Almost Always_Book 2 Read online

  She’d sipped at a quarter glass of champagne before Ian had arrived, and the liquid had soured in her belly after their meeting. “I have a rule against raiding the minibar.”

  Griffin gave a smile. “Sure you do. But lucky enough, at times our moral codes take quite divergent paths. White wine?”

  “All right.” However, she’d lay the blame for her lapse not at Griffin’s door, but Ian’s. He made her so angry she just barely resisted stomping a foot—because she’d missed her opportunity to kick him with it where it counted. “Are you going to have something too?”

  “Definitely.” She saw him withdraw a bottle of wine from the mini fridge. For himself he poured some sort of amber liquid in a glass, neat. Then he crossed to the couch, setting down the two glasses on the nearby table. As he took a seat on the cushions, he grabbed up a box of tissues.

  She frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.” He patted the place beside him. “I’m ready.”

  For what? But before she could voice the question, he patted the cushion again and sent her an encouraging smile.

  She couldn’t figure him out. Sitting wasn’t exactly appealing at the moment, not when she needed to work off some righteous anger. Call her silly and emotional, but seeing Ian had brought up a roiling combination of insult, disappointment and humiliation.

  She would never fall in love again. Look what could happen.

  “Those shoes must be killing you,” Griffin said with another encouraging smile. “Though they’re sexy as hell.”

  The compliment took her ire down a tick, so she made her way to the place beside him. Once she sank onto the seat, he reached for one shoe and brought it to his lap. His fingers found the zipper tab at the heel of the sandal and tugged it down. “Very sexy,” he murmured, slipping it off.

  He left that foot on his hard thigh and bent for the other. With the same tender care, he removed the shoe. With one big hand draped over the tops of her feet, he reached for a handful of tissues that he then offered to her, the odd expression back on his face. “Go ahead, honey-pie. It was my fault we were there tonight. I guess it’s fair that you cry on my shoulder.”

  Cry on his shoulder? The tissues slipped from her hand as Jane stared at him. Then the pieces came together—his tender consideration, his careful movements, that look on his face that was part kindness, part resignation and part pity. For a moment she went speechless, then her anger started to boil again.

  “You think I still care about that…that…”

  “Norm Scrogman?” Griffin suggested.

  How Griffin knew Ian’s real name, she couldn’t say. But it was as good a pejorative as any. “I despise him.”

  “Sure you do.”

  He didn’t believe her. Jane slid her feet from his lap and gave him the evil eye. “Listen to me. The man is a selfish, egotistical, unabashed and unashamed user.”

  Maybe he mistook her tight voice for a tear-clogged throat. He picked up the tissue box and pressed it into her hands. “Go ahead. Get it all out.”

  She threw the cardboard carton at him. He ducked, and it bounced off the cushion and fell to the floor. “Hey!” he protested.

  “Just be glad I’m not holding the letter opener,” she said. “Don’t you get it? I won’t cry over that man. Any man.” Ever again.

  “Still, you’re shaking.”

  “From rage. Do you know what he did to me?”

  “I’m pretty curious now, I must admit.”

  Jane swiped up her wineglass and took a healthy swallow. Griffin, his gaze still wary, reached for his own beverage. “Let’s agree not to throw anything else, okay?”

  “I’m just so mad!” Jane declared. “Seeing him again brought it all back. I feel as if I’ve swallowed a balloon and it’s inflating inside me.”

  He made a go-ahead gesture with his glass. “Then by all means let out some of the pressure, Jane. Though I find the idea of you exploding…uh, never mind.”

  More heat shot over her skin and she glared at him. “Did you have to bring that up now?”

  “I probably shouldn’t,” he admitted. “It’s just that you’re kind of red-faced and your breath is coming too fast and—”

  He broke off as she half cocked her wineglass. “—and I’m going to be very quiet now and let you get your feelings off your chest—” his glance dropped to her heaving breasts and then jerked back to her face “—I mean off your, um, mind.”

