street from the museum. Her body seemed to go more brittle with each step and Griffin eyed her with concern. Would she make it back to their suite before she fell apart?
Yes, he could leave her to deal with the aftermath alone, but tonight's event had been his idea. So he resigned himself to doling out tissues and considered offering a drink to combat an emotional collapse. What kind of booze mixed well with tears?
At the door to their rooms, he let go of her to reach for the key card. On his first try, he fumbled it. Jane snatched it out of his hand. Uh-oh, he thought, she was clearly eager to commence the weeping.
In another second they were inside. Wary, he walked backward into the living room, watching her as he braced for the first whimper.
She stood against the door, her palms flattened on the wooden surface. Her gaze hopped and skipped around the room, then finally settled on his face. "What do you have on hand that I can use as a murder weapon?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JANE SAW GRIFFIN flinch, but in her hot and bothered state she didn't try interpreting the reaction. As she stalked into the room, he kept a cautious eye on her. "I'm really sorry," he said as she passed him by to head for the desk placed against the far wall.
"Huh? Only be sorry if you can't find me a way to maim him." Yanking open the drawer, she scooped up a letter opener and brandished it. She needed some way to work off her terrible temper. "Will this do?"
"Maim him? Not, uh, maim me?"
She turned to look at Griffin. "What are you talking about?"
"Attending the party was my idea." He shoved his hands into the elegant, angled front pockets of vanilla-colored trousers. He wore them with a vertical-pleated Mexican wedding shirt in pale turquoise linen and gleaming leather loafers. At the cove, she'd seen him in nothing other than shorts or jeans and ragged Hawaiian shirts or tees. If she'd had to guess, she would have claimed his best pair of shoes had a swoosh on their sides.
She wasn't sure this cleaned-up stranger was any more attractive than the bronzed guy at the beach, however. For whatever reason, both managed to ring her sexual bell. Yet he was confusing her now, looking at her in a strange way that she couldn't decipher.
"Why don't you put down your instrument of death," Griffin suggested, crossing to her. He placed gentle hands on her shoulders, just as he had at the party. "Let me take your jacket."
Leaving the book launch, she'd shrugged it on, but she was happy to shed it now. The mad she'd worked up on the way back to the hotel was like a fire under her skin. Griffin hung the garment over a chair, taking an extra moment to straighten the lapels.
Aware he was usually a flinger, her eyebrows rose at his uncharacteristic fastidiousness. He was operating with the slow, careful movements of someone defusing a bomb. From the corners of his eyes, he sent her a sidelong glance. "Can I get you a drink?"
She'd sipped at a quarter glass of champagne before Ian had arrived, and the liquid had soured in her belly after their meeting. "I have a rule against raiding the minibar."
Griffin gave a smile. "Sure you do. But lucky enough, at times our moral codes take quite divergent paths. White wine?"
"All right." However, she'd lay the blame for her lapse not at Griffin's door, but Ian's. He made her so angry she just barely resisted stomping a foot - because she'd missed her opportunity to kick him with it where it counted. "Are you going to have something too?"
"Definitely." She saw him withdraw a bottle of wine from the mini fridge. For himself he poured some sort of amber liquid in a glass, neat. Then he crossed to the couch, setting down the two glasses on the nearby table. As he took a seat on the cushions, he grabbed up a box of tissues.
She frowned. "Are you okay?"
"Sure." He patted the place beside him. "I'm ready."
For what? But before she could voice the question, he patted the cushion again and sent her an encouraging smile.
She couldn't figure him out. Sitting wasn't exactly appealing at the moment, not when she needed to work off some righteous anger. Call her silly and emotional, but seeing Ian had brought up a roiling combination of insult, disappointment and humiliation.