Читать книгу From This Day Forward - Christie Ridgway - Страница 10

Annie pulled her face out of her pillow and opened one eye. Bright sunshine flooded her bedroom and she quickly squeezed the eye shut against the piercing light and moaned.

She was hungover, she thought, as that peek of daylight echoed painfully in her brain. Not from anything alcoholic, but from adrenaline, she supposed, or stress. She’d run on nerves gone wild yesterday, cleaning closets, counters, floors and then cooking until well past midnight. After that, she’d fallen into bed, too tired to even dream of the robbery.

The robbery.

Both eyes popped open and she breathed through another startling shock of sunlight. Yesterday she’d actually witnessed an armed man rob a bank.

As she pulled the bedcovers closer around her, the event replayed in her mind, even to the churning of her stomach and the sharp tang of pine cleaner in her nose.

Think of something else, she commanded herself. Anything other than the surprise and the fear. Think of the ride in the paddy wagon. Even think of the almost surreal experience of being questioned by the police and the FBI.

The safe, protective police station. The nice detective behind the desk and Griffin Chase acting lawyerly—no, acting like a sleek but threatening guard dog, really—by her side.

Annie closed her eyes again and sank deeper into the mattress, wishing it could swallow her up. Because, after the police had let her leave, what had she done? Given poor Griffin a heart attack by tossing items of clothing out of his car. She pulled the sheet over her hot face.

She’d thrown her bra, for mercy’s sake.

Wallowing in embarrassment, she recalled the uneasiness filling his blue eyes. The man hadn’t seen her in two years, and while to her he seemed as elegant and cool as always—his brown hair with its dark gold streaks shorter than before, but his body’s lean strength and latent sense of power just the same—to him she’d likely appeared at least dotty if not downright crazed.

What must he think of her?

Probably nothing, a little voice inside her answered reasonably. In the past, he’d never noticed her, let alone thought about her. Now, outside of thinking he was obligated to do a favor for the daughter of a family retainer, he probably didn’t think anything about her either.

“Right,” Annie said aloud, flipping the sheet back down and then kicking the covers entirely away. “Griffin’s likely already put me and anything I did out of his mind.”

Just as she was going to put the robbery out of her mind.

And Griffin.

Determined to get on with her day, she strode into her small bathroom. Its faint anti-bacterial smell testified to her housekeeping mania the day before, and it wasn’t until she’d soaped, shampooed and toweled off that she comprehended just how far that mania had taken her.

She had cleaned out her underwear drawer yesterday, too. Working with the zeal of the newly converted, she’d ferreted out each ragged or ill-fitting bra, each pair of panties with sagging elastic or in a color so unappealing that they had overflowed the sale bins at the local discount store.

Which meant that Annie had thrown away all of it. Yes. Every stitch of undergarment she owned was now lying in her garbage can, in a ragged tangle of ugly colors and stretched-out straps.

And it wasn’t as if she could rescue a piece of it for even a short shopping exhibition, Annie thought in dismay, wrapped in a towel and staring at the contents of her garbage. Because after the underwear drawer she’d moved on to cleaning out her freezer. That ragged tangle was now drenched with two cartons of melted neapolitan two-percent ice milk.

With nothing left to do but get something on and get to the mall ASAP, Annie hurriedly dressed in a knee-length denim skirt and a dark blue T-shirt. There was no reason to imagine she couldn’t make it to the store and back without detection or embarrassment, she told herself firmly. Hey, and the good news was she wouldn’t have panty lines!

Still, she was slightly disconcerted by the weird sensation of air passing over her bare…uh…well, there, as she slung her purse over her shoulder and made a beeline for the door. She pulled it open, stepped out and—

Bumped into Griffin’s chest.

“Good morning.” His voice rumbled against the tip of her nose.

Annie leaped back, causing air to whirl up her skirt which in turn made her acutely conscious of all she wasn’t wearing. “Uh, hi.” She tried forgetting that delicious breath of his understated, expensive scent in her lungs as she pasted the insides of her knees together and threw a casual arm across her chest. “Um, I was just on my way out.”

