Asking For It (13 page)

Killed two birds with one stone. And Griffith did like efficiency.

Then he saw Kate sitting on his bunk bed. With nothing but a cheap towel wrapped around his hips, Griffith felt an unexpected rush of adrenaline.

Her chin lifted. She looked stubborn and bossy. It made Griffith blaze. He had a brainless urge to join up with that feisty female energy.

He was stupidly wondering if some sort of joining was her goal, too, when Kate held up an object that shriveled his burgeoning libido.

"What is that?" Griffith asked, though the shiny triangular scales he could see gave him a pretty good idea.

"A rattlesnake," Kate said.

Okay, fine. But what was she doing
holding
the thing?

"Don't worry, it's dead." Her mouth twisted.

Griffith tried to cough the dryness out of his throat. "Oh?"

Her eyes were like twin spikes of ice. "You're lucky it's dead. Because if you'd come out of the shower ten minutes ago when I walked in here looking for you, it would still have been alive."

Griffith couldn't take his eyes from the thick, muscular shape in Kate's hand. "It...was slithering around in the bunkhouse?"

"That it was," Kate spat. "Thanks to you."

"Me?" Griffith dared to flick his gaze from the dead snake to Kate's face.

"You left the door open," Kate explained. "Wide open. Doors are supposed to be kept closed, so that unpleasant wildlife like this don't get in. You know that. You were told."

"I left the door open?" With his heart pounding, Griffith tried to remember. He'd wanted to get into the shower before anybody realized he wasn't at dinner. Had he left the door open?

"We're lucky it was me who walked in on it," Kate said, her voice dripping with venom. "And not one of the campers." Still holding the dead snake, she stood up from the bunk bed. "But you don't think about that, do you? You don't think about how your disrespect for the camp might affect anybody but yourself."

Griffith was speechless. Had he left the door open? He really didn't think so, but an unpleasant weight formed in his stomach. "Do you think any more snakes got in?"

Her expression dripping with contempt, Kate merely took her dead snake and stalked out of the bunkhouse.

Griffith was left to stand there, undressed, barefoot, and still wondering if there were any more snakes.

~~~

He tossed aside the towel and got dressed in a big hurry, too big a hurry to bemoan the oversize and low-fashion clothes lent by Arnie Meadowlark. Then, armed with a straw broom, he conducted a thorough search of the bunkhouse. He poked under every bunk bed, checked behind every door, and went through all the closets.

His ears were ringing the whole time with Kate's blistering set-down.
You don't think about anybody but yourself
.

Meanwhile, not a snake was to be found.

Griffith carefully set the broom in its place in the front utility closet. He spent half a second thinking about it before going to find Kate.

It was stupid, really. Didn't he
want
her to think he was a fuck-up?

~~~

She ought to get rid of him. The idea sang through Kate's head as she stomped off to the dumpster, where she threw the dead snake, and all the way past the dining room, which had been converted into a movie house full of children watching
Despicable Me
. She stalked up to her office on the second floor.

Griffith was not only a goof-off, but a hazard. Through his thoughtlessness somebody could have been seriously hurt.

It had been a mistake to make him stay, to try turning him into a real counselor. It would have been better, and safer, to find eight kids to send home.

Kate swept behind her desk and dropped into her springy wheeled chair. The idea of seeing Griffith leave was like bubbles in her blood. She leaned back in her chair, steepled her fingers, and thought with bliss and satisfaction about seeing him gone.

Perhaps too much bliss and satisfaction.

Her fingers trembled where they tapped against each other. She was still...reacting, she realized. The reaction had been far more vigorous earlier, when Griffith had walked out of the shower. His chest had been bare, little rivulets of water zigzagging over curved muscle and glittering on a virile field of dark curling hair. Worst of all, though, had been his face, wearing a look of sensual contentment.

Something had leaped in her belly, something...hungry and curious.

She'd nearly dropped the stupid snake. She'd nearly dropped her righteous anger.

And now she had to wonder... Why had she gotten so angry in the first place? Had it been righteous? Anyone could forget to close the door. She'd done it herself. It had simply been very bad luck that in the five or ten minutes the door had been open, a deadly rattlesnake had decided to wriggle inside.

Kate pulled her hands apart and poised them on the edge of her desk. She hadn't blown up at Griffith about the snake. She'd blown up at him because she'd nearly melted at the sight of him. She'd had a
physical response
to him, as if — as if —

God
. It made no earthly sense. She didn't have physical responses to
anybody
, not for years. Griffith, of all men, shouldn't have been the one to change that. He was nothing she admired in a person. He was materialistic, self-centered, and shallow. He was Eric turned inside out, with all the bad qualities sitting in the open where anyone could see them.

Yet the fact remained. She'd responded to him. Physically. She still
was
responding. To make matters worse, she now heard the sound of heavy, male footsteps approaching from the hall. She sat up straight in her chair.

Griffith, looking disheveled and dangerous, appeared in her doorway.

For one taut moment they stared at each other. He looked every inch the danger she'd so vaguely sensed in him, his eyes a stormy gray, a short length of brown beard roughening the planes and angles of his jaw.

Kate willed her heart to settle down. This was
ridiculous
. "Yes?" she asked, determined at least to sound cool.

"There are no more snakes," Griffith told her.

Kate raised her eyebrows.

Griffith took a step into her office. "I checked everywhere. The one you found was the only one that got in."

Kate tilted her head. "
You
checked?"

"I did." He took several more steps into the room, approaching her desk.

Kate lamented the fact her heart sped faster.

