Asking For It (39 page)

His solemn look cracked. "Am I? Am I, really? It took me awhile, Kate but, thanks in part to you, I don't think I
am
hatable any more."

"It was all a lie," Kate exclaimed. "You were never — It was all a trick."

"It was no trick, Kate. I loved you. I still do love you. Everything that happened, including my promise not to take your camp's water — It's all real."

"No," Kate breathed.

"Yes." He clasped his hands behind his back. "The only question is if you can let go of your guilt and your anger toward yourself long enough to see that, and accept it. Can you? Can you allow yourself to accept a man's love, and have a relationship? Or is your old guilt going to stop you?"

Kate could feel herself shaking again: with anger, and outrage and, yes, fear. She wasn't sure why the words he was telling her — utter nonsense — were making her feel afraid, but they were. She felt that if she didn't get away from him, right then, something terrible and dire would occur.

She opened her mouth, wanting to say — something. Something that would cut him down to appropriate size. But the fear was too big. She had to leave. So, without saying another word, and holding her car keys very tightly, she stuck them into the car, opened the door, and got in.

Her motor started with a roar and she backed up without even checking to see if Griffith was in the way. She rolled out of the dirt parking lot and onto Mineral Road, her hands clenching the wheel, her whole body shaking.

The nerve, the utter nerve of the man, trying to load this problem on her. When it was all his fault, the whole thing. He was the liar. He was the bad guy, a greedy opportunist.

She wasn't
afraid
of love. Come on. All she was afraid of was her own bad judgment. But she wasn't going to let bad judgment lead her astray now. Oh, no.

Kate drove at seventy miles per hour down the two-lane road toward Taft. What a — a concept, that she couldn't accept love. It was ridiculous, absurd, and outrageous.

Of course she could accept love...from a truly decent man. Of course she could.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was a good thing he'd talked to Arnie, or Griffith might have developed a serious inferiority complex on Friday morning following his conversation with Kate at the construction trailer. As it was, he had to jump onto a bale of straw in order to avoid getting plowed by her car as she backed out of the parking area. He perched there and watched the dust rise behind her as she peeled down the two-lane highway.

She seemed to hate him. But hatred shouldn't have stopped her from coming inside the trailer and seeing the plans. Hatred should have propelled her through the door, motivating her to point out Griffith's perfidy and discover whatever flaws in his blueprints she could use to thwart him.

Instead she'd run the other direction. She'd run, period.

Griffith set his hands on his hips and heaved a deep sigh. Thanks to a long conversation with Arnie — who'd been unbelievably cooperative once Griffith had managed to track him down — Griffith now had a good idea of what was driving Kate. She blamed herself, entirely, for her brother's death. As far as Griffith could tell, based on Arnie's second-hand narration of the story, Kate's brother could take the blame for his own useless death. Not only had he involved himself in the embezzlement scheme of his own free will, but he'd been into drugs as well. It was while on something, no doubt, that he'd taken it into his fool head to try running from a sheriff.

With another sigh, Griffith climbed off the clump of straw and started back toward the trailer. Though the sun was shining, there was a chill sitting on the valley floor. It matched the chill sitting in his chest. What if he couldn't convince Kate to let go of her misplaced guilt? Not only would she be unable to accept Griffith in her life, but she might never be happy. Griffith wanted Kate to be happy.

He was halfway back to the trailer when he saw the graffiti sprayed in angry curls at the east end of the vehicle. "Oh, hell. Not again." The trailer had only been sitting here a week, but already he'd had to paint over graffiti three times, had had to have the power line reconnected, and — by far the worst — had had to clean up a dead rat that he'd found inside the mail slot.

It was possible the rat was the result of a natural, if freakish, accident, but the other acts of vandalism were not. As with the previous occasions, the graffiti exhorted Griffith to 'Go Home.'

With his lips pressed flat, Griffith went to get the can of red spray paint he'd bought. For two seconds he'd thought Kate might be behind the vandalism, but never very seriously. And now her reaction to the trailer made it clear it was the first time she'd seen the thing. By knocking on the door she'd shown that her style of battle was direct confrontation. Of course it was.

Griffith grabbed the can of spray paint, took it outside, and carefully sprayed over the sloppy curls of black. Either there were kids with not enough to do in Sagebrush Valley City, the town ten miles to the north, or there was somebody other than Kate who wasn't happy with the alleged plans of Blaine Development.

Griffith waved the red paint back and forth, making a brighter rectangle on the rust-colored trailer. How many campers were out there, alumni, as Kate called them, who might have heard of his dastardly plans? How many had the means or motivation to drive all the way out to Sagebrush Valley and make trouble?

