From This Day Forward
Instead of answering the detective, Annie jerked her head toward Griffin.
“Sorry,” he said hastily, suddenly aware he’d painfully tightened his grip on her wrist. Gritting his teeth, he forced his fingers to relax.
“Thank you,” Annie said to the detective, flashing that dimple at him again. “But I’m going to be just fine. I am fine.”
Now Griffin could breathe. Just for a second there, with the notion of Annie being a victim, he’d felt…a tad concerned.
But she’d said it herself. She was fine.
Which was why he didn’t feel the need to talk much as they left the station beyond, “I’ll give you a ride to your car.” When they reached his Mercedes, however, he did open the passenger door and politely help her into the leather bucket seat.
Before he could shut the door, though, she touched his arm. “Would you mind putting the top down?”
He cocked an eyebrow. While February in coastal California was mild—the temperature was probably near seventy today—women usually liked the convertible’s top up and the air-conditioning on, if necessary. The hair issue, he always figured.
But apparently Annie was different. “I want to feel the wind on my face,” she said.
With a shrug, he complied with her request, and in a couple of minutes they were turning out of the police-station parking lot. The sun on their faces and the wind in their hair, they started down a fairly busy two-lane road.
Griffin sucked in a huge breath of fresh air and relaxed. Hell, but the sun felt good. With only one hand on the wheel, he rubbed his neck, trying to ease the tension slowly unknotting.
He slid a glance at Annie. Her head was against the back of the seat, her eyes were closed, and that pink mouth wore a little smile.
She’d said she was fine. She looked fine.
His muscles loosened even more. Now that she was safely in his car, he didn’t mind admitting that he’d been somewhat bothered by the idea of little Annie Smith being the witness to a bank robbery. Then once he’d seen her again, seen how she’d grown up into a young woman who was still quiet and composed but also so pretty and so delicate, well, he’d downright hated the idea of Annie being shaken up.
“Hey, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.
“Oh, I am.”
Griffin glanced over at her again. She had her eyes open now, and her cheeks were pink, from either the sun or the wind or both. In each of her hands she held one of the small white sneakers she’d been wearing.
Funny.
It wasn’t so funny when she cocked back her arms and tossed them over the side of the car.
At first, Griffin’s lips couldn’t move, but his gaze darted to the rearview mirror to see the shoes tumbling along the side of the road behind them. Then his wits returned, and he shifted his foot to the brake pedal, abruptly slowing the car. “Annie—”
The vehicle behind them honked at their sudden change in speed, then pulled around to pass. “Annie—”
The vehicle behind that one honked, too, and the driver flipped Griffin an angry gesture as he passed them as well. With the shoes now several hundred feet behind and the traffic starting to pile up, Griffin gritted his teeth and moved his foot back to the accelerator. “Damn it, Annie,” he said. “You threw your shoes out of the car.”
“So sue me,” she answered.
Griffin stared. Maybe the bank robber had kidnapped his nice, quiet Annie Smith—so composed and so delicate, he’d just thought—and put this suddenly flip woman in her stead. “That’s littering,” he felt compelled to point out. “It’s illegal.”
“I think Detective Morton would let me off, don’t you?”
Griffin’s eyebrows rose. That was all he had time for, because then Annie grabbed his arm and pointed toward the gourmet-ice-cream shop up ahead. “Stop there.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I told you, I’m fine.” She squeezed his arm again. “But I want ice cream. Please. I want ice cream now.”
There was no denying that the opposite sex had interested Griffin all his life. He’d first kissed a girl at eleven, he’d first dated at thirteen and women had only become more fascinating from there. Twenty years had passed since that novice kiss, and he’d been paying attention through every one of them. He knew not to mess around when a woman spoke in that decisive tone of voice.
He braked to a stop in front of the small shop with a wide front window that proclaimed in gilded letters Strawberry Bay’s Supreme Ice Cream. Annie hopped out in her stocking feet. “Do you want something?” she asked.
