Tall, Dark And Difficult

Her friend’s challenge interrupted her musing. She decided to wing it. “Such as establishing the fact that a given individual’s number of potentially satisfying mates is not limited to one. Studies show there are any number of suitable candidates—a category, in other words—a societal subset of similar Homo sapiens—a particular sort of personality—a character type, if you will.” She paused to breathe. “And I assure you, no matter what delusions Edie Blanchard has about the man, Hollis Griffin is most definitely not my type.”

The bell over the door sounded.

Lisa whimpered and lost her pacifier.

Griff walked in.

Maryann looked at him, then turned to face Rose and mouthed, Pierce Brosnan.

Rose had two silent words of her own. Why me?

She was suddenly sorry she had ever mentioned Griff to Maryann, and seeing the gleam in her friend’s eye as he approached, she had a feeling she was about to be even sorrier.

Stopping beside Maryann, he looked directly at Rose. “I need to talk to you.”

She eyed him reproachfully. “Forgive my lapse into good manners, but Maryann, this is Hollis Griffin. Hollis,” she continued, imbuing the name with just the barest hint of mockery, “this is my friend, Maryann McShane, and her daughter, Lisa.”

He turned his head, nodding at Maryann and flicking his gaze over the baby, who was winding up for a good cry. “Pleased to meet you, Maryann. Beautiful baby.”

“Hello, Hollis,” Maryann replied with a little smile and a nod of her own. “And thank you. I think she’s beautiful, too.”

“The name’s Griff,” he told her.

“Griff,” she repeated.

Rose observed the brief exchange, as she had observed dozens of other men the first time they laid eyes on Maryann—all five feet, eight gorgeous inches of her. But for once, the instant she was watching for never came, the instant when the man’s eyes glazed over and he struggled to keep his jaw from dropping. Instead, Griff turned his attention back to Rose.

“Can we talk now?”

“I’m afraid—” Rose began.

Maryann cut her off. “I’m leaving.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Rose insisted, her look shorthand for Don’t you dare leave me here alone.

“Oh, but it is,” replied Maryann, declining to decipher the code as she wheeled the stroller around to face the door. “I want to get home before Lisa realizes she’s hungry for more than that pacifier.”

“But we haven’t finished our discussion,” Rose persisted.

“Oh, we will. Most definitely. For now,” she said, doggedly ignoring the silent distress signals Rose was sending, “hold this thought. From my mouth to God’s ear, and in record time.” She grinned and glanced upward. “Thank you, Gramma Viola.”

Then she was gone.

Griff glanced around, frowning. “Who’s Gramma Viola?’

Rose shook her head. “It’s…complicated.”

He nodded.

She stood there.

Alone. With Hollis Griffin. Just where she did not want to be. Devora’s nephew or no, the man was insufferable, unfriendly and tasteless. And she hadn’t been able to get him off her mind for the past two days, eight hours and sixteen minutes. Give or take a few hours of sleep here and there.

And not, it pained her to admit, simply because he had stolen her hydrangeas. Some inner sense warned that nothing would ever be simple with Griffin, and simple was how she liked things.

So why couldn’t she stop thinking about the man?

It was ridiculous. And aggravating.

“So,” she said, folding her arms across her chest for much the same reason medieval warriors raised drawbridges: to protect against invaders. He might be wearing khaki slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled and neck open, but Rose saw battle armor. “Talk.”

Yeah, Griff, talk, he ordered himself. That’s why you finally broke down and came here, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Yes, he assured himself firmly. He was here because he needed the woman’s help. Period. Nothing more or less. He was, well, in a word, desperate.

“Look,” he began, shoving one hand in his pocket, then taking it out again. “About the other day…the way I left…I’m not usually that…”

“Sensitive?” she suggested, green eyes full of enjoyment.

“Exactly.” He presented her with a smile that was both grudging and self-derisive. “I realize I was way out of line, especially after you went out of your way to be friendly and make me feel welcome and all. And I just want to say I’m…”

“Sorry?” she helped out again.

He nodded, relieved. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“No problem.” Her mouth curved into a teasing smile. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to offend you. I just call ’em like I see ’em.”

“Yeah. Right,” Griff muttered, preferring not to explore it any further.

“Of course, even I can be wrong.”

“What does that mean? That now you don’t think I’m sensitive?”

“What I think is that I should keep what I think about you to myself from now on.”

“Fine with me. So…truce?”

“Truce. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“More or less,” he hedged. He cleared his throat. “But not exactly. I also came to see you because I…” In spite of the fact that he’d practiced what he had to say all the way there, the word need lodged itself in his throat like a chunk of day-old doughnut, refusing to come up or go down. “I…want to hire you.”

She looked startled and bewildered by the announcement. Which made two of them, thought Griff.

“Hire me?”

