by Alyssa Kress
He didn't need her.
"You're going to hate me for saying this." Deirdre lifted her head. "But I'm hungry."
Ricky groaned. Or tried to. A grin he couldn't help prevented any groan. "You are so predictable."
Deirdre smiled knowingly. "I am? Tell me you wouldn't mind my making you a sandwich, too, while I'm at it."
He shouldn't agree with her. He should go home, keep some distance. But he heard himself say, "I wouldn't mind a ham and cheese."
"Hypocrite." Deirdre laughed and pushed up. "You tease me, but you get just as hungry afterward as I do."
Ricky chuckled, but as he met her sparkling eyes his stomach lurched, not hungry, suddenly, at all. When she finally did find out who he really was, it was not going to be pretty. Probably quite ugly, in fact.
But that's exactly what he wanted, wasn't it? A hard and definite end.
Ricky's smile faded as Deirdre turned to find her robe. Sure, that was exactly what he wanted. A definite end.
~~~
"Is this where I tie it?" Jimmy asked. The fourteen-year-old camper was standing in front of Kate in the wheat field.
"What? Oh, sorry." Her face warm, Kate checked the string Jimmy had slung around the bundle of wheat. "Right. That's okay. Uh...I'm not paying very good attention, am I?"
Jimmy gave her a patient smile. "No."
"I don't know where my brain is this morning," Kate told him, and felt her face get even warmer.
She knew exactly where her brain was. It was twenty yards down the field, beside Griffith Blaine where he was helping the nine-year-olds. Her brain was wondering if it was possible that after all these years, she was in a relationship with a man.
A relationship.
Carefully, Kate turned. Griffith's oversize T-shirt managed to delineate his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped build. He was directing his troops in their own sheaving, but he halted as soon as Kate clapped eyes on him. Slowly, he straightened. Their gazes met.
Kate's heart raced. She knew, with excitement, with alarm, this response was something more than merely physical.
Griffith smiled, slow and wide.
Flicking him a brief smile back, she swiveled to face another bundle of wheat. Her heart was galloping. Damn. This was too — No. She didn't want to feel like this. Moony and infatuated and — stupid.
She was both deliriously happy, and terrified. Happy because — well, just because. Terrified because she had to wonder if she was making an incredible mistake here. The last time she'd felt this way about a man, someone had ended up dead.
Kate helped Jimmy tie another sheaf of wheat, then moved to assist Dorian and Maurice. Of course, she knew it was ridiculous to fear that an infatuation with Griffith was going to result in somebody's death, but she couldn't help the apprehension. And confusion.
As the campers trooped back to their bunkhouses to get ready for swimming, Kate decided she needed time. A step back. She needed a chance to think, and try to see things clearly.
All right, so she could try to see Griffith more clearly. Was he a good guy? Or was she being completely delusional about a man...again?
Dammit, she didn't trust herself.
She needed more time. More. Time.
Shortly after lights out, Kate went down the path from her cabin to the bunkhouse quad to give Griffith some excuse she couldn't meet him that night. It wasn't easy coming up with a good one. Well, Griffith, I'm just not sure if you're a felon or not didn't seem like it would cut it.
Both her head and her heart were pounding by the time she came to a stop in front of Bunkhouse Three. She almost didn't hear the commotion going on behind the building. Scuffing and thuds.
What the heck?
Frowning, Kate turned and crept alongside the bunkhouse toward the back. That's when she heard the voices.
"You've got to keep your left hand up. Yes, up. That's right. Now you can block either up or down — " It was Griffith's voice, followed by a sharp scuffling noise. "That's right. Good! Let's try it again."
Kate came to a stop at the corner of the bunkhouse and peeked around the galvanized drain pipe.
Griffith and Orlando were circling each other, arms up, hands fisted, eyes intent.
They were fighting.
Shock plugged Kate's throat. They were fighting.
"Okay, this time you come at me. Feinting now, like I showed you."
Kate watched as Orlando made to strike Griffith with his right hand, then followed through with his left. Griffith blocked the move easily, but grunted. "Good. Try it again."