He shook his head, baffled.
Her dimple winked at him as she unfastened a couple of buttons at her neck, and then she crossed her arms in front of her to grasp the hem of her long blouse. With a quick movement, she whipped the garment over her head and tossed it down on her seat, revealing the black V-neck T-shirt she wore beneath it. Then she twirled on her white socks and dashed into the shop.
All the speedy movement left Griffin’s head spinning.
It couldn’t be that Annie’s neat little body made him dizzy. Certainly he’d noticed that women had breasts before. Lots of them had trim waists and hips. Still, it was disconcerting to find that sometime when he was away, or maybe before that, when he wasn’t looking, Annie had developed the kind of pert, up-thrusting breasts and gently curving hips that were hard to look away from.
He ran a hand through his hair and forced his gaze off the door of the shop. What did it matter what Annie looked like? Annie was Annie. Annie the housekeeper’s daughter. Little girl Annie.
Annie all grown-up.
He pushed that thought away, and it wasn’t really so hard to think of her as a kid again when she was suddenly back in her seat, an enormous cone in her hand. “Double double chocolate fudge,” she said, with all the relish of a child for a special treat.
When her tongue snaked out of her womanly mouth for a taste though, he hastily looked away and started the car. “No time for breakfast this morning?” he asked lightly.
She swallowed. “I wanted ice cream.”
“Fine.” Then he hesitated. She’d used that word too, she’d said she was “fine,” but something about the shoes and the sudden urge for sweets made him just the slightest bit edgy again. “Are you sure you’re all right, Annie?”
“Mm.”
He pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road. Her mumble sounded positive, but it didn’t do much for his edgy mood. He wanted to be assured that her experience this morning hadn’t affected her. Because, strangely enough, he had a terrible premonition that that might affect him.
Griffin cleared his throat. “Sure?”
“Mm.” She made that same sound again.
He glanced over, and instantly figured out why she wasn’t giving him a straight answer. She was already pretty well occupied juggling that cone with one hand while the other snaked up the front of her T-shirt. When that hand quickly reappeared, she transferred the cone to it and then the now-free hand disappeared, worming its way into her short sleeve and then…down.
Griffin hoped like hell that the road remained clear before him, because he couldn’t have looked away to save his life. He’d heard about this—among men it was almost a locker-room joke—but as he himself had never been witness to it before, he’d always considered it an urban—er, gender?—legend.
But now he knew it to be true. Because, after Annie took an emergency lick of her melting cone and after she executed one or two little shimmies, out the sleeve of her T-shirt came her hand, and in her hand was…her bra.
Which, of course, she immediately tossed over the side of the Mercedes.
As he watched in the rearview mirror the piece of white cotton depart, fluttering in the breeze, Griffin tried not to believe that his peace of mind wasn’t getting away that easily, too.
Despite the warm sun, he felt the distinct beginnings of a chill. “Uh—” He had to clear his throat to get her name out. “Annie?”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Is something the matter?”
She was stealing his lines. Worse, she was stealing his sense of well-being. “I’m just wondering about the, uh, this sudden need to divest yourself of, uh…”
She laughed, a delicious, free little giggle that would have reassured him if he’d ever imagined that quiet Annie-Smith-the-housekeeper’s-daughter could make such a sound. “Oh, Griffin,” she said.
She patted his arm encouragingly. He caught sight of that unexpected little dimple again. He refused to let his gaze fall any lower than her mouth.
“I’m just tired of waiting,” she said.
Waiting for what? That chill grew stronger, cold prickles gathering force at the nape of his neck.
Her honey-colored hair swirling around her cheeks, she threw her free arm in the air, wiggling her fingers in the wind. “From now on, my life is never going to be the same!”
With the power of a waterfall, the cold prickles poured down Griffin’s back. Though he’d never before considered himself a superstitious man, he suddenly had the terrible feeling that his life would never be the same either.
Chapter Two
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.