Oh, great, Annie, she thought, groaning inwardly. Yesterday weird, today rude.

He looked down at her, that same expression she’d labeled before as uneasiness again in his eyes. “So I didn’t imagine it, did I? You really did grow up.”

“H-huh?” Annie swallowed and pressed her forearm closer against her unbound breasts. “I mean, um, well, yes. I suppose I did.”

She had been grown-up two years ago as well, but Griffin had looked right through her or over her or around her since the day she’d arrived at the Chase estate. Not in a superior, I’m-too-good-for-you way, but in a you’re-a-little-girl-and-I-smell-a-potential-pest way.

She hadn’t blamed him, though it hadn’t stopped her from following him around, either.

He just hadn’t noticed.

And while she remembered wanting him to notice her with an almost-humiliating intensity since she was four years old, today, in her underwearless state, she wished she could simply disappear before his eyes.

But he was noticing something, darn it, as he slowly shook his head. “When did you stop wearing…”

How could he tell? Annie’s heart froze and she squeezed her knees even more tightly together as she watched his forefingers make puzzling circles beside his ears.

“…pigtails you call them, right?” He smiled.

Oh my. She’d forgotten Griffin’s smile. It tilted up one corner of his mouth and both corners of his blue, blue eyes. Over the years she’d seen him smile that smile a hundred times—at her mother when finagling more cookies, at one of the groundsmen for washing and waxing his car, at every girl he’d ever brought home.

He’d just never smiled that smile at her. Not the housekeeper’s daughter.

“Annie?”

“Wow,” Annie murmured, then caught herself, blinking away her smile-induced stupor. “Oh. Yes. What?”

“Annie?” he said again, probably wondering if there was a padded room nearby. “Are you all right?”

She desperately cast back to the conversation. Pigtails. “Pigtails. You’re exactly right. That’s what they’re called.” She lifted both hands to imitate those funny ear circles he’d made.

And then remembered her bralessness and immediately clapped both arms across her chest, as if she was hugging herself.

Griffin’s expression switched from doubt to concern. “Are you cold? Why don’t we go inside?”

We? We? But even with that warning, Annie did nothing as he stepped closer except step back, until they were both inside the small front room of her cottage and he’d shut the door behind him.

Now what was she supposed to do with him? It didn’t seem quite fitting for the wealthy man-about-town to be standing in her modest cottage.

“Well, um, would you like to sit down?” she felt forced to ask.

“Sure.” He dropped onto the flowered cushions of her white wicker love seat, settling against its back and extending his long legs.

Oh, terrific. Not only did his position not make him seem any less out-of-place, it made it clear that he planned to stay awhile. She bit her bottom lip. “And some coffee? Would you like some coffee?” If he was going to stick around even for a few minutes she needed some alone time in her comforting kitchen to catch her breath and find her composure.

“Sure,” he said again.

Though trying to keep her legs together made her walk a sort of awkward scurry, Annie hurried off, wondering if she could stitch temporary undergarments from paper towels and the cook’s twine she used for her famous parmesan chicken rollups. She was biting her lip and contemplating the paper towels when Griffin suddenly appeared in the kitchen.

“Can I help?” he asked.

The largest room of the cottage suddenly shrank and Annie spun toward her coffeemaker. “Oh, no. This will just take a minute.”

He didn’t get the hint, instead pulling up one of her kitchen stools to the countertop nearby. “So you became a cook?”

She sneaked a peek at him, for the first time absorbing the fact that he was wearing a comfortable-looking, almost baggy pair of khakis and a white T-shirt that had the luxurious sheen of silk. The soft leather slip-ons on his feet probably cost more than all the shoes in her closet put together.

“Well, I’d like to think I’ve been a cook for a long time,” she answered, sounding less nervous than she felt. “I became a caterer, thanks to your parents. When the new housekeeper didn’t want to live on the estate, they rented me the cottage at a rate that made starting my own business possible.”

