defeat. “Last I checked, you were more or less struggling to make ends meet yourself.”

  The door swung open before Junior could think of a response.

  It was Griff Ross, and he was wearing a grin that stretched from one side of his dangerous face to another.

  “What are you looking so happy about?” Junior demanded with a scowl.

  She liked him better in pain, she decided. He was a lot easier to resist that way. His hair was wet from the shower and combed, but it was still too long, and he was wearing shorts that gave her a full view of his tanned, muscular legs.

  “Hush that mouth!” Rosie chided. “Don’t go taking your nasty mood out on the customers.”

  Griff’s grin only widened.

  “Hey, I’m a very satisfied customer. Just came by to thank the medical team.” He slouched against the door frame, folding his arms. “I’m taking you all to lunch.”

  “Oh, we’d love to!” Rosie answered quickly.

  Junior rolled her eyes. Rosie sounded like a girl being asked on her first date.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Ross, but I can’t. Y’all go on and have yourselves a good time.”

  “You don’t have anything until two,” Rosie protested. “And I’ll make those calls for you later. The ones we were discussing. Come on, genius, have a little fun.

  “She works too hard,” she added in a confidential tone to Griff. “Work work work. Can’t pull her away. She’s very dedicated.”

  “That’s enough, Rosie,” Junior protested, but it was tough to work up much indignation. She was on to Rosie—she’d seen her in action before. Rosie wasn’t one to hide her feelings, and once she made up her mind about someone, it was impossible to talk her out of it.

  And Rosie was doing her best to usher Griff Ross right into Junior’s bed. No doubt she was already planning the booties she would be knitting their baby.

  “Well, you have to eat,” Griff said, reasonably. “And there’s got to be somewhere decent around here, right? I’ll tell you what, I could go for some country-fried steak.”

  Junior raised her eyebrows. “You don’t look like the country-fried type.”

  Griff laughed, unfazed. “You’re right. I’d never touched the stuff until a couple months ago. But I’ve been doing research all over Missouri for a book. The Highways and Byways series—you heard of ‘em?”

  Yeah, she’d more than just heard of them. They made her blood boil, in fact. Overpriced glossy travel books full of pictures of old gas stations, right along side of snooty restaurant reviews. The people who bought
them were the same type that came through town in their glossy SUV’s looking for chain coffee shops that charged five bucks for a latte.

  But there was no need to give him the satisfaction. Something about his tone, his refusal to let her get to him, annoyed her further.

  “I don’t believe I have,” she lied rather primly.

  “Well, I have,” Rosie interjected. “I’ve read dozens! Or at least a few. Let’s see. Arkansas, I have a cousin down there, and Indiana—”

  “I didn’t write those, I’m afraid,” Griff said. “This is my first for this series.”

  “Well, that’s great. I bet if you do a good job, they’ll let you do a few more. How many states have they got left?”

  Griff smiled indulgently, and Junior could read condescension coming off him in waves.

  “Sorry, I wouldn’t know. I’m actually just doing this book as a favor to my editor. I do the Get Set/Jet Set series. I’ve done L.A., Miami, Tokyo—”

  “Uh huh,” Junior interjected. That fit, of course. It explained the shiny shirt that probably cost more than she pulled down in a week, and the dorky shoulder bag he was carrying around. Somebody in G.Q. had no doubt decided the look was fashionable.

  “Well, that’s great. Good for you. Nice of you to come visit Missouri, but I bet you can’t wait to get back home to New York.”

  Griff faced her, unruffled, smiling a little. “Chicago, actually.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s been a good trip.”

  “No kidding.” That was obviously was a stretch. She’d bet he’d been hitting every Corn Queen festival and county fair and country speedway and decide that was what rural life was all about.

  His loss, then.

  “At least I guess you haven’t starved, if you’ve developed a taste for the food.”