Christie Ridgway: From This Day Forward

But he was noticing something, darn it, as he slowly shook his head. “When did you stop wearing…”

How could he tell? Annie’s heart froze and she squeezed her knees even more tightly together as she watched his forefingers make puzzling circles beside his ears.

“…pigtails you call them, right?” He smiled.

Oh my. She’d forgotten Griffin’s smile. It tilted up one corner of his mouth and both corners of his blue, blue eyes. Over the years she’d seen him smile that smile a hundred times—at her mother when finagling more cookies, at one of the groundsmen for washing and waxing his car, at every girl he’d ever brought home.

He’d just never smiled that smile at her. Not the housekeeper’s daughter.

“Annie?”

“Wow,” Annie murmured, then caught herself, blinking away her smile-induced stupor. “Oh. Yes. What?”

“Annie?” he said again, probably wondering if there was a padded room nearby. “Are you all right?”

She desperately cast back to the conversation. Pigtails. “Pigtails. You’re exactly right. That’s what they’re called.” She lifted both hands to imitate those funny ear circles he’d made.

And then remembered her bralessness and immediately clapped both arms across her chest, as if she was hugging herself.

Griffin’s expression switched from doubt to concern. “Are you cold? Why don’t we go inside?”

We? We? But even with that warning, Annie did nothing as he stepped closer except step back, until they were both inside the small front room of her cottage and he’d shut the door behind him.

Now what was she supposed to do with him? It didn’t seem quite fitting for the wealthy man-about-town to be standing in her modest cottage.

“Well, um, would you like to sit down?” she felt forced to ask.

“Sure.” He dropped onto the flowered cushions of her white wicker love seat, settling against its back and extending his long legs.

Oh, terrific. Not only did his position not make him seem any less out-of-place, it made it clear that he planned to stay awhile. She bit her bottom lip. “And some coffee? Would you like some coffee?” If he was going to stick around even for a few minutes she needed some alone time in her comforting kitchen to catch her breath and find her composure.

“Sure,” he said again.

Though trying to keep her legs together made her walk a sort of awkward scurry, Annie hurried off, wondering if she could stitch temporary undergarments from paper towels and the cook’s twine she used for her famous parmesan chicken rollups. She was biting her lip and contemplating the paper towels when Griffin suddenly appeared in the kitchen.

“Can I help?” he asked.

The largest room of the cottage suddenly shrank and Annie spun toward her coffeemaker. “Oh, no. This will just take a minute.”

He didn’t get the hint, instead pulling up one of her kitchen stools to the countertop nearby. “So you became a cook?”

She sneaked a peek at him, for the first time absorbing the fact that he was wearing a comfortable-looking, almost baggy pair of khakis and a white T-shirt that had the luxurious sheen of silk. The soft leather slip-ons on his feet probably cost more than all the shoes in her closet put together.

“Well, I’d like to think I’ve been a cook for a long time,” she answered, sounding less nervous than she felt. “I became a caterer, thanks to your parents. When the new housekeeper didn’t want to live on the estate, they rented me the cottage at a rate that made starting my own business possible.”

Whew. It was much easier talking to him when she could half turn away and keep busy with the coffee. “How about you?” she asked. “Anything new about you in the last two years?”

Good. The question sounded automatic and impersonal. No way could Griffin guess that she’d trolled for every factoid she could get from his parents and his brother during the last twenty-four months. Old habits died hard, she’d rationalized then.

But now she blew all her fake disinterest by adding, “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until June tenth.”

He didn’t seem to detect her slip. “Believe me, I’m more than happy that I made it back to California early.”

Annie sprinkled some cinnamon over the freshly ground coffee beans and swung the filter basket into place then pressed the button marked Brew. “Why? Were you that ready to come home?” She suppressed a little teen-ish rush of delight that he hadn’t found some exotic lover impossible to leave behind.

“That too, I suppose, and I was gratified to wrap up my business deals early. But who would have come to your rescue yesterday if I hadn’t been back?”

Annie felt her face heat. “I should have thanked you for that right away, though I didn’t really need rescuing.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If you’d added flagging down a ride to eating ice cream and divesting yourself of clothing, I can imagine all sorts of emergencies that might have come up.” There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

Okay, so maybe her actions deserved Griffin’s teasing—something she would have lopped off her right ear for when she was seventeen—but she was really starting to regret yesterday’s vows. It was one thing for a woman to kick off her shoes and splurge on double double chocolate fudge. It was entirely another to be left braless and pantyless while having a conversation about disrobing with the one man said woman had mooned over for almost her entire life.

“I shouldn’t razz you though, Annie,” Griffin continued. “To be honest, I’m mad as hell that you had to go through that experience at all.”

Annie concentrated on sliding away the coffee carafe so that the dark, fragrant stream of liquid flowed into a thick mug instead. “I’m trying not to think of it too much myself.” An image of the gun flashed in her mind, and she suppressed a shiver while coffee trickled into a second mug.

With two mugs full and the carafe replaced, Annie finally had to face Griffin. Carrying a mug in each hand, she walked the few steps toward him, watching that she didn’t spill instead of watching him. She put one coffee against the countertop and slid it his way. “Maybe I’ll just pretend yesterday didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think that will work, Annie,” Griffin said softly.

She looked up, meeting his gaze. “No?”

“I can’t forget.”

Mercy. She’d never been this close to him, and with only two feet of countertop between them, his eyes mesmerized her. Their blue was faceted with clear crystal, and his eyelashes, like his hair, were edged in gold. “You can’t forget what?” she said, trying to break the spell.

“You said you were tired of waiting.”

“Oh.”

“I just can’t help wondering what for.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Well…” She’d been tired of waiting for shoe sales. Tired of waiting for the someday when she deserved nice lingerie. But most of all, she’d been tired of waiting for love to enter her life. For a man. “That kind of talk was just a reaction. That’s all. I think.”

“You think?”

Annie squeezed her mug of coffee between her palms. In the light of a new day, didn’t it seem more sensible—safer—to return to old, familiar paths? She shrugged. “I’m sure. And I’m over the robbery already.”

His eyebrows rose. “Then I suppose you won’t mind seeing this.” He watched her carefully, though, as he pulled something from his back pocket. A newspaper, creased three times, that he unfolded and then put in her free hand.

The Strawberry Bay Bulletin. Annie dropped her gaze to the front-page photo and then dropped her mug, not even hearing it crash and break into fragments against the tile floor. Instead, as she looked at the photo of the bank lobby with the massive, jagged holes in its ceiling, Annie was hearing the sound of the robbery. It was the sound of the gunfire and the well of terrified silence and that voice almost sobbing “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” all rolled into one ball of nearly unbearable noise.