Whew. It was much easier talking to him when she could half turn away and keep busy with the coffee. “How about you?” she asked. “Anything new about you in the last two years?”

Good. The question sounded automatic and impersonal. No way could Griffin guess that she’d trolled for every factoid she could get from his parents and his brother during the last twenty-four months. Old habits died hard, she’d rationalized then.

But now she blew all her fake disinterest by adding, “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until June tenth.”

He didn’t seem to detect her slip. “Believe me, I’m more than happy that I made it back to California early.”

Annie sprinkled some cinnamon over the freshly ground coffee beans and swung the filter basket into place then pressed the button marked Brew. “Why? Were you that ready to come home?” She suppressed a little teen-ish rush of delight that he hadn’t found some exotic lover impossible to leave behind.

“That too, I suppose, and I was gratified to wrap up my business deals early. But who would have come to your rescue yesterday if I hadn’t been back?”

Annie felt her face heat. “I should have thanked you for that right away, though I didn’t really need rescuing.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If you’d added flagging down a ride to eating ice cream and divesting yourself of clothing, I can imagine all sorts of emergencies that might have come up.” There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

Okay, so maybe her actions deserved Griffin’s teasing—something she would have lopped off her right ear for when she was seventeen—but she was really starting to regret yesterday’s vows. It was one thing for a woman to kick off her shoes and splurge on double double chocolate fudge. It was entirely another to be left braless and pantyless while having a conversation about disrobing with the one man said woman had mooned over for almost her entire life.

“I shouldn’t razz you though, Annie,” Griffin continued. “To be honest, I’m mad as hell that you had to go through that experience at all.”

Annie concentrated on sliding away the coffee carafe so that the dark, fragrant stream of liquid flowed into a thick mug instead. “I’m trying not to think of it too much myself.” An image of the gun flashed in her mind, and she suppressed a shiver while coffee trickled into a second mug.

With two mugs full and the carafe replaced, Annie finally had to face Griffin. Carrying a mug in each hand, she walked the few steps toward him, watching that she didn’t spill instead of watching him. She put one coffee against the countertop and slid it his way. “Maybe I’ll just pretend yesterday didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think that will work, Annie,” Griffin said softly.

She looked up, meeting his gaze. “No?”

“I can’t forget.”

Mercy. She’d never been this close to him, and with only two feet of countertop between them, his eyes mesmerized her. Their blue was faceted with clear crystal, and his eyelashes, like his hair, were edged in gold. “You can’t forget what?” she said, trying to break the spell.

“You said you were tired of waiting.”

“Oh.”

“I just can’t help wondering what for.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Well…” She’d been tired of waiting for shoe sales. Tired of waiting for the someday when she deserved nice lingerie. But most of all, she’d been tired of waiting for love to enter her life. For a man. “That kind of talk was just a reaction. That’s all. I think.”

“You think?”

Annie squeezed her mug of coffee between her palms. In the light of a new day, didn’t it seem more sensible—safer—to return to old, familiar paths? She shrugged. “I’m sure. And I’m over the robbery already.”

His eyebrows rose. “Then I suppose you won’t mind seeing this.” He watched her carefully, though, as he pulled something from his back pocket. A newspaper, creased three times, that he unfolded and then put in her free hand.

The Strawberry Bay Bulletin. Annie dropped her gaze to the front-page photo and then dropped her mug, not even hearing it crash and break into fragments against the tile floor. Instead, as she looked at the photo of the bank lobby with the massive, jagged holes in its ceiling, Annie was hearing the sound of the robbery. It was the sound of the gunfire and the well of terrified silence and that voice almost sobbing “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” all rolled into one ball of nearly unbearable noise.

She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears and then suddenly someone was holding her. Griffin. He was warm and he was big and she couldn’t believe she was gluing herself against him, but there it was.

