Asking For It

by Alyssa Kress

  Ricky's eyes were widening all over again.

  "We don't know if that's actually true," Kate put in. "Only what he said."

  "And we thought it was, like, providence," Arnie continued. "'Cause we needed another counselor real bad. So...Kate didn't let him use her phone, and since he didn't know the way down the hill, he couldn't leave."

  "And I wouldn't feed him," Kate interjected, deciding she might as well brazen it out. "Unless he agreed to take my nine-year-olds."

  Ricky looked from one of them to the other, so bursting with disbelief it appeared he was about to explode. Then he did explode, laughing. "That's where Blaine was? At your camp, being a counselor?" He slapped his hand on the Denny's tabletop.

  Disconcerted, Kate lifted a shoulder. She supposed it was good Ricky thought it was funny rather than a felony, but she couldn't suppress a sense of unease. Griffith had taken the nine-year-olds. He'd tried his best not to be, but had ended up becoming, a first-rate counselor.

  Ricky's laughter faded and he grinned at Kate. Arnie, too, was regarding her with a softer expression than he'd worn the past few days. "Well, at least you got your pound of flesh," Ricky observed.

  Thinking of flesh made something dive in Kate's stomach.

  Arnie scratched the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, that brings up the thing, see."

  "What thing?" Kate challenged. Let him dare...

  "Oh, the thing that I don't think either legal stuff or media pressure is the way to skin this cat." Arnie's dark eyes rested on Kate. "I think there's a better way."

  "Oh, no there isn't," Kate said crisply.

  Giving her a reproving look, Ricky turned to Arnie. "I'm listening."

  "Well-l-l." Arnie rolled a shoulder. "While he was with us, Griffith got rather tight with Kate, here."

  "Not true." Kate was ready to burst into flame. "He wasn't 'tight' with me. He — he played on my affections."

  "He got pretty involved," Arnie went on, as if Kate hadn't said a word. "I wouldn't be surprised if all we need to do to make this go away is for Kate to go ask him pretty please."

  "You. Must. Be. Kidding." Kate spoke from between clenched teeth.

  Ricky stared at Arnie. "That's...pretty damn involved."

  "But untrue," Kate repeated. Ruthlessly, she shoved out of her mind an image of Griffith standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to her cabin, his face intent and tender.

  A lie. It had all been lies and deceit.

  "Griffith has no deep feelings for me at all," she said out loud, glad her voice sounded normal. "And there is no way in hell he would restrain himself from making an incredible profit on this deal."

  Ricky and Arnie exchanged a strange look. "No shit?" asked Ricky softly.

  "The real deal," Arnie said in reply.

  "Not true," Kate insisted.

  Slowly, obviously schooling his expression, Ricky turned to Kate. "Look, I'd be the first guy to pooh-pooh the notion of love influencing any man that much, particularly a fellow like Griffith Blaine, but if there's any chance at all... I mean, we're fresh out of other options, Kate. Maybe it would be, you know, worth a try."

  Kate's teeth were clenched so tightly she thought she must be losing enamel. It wasn't so much that they were asking her to do something humiliating. It was the sneaky hope they were calling up, the hope that maybe, in some fantastic way, they were right.

  Maybe it hadn't been a lie. Maybe everything she'd thought had been happening between herself and Griffith really had happened. Maybe he had fallen in love with her. Maybe he didn't even plan to take the water from the camp.

  He had said so, she remembered. If she could be so reckless as to believe a word Griffith said, he'd uttered the statement.

  But that way led to madness. How could she believe Griffith, when she knew her tendency to choose lying scumbags as lovers? She'd chosen Eric, hadn't she? She'd chosen a relationship that had led to her brother ending up in a casket under a lead gray sky.

  If she let herself believe Ricky and Arnie, she'd be trusting something she hadn't believed in in a long while: her own good judgment.

  Kate gritted her teeth. "No, I'm not going to do it. I won't ask Griffith for a thing."

  Arnie shook his head. Ricky looked down, sucking in his lips.

  "I say we sue." Kate lifted her chin. "We might not even lose. In any event we'd be putting an obstacle in his charmed path."

