More Than Protect You (More Than Words #6.5) - Shayla Black Page 0,22
sit him in a makeshift booster seat, then scramble him up a few eggs to go with all the sugar. As soon as the little boy is done demolishing his food, he seems content to sit with his thumb in his mouth and a toy truck in his hand.
And I dodged a bullet. If left to figure out how to take care of Oliver by myself, this morning would have been messy. “Thanks a lot. I’d offer you a beer…”
“It’s fine. I gotta drive home. Britta is holding down the fort with our two boys. Jamie is almost four. Gray isn’t quite three months old. Together, they’re more than a handful.”
“I’ll bet.” I’ve only got Oliver to contend with, and I’m already feeling out of my element. But Griff seems to have the Dad thing down. “So about that crib…”
Griff and I retrieve all the parts from his SUV, and he gives me a quick, dirty explanation of how to put it together before he grabs a bag with crib sheets and a few blankets, then sets everything together in a corner of the living room.
“Thanks.” I shake his hand. “Really. I know Amanda will appreciate it, too. And I’d appreciate it even more if you could keep our location on the downlow.”
“No sweat. Here’s my number, in case you need anything else.” He hands me a business card, then heads to the door. “I’ll see you around.”
Then it hits me. If he’s Barclay’s son and Amanda is Lund’s daughter, maybe he knows more about her, especially what happened between her and his father.
“A question before you go?”
Griff turns back. “Sure. What can I do for you?”
“I need help with Amanda. She wants protection. Someone is after her, and the explanation I’m getting feels…off. An asshole with murder in mind would try to shoot her or maybe set her place on fire. But this guy? He came after her with a knife. That’s a way more personal approach than a slighted client of Barclay’s would suggest.”
“I never thought about it, but since you have to get really close to someone to stab them, that makes sense.”
“She doesn’t want to tell me about her relationship with your dad…but I can’t shake the feeling that I won’t be able to figure out who wants her dead or why without more information. Can you tell me anything?”
“Besides the fact dear old Dad had a history of knocking up his assistants? No.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And sharing them with his sons.”
Did Griff just say what I thought he said? “You…”
“Partook of his assistant? Yeah. When I was in high school. Her name was AnnaBeth.”
Holy shit. “Did Amanda know any of this before she went to work for him?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I never paid that much attention to her. She was my kid sister’s age. So even when I’d spent summers home and hung out by the pool, Amanda was still jail bait. No matter how cute she might have been, I did my best not to notice.” He presses his lips together. “But I think my dad did, even back then.”
“Any chance he more than noticed?”
Griff takes a long time answering. “If I had to bet? Yeah. And I think she would have let him.”
My gut seizes up. “Seriously?”
He shrugs. “I’m speculating; I have to say that up front.”
But Griff seems smart, and I’d be stupid not to listen. “I still want to hear.”
“After my freshman year of college, Amanda came out to Cali to spend a chunk of her summer with Harlow, like she’d done for years. And she still looked at my dad with puppy-dog eyes. But after a trip to Mexico with some friends following my sophomore year, I went home. Amanda was there. I didn’t see curiosity in the way she stared at him anymore. I didn’t see innocence, either. I saw heat. I saw hero worship. And I didn’t like the lecherous way he looked at her in return. To be fair, it’s possible she had sex with someone else and it emboldened her to—”
“No. At least I don’t think so. She told her brother that your dad is the only man she’s ever had sex with.”
He winces. “Then my guess is something happened between them during that year.”
But if Griff was in his first year or two of college… “How old would Amanda have been?”
“About fifteen.”
Is he fucking kidding me? “Would your dad really have—”
“Oh, yeah. He liked females and he liked them young. Bonus if they were virgins.