It was his luxurious, sandalwood-and-something-else scent that finally dispelled the remembered stench of gunfire and it was his voice, “I’m sorry, Annie. So sorry, Annie,” that finally banished the echoes of yesterday’s sounds.

His big hand was rubbing her back and she finally found the nerve to look up at him. She tried a smile, but it quickly wobbled off. “I guess I’m not as over it as I thought.”

“I shouldn’t have sprung the picture on you like that.” His hand smoothed down her back again.

She should move away, but her legs wouldn’t seem to obey her mind’s commands. And her mind! It wasn’t behaving either. It seemed to have forgotten this was Griffin Chase, vice-president of Chase Electronics, the biggest employer in town, who she was snuggled up against. It seemed to have forgotten this was Griffin Chase, the unattainable prince in every one of her adolescent Cinderella dreams.

Instead, it registered heat and size and male and something inside her—something warm and liquid—seemed to be rising and falling all at once.

“Forgive me?” he asked. That one side of his mouth kicked up when he smiled, a bit rueful, and he started to run his hand a third time down her back.

A hand that abruptly halted midway. Midway, where a bra strap would usually be.

They both froze. Annie was suddenly, acutely aware not only of the lack of a bra strap, but also that her bare breasts were against his hard chest, with only two thin layers between them. At the thought, her nipples, nestled so closely to Griffin, tightened.

Oh, mercy. She jumped away from him, the soles of her shoes crunching against pieces of ceramic mug. Her face felt flushed and she crossed her arms over herself as she looked down at the mess on the floor. “I…” She couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s okay,” he said. Maybe his voice was a bit hoarse, maybe not. “Let me take care of it.”

Take care of what? But Annie’s brain wasn’t firing with all the necessary cylinders even as he strode to the broom propped in one corner of the room and then strode back to start sweeping up the mess at her feet. She didn’t prevent him from cleaning, but merely stepped clear of the debris as she giddily recalled the hardness of his chest and the heavy warmth of his hand and how comforting and…and…um, pleasing it had been to feel Griffin against her.

She didn’t stop him from opening the cabinet under the sink, either. He had to toss the contents of the dustpan, after all, into the oversized white garbage pail.

The garbage pail that, she belatedly remembered, was almost overflowing with ice-cream-covered undergarments.

“Oh!” Annie said, dashing forward. She’d even gingerly pawed through the mess with tongs at one point, desperate for something wearable, so that several bras hung drunkenly over the edge to reveal a pile of ice-milk-sodden, but clearly recognizable panties. “I don’t…I’m not…”

Griffin looked at her, his brows raised. “You don’t?” He looked back at the contents of the can. “You’re not?” He looked at her again. “I can…see that. I just don’t understand why.”

Why? How could she possibly tell him about what had gone through her mind yesterday when she was lying on the bank’s floor? Annie chewed on her lower lip, feeling completely foolish about those silly vows. Then someone, a sainted someone in her book, rapped impatiently on her front door. Without a second’s hesitation, Annie grabbed at the opportunity to escape what now seemed horribly embarrassing and completely unexplainable.

“Company!” she said brightly, pasting on a cheery smile. Then she turned and ran to see who it was, as if the man she’d once adored from afar hadn’t just discovered her naughty, though totally innocent, secret.

On the other side of Annie’s front door stood two dear, familiar figures—her mother, Natalie Smith, and Annie’s best friend, Elena O’Brien. “Mom, Elena. Come in, come in.”

With a surge of relief, Annie ushered them inside. They were just the people to remind her of the real Annie Smith. The ordinarily patient and ordinarily shy Annie Smith. She wasn’t the unfamiliar creature who had tossed her clothes away yesterday any more than she was the half-naked woman who’d found herself in the arms of Griffin Chase this morning.

Her mother and Elena would help her remember that.

Annie’s mom looked at Annie closely, an unfamiliar frown on her pretty face. “Honey? Are you all right? You look…different.”

“No, I don’t,” Annie denied quickly. I’m the same. Nothing has changed. “I told you yesterday, Mom, I’m fine. A-okay. Peachy-keen. Hunky-dory.”

