Tall, Dark And Difficult. Patricia Coughlin
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day, and was caught off guard when instead, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and a slow, very appealing grin appeared.
“Well now, I’ve never had a lady boss. Maybe you ought to go into a little detail about how that works.”
“It’s not complicated, Griff. Think of me as your commanding officer. I’ll think of you as a raw recruit who doesn’t know his Waterford from his Wedgwood. Or, to put it more simply, I give the orders and you follow them.”
He had a little more difficulty with that one, she could tell, and she relished the moment. Truthfully, if he had asked her nicely, she would have been happy to help and would have refused to accept a penny. But he hadn’t asked; he’d waged a campaign. And she felt no qualms about recouping some of her loss on the garland.
“What sort of orders?” he asked finally.
“That’s hard to say at this point. Hunting for antiques is more art than science. You have to be constantly on the prowl and you have to have good instincts, good timing and good luck. Since we agree you don’t have any instinct for this sort of hunt, we’ll both have to rely on mine.”
“In other words, you’re the brains and I’m the muscle.”
“More or less.”
“I can live with that,” he agreed.
Rose waited. Neither his tone nor his lazy smile suggested resistance. Still, there was a prickle of apprehension at the back of her neck.
“With one little stipulation of my own,” he said.
She folded her arms. “Let’s hear it.”
“Your conditions apply to work time only. When we’re off duty, we’re on our own.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you can forget that rule about officers not fraternizing with enlisted men.”
“I guess I can live with that,” agreed Rose, wondering what she was getting herself into.
“Good. When do we start?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Chapter Four
The scent was all around him. Her scent…roses and wind…sweet and fresh, and he was falling into a sea of silvery green, her eyes, Rose Davenport’s amazingly beautiful eyes. She was smiling up at him, sighing softly, lost in a cloud of soft, white…ruffles? Pillows, pillows with ruffles. Hell, a motherlode of them, like the pile he’d seen on that old bed in her shop.
He’d had such thoughts about that bed and Rose, and now, like magic, here he was, stretched above her and so hot for her that not even the ruffles bothered him. Griff grinned with pure pleasure. This was like the old days—a beautiful woman tumbling into his arms after minimal effort on his part. Maybe his luck was changing.
He brushed the hair from her cheek and lowered his head to taste her lips.
She touched his mouth with one fingertip—one cool, irresistible fingertip—and screamed in his ear.
He flinched. Why the hell was she screaming at him? It’s not like he’d twisted her arm to get her here. There is no way he would ever become that desperate.
She screamed again. Longer and louder.
Griff opened his eyes to a wall covered with faded pink cabbage roses and realized that the cool fingertip against his lips was merely a damp spot on the pillowcase. He was drooling, for God’s sake.
He sat up to flip the pillow over, and whacked his head against the ceiling that slanted above the bed—just one more of Fairfield House’s charming period details. It was his own damn fault for opting to sleep in his old room. Considering his reason for being there, it just hadn’t seemed right to lay claim to Devora’s majestic four-poster. Not to mention the fact that when he’d tried, his first night there, one of the damn bed rails had let go, leaving him sleeping at a sixty-degree angle. Or trying to, anyway.
He realized it was absurd, but sometimes it seemed as if the old house knew what he had planned for it and was responding the same way its mistress would have: with regal disdain.
The earsplitting sound came again. Not a scream, he realized, but a car horn. Who the hell…?
He swung from the bed, wincing as his left leg threatened to buckle under him, and lunged toward the window. With both hands planted on the sill, he checked out the circular drive below.
Directly beneath his window was a white pickup truck. What looked like an old blue-and-white quilt spilled over the rear tailgate and a familiar logo adorned the driver’s door.
Somewhere downstairs was a shopping bag full of dead flowers with the same logo: a straw hat with black streamers that seemed to be fluttering in the wind and the words Second Hand Rose, Specializing in Has-Beens of Distinction.
So. Has-beens of distinction were Rose Davenport’s specialty. How very fitting, he thought, irritable as only a man who’s recently been yanked from a sound sleep and slammed his head into a wall can be.
Leaving the engine running, Rose hopped from behind the wheel and grinned up at him. Not, he couldn’t help noting, with anything resembling the lustful enthusiasm she had exhibited in his dream.
“Did I wake you?” she called to him.
“No,” he retorted, the rasp in his voice something only black coffee, and lots of it, would ease. “I always get up at…” He squinted over his shoulder at the bedside clock. “Six-thirty?” he bellowed. “Woman, do you know what time it is? It’s six-freakin’-thirty in the morning.”
“Six-freakin’-thirty-five, actually,” she corrected. “Which means we’re already running late, so move your butt, Griffin.”
“Late for what?”
She threw her arms in the air. “Life, Griffin, life. Look at this beautiful morning, the sky, smell the ocean, hear the buzz of the bees. Aren’t you just revving to get out and be part of it?”
He yawned. “No.”
“I thought you military types were supposed to be early risers.”
“Think again,” he suggested, turning away.
“I have coffee.”
Griff hesitated and turned back to see her reach into the truck for a steel thermos.
As he looked on, she removed the cap and sniffed. “Mmm.”
“Black?”
“And strong as sin. There’re homemade blueberry muffins, too.”
“You made muffins for me?” he asked, surprised.
“Not specifically for you. I made them for a brunch I had a couple of weeks ago and there were some left in the freezer.”
“I see.”
“I thawed a couple just for you,” she added.
“Thanks,” he said, feeling considerably less obliged to be polite than he had a few seconds ago. “Leave ’em with the coffee on the porch. I’ll be down in a few hours.”
“That’s quite an imagination you have there. You can’t actually believe I rose at the crack of dawn to fetch you breakfast.”
“It sure looks that way.”
“Get real, Griffin. This is Saturday. In a few hours we’ll have thirty miles and a morning’s work under our belts.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yard sales, dozens of them,” she added, waving the classified section of the newspaper at him.
“Thanks, I already have more yard than I know what to do with.” He yawned again, wondering if he crawled back into bed right then, the