  Ricky spoke mildly. "You're the client. I've given you my opinion, but if you still want to file...?"

  Kate ignored Arnie, who was giving her a disappointed look. "That's what I want to do." It's what she had to do, to rid herself forever of all dangerous fantasies.

  ~~~

  Ricky walked out of Denny's knowing he had to come clean. Traffic whizzed above them on Interstate 5. Wind whipped his tie over his shoulder. It was not an ideal place for a confession, but there was a significant piece of information he had to disclose to his clients.

  "Wait," Ricky said. He tossed his briefcase onto the trunk of his car and turned to Kate and Arnie. "There's something I need to tell you."

  Arnie stood with his hand on Kate's back. Both of them looked at Ricky with innocent interest.

  Ricky drew in a deep breath. "I, uh — You're not the only one, Kate, who's had an involvement with someone at Blaine Development."

  After a moment of silence, Kate's brows dipped. "That relationship you were telling me about. The one that was getting deep — "

  "No, no. It wasn't. I mean — Well, the truth is I was only dating Deirdre in order to try to find out something about Wildwood, if I could stop it." There, he'd said it. Ricky braced himself for their disapproval.

  "Deirdre?" Kate asked. "Do you mean Deirdre Marshal, the woman who called me? The one who tipped me off to everything that was going on?"

  Ricky inclined his head.

  "But you didn't say a word."

  Ricky turned to glance at a semi bulleting past. "I'm not proud of how I behaved with her. I crossed some lines." Though he'd tried to recross them and be honest with her at that restaurant the other night. Deirdre had refused to listen.

  Kate was still frowning, but hadn't yet delivered the set-down Ricky fully expected and deserved. He wished somebody would tell him what a bastard he'd been. Maybe then he'd feel a sense of closure.

  Instead, he'd been walking around with this... Hell, he didn't know what to call it. Loneliness? It was crazy. He didn't get lonely. He was independent, and happy to be so.

  Arnie was gazing at Ricky with his trademark penetration. "Is it over?"

  "What? Oh, yeah." Ricky bobbed his head. "It's over. Way over. And I told her — everything." Though Deirdre hadn't believed him. And that haunted Ricky. Tempted him. In the middle of the night, when the hours seemed to stretch, he would think: right, Deidre thought he was still involved with her. He could play into that. He could call her, suggest they go out. Yeah, he could go back to seeing her, doing things with her.

  The thought of lying to Deirdre again made Ricky sick to his stomach, but when he considered being able to get rid of the pain and plug the aching hole, he had to admit he contemplated it...

  Kate stared fixedly at Ricky. "So you dated her, got her to believe you were sincerely interested in her, when you never were?"

  Finally, the castigation Ricky had been waiting for. He waited for shame to wash over him, but instead got another hit of his futile longing. "I was interested, just...not as deeply as she thought."

  Kate shook her head. "How? How do you men get yourselves into these situations? Haven't any of you heard of honesty?"

  "I honestly hadn't intended the thing to get so...heavy-duty." And yet, Ricky thought, he'd guided it in that direction.

  Kate shook her head again. Meanwhile, Arnie regarded Ricky philosophically. "I'll tell you how we men get ourselves into these situations. With ease." He grinned at Ricky. "And by route of sexual need."

  Ricky laughed, embarrassed. Kate scowled.

  "Ahem. Anyway," Ricky
said, and grabbed for his flying tie. "That will have nothing to do with my advocacy of your case. You know I'm solidly behind you and the camp, Kate."

  "Right." Kate closed her eyes and turned away. "Right, I know you are."

  Ricky and Arnie exchanged an uneasy glance. Unwittingly, Ricky had warned Kate that Griffith, like Ricky, wouldn't let a brief affair get in the way of the bigger picture.

  "I'll let you know," Ricky went on. "As soon as I've drawn up a suitable lawsuit." As soon as he could think of a halfway decent Cause of Action.

  "All right." Kate turned back to Ricky and, to his relief, gave him a hug before climbing into her car.

  Arnie, meanwhile, tarried long enough to put a hand on Ricky's shoulder. "This thing with that lady, Deirdre, don't worry about it." His expression darkened and he nodded toward the car where Kate was sitting. "There's the real problem."

  Ricky frowned. "You don't seriously think Griffith would just dump this big project if Kate simply asked him to, do you?" He didn't see it. Griffith was like him: focused, independent. He wouldn't let himself want or need another person to the point where it would obstruct his goals.

  Giving Ricky a look of respectful pity, Arnie squeezed the younger man's shoulder. "Maybe one of these days you'll be able to see how it's possible."

  From pity to mystery. Ricky watched in frustration as Arnie lowered into the passenger seat and Kate started up the car.

  The frustration turned into something more familiar, more recently familiar, once the car had turned out of the lot and driven off.

  Ricky was alone. All alone.

  Another semi barreled past. Ricky's tie went waving in its wake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At ten o'clock at night on his first Monday back in L.A., Griffith walked into his condo feeling pleasantly exhausted. After less than a week, the loan agreement with GoldFed Financial for Wildwood was inches from being signed and his other projects had been brought up to scratch. Life was pretty good.

  As he'd predicted, hard work was acting like a healing balm. The thought of all the profit boosting Blaine Development's net worth was curing his ills.