“You left out tutti-frutti.” Elena grinned, her sassy smile bright against the golden color of her skin. Her Mexican mother and Irish father accounted for her straight black hair and blue eyes.

“Still,” Elena continued, “your mom wasn’t going to stop worrying until I drove her over here. I told her nothing could shake you—” Her eyes widened as she caught sight of something over Annie’s shoulder. “Whoa. Maybe I was wrong.”

Annie swung around slowly to find Griffin coming into the room. It’s not that she’d forgotten him, exactly, but she hadn’t quite yet figured out how to explain his presence or how to respond to him. Particularly now that she knew he knew that what she wore beneath her skirt and T-shirt was exactly zippo.

But he took the uncomfortable situation out of her hands by walking directly to Annie’s mom and lifting her off her feet in a grizzly-worthy bear hug.

“Griffin!” her mom cried. When he set her down she lifted up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “You’re home.”

“And completely devastated to discover that in the two years I was gone you had retired.” He smiled down at her. “Any chance I could entice you back? At least just to fill the cookie jar?”

Her mother laughed, and under the cover of their continuing conversation, Elena sidled over to Annie. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “I told you yesterday. He gave me a ride from the police station.”

Elena’s brows rose. “What about last night? Any additional, uh…rides?”

Annie lightly slapped her friend’s arm. As if a man like him would look at her twice in that way! “Of course not. Griffin merely came over to check on me this morning. It was a neighborly thing to do.”

Elena’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Neighborly?” she asked, her voice skeptical.

Before she could scold her friend again, Griffin turned away from Annie’s mom to look at the two younger women. “And this is?” He was asking for an introduction to Elena, but his gaze was only for Annie.

Suddenly, beneath her clothes, her skin prickled. She was naked. He knew it, she knew it, it was a secret only the two of them shared, and it only made her feel that much more exposed.

Annie swallowed as more tickles of awareness rose on her bare flesh. “Griffin, this is—this is my friend Elena O’Brien.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as squeaky to them as it did to herself. “Elena, may I introduce you to Griffin Chase.”

There was a funny little smile on Elena’s face as she stuck out her hand to shake Griffin’s. “Brother of Logan, I presume?”

That caught Griffin’s attention. His eyes narrowed. “You know my little brother?”

Elena gave a casual wave of her fingers. “We go way back. Be sure to give him my best.”

Annie slid a look at Elena. There was bad blood between Elena and Griffin’s “little” brother—now twenty-nine years old and as big as Griffin himself—over a senior prom date gone awry, though Elena wouldn’t speak of it beyond making nasty cracks about Logan whenever they happened to catch a glimpse of him.

Griffin glanced at Annie, then back at Elena. “Your best? I’ll be sure to do that.”

Annie’s friend smiled once more but it wasn’t her usual cheerful one. “Thank you. Be sure to tell him Elena says hello. That’s Elena with an ‘e’ as in every day I thank my lucky stars he left me standing there.”

Nodding, Griffin gave her one more half-puzzled, half-amused look, then switched his attention to Annie. “I’ll be on my way now,” he said. “I brought piles of work home. Will you be okay?”

Those crystal-faceted blue eyes of his made it impossible for her to look away, and even more impossible to forget the sensation of being enclosed by his arms. “I wish people would stop asking me that,” she whispered. It didn’t seem necessary to talk any louder, not when she could have sworn there were only the two of them in the room, maybe in the whole world.

He shrugged, then his hand lifted and he brushed his fingertips across her temple to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers were cool and his touch gentle. Goose bumps skittered across Annie’s neck and then southward, and she found herself once again crossing her arms over her chest.

His gaze flicked down toward her breasts, back up to her eyes. “We’re just concerned,” he said softly. “You’ve been through a stressful experience.”

“My mom and Elena are here.” Somewhere. She remembered how relieved she’d been to see them, because they would remind her of the real, the patient, the so-very-ordinary Annie Smith. The Annie Smith who Griffin Chase had never looked at twice, though she’d followed him around since she was four years old. “So you see, I don’t need a keeper or a…a…brother.”

