When they’d covered all the reasons why they weren’t interested in getting involved with anyone of the opposite sex in the immediate future, they did the dishes. The wine had diluted in Susan’s system by that time, though a rather crazy, lighthearted feeling of elation remained. Griff kept her laughing; for some obscure reason, she seemed to keep him laughing, too. They were just strangers for an evening; no reason for defenses to be raised, no reason not to share a few blunt truths…but then Griff was the kind of man who evidently always played with his cards on the table. Being comfortable with his candor was a little difficult for Susan, who had always been more reserved. Proper. Griff already realized that.
Well, she was. Maybe not proper, but normally shy, modest, stiff with strangers. Where had all that old-fashioned stuff come from, she didn’t know; her father had certainly been happily outgoing. It had always been a bit of a nuisance, carrying around those outdated character traits. With someone close to her, it was different, yet it had never been easy for her to scale those defensive walls…
Griff had no problem scaling those walls. She had no idea how or why it happened… She was doing something simple: hanging up the dish towel. His hand brushed the small of her back. And then lingered.
She turned to him with a smile all ready to be captured. He captured it. That first taste of a shared kiss seemed to surprise them both, because suddenly there was no more laughter. His arms cradled her close as if he’d discovered something precious. A blend of rough, tender kisses aroused a sweet, low love song in Susan that she’d never heard before. He had so damned much love in him, all pent up. She could feel it. Touch it. It was not the desire to take, but the desire to share, the need to share, the need to touch another human being…
Susan knew better than to sleep with a man she barely knew. It had never happened; it never would happen.
But then she didn’t sleep with him; they didn’t sleep at all. They made love, over and over, defining that word in all its myriad facets. Tenderness, sharing, selflessness, warmth, passion…touching souls. For the first time in her life, Susan understood why she had built up so many defensive walls over the years. Anything casual would have taken away from what she offered this man now. What she wanted to offer him, what he asked for, what he claimed, was the freedom to share the depth of emotion she had kept inside herself. She was like a well just waiting to be tapped, straining to be free…
They were married at the end of August, almost three months later. The small, simple ceremony had seemed so right to her, only the people who really mattered to both of them sharing that very private commitment. Her father had flown in ahead of time to spend the week, wanting to get to know Griff. The two men had known each other only an hour when her father had cornered her. “So you finally found him, Susie.” There had been a sweet blur of tears in his eyes at the ceremony; Julie had been wearing an I-told-you-so smile, her hands filled with rice…
Susan smiled sleepily and curled an arm around Griff in sleep. The house was so quiet, the air so still and fresh, with the last of summer’s sweetness drifting through the partly open window.
She was worried to death that his kids wouldn’t like her. She was just as concerned that Griff wouldn’t get the custody he so desperately wanted. She was well aware that he was trying a bit too hard to pretend he never lost his temper, that he enjoyed cooking, and that he didn’t care if she had to work an occasional evening in the shop. She was just as aware that she’d never really anticipated being involved with the kind of no-holds-barred physical and emotional man that Griff was, and she was fighting a few feelings of inadequacy, of doubt that she was up to providing the depth of love he needed so much.
She closed her eyes. They’d work it through. She had never been so sure of anything in her life. A love this strong, this rich… Come on, world, we’re ready, her heart sang, and the song became part of her dreams.
Chapter 3
“No. try it like this, Mrs. Riffler.” Susan glanced wildly at the clock, then pasted on a calm, reassuring smile for her elderly customer. “The tension of the yarn is important. Just try it once more.”
“I swear it never seems to work for me like it does for you. Maybe if you’d do this little part for me…”
Susan ran a distracted hand through her thick, dark hair, but her smile never faltered. “Of course.”
It was past noon, and Griff was expecting her. He’d gone to fetch Tiger from his ex-wife for the weekend, and the three of them had a thousand things planned. She’d only stopped by the store to do an hour of bookkeeping-and found her assistant, Lanna, trying to keep the shop open even though she was running a temperature of 101 degrees. Susan sent Lanna home. It didn’t matter; the shop always closed at noon on Saturdays…except that Mrs. Riffler had never appreciated the significance of closing time.
Sunlight filtered in on the unicorn display in the front window. Susan had displayed images of the mythical creature in crewel, in wood and in pastels, all on easels designed to catch the customer’s eye. Beneath the three frames were whimsically jacketed books of myths and monster legends and fairy tales.
Susan had always had a strong love of books; she’d collected more books than dolls as a child and had worked in bookstores from the age of sixteen. Her father’s hobby was trading and swapping old editions which he’d passed on to her for her shop. During her last year in college, an uncle on her mother’s side had died and left her an unexpected inheritance. It was enough for a down payment on a corner building that contained a small apartment above a store, very close to the university. Up to that point, her dream of owning a bookstore had always been wishful thinking.
Reality was far different from the dream. Who would have thought one small bookshop could have had such an enormous overhead? Thank God for the bank’s friendly loan officer. Finally, the store was stocked, the image of her youthful dreams; but then she made a series of dreadful mistakes. Getting people to come into the store was no problem, but old editions brought browsers, not buyers. The college kids loved to haunt her back aisles, where they thumbed through her expensive reference materials until the pages were dog-eared. And that unique section of children’s literature she was so proud of brought in the little ones, all right, but books with crayon marks just didn’t sell. Desperate by then, Susan had branched out into crafts-needlepoint and crewel, crocheting and candlewick. She’d started giving craft classes herself. Susan would have sold kisses for a dollar apiece at that point, but actually what was required was much more careful buying of items that would bring in ready cash and encourage paying customers. Reference materials were now stocked behind the counter, and she’d started a used and new children’s section… There had certainly been some changes made.
A great deal of scrambling had been required over the past five years, but Susan was now close to paying the last debt on that corner lot, and she rented out the apartment above the shop to Lanna-a recent college graduate and a book fanatic like herself who had proved invaluable both as friend and worker. Every inch of the struggle had been satisfying, even the occasional prolonged visits by lonely widows like Mrs. Riffler. The older woman beamed at her, finally stuffing her half-done afghan into her huge bag. “I just knew you wouldn’t mind if I came down to have you show me the stitch again. You know, I used to go to that other craft shop on Fifth Street, but they never had the time…”