with the mingled scents of crayon, baby powder and nail polish. It was so quiet without the minions.
Which was why she heard the footsteps behind her. Startled, she whirled around, only to see a stone-faced Griffin stalk through the entrance. He brushed past her to grip one suitcase and then the other bag. Without a word, he turned back toward No. 9.
"What are you doing?" she said, hurrying to keep up with him.
"Do you think I'm blind? I passed by the laundry room, and the first thing I noticed is that your filmy bits of sexual torture are missing."
Her lingerie. She'd hand washed a batch the day before and hung it on the drying rack. Of course she'd collected the garments as part of her packing process.
"This is kind of high-handed, you know," she said, as he walked through the door of No. 9 without even looking to see if she still followed.
"Pot, meet kettle," he muttered.
She trailed after him on his way down the hall. "Maybe I want some alone time."
"So take an hour next door when you need it. The rest of your days and nights you're with me." Then he dropped her belongings on the floor of the master bedroom and took her in his arms, making sure she knew exactly what he meant by "with me." And Jane, seduced by that long, strong body enclosing hers, pressed her cheek into the delicious, heated skin of his throat and abandoned any more thoughts of escape.
* * *
DESPITE HER DECISION to remain at No. 9, Jane realized over the next few days that things didn't go back to the way they'd been. He wasn't the same Griffin as before. Though he was at turns teasing and seductive and brooding, there were times when he went even quieter now, as if every part of him stilled. Like a body submerging in deep waters, he would sink inside himself to a place that was unreachable.
Nobody goddamn knows me.
She kept coming back to that, and as more time went on, she acknowledged it was true. Though she read the pages of his memoir and thought she understood something of his experience while embedded in Afghanistan, there seemed to be a link missing in the connection between herself and Griffin. Between him and the world he lived in now. He wasn't tethered to it in any meaningful way, and he didn't seem in any hurry to make the essential attachment.
She also began to suspect he was using sex as he'd previously used the television and his iPod and his solitaire games. It was a way to occupy his body without his brain actually being engaged.
After a short while with this newly distant man, she longed for the distraction of Tess and the minions.
She saw them not long after they'd left the cove, however, on the day that Griffin and Rex Monroe gave their talk to Rebecca's history seminar as part of her final project. To accommodate working parents, the presentations were scheduled in the late afternoon. The entire Quincy family was there, though Duncan and Oliver were allowed to play on the grass just outside the classroom door. David held baby Russ in one arm as he and Tess sat together, fingers enmeshed. Skye attended as well, and she was in the car with Jane, Rex and Griffin as they headed back to Crescent Cove once the war reporters' talk was over.
Unsurprisingly, the men traded insults the entire return trip.
"Your ugly mug frightened the kids," Rex said from his place riding shotgun.
Griffin's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he glanced over at his nemesis. "Give it up, you old crank. They looked scared because they never thought they'd meet a man who handed out prunes on Halloween."
"You shouldn't have told them that."
"They were yawning," Griffin said. "Your stuff was putting them to sleep."
The conversation continued in that vein despite how affecting their discussion had been. Rex's experiences as a combat journalist in World War Two echoed Griffin's sixty-odd years later. They'd both described surviving brutal temperatures, the tense boredom of waiting for action and the bonds of brotherhood between the soldiers. War was war, their accounts made clear to the teenagers, no matter what the weapons, the era, the prize to be won.
A young man had raised his hand, wanting to know if war wasn't also exciting. They'd glanced at each other, and then Rex had admitted that it was. "It's not do or die," he'd said. "Combat is die or