Asking For It (37 page)

"Are you cra — ?" Griffith's attorney made a visible effort to control himself. "Mr. Blaine, I can't recommend that course of action. The whole point of this conference is to — "

"The point is to settle this dispute." Griffith gave his attorney the kind of look Kate had seen him give her once or twice. Pure steel.

Griffith's attorney pressed his lips together. He looked like he would have been happy to say more, and adamantly, but that was when Ricky, in a bright tone, spoke up. "I think a private conference straight between the parties would be a great idea."

Kate turned on him. "
What
?"

Ricky didn't quite meet her eyes. "Griffith has a point. More could be accomplished if you two had a chance to talk...informally."

"What?" Kate asked again. She didn't want to be alone with Griffith. Hadn't that been the whole point of bringing along an attorney? Those inappropriate longings of hers — No!

"It would be highly irregular," Griffith's attorney said.

"But we're agreeable," Ricky replied, despite the sharp stab he received from Kate's heel under the table.

"Let's do it." Griffith gave his attorney another meaning-laden stare.

Kate, meanwhile, gripped Ricky's wrist. Under her breath, she hissed, "What are you doing?"

Ricky used Kate's hand on his wrist to guide her up from her chair. With a raised finger meaning, 'give us a minute,' he led her to the far corner of the room. There he took both of her hands and leaned down to whisper. "Arnie was right, he's a sucker for you."

"
What
?"

"It's as plain as day," Ricky whispered back. "Just hear what he has to say."

Griffith was a sucker for her
? First Arnie, and now Ricky. How deluded could the men in her life get? Couldn't either of them see Griffith for who he was — a man just like her old boyfriend, Eric? "No way," Kate said.

"Look, nothing dire can happen. Even if he gets you to agree to something you later don't like, it isn't set in stone, not until we lawyers take a stab at it."

"I don't want to — "

"Kate." Her one-time camper gripped her hands, looking stern. "The point is to keep Camp Wild Hills open, correct?"

Kate felt her temperature rise beneath her cool-looking suit. "Of course that's correct." But talking to Griffith wouldn't accomplish that. And besides, seeing him, being so close to him, was doing things to her that shamed her. She had so
missed
him.

"Then just — talk to him. I'm not asking you to do anything more than that."

Kate ground her teeth. She saw no point in a private talk with Griffith. But Ricky had driven up here to help her, taking a day off of work he could ill afford. Even if he was completely wrong and misguided, she couldn't refuse his request. "Under protest," she muttered. She would have to be careful. Oh, so careful. Watch her own grip on reality.

Ricky beamed and gave her hands one last squeeze. "All right, then." He turned to the two waiting men. "Mr. Granger, let's go check out the cafeteria. I'll buy."

"As well you might," Griffith's attorney muttered.

From her corner, Kate watched with dread as Ricky opened the door for Mr. Granger, and they both walked out of the room. But she wasn't going to put on a weak front. As soon as the door closed, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stalked straight up to the table where Griffith still sat.

"So," she said. "You wanted to talk alone." Her tone said,
you might as well go to hell
.

Griffith's relentlessly charming smile toned down. Finally. "Why don't you have a seat?"

Kate considered that, and decided she'd look weaker standing than sitting, so she sat. With her back straight, she made herself meet Griffith's eyes.

That was a mistake. The man had...powerful eyes. And they took her back, back to the porch of Bunkhouse Three where they'd looked up at the stars, back to a kiss of yearning and tenderness, back to... Kate shuddered with a shaft of utterly forbidden longing. She had to remember: just as with Eric, none of those moments had been true.

Watching her, Griffith crossed his forearms on the tabletop. "It really
is
good to see you."

Kate made a rude sound.

Griffith's lips curved. "There's not a thing I could say you'd believe, is there?"

"True. So why the charade of this private conference, or any settlement conference at all?" Ricky had explained to Kate it was extremely rare for a party to actually request a settlement conference. It was seen as a sign of weakness. But, to her eye, Griffith was not looking particularly weak.

Griffith uncrossed his arms. "Okay, let's take it from where you're sitting now, disbelieving everything I say. So if I tell you I don't intend to see Camp Wild Hills close, you won't believe it."

"Not for a minute."
What was he up to
?

"Fine. Don't believe me." Griffith spread his fingers on the tabletop. "But...fantasize for a minute, if you will."

Kate snorted. Fantasizing was exactly what she was
not
going to do. She tapped a toe on the floor.

"Let's pretend," Griffith said, "that I'm not going to build the Wildwood housing project, or at least not in its present form. Let's pretend that means I won't have to divert Wild Tail Creek. I won't take your water."

Kate stared at the faded lemon color of the paint on the opposite wall. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. If they were going to pretend — ? But that was Griffith's idea, not hers. "And what, exactly, is the point of pretending?" she asked.

"The point," Griffith said softly, "is so you can start helping Camp Wild Hills, instead of hurting it."

Her gaze shot back to him. "I'm not hurting the camp." She was doing everything in her power, in fact, to prevent herself from going down that path again.

But Griffith was craven enough to go on. "Isn't it hurting the camp to waste time on a needless lawsuit, when you can be building that expansion you were planning?"

Kate's lips parted. "How can I build an expansion when you're going to close the camp?"

"But I'm not."

"Oh, please." She was getting annoyed now. "How many times can you repeat the same lie?"

"It's not a lie, Kate. Oh, I don't blame you for being skeptical. I was skeptical of myself for a while, there." Griffith shook his head. "I've been working on the Wildwood project for over two years, have several hundred grand invested in it already, but..." He stopped and laughed softly. "But it only took two weeks with those kids to convince me there was no way I could take the camp away from them. Come on, Kate. Think about it. Elroy? Little Elroy making it across the whole swimming pool for the first time. Do you remember the look on his face?"

