With a nonchalant little gesture, he retrieved his beer and toasted it in her direction.
It was the implied fuck-you in the motion that lit her own fuse. She wasn't his enemy, but that was clearly the role he wanted her to play this time. Librarian, governess, foe. Just another way to diminish her. To dismiss her. To not see her.
And to think that for half a day she'd considered -
"Well, Jane?" He stirred the pile of scraps with his toe. "What do you have to say?"
"I have to say thank you," she replied in a cold, clear voice, enjoying the surprise that wiped away his expression of smug anger. "Thank you very much. For a few hours I was worried...but now I realize it was just some dumb and sappy overreaction of mine. Because there's no way in the world I could...could...care for such a stupid, stupid man as you." Then, with a crisp spin on her heel, she headed for that key in the kitchen and the beach house next door.
Her escape didn't last as long as she expected. An hour later, after she'd showered and put on pajama pants and a tank top that either Rebecca or Tess had left behind, she heard a knock on the door of No. 8. Her mind leaped. Griffin. But the sound was too polite. Tentative. Not angry and demanding. Not arrogant and sexy.
There was no peephole, so she had to peer through the inches revealed by the chain lock. The Beach Boy, the one with the curly blond hair and surfer's body, stood there, an anxious expression on his face. "Ted?" she said, remembering that was his name. "Can I help you?"
"Uh." He made a vague gesture over his shoulder. "He's going for another record. At least that's what he says. I don't think he should be going anywhere."
She shook her head. "Huh?"
"Captain Crow's. We were at the bar. Then he got it in his head to jump off the cliff."
Now she understood, and the realization had her rushing out the door. Griffin had been drinking before, and if he'd had more after she left, then he was too drunk to attempt a leap off the cliff in the dark. "Where is he?"
Ted took her hand and led her down to the sand and along the moonlit beach. "This way."
Sure enough, Griffin stood at the base of the cliff, staring up and swaying a little. Jane groaned to herself, then hurried forward to tuck her hand in the crook of his elbow. He looked at her, blinked, then gave her a broad, drunk grin. "Jane!" he said, as if he was glad to see her. As if he'd forgotten completely what he'd done in the office.
Really, she so could not love an idiot like this.
"C'mon," she said, tugging on him. "We have to go."
"What?" His eyebrows drew together. "Why? I..." He made a broad gesture with his free arm that almost spun them both around.
She tightened her hold. "We have that thing, remember?"
"Thing?"
"Yes." A push, a prod, and she had him turned in the direction of No. 9. "The thing about the thing." Someday she'd laugh about this. Or perhaps even ten minutes from now, when she was safely alone again.
His head turned this way and that, until he spotted Ted. He squinted at the other man. "The thing about the thing, Ted?"
"You got it, buddy. Gotta do that thing."
"'S'okay."
His feet moved in tandem with Jane's, though he was not very steady on them. She tried to control his lurching movements by sliding her arm around his waist and holding him tight against her. He grinned down at her, his smile fond. "Jane," he said.
Clearly, the man was too much trouble to love. She couldn't wait to pour him into his bed and return to her own cottage. "Keep moving, chili-dog," she muttered. Ted was a few feet behind them, and she thought of handing Griffin over to him, but she'd been taught since birth to see a job through to the end. The only time she'd done different was with Ian, and that debacle had led to this one.
Her stick-to-it-iveness almost ended up killing her. Because when they were still a dozen feet from No. 9's deck, Griffin tripped on the smooth, soft sand. The both of them started to go down, and she figured she'd be smushed under his one-hundred-eighty pounds of lean muscle and drunken idiocy, but at the last second he twisted and it