They were not fighting, Kate slowly realized, as Orlando performed the same move, but with greater ease. Griffith was teaching him, teaching him how to box. A shivery, sparkly sensation rippled from her toes up to her hair. Griffith was teaching Orlando, skinny, under-sized Orlando, how to fight.
A part of her knew she ought to be outraged. Fighting was strictly forbidden at Camp Wild Hills. How else did you keep control of fifty-odd bundles of testosterone?
But she could also see that Griffith was getting through to Orlando. He was giving the teen a sense of power, building the positive self-image Kate knew Orlando was lacking.
The shivery sensation inside Kate wrapped around her. Griffith, the man she'd been so unsure of moments ago, was getting through to Orlando.
Orlando noticed Kate first. When he circled and faced her position by the drainpipe, he stopped in his tracks. Dismay slackened his features. "Oh, no," he muttered, and glanced worriedly toward Griffith.
Yup, Orlando was worried on Griffith's behalf, not his own. The toughest nut in the camp, and Griffith had managed to win his loyalty. Kate had time to process this information and have it slip into her heart in the split-second before Griffith turned and saw her.
His expression became the picture of alarmed guilt. "Uh...Kate." Griffith straightened from his fighting crouch and waved a feeble hand in the air. "I see, you're — Uh, this is, uh... This is just..."
He wasn't Eric, if that's what she'd been worried about. In fact, he might be the opposite of Eric. Kate would never be able to pretend otherwise, or use that as an excuse not to move forward in this relationship.
"Just an extracurricular activity?" Strolling out from behind the drainpipe, Kate kept one eyebrow raised and her arms crossed over her chest.
"Right! Uh..." Griffith took a step back. "Totally extracurricular, my own idea — "
"No, it wasn't." Orlando's dark eyes flicked from Griffith to Kate. "It was my idea. In fact, I forced him to do it."
"Really?" Kate turned her interested eyebrow in Orlando's direction. Griffith had earned Orlando's loyalty, all right. "You forced him. Exactly how did you manage that, Orlando?"
"Hey — " Griffith said.
"Blackmail," Orlando told Kate. "I told him I'd lead a rebellion among the little kids if he wouldn't give me lessons."
"Oh, please," Griffith growled. "It was my idea, not his."
"No way — "
"Yes, way."
The two of them looked like they were about to start fighting in earnest, toe to toe and glaring each other down. Watching them, Kate felt a marvelous warmth glow inside. There was no reason to step back here, to let fear and past history cloud the present. The healthy course of action would be to step forward, closer. Now. With this man.
"Excuse me," she broke in. They stopped glaring at each other to turn two fierce gazes her way. She smiled sweetly. "You let me know when you've finished deciding who's to blame."
The fierceness evaporated.
"Look, Kate — "
"I don't think — "
"But I suggest you don't waste your time. It's already forty minutes after lights out and you want to finish your lesson, don't you?" She lifted a hand to waggle her fingers. "I'll thank whoever's idea this was later."
She was both trembling and smiling as she walked away, back toward her cabin. Yes, she was moony and infatuated — but not stupid. No, not stupid.
It seemed her judgment ab
out men wasn't so bad any more.
Kate glanced down at her watch. Her smile shook with emotion. She had only sixty minutes before she did meet Griffith under the oak tree, after all.
~~~
"Penny for your thoughts."
Stupid question, but Griffith badly wanted to know. They'd pulled the blanket out from under the oak tree — lack of intrusion so far had made them bold — and were lying side by side, looking up at the stars. There were enough stars pinpointing the sky to make light on the soft field where they lay. It was enough light for Griffith to see Kate's profile, though she was wearing a completely inscrutable expression.
What was she thinking? Or was she thinking at all? Perhaps she was still in the blissed-out state Griffith had been in for the past half-hour following their frenzied lovemaking.
No longer stupefied by sexual satisfaction, Griffith found himself overcome by a wholly different sort of need as he lay beside Kate, his hand loosely twined with hers.
Did she like him at all?