He blinked. “A brother.”

Annie felt herself flushing. “Or whatever.”

Griffin smiled, and Annie thought he suddenly appeared more relaxed.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m certain you don’t need a keeper, or a brother, or a ‘whatever.”’ Cool fingertips brushed her temple again. “Goodbye Annie.”

Then he was gone.

With the click of the door behind him, her mother and Elena started chattering, as if to fill up the hole his leaving created. Their talk went on around her: Annie’s impending twenty-fifth birthday and how to celebrate it; her big catering job for the elder Chases’ fortieth wedding anniversary; the most recent phone call Annie’s aunt had made to Annie’s mom. Instead of joining in, Annie wandered to the window.

Over the lace café curtains, she could see Griffin stride away. As she watched, she thought of his crystal-blue eyes and how they made her skin tingle and how that tingle made her feel alive and even…yes…impatient. Then he disappeared into the thick stand of oaks that separated her cottage from the Chase’s house.

There was a drive that connected the two residences as well, but the shortest foot route was the way he’d chosen, through the oaks. It would take him past a trellised gazebo, then up the steps to the veranda that encircled the big house.

Formally named the Montgomery Mansion, the Chase’s massive three-story Victorian with its leaded windows and gingerbread fretwork was listed on the national historic register. In modern times, an adjacent carriage house had been replaced by a fleet-worthy garage embellished with similar Victorian styling. The old carriage house had been moved to the other side of the oaks then renovated as the housekeeper’s residence. It was Annie’s now.

Griffin, master-of-the-manor Griffin, lived in the mansion while Annie, silly, tingling Annie lived in the cottage. A distance not easily breached, but she’d been watching through windows across it all her life.

She whirled away from the window and tuned in to her mother and Elena.

“…my sister keeps insisting I should move to San Diego and share her condominium. It’s right on the beach. Some place called the Silver Strand.”

Elena flopped onto the love seat, her straight black hair flying up then settling back into place against her jaw. “The Silver Strand. It sounds heavenly. Why don’t you take her up on it, Natalie?”

Annie’s mom laughed. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’m staying in Strawberry Bay.”

Annie studied her mother. Though she’d retired when the arthritis in her hands made her housekeeping duties difficult, she remained slim and pretty. She didn’t look much older than the woman whose husband had walked out on her so long ago. Yet Natalie Smith had never dated another man or even appeared interested in one.

What was her mother waiting for? Annie mused.

Waiting. That was Annie, too, of course, and she might as well be preparing to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday instead of her twenty-fifth for all the living she’d done. That truth had bothered her yesterday. She’d vowed to find love instead of waiting for it.

But her common sense had reasserted itself this morning. Yes, common sense…or cold feet?

Through the open window a breeze blew in and the air swept up Annie’s skirt. The goose bumps rising on her bare flesh caused her to remember the tingles that Griffin’s touch made burst across her skin.

Certainly he couldn’t be the right man for her. He was merely the one she’d spun fantasies about, the prince a lonely little girl had put on a pedestal. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to find another who made her feel that way? The breeze brushed by her again. Yet what if waiting patiently meant waiting forever?

“Elena,” she said urgently.

Her mouth open in mid-sentence, Elena’s head swiveled toward Annie. “Huh?”

“Come shopping with me.” Though Elena was the sole support of her teenage sister and worked two jobs, she always managed to look chic.

Elena blinked. “Huh? What?”

Annie headed for her purse. “I need your help. New clothes. From the inside out. And from the department store, not the discount store.”

She didn’t miss the gleam in Elena’s eyes. “It’s a miracle!”

No, said a little voice inside Annie. It’s a man.

She didn’t know who quite yet, but she wanted one.

Despite her cowardly attempt at denial this morning, after yesterday’s experience she was certain she wanted love. And she was no longer content to wait for it to find her.