He bent over to kiss her forehead before gathering up their dinner debris. “Will you stop worrying about them? They’ve been camping out weekends at my place in sleeping bags for ages. None of them care about furniture.”
“Hmm.” She trailed him absently into the kitchen, snatching up the last contact paper scraps from the floor to toss them in the trash.
“I heard that.”
“Pardon?”
She glanced up to see the grin that was so uniquely Griff. One arched eyebrow and a slash of a smile. “Whenever I hear that little ‘hmm,’ I know you’re going to do whatever the hell you want to, regardless of World War Three.”
Her smile was impish. “I never did believe in wars.”
“You just set up minefields in velvet.” He shook his head ruefully and switched off the kitchen light. “We’ve got to put out the fire in the library-”
“Griff.”
She’d had her mind on his three children for days. She was worried about whether or not they would accept her, desperately aware of how important they were to him, and uniquely conscious that their idyllic twosome couldn’t last much longer. She’d known about his kids from the beginning, and she truly wanted to be a second mother to his brood. She might know nothing about child rearing, but she was not afraid of loving, and Griff himself had expanded that capacity for love within her.
Pinpricks of anxiety had gradually haunted more of her waking moments, yet at this instant, at this minute, Griff was standing in shadow, all tough sinew and moonlight-silver hair and dark, beautiful eyes. Hers alone. As male as danger, and sexual in a primitive way. He evoked vulnerability and he evoked desire, both still seeming strangers in Susan’s cool, efficient and well-ordered world. He’d encouraged her to break all her comfortable rules, yet she hesitated now, not sure how to ask for what she wanted. “We really won’t have to go back and forth to the apartment much longer,” she said hesitantly. “The kitchen’s done, and the painting’s finished…”
“We don’t need to rush the move. All our clothes are still at the apartment. We can hardly commute from here to there to change for work.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, turning away.
“We don’t even have a bed in here yet.”
“You’re right,” she repeated, and headed back to the library to take care of the fire. It had been an impulse, a silly, impractical impulse to stay here. To christen the house, just the two of them. In a week, the whole place would be livable-not fully furnished that quickly, but certainly inhabitable. They had a lifetime to spend in the house. There was no hurry.
She crouched down on the marble hearth. Their little fire was now only glowing coals; the large, shadowed room was hauntingly empty behind her. She adjusted the damper, set the screen in front of the fireplace and stood up again, only vaguely aware that Griff hadn’t followed her.
He was there, suddenly, in the shadows of the doorway, with a mound of sleeping bags in his arms and a cold draught of air following him that announced he had just been out to his car. He said nothing for a moment. The wind had whipped his blond hair, and with his square Nordic features and brawny build, she thought of him as Viking, an undeniably physical man with the inner strength of oak…and an incredible gentleness when it came to pleasing her.
“Our room, Susan?”
Something caught in her throat. “How dare you know what I’m thinking even before I do, Griff? I just can’t imagine why I love you.” She volunteered a kiss, took the pillows from the top of his bundle, and volunteered another kiss, then followed him through the dark, silent hall. Their staircase had a landing halfway up, with a long, low built-in window seat to match the long, low windows that stared out on their three acres. Normally, she would have been mentally hanging pictures and stuffing cushions for the window seat as she walked up the stairs. Not tonight.
Tonight her heart was full of Griff, and her mind was totally on him. On the intimate touch between them that she knew was coming. He was the kind of man who tried very hard to guess her every wish, who must have known hours before that she would want to stay here this night. He’d moved mountains to get her the house, just because she wanted it. And he’d moved her own private defensive mountains just to get her, making it very clear he’d be happy to treat her like spun glass if she wanted that. She didn’t. She just wanted…Griff. His happiness was already irretrievably linked to her own.
Her thoughts strayed back to Griff’s children, and the smallest of frowns etched her forehead. At the top of the stairs, one wing of the house was closed off by a set of double doors; there were four rooms where the original owners of the house had undoubtedly stuffed their offspring. Isolation tactics were not an element of Griff’s concept of raising children, nor of hers. Tom was to have the first room in the main wing. It wasn’t large, but Susan had already guessed that Griff and his seventeen-year-old son were fighting a few generation-gap battles; accordingly, she’d placed Tom far from his father’s door. Tom of the winsome smile and lanky limbs and his father’s pride-the boy just might appreciate a little privacy after coming in from a late date. The long conversation Susan and Tom had shared had been on the subject of energy and its effect on world politics; not the easiest topic to pursue at McDonald’s, when the rest of the group were gregariously bickering about French-fry portions. Susan had not expected such a quick feeling of rapport with Griff’s oldest child, but now she had high hopes they might develop it…
Across from Tom’s room was Barbara’s room. Or room-to-be. If anything could win over the girl with the snapping black eyes and fourteen-year-old world-weary precociousness, surely it would be that room. That alcove was just made for a canopied bed; the perfect spot for a makeup table was just under the window. Barbara would need an extra bed for a girl friend to sleep in…or didn’t girl friends spend the night anymore at Barbara’s age? Surely, at fourteen, she wasn’t already dating…? Uncertainty flickered through Susan’s mind, and her instincts told her to tread carefully with Griff’s Barbara. The child hid her feelings very well beneath a torrent of teenage rhetoric, but the atmosphere between her and Susan wasn’t friendly yet. How could it be? Susan would be taking her mother’s place, a role she’d better step into very carefully…
“Susan!”
She rushed back to the hall, barely aware that she had wandered. Next to Barbara’s room was a huge bathroom with a monstrous claw-foot tub and the original pull-down chain for the john. The light came from a crazy little skylight in the ceiling; sun-drenched by day, that corner was, in Susan’s mind, already filled with lush ferns and other moisture-loving plants. She would find a small, fluffy rug that was colorful and soft, but not so big as to hide the patterned-tile floor.
The last room before theirs was to be Tiger’s, and Susan unconsciously paused again. At ten going on ninety, that little imp had to be the easiest to win over. On first meeting, he’d dunked her in the pool. Not much on formalities, Tiger. There were certain priorities in life: What are you doing in my dad’s life, strange lady? rated far below Can you swim? Throw a beach ball? They could cover one wall of his room with cork and fill it with color and brightness…
From the darkness, Griff’s hand suddenly snatched hers, tugging her back out of Tiger’s room. Most impatiently, she thought wryly. His arm whipped around her, hugging her close, and then nudged her unerringly in the direction of their room. Hunger had clearly replaced tiredness. It was most difficult to understand, when they’d just had dinner…
Their room was huge, with a marble fireplace in the center of the outside wall. Moonlight flooded in through four huge windows, and Susan felt a surge of emotion burst through her at the sight of it. The fireplace and gabled windows, the arched ceiling and molded walls…the room fairly shouted family to her. Births and deaths and wedding nights, laughter and tears and tenderness; she could almost feel the love of families that had known this room, a happiness of generations in their joys and heartaches.