Christie Ridgway - From This Day Forward

Griffin hoped like hell that the road remained clear before him, because he couldn’t have looked away to save his life. He’d heard about this—among men it was almost a locker-room joke—but as he himself had never been witness to it before, he’d always considered it an urban—er, gender?—legend.

But now he knew it to be true. Because, after Annie took an emergency lick of her melting cone and after she executed one or two little shimmies, out the sleeve of her T-shirt came her hand, and in her hand was…her bra.

Which, of course, she immediately tossed over the side of the Mercedes.

As he watched in the rearview mirror the piece of white cotton depart, fluttering in the breeze, Griffin tried not to believe that his peace of mind wasn’t getting away that easily, too.

Despite the warm sun, he felt the distinct beginnings of a chill. “Uh—” He had to clear his throat to get her name out. “Annie?”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Is something the matter?”

She was stealing his lines. Worse, she was stealing his sense of well-being. “I’m just wondering about the, uh, this sudden need to divest yourself of, uh…”

She laughed, a delicious, free little giggle that would have reassured him if he’d ever imagined that quiet Annie-Smith-the-housekeeper’s-daughter could make such a sound. “Oh, Griffin,” she said.

She patted his arm encouragingly. He caught sight of that unexpected little dimple again. He refused to let his gaze fall any lower than her mouth.

“I’m just tired of waiting,” she said.

Waiting for what? That chill grew stronger, cold prickles gathering force at the nape of his neck.

Her honey-colored hair swirling around her cheeks, she threw her free arm in the air, wiggling her fingers in the wind. “From now on, my life is never going to be the same!”

With the power of a waterfall, the cold prickles poured down Griffin’s back. Though he’d never before considered himself a superstitious man, he suddenly had the terrible feeling that his life would never be the same either.

Annie pulled her face out of her pillow and opened one eye. Bright sunshine flooded her bedroom and she quickly squeezed the eye shut against the piercing light and moaned.

She was hungover, she thought, as that peek of daylight echoed painfully in her brain. Not from anything alcoholic, but from adrenaline, she supposed, or stress. She’d run on nerves gone wild yesterday, cleaning closets, counters, floors and then cooking until well past midnight. After that, she’d fallen into bed, too tired to even dream of the robbery.

The robbery.

Both eyes popped open and she breathed through another startling shock of sunlight. Yesterday she’d actually witnessed an armed man rob a bank.

As she pulled the bedcovers closer around her, the event replayed in her mind, even to the churning of her stomach and the sharp tang of pine cleaner in her nose.

Think of something else, she commanded herself. Anything other than the surprise and the fear. Think of the ride in the paddy wagon. Even think of the almost surreal experience of being questioned by the police and the FBI.

The safe, protective police station. The nice detective behind the desk and Griffin Chase acting lawyerly—no, acting like a sleek but threatening guard dog, really—by her side.

Annie closed her eyes again and sank deeper into the mattress, wishing it could swallow her up. Because, after the police had let her leave, what had she done? Given poor Griffin a heart attack by tossing items of clothing out of his car. She pulled the sheet over her hot face.

She’d thrown her bra, for mercy’s sake.

Wallowing in embarrassment, she recalled the uneasiness filling his blue eyes. The man hadn’t seen her in two years, and while to her he seemed as elegant and cool as always—his brown hair with its dark gold streaks shorter than before, but his body’s lean strength and latent sense of power just the same—to him she’d likely appeared at least dotty if not downright crazed.

What must he think of her?

Probably nothing, a little voice inside her answered reasonably. In the past, he’d never noticed her, let alone thought about her. Now, outside of thinking he was obligated to do a favor for the daughter of a family retainer, he probably didn’t think anything about her either.

“Right,” Annie said aloud, flipping the sheet back down and then kicking the covers entirely away. “Griffin’s likely already put me and anything I did out of his mind.”

Just as she was going to put the robbery out of her mind.

And Griffin.

Determined to get on with her day, she strode into her small bathroom. Its faint anti-bacterial smell testified to her housekeeping mania the day before, and it wasn’t until she’d soaped, shampooed and toweled off that she comprehended just how far that mania had taken her.

She had cleaned out her underwear drawer yesterday, too. Working with the zeal of the newly converted, she’d ferreted out each ragged or ill-fitting bra, each pair of panties with sagging elastic or in a color so unappealing that they had overflowed the sale bins at the local discount store.

Which meant that Annie had thrown away all of it. Yes. Every stitch of undergarment she owned was now lying in her garbage can, in a ragged tangle of ugly colors and stretched-out straps.

And it wasn’t as if she could rescue a piece of it for even a short shopping exhibition, Annie thought in dismay, wrapped in a towel and staring at the contents of her garbage. Because after the underwear drawer she’d moved on to cleaning out her freezer. That ragged tangle was now drenched with two cartons of melted neapolitan two-percent ice milk.

With nothing left to do but get something on and get to the mall ASAP, Annie hurriedly dressed in a knee-length denim skirt and a dark blue T-shirt. There was no reason to imagine she couldn’t make it to the store and back without detection or embarrassment, she told herself firmly. Hey, and the good news was she wouldn’t have panty lines!

Still, she was slightly disconcerted by the weird sensation of air passing over her bare…uh…well, there, as she slung her purse over her shoulder and made a beeline for the door. She pulled it open, stepped out and—

Bumped into Griffin’s chest.

“Good morning.” His voice rumbled against the tip of her nose.

Annie leaped back, causing air to whirl up her skirt which in turn made her acutely conscious of all she wasn’t wearing. “Uh, hi.” She tried forgetting that delicious breath of his understated, expensive scent in her lungs as she pasted the insides of her knees together and threw a casual arm across her chest. “Um, I was just on my way out.”

Oh, great, Annie, she thought, groaning inwardly. Yesterday weird, today rude.

He looked down at her, that same expression she’d labeled before as uneasiness again in his eyes. “So I didn’t imagine it, did I? You really did grow up.”

“H-huh?” Annie swallowed and pressed her forearm closer against her unbound breasts. “I mean, um, well, yes. I suppose I did.”

She had been grown-up two years ago as well, but Griffin had looked right through her or over her or around her since the day she’d arrived at the Chase estate. Not in a superior, I’m-too-good-for-you way, but in a you’re-a-little-girl-and-I-smell-a-potential-pest way.

She hadn’t blamed him, though it hadn’t stopped her from following him around, either.

He just hadn’t noticed.

And while she remembered wanting him to notice her with an almost-humiliating intensity since she was four years old, today, in her underwearless state, she wished she could simply disappear before his eyes.