But none of them had been from her. He hadn’t heard a peep from her since they said their lackluster goodbye at the port once they arrived back in New Orleans. This same woman he’d made love to at least once a week for the past eight months hadn’t reached out to him even once since their return.
And that’s what hurt him more than anything. How could she just move on after all the time they’d spent together?
“Shit.”
Griffin massaged the back of his neck. He had to shake himself out of this. He couldn’t go on mired down in this funk he’d found himself in since he stepped off that boat.
His phone vibrated and he nearly knocked over a cup of pens in his haste to reach it. The stupid burst of hope he experienced at the possibility of it being Indina deflated when he realized it wasn’t her. But a smile still drew across his lips as he opened the text message from his brother. It was a picture of his nephew in a baseball uniform with the news that he’d made the team at his junior high school.
That was one good thing that had come of the cruise. Being with the Holmes family over the course of those three days had driven home just how much Griffin missed his own family.
Last week, while making the hour and a half long drive back from Baton Rouge, he’d pulled up Garland’s contact on his cell phone and made a call that was several years overdue. When his first attempt went to voicemail, Griffin figured his brother wasn’t ready to mend fences. But just as he’d tossed it on his passenger seat, his phone rang, with Garland on the other end of the line.
They talked for Griffin’s entire ride home. Once he pulled into his driveway, he sat in his car for another hour, trying to cram everything he’d missed over the past two years into a two-hour phone call.
Over this past week, he and Garland had either talked or texted every single day. The two had caught up on everything that had been going on in each other’s lives, and Griffin had invited his brother to bring the entire family down to New Orleans sometime in the fall. He still couldn’t believe he’d allowed his ex-wife to come between them for so long. He would never make that kind of mistake again.
Griffin didn’t miss the irony that it was at Indina’s urging that he’d worked out things with his brother, yet he’d blown up everything with her.
How was he supposed to act the first time he saw her again? As if the last week had never happened? Or worse, as if the past eight months hadn’t?
“No.” Griffin shook his head.
He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. There was no way in hell he could forget about the time he’d spent with Indina. No way he would throw away the future they could potentially have together.
Indina could argue all she wanted that sex was the only thing they had going for them, but those three days on that cruise proved her wrong. They may have started out as coworkers with benefits, but there was so much more between them. They had the potential to grow their relationship into something that would last, if only he could convince Indina to see that it was worth fighting for.
The doorbell rang just as Griffin picked his phone up to call her.
“Dammit,” he cursed as he made his way to the front door. Probably the repairman who was supposed to work on his stove. He’d forgotten to call and cancel the technician after fixing it himself.
Griffin opened the door, preparing to tell the technician he could leave, when the sight before him stopped him cold.
Indina stood on his top step. Her light brown eyes brimmed with regret and the subtle misery Griffin had recognized in his own eyes every time he’d looked in a mirror this past week.
“Hey,” she said, a timorous quiver in her voice.
“Hey,” he returned.
She cleared her throat. “Do you mind if I come in?”
He opened the door wider and motioned for her to enter.
She walked into the house but didn’t go past the foyer. She turned to him, and after a deep breath, said, “I don’t even know where to start. An apology maybe?”
Griffin swallowed past the lump that had instantly formed in his throat. “What are you apologizing for?”
“Because I hurt you,” she said. “And that is the last thing I ever wanted to do, Griffin. What I said on the veranda that night was callous and wrong. I gave you the impression that I was sorry that you joined me on the cruise, when nothing could be further from the truth.”
Even as relief threatened to bring him to his knees, he couldn’t help the cautiousness that continued to beat throughout his bloodstream. Why hadn’t she called him? Why had she stayed away all week?
“When I didn’t hear from you this week, I thought you’d decided that you were done,” Griffin said.
“I knew you were upset,” she said. “I was trying to give you space.”
He stepped up to her. “I don’t want space, Indina. I want you.” He took her hands in his. “Look, we both have our baggage. I allowed what happened with my ex-wife to color my thoughts on relationships for so long that I couldn’t recognize a good thing when I was staring directly at it.”
“I did the same thing,” she said. “I wouldn't allow myself to get too close to you. My body? Yes. But this?” She placed a hand over her heart. “I was too afraid to leave it unguarded, Griffin. It’s been broken one too many times. I wasn’t willing to take that chance.”
He glided his fingers along her cheek in a gentle caress. “Are you willing to take it now?”
Her eyes fell closed as she leaned her face into his palm. The air grew thick