"My thoughts," Kate repeated. Slowly, she smiled. "I was thinking maybe I ought to include martial arts instruction as part of the camp program."
Griffith snorted.
"Hey, you asked."
Griffith hummed reproachfully. "You weren't supposed to find out about our little lessons. You were supposed to live in ignorant bliss."
Kate released a scornful laugh. "If something is going on in this camp, I'll find out about it."
Griffith released a mocking laugh of his own. "So you believe."
Kate turned her head to laugh in earnest then, meeting his eyes.
Emotion swept over him, nearly drowning him. She looked so — with him, right then. So...liking him.
Now, a voice yelled inside. Ask her now. Did she really like him? Was it just for now...or longer? Griffith tried to voice the question, but fear closed his throat.
What if her smile faded when he asked? What if she looked at him like he'd made some terrible faux pas? So instead he asked, "You're really not angry about the boxing lessons?" Damn! He was a coward.
Kate's cheek hollowed as she appeared to bite the inside of it. "Did I say I'm not angry? You only broke every rule I have about physical violence."
"Ah...true. But maybe you're not majorly pissed?"
Kate laughed again, a delightful sound, and set one hand on Griffith's cheek — an even more delightful gesture. It made him go warm and soft inside. "How could I be even minorly pissed," she told him, "considering you got through to Orlando?"
"Yeah, well..." Griffith had to look away. The desire to ask her, to make it so, rose like a tidal wave. Just as powerful, however, and fighting mightily against him asking the question, was Griffith's fear.
How could she like him?
Nobody liked him.
Now she smoothed her hand down Griffith's face and patted his shoulder, turning a gesture of tenderness into one of pal-like affection. "I'm going to ask him to be a junior counselor next year," she told Griffith, apparently referring to Orlando. Yes, while he was pondering how deep he'd like to take their relationship, she was talking about a fourteen-year-old camper. "I think he'd agree, don't you?"
Griffith sucked in his lips. At least she was asking his opinion. That was good, right? It meant something, yes? Slowly, he nodded. "Yeah, Orlando'd probably be up for that." Especially if, as Griffith believed, Camp Wildwood was still going to be around next summer.
Yes, Griffith was planning to exercise super-human restraint, giving up the construction of Wildwood Homes. But what was all the restraint about if he didn't ask the woman to continue on with him?
Wasn't he choosing her over Wildwood? What did that choice mean if he wasn't going to follow through on it — and get her?
An ugly snake of fear wriggled through Griffith's gut. Get Kate? Him?
Part of him reviled his insecurity. Why shouldn't Kate want him? Didn't she act like she did? ...sort of? He should be confident, take a chance.
But down deep, where such decisions were really made, Griffith was far from confident. He'd never earned a human being's affection in his life.
Having managed to terrify himself now, he fell back to safe territory. Rising on one elbow, he looked down at Kate with a lascivious half-smile. "Tell you what. I'm up for something."
In the starlight, her eyes gleamed. "Is that so?"
"Hmm." Griffith brushed his lips over hers. This he could handle. He knew she liked this.
"Just how far 'up' are you?" Kate asked archly.
Griffith chuckled low, and rocked his hips against her thigh, letting her feel just how up he was.
She laughed deep in her throat.
Griffith kissed her. And so the beat began again, the jungle rhythm that lived between them.
He could ask Kate if she loved him. He could. It wouldn't be so hard.
...Next time.
~~~
"I gotta tell you about the strange phone call I got today." Sitting at her kitchen table, Deirdre licked her fingers of tasty oil from the Kung Pao chicken. An array of white Chinese take-out boxes littered the table. Outside the window that overlooked the second-floor walkway, the summer sky was finally turning from dusky blue to black.
"A strange phone call?" Ricky gazed into a box of orange beef hopefully, then used his chopsticks to shovel the remainder onto his plate.
"Yeah." Deirdre reached for more Kung Pao chicken. "GoldFed Financial called, the junior guy, Ed March. Usually when we talk about the Wildwood project it's purely financial stuff: costs and prices and expected profit margins. But today he had some very technical questions."
