Beach House No. 9. Christie Ridgway
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Her spine straightening, she pinned him with her gaze. “So you’re committing to working on the book now?”
“As you’ve been telling me, I have a deadline to meet.” He turned to his sister. “See? I can’t have all of you underfoot.”
“But we won’t be any trouble,” Tess said. “The kids won’t get in your way.”
Jane was no longer listening to the other woman, her mind already on the project ahead. She didn’t rub her hands together, but she wanted to. “We’ll start first thing in the morning.”
“Griffin,” Tess pleaded. “We need Crescent Cove this summer. Me and the kids. We need it for just a few weeks.”
He looked from Tess to Jane, who had no trouble giving him the out he wanted this time. “You need to finish the book, Griffin. That’s why I’m here.”
His gaze shifted back to Tess, to her, to Tess again. Jane saw a calculating light enter his eyes. Uh-oh, she thought.
“All right, sis,” he finally said. “You and the kids can stay.”
She clapped her hands, and the baby did too. “Thank you.”
“You can stay in No. 8,” Griffin clarified.
What? Jane mouthed.
Tess frowned. “No. 8?”
“Yes,” Griffin answered. “In No. 8, with my assistant Jane, here. Though I’ll be busy with my memoir, I’m sure she’ll be happy to assist you at every opportunity.”
* * *
WORN PACK OF CARDS in hand, Private padding at his side, Griffin strolled into the small backyard of Beach House No. 9. Okay, skulked was a better term, because he couldn’t deny the furtiveness of his movements. He stayed close to the side of the house and craned his neck for any sign of the occupants of No. 8. His property provided a view of a slice of the smaller house’s rear patch of scruffy grass. When he didn’t spy any rowdy relatives or rigid-spined governesses, he picked up his pace toward the nearby picnic table painted sailor-blue.
Once seated on its bench, he tucked in earbuds and thumbed on his iPod. The crashing chords and heavy backbeat of classic Metallica poured into his head as he laid out yet another of his mindless games of solitaire. This was the second day in a row he’d managed to dodge his sister, her children and the woman he’d foisted them on. Or was it, he thought, frowning, the woman onto whom he’d foisted them?
He stared down at his cards for a moment, then cursed the stupid question circling in his head. Damn it! He’d always been lousy at the picky points of grammar and had accepted that fact. But now he was thinking like Jane. Or at least about Jane. Hadn’t he been doing a pretty good job of avoiding that too?
With the heel of his palm, he bumped the side of his skull, a little signal to his psyche to move on. For the past forty-eight hours he’d been in the best mood he could remember having in months—the kind of mood a prisoner might experience upon avoiding the electric chair—and though he was still behind bars of a sort, he planned on holding on to this good humor. After all, hadn’t he managed to escape his sister, her progeny and the librarian, all in one fell swoop?
Two hands of the card game later, he saw Private jump to his four furry feet. On a groan, Griffin tugged the buds from his ears and quickly scrutinized the vicinity. He groaned again when he realized the one invading his privacy was none other than his elderly neighbor. “What do you want, you old coot?”
Though he was certain he didn’t sound the least bit welcoming, Old Man Monroe sat down on the opposite bench.
Griffin returned his gaze to his game. “My dog was right here the whole time, and don’t try saying otherwise.”
“I’m not here about the dog.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not here to give you your daily senility check. Go home.”
“Hear from Gage? Skye said you had mail.”
At that, Griffin had to smile, even though he knew the postcard that had been delivered to the cove today—all correspondence addressed to the cottages went to Skye, who then distributed it to the residents—was more than a week old. Seeing his brother’s distinctive block lettering pleased him.
“It was one of his own photos.” For years, whenever Gage could manage it, he’d find a place that would put an image on card stock and send it across the country or across the world to Griffin. It had started as a friendly twin-to-twin taunt—photojournalist Gage bragging to his brother about the exotic places he found so thrilling. Now, when Griffin had nearly as many faraway locales and out-of-the-ordinary sights stored in his own memory banks, it was a tangible connection. Looking at an image his brother had found through his own viewfinder, touching paper that his brother had also touched, it was as if they were in the same room, at least for a brief moment.
“He’s well?” the old man asked.
“As good as he can get, in the kind of places that he goes.” Griffin thought about the child Gage had captured on that postcard, in apparent midgiggle. Dirty and thin, he’d still found something to laugh about.
Children had that gift. The thought gave him a guilty prod about his niece and nephews. Angry at himself for letting in the emotion, he slapped down a king in an empty space in the line-up.
Rex Monroe shifted, straightening out his bad leg. Griffin didn’t bother looking up. “Don’t you have a date with The Golden Girls about now?”
“My cable’s out. Entertain me.”
Instead, Griffin decided to ignore him.
“I have the patience of Job,” Rex cautioned after a few minutes had passed.
“You mean you’re a job. But not my job. Go harass somebody else.”
“Maybe I’ll find your sister, tell her you’re sitting outside with nothing to do. Looking morose.”
The threat put Griffin on his feet, startling Private, who let out a bark. He didn’t want Tess or anyone else checking on him, damn it. “I’m not morose.”
“You’re in a happy frame of mind, then?”
“Sure.” He strode to the yard’s narrow flower bed and bent over to yank at some weeds, as if he gave a shit about them. “For your information, I’m in a very happy frame of mind.”
“Huh,” the old guy said, slyness entering his voice. “Does this happiness have to do with Jane?”
Griffin grunted. Jane. She’d worn this silly hat the other day, lowered all the way to her eyebrows. For a few moments, on the deck of Captain Crow’s, he’d thought she was going to prove cooperative. She’d been close at his side as he’d approached Tess, all compliant and cuddly. That should have been the tip-off. How long could the librarian last like that? But hell, what was wrong with her, having a sudden attack of the truth?
“Jane bugs the crap out of me,” Griffin said, ripping a dandelion out by its roots. Its fluffy head reminded him of Jane’s fluffy hair. He liked her hair; it twisted and turned, making him want to bury his fingers in it and then… Gah! With a jerk, he tossed the stupid weed away. She was like that, rooting into his head where she didn’t belong and wasn’t wanted. Messing with his cool equilibrium.
“I guess your sister gets the credit for your good mood, then.”
“Oh, right,” Griffin said. “Like I want to get involved with her and her domestic dilemmas.”
“Looks like you won’t,” the ancient one said, his voice mild. “Since you’ve found a way to palm it all off on poor Jane.”
“What, you got a spy camera installed around here? And poor Jane, my ass. Poor Jane is actually Annoying Jane who does not follow instructions. If she’d stuck with the program and told my sister that we were…that we had a thing happening here, then Tess would have left me my