"I believe I closed the door," he said, "but maybe I didn't. I wasn't paying very much attention, I'll grant you. But it was an
oversight
, an accident, not a deliberate attempt to hurt anybody."

Exactly what Kate had been telling herself, dammit.

"And anyway," Griffith went on, "as I was the only one in the bunkhouse at the time, it was only me who was in any danger."

His eyes were intent, serious...authoritative. Kate's stomach did a belly roll. She hadn't known Griffith
could
look like this, as if he had some integrity behind his steel. For a moment she felt deeply frightened.

But then his gaze shifted. Kate didn't know what caused him to break the contact, but she was glad. This was all strange, stupid —
wrong
.

Staring beyond Kate, Griffith blinked. With an indrawn breath he stiffened. "What's that?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

Griffith was staring at the wall beyond Kate. He pointed. "That."

Kate turned in her chair. He was pointing to the plot plan the architect had given her, the big two-by-three-foot blueprint. "It's a map of the camp."

"No, it isn't." Griffith's pointing finger waved to Kate's right. "There are only three bunkhouses in the camp. This map shows six."

"Ah, yes." Kate relaxed. He wasn't looking all serious and dangerous any more. She wasn't feeling quite so stupid. Concentrating on the confusion now in Griffith's expression, Kate explained, "This is a map of our proposed expansion. Really, it's a renovation. Two of our bunkhouses washed out in some big rains a few years ago. I'm replacing them and adding a sixth. All I need is a building permit and we can have a hundred campers per session next summer."

"A hundred campers," Griffith repeated, under his breath. He walked around Kate's desk toward the map, staring at it almost angrily.

"I won't count on you to be helping out then; you don't have to look so worried," Kate remarked.

But he didn't respond to the bait, just kept glaring at the map. Lips flat, he tapped his index finger on one of the new bunkhouses.

It suddenly occurred to Kate that the route down the hill was delineated on the site map. Was he staring at the proposed bunkhouses even while memorizing the path down?

Half of her jumped to get him away from the map, to protect her campers from being sent home if he managed to escape. The other half of her sat like a lump on a log, thinking it might be a very good thing if he did figure out how to leave.

She didn't like the way he'd made her feel a few minutes ago, subject to urges she'd thought dormant, if not dead. Out of control.

But as she sat there unmoving, Kate felt more and more ashamed. She should not have a physical response to Griffith — of all men — but she did. Was she going to handle it, for the sake of the campers, or was she going to act like a complete craven — like Griffith, himself, in fact?

She made herself move. Griffith had to be distracted from the map.

"You were right about the snake," she told him.

He started, and turned to stare at her.

Her heart suddenly sped. His gray eyes had way too much impact on her, so she chattered quickly on. "It was an accident, and a darned unlucky one at that. I mean, who could predict a snake would wander in during the few minutes you were in the shower?"

Griffith continued to stare.

Her heart pounded heavily. "I overreacted." Kate spread her hands. "My apologies."

Far from looking mollified by this about-face on Kate's part, Griffith appeared incensed. "You apologize." He took a long, brisk step away from the map. "I — You — Never mind. I have to go." He appeared to search for a place he had to go to. "My campers must be all over creation by now."

"They're downstairs, watching a movie," Kate said, bemused.

"Like I said, who knows where they've gone to," Griffith returned. "I have to go." He swiveled and banged furiously out her office door.

Kate gazed at her now open door, still baffled by her own response, but even more mystified by Griffith's.

~~~

Deirdre kept thinking she was going to wake up. Ricky couldn't really have asked her to go away with him for the weekend. They couldn't really have set out together late Friday night, laughing and chattering, her overnight bag stashed in the trunk of his car. It was too difficult to believe that when they'd reached the hotel in Santa Barbara, Ricky had gone up to the front desk and confidently asked for one room, then turned to Deirdre with a smile that said they were really
together
: a couple, an item, real lovers.

But Deirdre didn't wake up. The dream continued. They made love as soon as the hotel room door closed behind them. It was a beautiful room, spacious and tastefully decorated, but it was the notion they were alone, together, and utterly private that added an extra zest to their customary sensuality.

Afterward, they'd talked; insignificant murmurs, stray thoughts, and low chuckles. It had been easy and close and wonderful.

It hadn't hurt that Deirdre's worries about Griffith had been at least temporarily allayed by a conversation with Helen in Blaine Development's accounting department.

"Oh, he's done this before." Helen had waved a carefree hand, artificial fingernails flashing. "He found out some possible lessee was doing a fishing vacation in the Caribbean. Grif took off to go romance the fellow. We didn't hear from him for five days. Came back sunburned, beaming — and with a check for five mil."

Deirdre knew that the financing for Wildwood was crucial, but perhaps Griffith had something even hotter in the works, something that had taken him off on a fishing vacation with no cell phones. He certainly didn't tell her everything. She decided to stop worrying.

And so Saturday grew out of the magic that had started Friday night. She and Ricky walked past the boutiques on State Street and then strolled along the beach. Deirdre splashed in the foam of the waves while Ricky went swimming with long, muscular strokes along the edge of the surf. He came out of the water wet, solid, and male.

"God, I needed that," he sighed, plopping next to where she sat in the sand.

"You're going to need a shower now." Deirdre eyed the sand clinging to the wet skin of his belly and thighs.

Ricky laughed, then pulled her on top of him. Deirdre screeched as her new sarong became encrusted with wet sand from his skin.

"We'll take a shower together," Ricky said, pulling her down for a very wet, and surprisingly warm, kiss.