"Hm." Frowning, Ricky reached for the big white box full of rice.
Deirdre glanced at him over her Kung Pao. Though he seemed distracted, she was confident he was listening.
"Very technical questions," she went on, "about things like water flow, how many gallons per minute we were expecting at the site. Boy, did I have to fudge, told him it must be in my notes." Deirdre shook her head. "The water thing has always been Griffith's bailiwick. He said he didn't even want me involved, it was too — what was the word he used?" Deirdre tapped her chopsticks against the edge of the box. "Sensitive."
"Huh." Ricky stabbed his chopsticks into the rice.
"I don't even know where to go to get the answer to March's question," Deirdre confessed.
Ricky began shoveling white rice onto his plate, on top of the orange beef.
The silence stretched. Deirdre watched Ricky, and felt her confidence flutter. Why wasn't he saying anything?
At last, after spearing his chopsticks into the food on his plate, Ricky looked up. His lips flattened. "This isn't something you should be telling me."
Deirdre blinked. "What?"
"You shouldn't be telling me about confidential conversations regarding sensitive projects. There's a lot of — Well, it's just confidential."
Deirdre blinked some more. "But we've talked about it before." And he'd been helpful and concerned. Indeed, he'd been so concerned it had really heartened Deirdre. Maybe she was becoming important to him.
So what was this about confidentiality? Was that his subtle way of telling her he didn't care, after all?
The flutter in her stomach became an arrow. Ricky didn't care. He'd never cared. This whole relationship had only been in her mind.
Ricky tapped his chopsticks on the tabletop and met her gaze. Deirdre felt the cold arrow in her middle flip.
The scene did a similar flip in her brain. She was assuming his stern expression meant he didn't care. Why was she assuming that? He cared. He was caring right then, in fact, protecting her.
Lord, she was turning paranoid. That wasn't good. Unjustified fear could easily ruin the best thing that had ever happened to her. Instead of assuming the worst, Deirdre had to be brave.
"Confidential," she said slowly. "Yes...I suppose you're right."
Ricky visibly relaxed. "You never know. My law firm might get involved in this transaction. Th
ere could be all kinds of ramifications, conflict of interest, that sort of thing."
"Yes," Deirdre said. "That's certainly possible." He was right. She should be more cautious about what she spilled, even in front of Ricky.
And she would not be paranoid. She would not ruin this marvelous thing.
"So, did you try the moo shu pork yet?" Ricky asked, and lifted a box liberally stained with Chinese sauce. He gave her a crooked smile as he offered the box in her direction.
Deirdre felt any lingering coldness inside of her warm. He hadn't meant to warn her off, at least not in a personal sense. His admonition had been strictly professional, a legal opinion. "No, I haven't tried the moo shu pork." She reached for the messy box. "Thanks."
"And do you have any of that Kung Pao left?"
"Uh..."
Ricky laughed at her sheepish expression, and Deirdre laughed with him. Yes, they were okay, they were together. And she would stay confident.
Deirdre passed what little was left of the Kung Pao chicken across the table to Ricky, who was still chuckling. Laying a moo shu pancake on her plate, Deirdre mused that it was a funny thing. She'd been counting on Ricky to give her an idea how to answer the bank guy's questions about the water. But since he'd refused to help, she'd just thought up a way of her own.
She'd seen the office maps of Wildwood. The water that was going to serve their project came from a hill that loomed above the site to the south. Deirdre seemed to remember a note on the map, the name of some camp.
Spooning plum sauce onto her pancake, Deirdre wondered if she could get the camp's name from the map at the office, then find a phone number for the place. The camp probably used water from the same creek Griffith was planning to use for Wildwood Homes. It was possible somebody at the camp would know how many gallons per minute the stream could deliver.
She might be able to find this answer out on her own, and thereby satisfy Edward March of GoldFed Financial.
Deirdre was smiling widely as she dropped some moo shu onto her pancake. In not helping her, Ricky had ended up doing her a favor; he'd encouraged her to figure it out for herself.
She glanced over the table at him and smiled, warm and happy.