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.”

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