“Your services, I mean.”

“I see. And exactly which of my services are you interested in hiring me to perform?” she enquired, her tone chilly and mocking.

“Not that,” he blurted, aghast. Could the woman possibly believe he had to pay women for their company? And that if he did, he’d go about it in such a clumsy fashion?

“That,” she repeated, her lips drawing into a soft rosy bow that did not help his concentration at all. “That being?”

Her brows arched and her lips twitched.

She was laughing, Griff realized. At him. The sheer humiliation of it bounced around like a pinball inside him, slamming his pride hard enough to trigger some abandoned, deeply buried response system. A sort of Freudian kick in the ass.

As their gazes locked, he felt his grip on the cane relax and his lips settle into a comfortable smile. “That being any service requiring negotiations of a personal nature,” he said in a soft, deep voice that was only the slightest bit rusty. “The specific service I have need for at the moment is of a less intriguing, more professional nature.”

There was no mistaking the look of heightened awareness in her pretty eyes. It was laced with wariness, and with excitement. It was a look Griff hadn’t seen on a woman in quite a while. A look he’d thought he didn’t care if he ever saw again. He’d thought wrong, he realized. Suddenly, to his surprise, he felt more at home in his skin than he had in a long time.

“To be specific, I want to hire you to help me complete Devora’s collection,” he told her. “The birds,” he prodded gently, when she continued to stare at him in silence.

“Of course.” She ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging an amber-jeweled butterfly clip so that it seemed to be dancing across the sun-kissed waves near her ear. He liked it.

“I’m sorry. I was…thinking of something else for a moment,” Rose explained, then wanted to kick herself when Griff’s indulgent smile assured her that he knew exactly what that something else had been.

She didn’t like this, not one bit, and there was no way in heaven that she was going to agree to work for the man. Hire her, indeed.

“I’d really like to help you,” she told him, “but as I explained the other day, this really is not my field of expertise.”

“Maybe not, but there’s no denying you know a hell of a lot more about antiques in general than I do.”

She conceded that with a small shrug. “You could learn.”

“You could teach me.”

“Out of the question. I’m in business to sell stuff, not train potential competitors.”

“Understood. You have my word of honor that I will never go into the antiques business for myself. What do you say?”

“I say I really have to get back to work now.”

“Does that mean you accept my offer?”

“No, it means I have a business of my own to run.”

She began rearranging a display of Limoges boxes, while he looked on.

“I get it,” he said, leaning against a mahogany armoire filled with linen. “You want me to beg.”

“No, really, I don’t—”

“I’m begging you, Rose. I’m a desperate man. A victim of my own ignorance. Take pity on me.”

“All right, I’ll do this much—I’ll make a suggestion.” She turned to him holding one of the prized miniature boxes in each hand, one a ripe strawberry, the other a tiny carousel. “If I were you, I would try the Internet.”

“I did. Unfortunately my computer skills are limited to flight simulation and engine design.”

“You didn’t turn up anything?”

He shrugged. “Only that one of the three birds I need is a Piping Plover, name derived from the Latin pluvius, or rain. The feminine form of rain, to be precise.”

“Rain has gender?”

“Evidently the Romans thought so. At any rate, this particular Plover is practically extinct. What does that tell you?”

“That you’re in trouble.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” He shifted so he could see her face. “Would it have any influence on your answer if I told you that you have the most amazing eyes?”

“No,” she retorted, wishing that were the truth. Just hearing him talk about her eyes in that voice—the sort of deep, dark caress of a voice that every woman hears in her most secret fantasies—had an eroding effect on her resolve. And her concentration.

“Because it’s true,” he continued. “Just when I’m convinced they couldn’t be any greener, you blink, or I do, and they’re suddenly full of silver lights.”

Rose placed the strawberry Limoges box on the shelf, picked it up and put it back down in the precisely same spot. Maryann was right. God did work in mysterious ways. Right now, he was punishing her for saying that Griff was not charming by making him disarmingly so.

“And you,” she said, putting aside both boxes and turning to face him, “are full of baloney.”

“You want me to say your eyes aren’t green? I will. It goes against my code as an officer and a gentleman, but I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to say yes.”

“Does this really mean that much to you?”

“Yes. It does.”

“Why?”

Griff hesitated. Damn. He’d wanted to play this straight. He didn’t consider a little flirting, especially when it came so naturally and she did have incredible eyes, to be dishonest. But now she was digging into his actual motives and intentions, and he was going to have to make a choice. Lie, or tell the truth and make her so angry she’d never agree to help him.

“Bottom line,” he said, “it means a lot to me, for no other reason than that it meant so much to Devora. Hell, I’d never be standing here pressing you this way otherwise. She made it clear she wanted the collection completed, and I feel strangely compelled to oblige.”