  True, Griffith hadn't yet executed a suitable judgment on Simon Grolier, the joker who'd started the whole mess. He hadn't even thought up a suitable judgment. But he would. Besides, Griffith's mere presence back in Los Angeles had to be giving Simon hives. That was enough...for the moment.

  In his condo, Griffith tossed his suit jacket over the back of a chair in the living room, loosened his tie and considered putting on the news. With a shrug, he decided he was ready to hit the hay, having stayed up most of the previous night solving a budget problem on the Ventura Boulevard project.

  Griffith strolled down the hall to the master suite. On the way, he dug his cell phone out of his trouser pocket. It was a brand new Galaxy, bought the day he'd returned to Los Angeles. He checked for dropped calls and, seeing none, tossed it onto the night table on the right side of his bed. The night table on the other side of his Duxiana bed had a pillow covering it.

  Griffith had thrown the pillow there on his first night back in the condo. It had been bad enough dealing with the thousand messages waiting in the voice mail for his old cell phone. Griffith had ended up hitting a blanket delete, not wanting to discover as he waded through the calls that not a single one of his contacts had realized — or cared — he'd been missing.

  The conventional answering machine on the night table was something else, however. Only personal calls would come in on that machine. Griffith had had the distinct, and dread-filled, suspicion that if he looked at the answering machine he'd find a big orange zero staring back at him.

  He'd thrown the pillow before he had a chance to see if he was right.

  But tonight Griffith stopped and looked at the pillow, situated so cravenly atop the answering machine. Was he that much of a coward? It wouldn't mean anything significant if nobody had called. He was rich, wasn't he? That phone with no messages was sitting in a two-million dollar condo, wasn't it? So what if the number was zero. Big deal.

  Setting his jaw, Griffith walked around to the other side of the bed. He reached out and snatched the pillow off the night table.

  Orange numbers spelling out twenty stared back at him.

  Twenty?

  Griffith lowered to a seat on the bed, the pillow crushed under one arm. He stared at the orange twenty and, with a shaking hand, reached out to press the Play button.

  "I'm done trying your cell phone. You never call me back anyway. Oh, what a terrible, terrible boy you are!" There was a long, in-drawn breath. "I have never understood why you can't ever call your poor mama who lives so far away from you. Who has no idea if you're alive or dead. Oh, I just know you aren't eating right. But I suppose that big project you're working on is more important than talking to your mother. Yes, of course it is..."

  His mother's voice went on from there, in full complaint mode, listing Griffith's many flaws and her own myriad unfulfilled needs.

  It was the sort of phone call that could make a man's back teeth curl.

  Griffith hit the Repeat button.

  He closed his eyes as his mother's voice swept into the room once again. All twenty calls were from his mother. All twenty were in the same nerve-scraping, long-suffering vein. Griffith listened to each one — and some of them twice. He lay back on his bed, letting her voice flow over him; her annoyed, complaining, caring voice.

  Amazing, but true. There did exist somebody in the world who simply wanted to talk to him because he was alive. Who cared.

  A warm sensation washed over him.

  Finally, Griffith hit Stop, then rose to a sitting position. He lifted the receiver for the land line. His hands were unsteady and it was much too late, but he dialed his mother's New York number anyway.

  She answered on the third ring, sounding groggy.

  "Mother?" Griffith's hand gripped the phone tightly. "Sorry if I woke you up. I — I just wanted to let you know I'll definitely be coming to see you at Thanksgiving — probably before then. Yes, yes, I'm all right. I...was called unexpectedly out of town, but I'm back now, and I'm fine." His lips curved at her observation on the other end of the line. "Okay, yes, I should have called to let you know I was out of town." He laughed at her next comment. "Do I? Well...maybe I am strange. A strange and mixed-up fellow. Now I'd better let you go back to sleep. No, no, don't worry, I'll call you again tomorrow. That's a promise. Good night, Ma."

  Slowly, carefully, Griffith replaced the receiver. He felt, indeed, very strange, just as his mother had observed. For six days he'd worked like a dog, patching up problems in construction schedules and piecing together new deals — making money. Paving the way to make even more money.

  In short, doing everything that had always worked for him.

  But only kidding himself. Because none of his money-making efforts had helped him a fraction as much as one, thirty-second phone call with his mother, a person who cared about him. A person about whom he'd forgotten how very much he cared.

  For the first time in six days Griffith felt like a part of the human race again. The sensation was already fading, but...Griffith wanted more of it. Spearing his fingers through his hair, he jumped up from the bed and paced toward the window. Outside, he could see half of West Los Angeles, a view he'd paid a fifty-thousand dollar premium to enjoy.

  He might as well have flushed that fifty-grand down the toilet. Money couldn't buy happiness.

  Griffith leaned his palms on the window sill and glared out the window. Nope, money wasn't going to do it.

  So now he had to figure out what the hell would.

