Trouble in Paradise

knew Griff needed to say certain things out loud. He had coaxed her out of her own defensive shells, and she would coax him from his. “Just tell me,” she insisted.

“What do you want to know?”

“Talk, Griff.”

The muscle in his jaw flexed when he turned his head on the pillow. Dark eyes glittered on her softer gray ones. At this moment, Griff was not so very pleased with his too-perceptive wife. “She’s a good-looking woman,” he said flatly.

“That hurts. Naturally. Go right ahead, but when you’re all through-”

Aaah. He gathered her close, shutting her up, burying her face in his shoulder, arching a leg around her to drag her nearer yet. He kissed her hard on her temples, and Susan relaxed, silent, waiting.

“We married too damn young,” he admitted finally. “Sheila had been raised to ‘catch a man.’ That was the game. So she loved campfires and kids and quiet evenings, because those were the things I loved. Until she got the ring on her finger. Then she was so damned unhappy…” He took a breath. “Restless all the time. Moody with the kids, taking on causes with incredible enthusiasm, flitting from one thing to another… I don’t know what she wanted from me. I never knew. Oh…money, of course. The Anderson name…”

Susan wound her arms around his waist and snuggled closer, wanting desperately to cushion him from some of those memories. How many years had Griff been without love? But she knew, every time he touched her.

“For the kids, I kept trying. There was no love between Sheila and me, but I had the kids’ love, and the five of us were surviving. Until Sheila stepped out with someone else. Then something just clicked inside me, an awareness of how little I really did care. From that point on, I just couldn’t pretend with her anymore.”

He took a breath. “We called it ‘irretrievable breakdown of a marriage.’ I never mentioned adultery in court. Neither of us wanted to sling the kids through that kind of mud. But Sheila, for some reason, balked at the end and wanted the marriage to stand. The big fight came when we were talking custody in front of the judge. I wanted the kids, and I knew that she really didn’t. She was just worried that people might say she was a bad woman and a terrible mother if she didn’t fight for the kids. Maybe I could have won custody if I’d mentioned her affair to the judge. At the time, all I could think of was that we were hurting the children enough without bringing that up. I knew I’d claim my share of time with them, and since I had to work all week anyway and they were in school-”

“Which is all true, Griff,” Susan interjected.

His jaws clamped together and then relaxed slightly. “She doesn’t love them. She never did. She loves the child-support money, but she’s still off and running twelve hours of the day, never there. I’ve been back to my lawyer countless times, but there’s nothing I can take to court. I can’t prove she’s done anything that shows her to be an unfit parent. Hers isn’t the kind of neglect that shows… There was a time when I even felt sorry for her. She’s incapable of loving anyone. Even herself. But the point is what she’s doing to them-the kids. Tiger and Barbara and Tom. And I’m the one who initiated the divorce proceedings, who tore their lives apart.”

“Listen to me.” Susan extricated herself from his hold, and leaned up on one elbow to glare at him. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she said furiously. “You love those kids like hell. You give them so much of yourself. Surely you don’t think you’re the only divorced father in this country? You know so many kids who’ve had a perfect, ideal upbringing? Your kids have had it a little tough, Griff, but they’ve never suffered from lack of care, lack of love, lack of anything they needed from you. It’s the tough times that build character…or can build it. And don’t you ever tell me you didn’t have the right to fight for your own needs, dammit.”

She was a cougar in the wild, so fierce in her defenses, so furious when her own were attacked… Griff sighed, feeling something released inside him that had been locked up for a very long time. In the four years since the divorce, he’d never discussed or even admitted to himself any of the lingering guilt he felt about it. Susan was somehow his mentor. Minx, mentor…lover, wife…

He turned, rearranged Susan’s pillow and dragged her down and flat beneath him, smiling into her startled eyes. In a tough business world, he inspired respect; he knew that. Even a little fear. A few people even jumped when he walked into a room, and no one had scolded Griff Anderson in at least two decades.

Except Susan, who could barely shoo away a fly without worrying about having done the creature harm.

“I love you, Susan,” he told her tenderly.

The fires in her eyes softened as if cooled by a gentle rain. “I love you, too.”

“Yes. Well. I don’t want you starting any more nonsense like those acrobatics in the bathtub,” he said sternly. His lips dipped down to taste the hollow between her shoulder and neck. A most vulnerable hollow. “And just a few days ago, there was that episode on the new dining room carpet.” Edging lower, his palm gently cradled her right breast. Susan’s breath suddenly caught when his tongue touched down. “Hours before that, you wanted to christen the kitchen. Susan, we are never again going to try to make love in a kitchen. Any kitchen…”

So very, very stern. “Griff.” She could not possibly be feeling the renewal of fire again. Her head was spinning with Griff’s memories, still. Her own insecurities, which Tiger’s visit had triggered, had faded in a renewed understanding of why and how much Griff wanted his children with him. Beyond that, she was annoyed with Griff for harboring unnecessary guilt. All those emotions from the heart…yet her breasts went strangely taut under his lazy ministrations.

He suddenly turned them both on their sides, his brown eyes meeting hers in the dark room-full of the devil. Not to mention the devil’s advocate pressed deliberately against her stomach. “You knew when we married that I was more than a decade older than you,” he continued with mock gravity. “I hope you outgrow this…insatiable tendency of yours, Susan. I simply can’t keep this up. Just because you have this irresistible, luscious little body…”

She lifted up her body and planted her lips on his. There was obviously a time for soul-searing discussions as well as a time…to give in. She’d wanted credit for the kitchen episode, anyway. And tomorrow was Sunday. They could nap all afternoon.

Chapter 5

As Susan sat across the dinner table from Barbara, she was rather startlingly aware of how different the fourteen-year-old was from her gregarious younger brother. A week had passed since Tiger’s brief visit. Susan and Griff had packed up the whole brood and taken them out to dinner on Wednesday; his ex-wife had raised no objection, even though it wasn’t their “assigned time.” Barbara had been distinctly cool that evening, though no one else seemed to notice. Susan had scolded herself that she was just looking to make mountains out of molehills as a result of her fear that the girl wouldn’t accept her, but she wasn’t making any mountains now as she and Barbara ate dinner alone together. Passing the plate of ham, she felt the tense silence between them. Someone at the table was sending out distinctly hostile messages. It wasn’t Susan.

Tall and slim, Barbara had rich sable hair, worn long with a heavy fringe of bangs. Most teenagers would have killed for that porcelain complexion. Barbara was a beauty, give or take the adolescent garb. Newly budding breasts were concealed under a voluminous old sweatshirt; the jeans, by contrast, undoubtedly took her a half hour to get out of; she had probably put them on wet and let them dry. The only feature of Griff’s that Barbara had inherited was a pair of beautiful dark eyes, accented-five minutes after her father had left the house-with four coats of mascara.

Those eyes kept darting over to Susan, slipping past her favorite dinner, dancing past Susan’s utterly innocuous gray wool pants and bright red sweater, glancing into Susan’s compassionate gray eyes, flitting around the dining room, taking in the deacon’s bench and long oak table and crystal chandelier…and apparently disdaining all of it.

Susan made every effort to send over her own share of silent messages: Honey, I’m sorry Griff isn’t here; you know how much he values time with you. Yes, I know the last thing you want is to be stuck here alone with me. I’ve seen all those intimidating looks you keep giving me, but I’m not raising any white flags yet. And, yes, you little vixen, I’ve noticed the eye shadow and mascara, but you’re going to have to wait until hell freezes over before I make any comments about the appropriate age at which to wear makeup. First of all, I have no interest in playing