All true, after a fashion, he assured himself. If he was lucky, he might be able to continue to pick his way along a fine line of omissions and insinuations.

“I guess I can understand that,” said Rose.

“Good. Because I really need your help. And I’m prepared to be generous,” he added, hoping to sway her with the more honest incentive of cold, hard cash.

At first she appeared uninterested in the offer. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the counter behind her and did that distracting, sort of pouty thing with her lips that he’d noticed she did when she was pondering something.

“How generous?” she asked.

Griff considered the price she’d charged for the string of dead flowers and named an hourly rate in keeping with it. He was desperate, he reminded himself as he saw her eyes flash with real interest, and something else—something he couldn’t quite name.

“I’ll do it,” she said. Then, before he could feel triumphant, she added, “But with a few stipulations.”

“Name them.”

“I’ll work for you, but not instead of you. I already have my hands full. I do a lot of business online,” she explained, pointing to the computer sitting on a small desk behind the counter, “so I’ll handle that part of the search. But you’ll have to be available to come along if I decide we should chase down a lead.”

“No problem. What else?”

“I’m the boss,” she declared. She waited for him to bristle the way he had the other 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 dream Rose would pick up where the real Rose had so rudely interrupted.

“Very funny.”

He frowned. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a yard sale is?’

“I have a vague idea,” he admitted, “and no interest in learning more.”

“But you do still have an interest in acquiring the pieces to complete Devora’s porcelain collection.”

“True,” he countered, his smile amused, “but I hardly expect to find them amidst piles of used baby clothes and old exercise equipment.”

She grinned broadly. “That’s the beauty of this business, Griffin—you can always expect the unexpected. You know what the seasoned veterans say…”

“I’ll bite. What do seasoned veterans say?”

“They say when it comes to junk, you just never know.”

“And on that less than inspiring note…”

“Who do you think coined the phrase ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’?”

“A woman.”

“Wrong. A yard sale enthusiast. In case you’ve forgotten, Griffin, you’re the one who asked me for help. You’re a desperate man, remember? And desperate men can’t afford to overlook a single possibility, no matter how insignificant it may appear to the eye of a raw, still wet-behind-the-ears novice.”

The raw, still wet-behind-the-ears novice resisted the urge to toss something out the window at her.

“So now that you’re up to speed on the day’s agenda, let’s get cracking,” she ordered, tossing the thermos and newspaper back into the truck. “Our first stop is an early-bird special in Middletown.”

“I don’t even want to think about birds for another five or so hours.”

“I’ll give you five minutes.”

“For what?”

“To shower and dress and get down here.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Would it help, from a motivational standpoint, if I pointed out that you are paying me by the hour…and that the meter’s been running since I turned into your drive?”

He glared at her, but didn’t bother to protest. She didn’t seem to be in a capitulating state of mind this morning…if she ever was. Beneath Rose Davenport’s soft, pretty facade beat the heart of a cutthroat venture capitalist. Pride alone demanded he not allow her to bamboozle him out of any more money than absolutely necessary.

“I’ll be right down.”

“Did you really make these muffins?” Griff asked, polishing off his second and washing it down with a swig of very fine coffee.

“Sure did,” replied Rose. “With frozen blueberries, because that’s all I could get. You ought to taste my muffins in August.”

Was that an invitation?

Griff glanced across the small cab at her. Her words held an erotic appeal that he was pretty sure she did not intend, and as tempting as it was to explore the matter further, he was smart enough not to risk it. His belly was pleasantly full, the coffee was just as hot and strong as she’d promised, and a taste of Rose Davenport would top the morning off nicely. Which was just one reason he put the notion firmly from his mind.

He was in a better mood than he’d been in a while, a better mood than he’d have thought possible considering the morning’s inauspicious start. It was as close to content as he hoped to get, and he was in no hurry for it to end.

There was also the matter of the damn birds. Because of them, he was more or less at her mercy…as his reluctant presence this morning demonstrated. A smart man knows when to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.

For several moments they drove in silence, across the bridge from the mainland to the tiny island of Jamestown. On the other side, another bridge connected Jamestown to Aquidneck Island—home to several towns, of which Newport was the most famous—and yet another, the Mount Hope Bridge, completed the circle. Rhode Islanders were geographically indisposed to driving long distances, and the trio of bridges helped to bring the entire state within their thirty-minute limit.

The water was calm and blue, the fresh air and the hum of tires on pavement was lulling. The view of Rose’s long, suntanned legs was a bonus. He couldn’t recall when he’d seen someone work a clutch so captivatingly. He also realized that he had a real weakness for faded denim coveralls hacked off above the knee.

He helped himself to another muffin from the napkin-lined basket on the seat between them. “Devora used to make blueberry pancakes for breakfast every Saturday morning,” he remarked, surprising himself by voicing the thought even as it drifted through his head.