Asking For It (14 page)

And they did take that shower together. Ah, and what a shower it had been. More than merely sexual.

Sunday morning was gray, but sunshine was still in Deirdre's heart as she came awake in the soft, king-size bed. She smiled, stretched, and rolled over.

The other side of the bed was empty.

Deirdre raised her eyebrows. Ha, now wasn't that a sign of her growing confidence in this relationship? She didn't feel a sinking dread, but instead a simple, mild curiosity.

Where was Ricky?

A tapping sound directed Deirdre's gaze to her left. Ricky was sitting in front of the little painted wooden table on the other side of the room, his eyes fixed on the screen of his laptop. He was typing furiously.

Deirdre smiled. So, Ricky had work to do. But he'd wanted this time away together. He'd wanted it enough that he'd put off work for a day.

Deirdre stayed where she was, her head propped on one hand, and enjoyed the view. There was something immensely satisfying — and sexy — about a man who was deep in concentration. All that male energy, so focused, so channeled.

Ricky was that, Deirdre thought fondly. Focused. Capable. Competent.

Oh, how she loved him.

Wait a minute. She loved him?

The thought, unbidden —
for
bidden — stiffened every muscle in Deirdre's relaxed body.

As if he'd sensed her internal response, Ricky's concentration on his computer screen broke. His gaze lifted.

Deirdre used every ounce of self-control she owned to make herself relax again, to smile. If she did love him, she was going to forget about it, make it gone. "Catching up?" she asked lightly.

He rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't believe..." Then he appeared to catch himself. "I mean, it's not that bad. I was just, uh..." But his gaze pulled back to his screen. "Fiddling around a bit, until you woke up."

Deirdre laughed. "Fiddling around?" Catching sight of her wrapper on the floor beside the bed, she reached down and grabbed it. "It's okay to admit it, Ricky. You have a ton of work to do." Wrapper in hand, she shoved one arm in the sleeve and looked over at him.

His expression was chagrined. "Shall we go out for breakfast?"

"Ricky." She dared to sound admonishing. Slipping her other arm into the wrapper, she stepped off the bed. "Admit it."

"Okay. I have a ton of work to do. But that doesn't mean we can't go out for breakfast. Or that I'm not about to strip that robe right off you and make love until you forget all about having breakfast."

Chuckling, Deirdre stepped over to his makeshift office. "You don't have to prove anything to me, Ricky. We had a marvelous day yesterday. It was...fun." She couldn't prevent the blush that heated her face. Fun? It had been fantastic; they'd been like soul mates. But of course she didn't say anything like that as she shook her head. "But if you have work to catch up on, you have work. I understand, believe me."

He sighed and his eyes travelled back to his laptop screen. "I have work."

The love bubbled up in Deirdre again. She couldn't prevent it. He hadn't wanted to disappoint her, to make this weekend any less than what he'd wanted to give her. She moved around to look at his screen. It was filled with words. Squinting, uncertain she could understand the words even if she could see them, she put her hands on his shoulders and began rubbing. "Is there anything I can to do help?"

Beneath her hands, his shoulders went stiff.

Deirdre froze.
Stupid, idiot, bird-brain
. Had she just offered to
help
him? As if he needed her help? As if she were intimate enough with him to offer any? He was a man. He had pride. Above all else, he considered himself independent. And if Deirdre knew anything about men, it was that they absolutely hated a woman who infringed on their independence.

Gingerly, she lifted her hands from his shoulders, but it was too late. She braced herself as, slowly, Ricky turned in his seat. His eyes were dark, deeply uncertain as they met hers.

"Actually," he said, very low, "there is something you could do — if you really wanted to help, that is."

Deirdre stared.

"You don't have to, of course," Ricky went on, sounding uncertain now, too. "But if I logged you onto Westlaw and gave you the citations, you could find the related cases for me. It's boring as all get out, but — "

"Sure." Deirdre knew she was wide-eyed. "I'd love to — I mean I'd like to help. Of course." Meanwhile, a slow wave of euphoria poured over her. He was accepting her offer of help, he was
asking
for it. From her.

Letting her protect him. Maybe even letting her possess him, the tiniest little bit.

Ricky gave her a grateful smile. "Great. That'd be great." Abruptly he stopped. "Unless you have your own work to do...?" His gaze was questioning.

Deirdre thought of the pile on her desk and the as-yet-unanswered phone calls: her own work plus Griffith's. She remembered the lingering questions regarding his disappearance. But all that could wait until tomorrow. "I can help," she told Ricky.

He smiled again.

"I'll get my laptop," she said, and turned quickly.

He might be ready to accept her help in looking up citations on Westlaw, but she was quite sure he wasn't ready to see her love.

Not yet, anyway.

She was smiling hard enough to hurt as she unzipped her case to fetch her laptop computer.

Not yet, but the way this was going...maybe someday.

CHAPTER NINE

"You didn't pick tomatoes this morning," Kate remarked. At lunch on Monday, she stood beside Griffith's table in the dining hall with a clipboard in her hands.

Griffith put on a careless smile. "The kids didn't feel like it." Suppressing the urge to scratch his jaw wasn't easy. But he didn't want anyone to know he was dying to shave the beard off.

Nor was he going to let Kate know that her proximity as she stood by his right shoulder was making him go hot under his purposely wrinkled clothes.

Hot and bothered. He still couldn't believe what he'd seen on the map in Kate's office. The damn woman was planning an
expansion
. When her camp was
doomed
. Why the hell didn't she have somebody take a look at her lease before she started planning construction? Why hadn't she used some foresight? Been professional? He supposed he might as well have asked how she could — while being a complete witch — exert such a powerful sexual draw on him.

