Business picked up around noon. It always did, about the time she and Lanna were trying to snatch a sandwich and had given up on customers in favor of restocking and bookkeeping. Susan was already convinced the store could support a part-time worker in addition to her and Lanna, particularly with Christmas coming. She wanted more time with Griff as well, and the house was a bundle of work. A small sign in the shop window said she was willing to consider applications, but that merely produced a flood of money-hungry students who added to the chaos around noon.
At quarter after one, she closed the door to her office. With a wilted sandwich in her hand, she called Griff. They discussed the weather, her business, his business, and traded anecdotes to make each other smile, all in the space of five minutes. Very carefully, they skirted any mention of Tom. If there had been news, obviously Griff would have offered it.
Susan walked out into the shop a few minutes later to find that Lanna had evidently thrown out every customer in the place except one. Lanna never threw out a good-looking male.
The boy was hovering near the door, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn-out jeans. His dark eyes were hollowed out with tiredness, which didn’t take anything away from his outstanding good looks. With his shock of blond hair, the beautiful eyes and his clear, strong features, he was a beautiful boy. Brazenly sexual as only a seventeen-year-old male can be, the kind of boy Susan would have run from when she was a teenager. She saw all of that, but did not really think about it. All her attention was focused on those eyes raised to hers, anxious, exhausted, and a terrible mixture of terrifyingly young and all too suddenly old.
Susan stood stock-still for all of a second and a half, praying that he would let her help him. She was beside Tom in seconds, then hesitated, a helpless blur of tears in her eyes. She knew Griff’s oldest child so little, and doubted very much that he would let her throw her arms around him. His finger touched her sleeve uncertainly.
“Susan? I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I came to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have-”
Reason was tossed by the wayside. She grabbed him and hugged him close. “Thank
Tom drew in his breath, his dark eyes miserable. “I should have called. Dad’s probably furious…”
He shook his head, but his face had taken on a little color from her full-hearted welcome. “Not since yesterday. I came here… I don’t know why. I just had this feeling from the first time I met you that you were someone I could talk to.”
“I’m so glad you feel that way.” She led him to her office and closed the door. He slumped in a chair as if he were too tired to move again, and Susan couldn’t miss the blatant relief on his face when he realized that she was not going to bombard him with furious questions.
In the bottom drawer of her desk, she stashed peanut butter and bread for those days when she couldn’t get out for lunch. She made Tom three sandwiches and poured him a cup of coffee. While he was eating, Susan picked up the phone, sending a reassuring smile across the desk when his frantic look telegraphed
Griff’s secretary had to fetch him from a meeting, and his impatient bark into the phone made Susan feel like laughing. “Tom’s
She passed the phone to Griff’s son, who hesitated, biting his lip before taking the receiver, looking at Susan fearfully.
Reluctantly, he put the receiver to his ear. “Dad? I-” There was a long silence, but by the time Tom handed the phone back to Susan, more color had returned to his face; there was even the smallest hint of a smile. “He’s going to kill me,” he informed Susan, but the prospect clearly wasn’t as painful as he’d thought it would be.
For what he’d put his father through, he deserved the good tongue-lashing that was coming, but it wasn’t appropriate for it to come from Susan-thank heavens. Once he was fed, she arranged for Lanna to stay at the shop and close up later, and browbeat Tom into driving home with her rather than following in his own car. It was just as well. The moment his head hit the headrest he was out, one dead-tired pup who couldn’t even raise an eyelid.
Susan just looked at him, at every stop sign, every red light, every bottleneck in traffic. That he had come to her in time of trouble touched her, and as she pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, she studied his sleeping face again, still so white with strain. Every protective instinct she’d ever had surged to the surface. She knew why she felt such special sympathy for Tom. This was a younger version of Griff slumped so exhaustedly in the car seat. A young man already determinedly independent, throwing himself violently into life… and foolishly tearing himself apart because he’d made a mistake. No, she didn’t know what had made him run off, or where he had been for the past five days. She didn’t need to know.
She knew Griff. And suddenly understood why Griff occasionally came home frustrated and angry after having lunch with his son. Two of a kind did not always blend well.
A bit of running interference was in order. For the first time in relation to Griff’s children, Susan knew she had something to offer of herself. Finally, she felt that she was part of the family. Griff actually needed her; Tom actually needed her, and she wanted so very much to be there for both of them.
“I…thought she was pregnant,” Tom said haltingly, his eyes boring into the Oriental carpet in the living room. “That’s what she told me. Like, I’d used…protection, Dad, but it’s not one hundred percent reliable…and when she told me…” He hesitated. “It wasn’t that hard to get an ID that said I was twenty-one. I bought it for five bucks from one of the kids at school. Candice wanted to get married, and I thought that was what I wanted to do, too. We planned to cross the state line and just…and, like, no, I couldn’t come to you. Or go to Mom. Mom, I never…and I knew you’d raise the roof, that you’d find some way to stop me. Too young, no money, no college… I knew what you’d say. But all I could think of then was that Candice would be left with a kid, that I’d have wrecked her life, wrecked her chances for going to school…”
Griff surged up and out of his chair, his dark eyes aching with hurt as he ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Dammit, Tom,” he growled. “I can’t believe you didn’t know you could come to me with that kind of problem. That you didn’t trust me-”
“I’ve always trusted you. It wasn’t like that.” Tom jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, stretched out his long legs and rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if the frustration of trying to communicate with his father was familiar. The gesture angered Griff as well as hurt him; Susan could see it in his eyes, but for the moment she stayed silent. “Look, Dad. I couldn’t come to you. It was my problem.
“You didn’t think
Tom’s eyes went desperately to Susan’s, not for the first time that evening. With his hair freshly washed and his clothes hanging on him loosely enough to announce that he had lost several pounds in the past few days, Tom still looked exhausted, half boy, half so clearly man. Susan’s heart went out to him. “Just go on,” she said gently. “Tell us what happened after that, Tom.”
“We didn’t get married,” Tom said flatly, his eyes following his father’s restless movements. Griff could not seem to sit still. Alternately facing his son directly, or pacing, he finally leaned back against the fireplace and tried to stay calm. Tom resumed speaking. “I… The first night Candy seemed to get ill. And by the next day…she wasn’t pregnant.”
Susan made a small sound of distress. “Lord, she didn’t miscarry, Tom?”
“No. Like, I guess she wasn’t ever pregnant, really. She just wanted to get married, and that was the way she…”
“She got her period,” Griff interpreted bluntly.
Tom lowered his head. “She tried to pass the cramps off as the flu, and I…” He let out a weary sigh and dragged his fingers roughly through his hair in an almost exact imitation of his father. “But she wanted to get
