Trouble in Paradise

married anyway. To some extent, I still felt a responsibility. All the same she could have been pregnant, because of me. Everything suddenly got confused in my head…”

His eyes met Susan’s. “You felt that you’d been taken for a ride by someone you believed you loved,” she suggested gently.

Tom looked at her gratefully. “I wanted to do the right thing. Maybe it would have meant I couldn’t go to college, but, like, I’m not stupid, and I’m not lazy. I could have supported her. But I never saw Candy as… calculating before. I never imagined she would lie to me about something so important. I thought she loved me. I never knew she saw me as a ticket to the right side of town because my last name is Anderson.”

Oh, honey, your father knows that story, if only he could see it. Griff and Tom passed the conversational ball back and forth like players in a tennis rally, while Susan sat back, exultant when they scored in communicating with each other, anxious when one of them missed a shot. At least they were trying. Griff loved his son so much, but his natural instincts of love and compassion were shunted aside as guilt told him to play Victorian paterfamilias-stern, rigid, authoritarian. And Tom so clearly respected and loved his father, but his pride was involved; he was smarting from having had to come home with his tail between his legs.

Susan leaned back in the tufted wing chair with her legs curled under her, her chin resting in her palm. For a few seconds, her mind blanked out the war. She was exhausted; she’d been through her share of trials earlier. Sheila had been furious that Tom had come to Susan first. To a woman he barely knew. And then her son had gone to Griff; Sheila was a poor third. She’d spent an hour late that afternoon closeted with Tom, but she took the time to hurl a few choice words at Susan before slamming out of the house…without Tom. The accusation-that Susan had deliberately and maliciously come between mother and son-had hurt. Badly. From the very beginning, Susan had promised herself she would never do anything to interfere with the relationship between the children and their mother. Of course, there had been more to Sheila’s tirade than that. She might as well have used knives instead of words, all of them intended to pierce deeply and twist in the wounds…

Then Griff had come in, exhausted and drained. Normally, he required very little sleep, but three days with almost no rest was beginning to take its toll. His rumpled hair, the circles under his eyes, his tie askew, the deep lines in his forehead… Love for him surged through Susan, coupled with a desperate wish that he would take a less belligerent tack with his son.

Tom would live here from now on, but things were going to be very different for him. Griff expected to know where he was; Tom would not spend his nights with his girlfriend; he would stop skipping school…

“Dad. Come on,” Tom said defensively. “Like, I messed up. I said I was sorry, and I am. I did a stupid thing, but as for skipping school-you know I got straight A’s last semester. I’ve already got enough credits for college, it’s not like I missed anything.” He paused, squaring his shoulders, and suddenly looked his father straight in the eye. “And I’m not all that sure I want to go on to college anyway.”

“Suddenly you don’t want to go to college?” Something had snapped in Griff; Susan could see it and instinctively leaned forward.

“No, I’m not sure I do,” Tom said flatly, a belligerent spark in his eyes. “Four more years of school? For what? I can go to work and make some money.”

“And just what kind of money do you think you could earn without an education? I swear to God, if I had known about this girl-”

Tom stiffened. “Leave Candice out of it. I-”

“Griff. Tom.” Both pairs of blazing eyes shifted unwillingly in her direction. “You’re both tired, and I think you’ve had enough. We can talk some more tomorrow…”

“Stay out of this, Susan!”

The command was delivered curtly, in a voice both cruel and cold. Susan felt the blood drain from her face as she stared in disbelief at Griff’s dark eyes. There was no softness of I-take-it-back. He meant it. She felt as if she’d suddenly been relegated to the role of outsider, a third party who mattered not at all at the core of his life. The hurt went swift and deep; she would have preferred a knife wound.

“All right.” She stood up, cast a wan smile meant to reassure Tom, and started walking toward the stairs.

“Susan…”

She heard Griff, but once she was out of sight she could not take the stairs fast enough.

Chapter 10

Like a robot, Susan turned into the dark hall at the top of the stairs, not bothering to switch on a light. Tears blurred her eyes as she searched out sheets and pillows to make up the bed in Tom’s room. The bedroom was still not finished; the rich dark wood and crimson carpeting were masculine and dramatic, choices Susan had felt instinctively Tom would like. Beyond providing a bed, a dresser and shelves, she’d left the room alone so that Tom could decorate it in his own way. She’d just never imagined that his first night would be quite like this one. When she had made up the bed, she walked soundlessly toward her bedroom.

She slipped out of her sweater and skirt, then lined up her shoes in the closet. Basically neat, tonight Susan was obsessively so, which struck her almost as funny, since she was maneuvering in total darkness. So turn on the light, bright one.

She didn’t. She tossed the peach lace bra and slip and her stockings in the hamper, washed her face, brushed her hair. All in the dark. She tugged on a nightgown, pulled down the comforter and slipped between cold sheets. It was nearly eleven, the luminous dial on the bedside clock informed her. Not an unreasonable time to go to sleep, for a working woman who had to get up at six.

Unfortunately, every muscle in her body was as rigid as iron. She was prepared for a fire alarm or some other emergency, but not at all prepared to relax. Sleep might just happen in the next century.

All he’d said was one simple sentence: Stay out of this, Susan. He hadn’t sworn at her. Or shouted. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know Griff was worn out with fatigue and that he’d been harrowed by anxiety for his son. He’d eaten no real food, had too little sleep. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know she was ridiculously oversensitive where Griff was concerned.

That was all very well. But Griff had never hurt her before, never shut her out. He loved her in bed; she didn’t doubt that. She knew that he loved other things about her, including her ability-and need-to make a home. It had just never occurred to her that he thought she was capable of upholstering a chair but not wise enough to share his problems.

Shut up, Susan. Count sheep, she advised herself. Analyze your life in the morning. It’ll still be there. The wound would heal as all heart wounds eventually did. “Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not from love,” as Shakespeare had put it. But for once, literary quotes offered her no comfort.

So he didn’t want her there, not in a crisis that touched them deeply-the first crisis of their married life. She had known from the beginning that there would be problems with the kids; no one had twisted her arm and forced her to put on that wedding ring, and the last thing Griff needed was an oversensitive, overreactive, overemotional female…

She had a dozen sheep’s-wool sweaters knitted by the time Griff hesitated at the door to their darkened room. Susan froze, instantly closing her eyes. He was in his bare feet; there was no sound for a few seconds. Then she heard the plop of a linen shirt on the floor, the faint sound of his zipper going down; the rustle of wool sliding down thighs. Then silence.

A cool draft shivered along her spine as the mattress sank beneath her. Firm, silent hands rearranged the sheet around her, then tucked the comforter meticulously around her neck and breasts and stomach. Not her calves and feet. Griff had discovered the first night they were together that she couldn’t sleep with her toes barricaded in covers…

A warm thigh slid next to her own, the hard muscle so familiar. An arm slid between hers and her side, and she could smell Griff. Male. Distinctly male Griff. He leaned over her suddenly, slid his arm back out and brushed her hair back from her forehead. She didn’t so much as breathe.

“You’re hugging that mattress as if it’s going to bite you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Susan.”