"I'm afraid not feeling like it isn't a satisfactory reason to skip chores." Kate made a mark on her clipboard. "Instead of free time after lunch, your campers will go back to the field and pick their share of tomatoes."

"Is
that
what they'll be doing?" Griffith murmured. "I'm relieved to have such a mystery cleared up."

Kate kept her gaze on her clipboard while her lips tightened. But she didn't tell him to get lost. She didn't say she'd had it with him and had found a real counselor to replace him.

And why not, dammit? That's what Griffith wanted to know. He'd been as awful as he knew how. He'd even let a rattlesnake into the cabin. But Kate wouldn't budge. He didn't know how much longer he could take it: the itching beard and the sense of failure, the disapproving frowns of the teenage counselors and the fidgety unhappiness of the nine-year-olds under his charge. The unwanted thoughts about Kate's stupid, planned expansion.

Or the growing suspicion that nobody back home was looking for him — six days after he'd gone missing. Nobody cared enough to try finding him.

So what? It didn't matter. Why should he care?

"We don't get to have free time?" The boy seated to Griffith's right had apparently heard Kate's edict.

"I'm afraid not." Turning to the boy, Kate's attitude rode the perfect balance between sympathy and firmness. "You had work to do this morning that didn't get done. The rule at Camp Wild Hills is work first, then play."

The boy's mouth opened in protest as he turned to the kid to his right. "We don't get to have free time today."

"What?!"

There followed a chorus of inquiry and protest all the way around the table.

"It's because we didn't do our work this morning," was repeated amongst the whines and outcries. Heads began to turn Griffith's way. Eyes narrowed in accusation or widened in hurt.

"If you get your work done," Kate said, obviously softening, "
then
you can enjoy free time — until the afternoon activity at two o'clock."

"But it would have taken all morning to pick the tomatoes," one kid pointed out.

"There's no way we could get it done by two," another finished.

All eyes focused on Griffith again. All were accusing.

Griffith shrugged. Yeah, it was his fault. So, what? He'd
intended
to get them in trouble. Or at least, he'd intended to get
himself
into trouble. Griffith frowned.

It didn't matter who got in trouble, him or them. It hadn't been his idea to become their counselor, not his idea to lead them or make sure they got any of the things out of this camp they were supposed to be getting.

He didn't feel guilty, not about anything. If bulldozers arrived to build the channel for the water just as Kate started construction on her friggin' new cabins, it would be her fault, not his.
She
was the one who'd signed the lease, the lease that he now held.
She
was the one who hadn't lined all her ducks in a row. If she lost her water, it would be her fault, not his.

He was
clever
. Not
bad
.

This was true, even though from Kate down to his runtiest nine-year-old they were all looking at him like he was a slug.

Or that he felt like one.

But how was that different from normal? Nobody back in L.A. liked him, either. They hadn't looked for him. Everybody in the world hated him — and that was fine, didn't matter. He
was
hatable, anyway. That's why he didn't need anybody. Nobody at all. For anything.

He only needed to win.

He glared at Kate, so female, so wholesome. So...oddly troubling. But he was resolute. None of it mattered. He only needed to win.

~~~

That Monday night, Griffith was missing from his table at dinner. Kate noted this fact with resignation rather than the fury she'd felt on Saturday night. He was probably hogging the hot water again, his precious, big city skin too sensitive for anything else.

Well, if he wanted to skip dinner and take a hot shower, she wasn't going to stop him. Not this time. She wasn't setting herself up for another confrontation with Griffith when he was wearing nothing but a camp towel.

Meanwhile, Griffith's kids were unsupervised at the dinner table and were creating a noisy, rowdy mess. Kate's eyes narrowed at the red blotches she could see covering their shirts and shorts.

Tomatoes.

It appeared Griffith's campers had done something other than basketing their harvest that afternoon.

Griffith still hadn't put in an appearance by the time supper ended. Campers began filing out of the dining hall to go to their various bunkhouses for an hour of indoor activity.

Breaking away from the unruly line of nine-year-olds, Orlando slouched toward Kate. "Uh, what should we be doing for the next hour?" he asked.

"Excuse me?" She frowned. "You should be going to your bunkhouses, like I announced."

Orlando scratched the edge of his mouth. "Well, see, yeah, but I think you were talking about campers who still have a counselor."

A pit formed in Kate's stomach. "You don't have a counselor?" Wondering what could have happened to Griffith — and knowing whatever it was would be her fault — Kate did her best to appear only mildly interested. "What happened to him?" she asked the teenager.

Orlando grinned broadly. "I think he had one o' those nervous breakdowns, Miss Kate. We left him sitting in the tomato field. He wouldn't move, wouldn't talk, wouldn't nothin'. Yep." Orlando nodded with satisfaction. "I think he had a nervous breakdown."

So he hadn't gone down the hill — or had a terrible accident. Relieved, Kate glanced toward Orlando's red-splattered T-shirt and raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps his nervous breakdown had a little help."

Orlando didn't have the grace to look sheepish. "Well, maybe it did, Miss Kate, maybe it did." Tilting his head, he gave her his patented defiant look. "He's a rotten counselor. He only got what he deserved."

"Hm." Kate was not about to concede the point — yet. She'd see just how badly the kids had behaved toward Griffith first. "In any case, you and the nine-year-olds should join...José's group in his bunkhouse. I don't want you in Bunkhouse Three all by yourselves."

Orlando lifted his shoulders, amused. "Sure, Miss Kate. Whatever."

Kate watched the boy saunter away. A nervous breakdown? It wasn't a broken neck, but maybe she ought to hike out to the tomato field and see the damage for herself.

The sun was riding the top of the hills to the west when Kate walked the chaparral-scented path between the fields toward the soft vegetables. As she came around one of the big oaks, she sighted the tomato field.