breakfast, but the prep cook made a pot of coffee in the mornings, and this morning Griffin had made friends with the prep cook. The guy had left for an emergency onion run, giving Griffin privacy and a place to start the day away from the eagle eye of the little dictator.
He still clung to his one and only plan in regards to Jane: avoid her as much as possible - and completely avoid what she wanted him to do.
After moving in two days before, she'd kept mostly to the guest room she'd selected. Though he'd continued blasting music through his earbuds, her close proximity seemed to punch through the wall of sound. He'd felt her presence, the capable and unwavering energy she exuded, despite the beams and plaster between them. She'd brought into his house a new scent too, a light and feminine fragrance that somehow pierced the Pacific's own salty-green perfume.
At dinner that first night, while he'd manned the barbecue and stayed out of range of the conversation between her, his family and Old Man Monroe as much as possible, he'd still been able to chronicle the effect she had on them. She'd managed to surprise a laugh out of his sister, unearth a set of jacks to amuse his nephews, put a book in the hands of his sulking niece and send their elderly neighbor home with a smile after a short stint holding the sleeping baby.
If he didn't keep up his guard, damn it, he had good reason to fear she'd manage to make him start the memoir.
He wasn't ready.
Closing his eyes, he swallowed another gulp of coffee. Caffeine was a necessity, because he was, as usual, sleeping like crap. That sweet Jane smell that had invaded his bungalow didn't help any. With every breath, he was reminded of her - the soft wave of her hair, the spiky darkness of the lashes surrounding her incredible eyes, the tender mouth.
The mouth that would keep on talking and talking and talking at him until she bent him to her will.
No. Wasn't going to happen, though he'd have to find some way to keep her mollified. Maybe he'd scratch a few nonsense words in a notebook or something.
Christ! As if that would satisfy the governess. She wasn't so gullible.
The certainty of that had him groaning aloud. He'd blown it by allowing her to move into No. 9. Dumbfounded by how she'd outmaneuvered him, he'd stayed silent. He could change that now, of course, throw her cute ass out of his place and out of the cove, but he was canny enough to realize she could serve a convenient function for him.
Be a beard, of sorts.
With her settled in his house, it gave the appearance he actually was settling into work. As he'd told Rex Monroe, that would keep Tess and company at bay. Better yet, it would appease his agent, who was fifty-one years old, overweight and took daily meds for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Griffin knew he'd been worrying the guy, a formerly entrenched bachelor who had finally married seven years before and adopted his adoring wife's two small children. Guilt had finally gotten to him two days ago when Frank told him that Griffin's feet-dragging was sending him into a hypertensive state. Dealing with Jane on-site had seemed much more preferable than selecting a funereal spray.
So she was staying in one of the guest rooms and he was staying clear of her.
Except, as he took a deep breath, he could smell her again. Damn it! How did her scent reach him all the way here?
Then he realized, his eyes still closed, that she had reached him here. Literally. Once again, she'd broken into his solitude.
"What the hell do you want?" he growled, though he didn't need to ask the question. Everything she did was an attempt to make him mine his feelings. Those feelings that he so fucking did not have. She was here to round him up, rope him in and drag him back to the beach house, where she planned to stand over him all day. Likely with a whip.
"I, um, wanted to let you know I'm leaving now. I'll be gone until evening."
Surprise had him sitting up and blinking. Yes, it was Jane standing nearby, he hadn't been wrong about that, but she wasn't wearing her usual resolute expression. She looked, actually, a little unsure of herself.