  Her gaze narrowed on him. “I think you’re trying to distract me. Tease me out of my temper.”

  “A little. Is it working?”

  His semihopeful and too-charming smile didn’t move her. “No. Because that means you’re still feeling sorry for me.”

  “Shouldn’t I? Apparently the two of you had something going, some sort of…understanding and then he was a jerk to you.”

  “Jerk doesn’t cover it,” she muttered. “Have you ever read one of his books?”

  “Not really my thing. I was on a plane or two when the movie adaptations played, but though I usually slept or read through them, I caught the gist.” Griffin looked down at his drink, then back up. “I admit I heard Skye mention his name, so I checked out his website. I read some reviews of his books.”

  Jane tilted her head. “What’d you think?”

  “That you might have guessed your association wasn’t going to be happy-ever-after when the romantic relationship in every one of his novels ends in death by lingering disease or natural disaster.”

  Despite herself, Jane laughed. “Now I feel an even bigger fool.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t mean to rub salt in the wound.”

  “You’re not listening. I’m past being wounded when it comes to Ian.” She took another swallow of wine. “He called me his muse, you know. In print.”

  “Three times.”

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  “You can learn a lot online.”

  “He was my client for almost three years. His output was amazing, but he needed someone to help keep things straight. He usually had two or more books going at a time, and he’d bounce ideas off me every morning. We’d polish the pages he’d written every evening.”

  “Was he your only client?”

  She shrugged. “He took up most of my time the last two years we were together. Evening work sessions turned into dinners. We started getting together weekends too. Then all indications were that we were headed for…”

  “An ending unlike those in his bestselling novels.”

  “Yes.” Like her father never failed to mention, she had been that silly and emotional. “He said such pretty things—and knew exactly when to say them. I’m annoyed to admit I soaked it all up.”

  “Why shouldn’t you—”

  “Because I should have been smarter. More wary.” But the male attention and approval had been heady. “Looking back, I realize it was just too…studied.”

  Griffin frowned. “Meaning?”

  “I think it was kind of a first draft. That Ian was working out relationship moves to use in a future book.”

  “Oh, God.” Griffin looked away.

  “Maybe he finally got all he needed from me. I only know that one day he said he wanted to start working on something new. And work on it in a different way—this time he was going to write without my assistance.”

  Griffin groaned. “I can see where this is going.”

  “I didn’t suspect a thing. I even thought it was a good idea—good for our personal relationship—as a matter of fact.” Her jaw tightened. “A couple of mornings later, when he’d told me he was going to be at a meeting, I let myself into his house because I’d left some papers I needed beside his computer. That’s when I encountered a woman…Deandra. She was wearing the long cardigan sweater I left there for chilly mornings.”

  “And nothing else, I presume.”

  It came back to her now, the other woman’s startled excuse, her own initial and ridiculous inclination to disbelieve her lying eyes. Then cold had wa
shed over her, followed by an unnatural heat burning outward from her chest. “Ian was stepping into his pants when I walked into his office.”

  Griffin tossed back the rest of the liquid in his glass. “His reaction?”

  “In two words: somewhat sheepish.” She was reliving her own reaction now, the curdling contents of her stomach, the dizzying speed of her pulse, the taste of metal in her mouth.

  “He asked that I come back at four that afternoon.” Her fingers curled into fists. “I was leaching dignity by the second, so I agreed. I assumed we’d made the appointment to give me time to pack up my things—I had books there, my extra laptop—”

  “Your favorite cardigan.”

  “You can’t imagine I’d want that back.” He shook his head and she picked up the story. “When I returned later, he was sitting at his desk, and he proceeded as if nothing had happened. He thought now that the truth was out, we could continue working together as before. Though he needed a new romantic muse, he still appreciated my professional skills.”

  “Jesus.” Griffin laughed. “Even I know there are rules.”

  “Yes. The fact that he wrote bestsellers didn’t give him a pass on lying and cheating. I told him so.”