  ~~~

  "Are you going to be all right up here by yourself?" Arnie's weathered face expressed concern as he stood outside his Jeep parked beside the camp dining hall.

  "I'll be fine." Kate made sure to give him her best smile, the light, unconcerned one. "You know I like to be here by myself. Just me and nature."

  "Yeah, but..." Grippin
g his battered cowboy hat, Arnie only looked more concerned.

  Wishing everyone would forget she'd ever been involved with Griffith, Kate brightened her smile and deliberately misunderstood his concern. "No 'buts.' Yeah, I'm worried about the future of the camp, but I can't angst over it every second. Sugar is back. I want to go groom her and take a ride. Which I can do once you drive away and go see your girlfriend in Taft." She made a pushing motion with her hands, as if to sweep Arnie into his car. "So go."

  "I just hate leaving you...alone."

  It wasn't easy, but Kate kept her smile. "You've left me alone for the two weeks after camp is closed every year for eight years now. You never worried about it before."

  Arnie just looked at her with tired, sad eyes.

  Damn it. Kate knew what was coming.

  "You miss him," Arnie said.

  Ready, Kate scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. We're suing the bastard, which gives me all kinds of satisfaction. And why should I miss someone who turned out to be a snake? Evil. He intends to close the camp!"

  Arnie sighed. "All the same, you miss him."

  Her gaze averted. It was crazy — but Arnie was right. Ever since they'd decided to sue Griffith, and thus cut all possible ties to him, Kate had been...waxing sentimental. Despite herself, she'd recall all kinds of strange things: the indent of a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled, the crinkle at the corner of his eyes, the timbre of his laugh. A thousand heart-rending details.

  Weird. It was so weird. She couldn't miss Griffith, she hated him. Besides, everything he'd ever been or done to her had been a lie.

  Letting out a breath, Kate said, "It's not him I miss. It's more like..." She closed her eyes. "It's like now that I know we're taking care of the evil person he actually is, I can...afford to indulge in my fantasy of who he might have been." Surely that's all this was. She wasn't second-guessing herself. Etched in her memory was Griffith's grin when he'd crowed over having fooled her. That was the real Griffith.

  So why wasn't this working the other way around? She'd thought taking up arms against the awful Griffith would help her leftover emotions dissipate. Instead, they were growing. It was...crazy.