Griffith gazed at Kate, smiling as if he truly were remembering. As if he'd gotten the kind of pride out of the moment that Kate had.

As if...he got it.

This was the man she'd been missing so badly, this one gazing straight at her.

The lurking longing inside Kate swelled. All her painful, yearning memories swirled wildly in her heart and swept up into her brain. What if he did get it? What if he was telling the truth? Then everything she thought had happened to Griffith during his time as counselor last August really had happened. Then he was actually the decent, caring man she'd fallen in love with.

She looked across the table. Her longing to believe was huge. If Griffith could possibly be who she'd thought he was last summer — life would be fantastic, a dream come true. Really good.

Too good.

Kate's huge longing turned sharp. Sharp enough to cut. In fact, her longing to believe cut through — to the memory of the other man she'd believed, and to the harm he'd done. It cut to the polished wood casket under a cold, gray sky, and the thud of the newly turned soil that she'd thrown into her brother's grave.

Her fault. His death all her fault.

The longing inside Kate abruptly transformed. It turned to horror. In horror she jumped up from her seat. The chair scraped on the linoleum floor. "No!" she shouted. Then, lowering her voice with enormous effort, she whispered hoarsely, "You want to help Camp Wild Hills? Then go away."

She was shaking, physically trembling with her hate for Griffith. Yes, hate. She didn't long for him — she loathed him! Of course she did. She'd loathed him all along. Not for an instant had she truly felt otherwise.

Griffith looked into Kate's burning eyes. So much for his grand plan of a reconciliation, he thought. Ever since he'd instructed Don Granger to arrange this meeting, he'd been looking forward to seeing Kate again, planning how to effect the rapprochement he was after.

They were on the same side, he and Kate. They could be
together
. Or so he'd believed. But it was almost...religious, the way she had to see him as evil.

All the same, he wasn't ready to give up. Calmly, choosing his words with care, he said, "I want to help. And I think I can help the camp more than by simply staying away."

Her eyes widened. "I doubt that."

"You're planning an expansion. It so happens I have some expertise in construction development. Maybe even some connections to funding."

"Ha!" Her eyes managed to get wider. "What a line! You're going to help me build a few crummy bunkhouses for charity-case kids — instead of all your mini-mansions for millionaires?"

"Actually," Griffith said. "Yes."

She lifted her head and laughed.

That grated. He hadn't earned that kind of skepticism. Beyond skepticism, it was...mockery. He'd been a good counselor, hadn't he? He'd convinced frightened Elroy to swim across the pool, he'd turned Orlando into a responsible almost-adult. She had no reason to hate him so much.

No reason except his little evasion about being her landlord.

Griffith pressed his lips together. "All right, I'm sorry I didn't tell you who I was from the beginning. But in the long run, that turned out to be for the best. I'm
not
who I was any more. Though still your landlord, I'm not the evil villain who's going to take your water."

Kate stopped laughing. She leaned over to press her fists on the tabletop. "It matters," she told Griffith. "Lying matters."

Her voice had an odd edge to it. Her whole self had an edge, if he could detach himself long enough from his misery to observe her. Her mouth twisted bitterly. "But it's not all your fault," she told him. "Falling for liars — and criminals — seems to be my specialty."

She might as well have impaled him. Griffith sat frozen. "I'm hardly a criminal."

"No." Kate straightened, her gaze pure scorn. "You're that much different from Eric. You make sure your dirty dealings are within the bounds of the law. Clever. And you won't go to prison, no matter how much you deserve it."

Eric
? Griffith felt an odd tumbling inside. Who the hell was Eric? And what did he have to do with Griffith? But the sinking tumbling inside told him what the mysterious Eric had to do with him. They'd both been Kate's lovers.

Griffith spoke very softly. "So, I'm like Eric?"

"Exactly like Eric."

"Who went to prison?"

"He deserved worse." Kate took a step back from the table. She looked as if she wished she hadn't brought the whole thing up.

Griffith kept his voice soft and neutral. He was feeling anything but. He needed — desperately — for her to tell him more. "Why?" he asked. "Why did Eric deserve worse than prison?"

Kate's face had gone from a flushed pink to a shade so pale Griffith was afraid she might faint. "Because he took my brother down with him. My brother, who was already floundering, with a juvenile record and nothing but an idea he was no good at anything. And Johnny
died
."

Her voice was a mere breath by the time she'd said the last bit, and there was a spot of color, feverish, at the top of her cheekbones.

Griffith felt a weight of sick despair drop down on him. Her brother had died because of this criminal, Eric.

And she was painting Griffith in the same colors.

"So I don't want your 'help.'" Kate nearly spat the words. "I don't intend to put my trust in the wrong person, not again. No, thank you." Then, her skin flushing again, she turned on her high-fashion heels, and stalked out of the room.

The door closed after her with a well-mannered click, only prevented from slamming by its damper. Griffith sat there, feeling as if a thick, black blanket had settled over him.

She was projecting, it was as clear as day, blaming Griffith for the unforgivable sins of this fellow, Eric. She had them inextricably intertwined.

She thought Eric had
killed
her brother.

And she thought Griffith was just like him.

Griffith wanted to slam his fist into the table. He wanted to lift his head and howl. He'd admit he hadn't been the best person in the world, but he'd never been
that
bad. And right now he honestly wanted to help Kate.

Good God, he wanted to
love
her.