  He nodded. “Of course you did. Followed up, I assume, by a dramatic rending of his manuscript-in-progress.”

  Shocked, Jane blinked, then set the wineglass on the table with a firm clack. “No. That would be against the rules too.”

  “Jane,” Griffin said on a sigh.

  “Huh?” Closing her eyes, she flopped back to the cushions. How she wished she could pluck that piece of her past out of her head and toss it away, she thought, forking her hands through her hair. Her muscles tight with tension, she stretched for the table with her bare toes, extending her legs as long as they would go. The hem of her dress tickled the top of her thighs as it rose. “He made me feel so naive. So needy.”

  The air suddenly shifted, and she felt Griffin rear off the couch. She opened her eyes to see him stalking toward the windows, a beautiful male figure in his stylish clothes. His shoulders looked a mile wide as he placed the inner surface of one forearm against the glass and stared into the night. “Maybe we should go to b—I mean to sleep.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her gaze idly ran down the length of his spine. She was accustomed to seeing him shirtless, and she imagined him that way now—that bronze swath of skin that stretched from neck to hips, the shallow valley of his spine, the play of muscles as he pulled himself up the cliff at the lower tip of the cove. “I’m too wound up for sleep.”

  He swung around. That laser gaze of his fixed on her face, and she felt herself going hot. Had he sensed her checking him out? She shot straight in her seat, yanking down the hem of her dress as far as it would go. Her gaze shifted aside and caught on her reflection in a mirror across the room. Her hair was tousled and wild. Remembering her conversation with Ian all over again, she touched the disordered waves.

  “Why wasn’t he honest with me back then?” she asked the woman in the glass as she yanked her fingers through the curling locks. “Tonight he didn’t have trouble communicating this new hair wasn’t to his taste. Why couldn’t he have talked to me before humiliating me by fooling around behind my back?”

  Griffin started back across the room, and she shifted to address him. He’d unfastened the top two buttons on his shirt, and her eyes stalled on the wedge of revealed skin. She cleared her throat and lifted her gaze to his face. “Couldn’t he have said, ‘Jane, it’s been nice, but we’re over’?”

  When her companion didn’t answer, a frisson of concern tickled her neck. She licked her lips and pressed farther into the cushions and then found herself talking again, as she always did when she was nervous. “Or he could have left a message on my phone.” Her voice lowered, and she tried intoning in an Ian-serious imitation. “‘Jane, I’m sorry, but it’s time I move on.’”

  A still-silent Griffin was standing over her now, the fierce expression on his face making him seem more pirate than that afternoon when she’d found him in eye patches and an earring. Her brain seemed to be stuck on babble. “Even a text would have—”

  “Jane,” Griffin interrupted, voice tight and matter-of-fact. “I’m sorry, but I’m having one of those inexplicable man-lust moments. Meaning if you don’t get behind a locked door in the next seven seconds, I’m going to be all over you like coconut oil at a nudist colony.”

  At that, the heat in his gaze evaporated her thoughts. It seemed to evaporate the air too, because she went breathless as desire surged, then raced pell-mell through her bloodstream, flushing her skin like a fever. Ian Stone was cleared from her mind, his past betrayal suddenly wiped away by the big, tempting display of muscled male looming so close she could feel his sexual intent radiating outward to press against her skin.

  She’d wanted to work off her temper, but now she couldn’t remember what she’d been so mad about.

  Other than Griffin.

  Clearly, she was mad for him, she admitted to herself, because when he’d ordered her to be his party date, there’d been no other reason to agree. Oh, she’d told herself she’d gone along to support his interest in mingling with other writer types. That she wanted to witness him making professional progress. But that had been as good an excuse as any. Fact: she found him fascinating. Fact: despite all the reasons why she shouldn’t be alone in a hotel room with him, she was. Fact: he’d been cold-hot-cold when it came to her, and it seemed as if he was running hot again.

  Why not take advantage of that? She had those kinks she claimed she wanted to work out.