Griffith took his finger off the spray can and stepped back, frowning at the bright red rectangle. He thought of the dead rat and wondered what kind of trouble one of these allies of Camp Wild Hills was willing to commit.

~~~

Deirdre was holding down the fort again. This time, however, the responsibility was just fine with her. She didn't mind that Griffith had decided he, himself, had to go out and babysit the construction trailer on Mineral Road in Sagebrush Valley. She didn't mind that he put the load of carrying every other project in the office on her shoulders. She was thrilled to take care of the host of details necessary to run Blaine Development.

What she did mind was Griffith gently scolding her for doing all this good work for him when he called on the telephone Friday afternoon.

"I thought I told you to take the day off," Griffith grumbled over the land line. "You worked both Saturday and Sunday last weekend, didn't you?"

"Griffith." Seated behind his now-cluttered desk, Deirdre smiled wryly at the piles of work waiting to be done. "I'm head of this office when you're out of town. What do you suppose would happen if I simply didn't show up on a regular workday?"

"Nothing." Griffith laughed. "I was gone for two weeks and nobody even noticed."

Deirdre folded over the corner of a page in a construction schedule. "They'd notice if
I
were gone."

Griffith laughed again. It was a very different laugh from the kind he would have given his principal assistant two months ago. Then his laugh would have been pure devilment, a cheerfully ferocious happiness. Now he sounded wry and muted, wiser but not happier.

"If you don't watch out," Griffith told Deirdre, "you'll end up as dispensable as I was."

"Unlikely. Say, I got the plans for the Wildwood site that you were waiting for. Alternate E, right?"

"You have them?" Thankfully, Griffith was distracted from further discussion of Deirdre's life, or lack thereof. Actually, he was entirely accurate in saying she was spending too much time at work. She was trying to lose herself there. Heck, she needed to.

Ricky was calling her every day, sometimes more than once a day. With the miracle of call screening, Deirdre had been able to avoid actually having to speak to him. It was bad enough he was calling, clearly wanting to do damage control. She didn't want to compound the temptation by hearing his voice. She'd melt.

Deirdre didn't want to melt. She didn't want to be a doormat for that man one more time. Maybe she was giving up a real life in her work, but for right now she had to. Real life was over her head. She reached out to rock the rolled-up plans for Wildwood, the latest option from the architect. "Want me to run Alternate E out to you?" she asked Griffith.

"You mean, you personally?"

"Sure."

"And spend six hours of that life I want you to have in driving out here and back? Nah. I'll be back in L.A. tomorrow. I'll see them then."

"It'd be a nice drive," Deirdre argued. "And I've never seen this famous Sagebrush Valley. I'm curious."

"Satisfy your curiosity another time...maybe with a friend. Meanwhile, knock off early tonight, go out for drinks with somebody, a movie."

"'Somebody,'" Deirdre repeated mockingly. She curled the telephone cord around her index finger. "You mean Ricky."

"Well-l-l." Griffith had the grace to sound sheepish. "I don't know exactly what he did to you, but he does seem to want to beg forgiveness — "

"Take advantage," Deirdre translated. She uncurled the telephone cord.

" — and I certainly know how it feels to be in the doghouse," Griffith went on.

"No. You are a completely different story." Deirdre sat up straighter in Griffith's big chair.

"I am?"

"Yes. Kate Darby has every reason in the world to let you talk to her. She absolutely
ought
to listen to you. You're bending over backward — more than backward — to do the right thing for her and her camp."

"And exactly how is she supposed to know that?" Griffith sounded sincerely curious.

"By giving you a chance!" Deirdre exclaimed.

"But..." Griffith appeared to be feeling his way with care. "Doesn't Ricky deserve the same kind of chance?"

"He already
had
his chance." Deirdre had to stop and swallow to get the bitter tears out of her voice. As far as she was concerned she'd given Ricky one chance too many: a 'last date,' opportunity for her to go and perform one final 'class act' for him. The memory alone could scrape her raw.

"I see," Griffith said, but Deirdre could tell that he didn't, really. Especially after he sighed. But he was considerate enough to change the subject. "So don't talk to Ricky if you don't want to, but I'm asking you — I'm
ordering
you — to leave the office by three o'clock, y'hear? Do it for me, okay, Deed?"

Deirdre rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. The new, soft Griffith Blaine. "Fine. For you, I'll knock off at three."

"Good. And I'll see you Monday."

"Sure thing." Deirdre rotated the architect's roll of Alternate E another inch across the desk top. She'd leave the office at three... She rolled the drawings back toward herself. But what she chose to do with her time after that would be up to her, not Griffith.

~~~

Ricky was hard at work on a memo for one of the junior partners when the phone at his polished desk deep in the warren of associates' offices rang. Annoyed, Ricky glanced over. When he saw the name displayed on the screen he froze, all annoyance transformed to paralyzed excitement.

Blaine Development.

Deirdre
. Ricky's heart started pounding so hard he could barely breathe. After all the bluster she'd used in walking out on him, and after refusing to take any of his calls for two weeks, she was calling him back.

Was that really possible?

Ricky's pounding heart said yes, while his brain shook a mournful head no. Deirdre was through with him. The dump had been total. Of course it had. He'd engineered it that way. He'd wanted to get dumped.

He just hadn't known how bad it would feel.

If Deirdre were calling him now, it was probably to threaten him with a restraining order.

So, not sure whether to hope or to dread, Ricky reached out for the phone with a hand that trembled.

"Hello?" he ventured.

"Mr. Ascensios!" The voice booming from the other end of the phone was definitely not Deirdre's. Ricky blinked and tried to assimilate his disappointment, along with his surprise. Griffith Blaine was calling him? The very man? In a way, this was even more unlikely than Deirdre calling.

"Uh...Mr. Blaine." Ricky glanced toward his open office door. With the phone to his ear, he got up and closed it. "Does your attorney know you're calling me?"

"Granger?" Griffith scoffed. "This call has nothing to do with him."

"I think Mr. Granger would disagree." Actually, Ricky was sure he would. "It's not at all ethical for me, an attorney in the action, to speak directly to a party."

"But I'm calling
you
," Griffith pointed out. "And, like I said, I don't want to talk about that silly lawsuit."

"You don't." Ricky was baffled.

"Nah, screw that. But, listen. Doesn't Kate need those new cabins built as soon as possible? I mean, they won't be ready for the campers in the summer if they don't start, like, immediately, right?"

Ricky couldn't make heads or tails of this. Carefully, he replied, "Kate could not conscientiously spend money on new cabins when she has the threat of losing the whole camp hanging over her head."

Griffith made a rude sound.

"Excuse me?" said Ricky.