  There was no need to get all uptight about their bubbling chemistry. It was merely the biological imperative to have sex, she told herself. Those irresistible feelings of desire that were near impossible to overcome or explain—so why overanalyze? She’d done research for an author once and learned why historically there were so many rules governing marriage—they were developed to constrain these primitive urges that all men and women experience from time to time.

  But there were her own rules, Jane reminded herself. Griffin was her client, and Ian had been her client too, remember? That should prove why she shouldn’t cross the line again.

  But the devil on her shoulder whispered she’d learned her lesson about love. And Griffin wasn’t Ian. Griffin wouldn’t pretend pretty feelings he didn’t have, and Griffin was so, so attractive, with his straight nose, his perfect high cheekbones, those eyes a fiery aqua-blue beneath the dark stripes of his brows.

  She wanted him. Yes, she did. And sometimes even the librarian had to talk aloud among the stacks of books. Sometimes the governess had to break the rules, didn’t she? She had to go after what she yearned for, or else there would never be any Gothic fiction.

  And if Jane didn’t think of herself first, no one else was going to.

  * * *

  THE GOVERNESS SHOULD really get moving, Griffin thought. He wasn’t kidding about what he wanted.

  And what he didn’t want.

  He couldn’t listen to her for another moment. It got to him, the way that Ian Stone had disappointed her. And it hit just a little too close to home too. Not that he’d ever been a two-timer—banging a woman when seeing another was not his style—but he’d not always come clean about his feelings. Or lack thereof. Particularly the lack thereof. More often he’d kept silent, telling himself he didn’t want to let down a lady, when the bald truth was that keeping his own counsel was for his own convenience.

  “Five seconds,” he warned Jane.

  She slowly rose to her feet.

  He didn’t call the sensation sluicing through him disappointment. He’d made the offer—ultimatum, whatever—and was happy to abide by her decision. Hell, he’d counted on her stalking off. It was just as effective a way to prevent her Jane-tentacles from attaching to him as a tumble in his bed. See, every word that came out of her lush mouth made him almost want to care—and, hell, he knew he was incapable of doing more than a sh
allow imitation of that. Focusing on her body in bed would keep her out of his head.

  Having her go to her own bed would work almost as well.

  She had to brush by him to get to her room. As she moved, her sweet scent stroked him first. He cleared his throat. “Good ni—”

  Her lips muffled the rest of what he’d meant to say.

  Surprise slammed his heart against his ribs throughout the kiss. It kept him frozen too, until she stepped back and looked up at him. Her mouth opened.

  He braced for whatever was going to come out of it.

  “Have you ever been to a nudist colony?”

  His jaw dropped. He shook his head. “Where the hell did that come from? Are you working on a Wikipedia article now?”

  “You brought it up. It made me curious.”

  This was what was wrong with her. This was what made her dangerous. She unbalanced him. When he tried to scare her off or push her away, she stood her ground. And then she demanded disturbing things—I had to help him include the emotion, she’d said. You’ll have to do that too—or asked odd, irrelevant questions like this one. He barely restrained himself from wringing her neck. “No, Jane, I’ve never been to a nudist colony.”

  She nodded. “Because you’d think they’d use sunscreen instead of coconut oil.”

  Now it was his turn to stare. “Your brain is too damn busy.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” she said, looking down. Then she peeped up at him through the screen of her lashes. “Want to try quieting my wild mind?”

  As if he was his sister’s OM chewing gum. Jesus! This wasn’t turning out how he’d expected. Which should be exactly as he expected when it came to Jane. Still, he couldn’t move.

  “First, I want to make clear this has nothing to do with our working relationship. Instead, let’s think of it like this,” she said. “Right now, we’re in a place out of time.”

  “Out of time,” he echoed.

  “This isn’t the real world.” She gestured with one arcing arm.

  He followed the movement and found himself looking out the window at the lights of Los Angeles. He was a native. Jane was also a Los Angeleno. This was their real world.