Griff had just picked Casie up out of her playpen. She was beginning to moan again. "Know she's gone, right?" he asked the child. "Well, this time we're going to muddle through by ourselves. I know what to do now." He heard the knock. "Now what?"
He crossed to the door and opened it, not knowing what to expect. No one paid social calls on him and it was Sunday, so there would be no neighborhood children trying to sell him candy he didn't want or wrapping paper he didn't need.
Liz was standing on the doorstep. "Did you hear her moaning?" he asked incredulously.
"No, I locked myself out of my car. Are you in pain again, Casie?" she asked.
He handed the baby to her. "Nothing I can't handle. Wait right here."
"I'm not going anywhere," she called after him.
It took him five minutes and a bent coat hanger to get the door open for her. She grinned as she passed Casie back to him. The baby was biting down on the deep-blue teething ring Liz had fetched from the freezer. "It's nice to have connections in the right places."
He looked at the teething ring. "I was just thinking the same thing."
Then, to his surprise, he bent and kissed her goodbye lightly on the lips. Somehow, with Casie in his arms, it seemed the thing to do.
Liz drove off, knowing that it had finally happened and it was time she called it by its rightful name. She rolled down her windows and called out, "Hey, world! Elizabeth Ann MacDougall has fallen in love."
There was no one in the street to hear her, but it didn't diminish the magnitude of the statement, or the way she felt.
* * *
"Hey, hey, there he is!" C.W. called out as Griff came into the locker room early Monday morning. "Boy, you sure had us fooled." C.W. stretched a little as he laughed and clapped Griff on the back.
To Griff's dismay, several other officers gathered around them.
His glance barely acknowledged C.W. "Would you like to explain that?" Griff's voice was low, and he knew that normally the others quietly backed off when he spoke in that tone.
Today, it didn't work. Or maybe the tone he was using didn't sound menacing enough or have as much conviction behind it as it usually did.
C.W. just went on talking to the other men as if nothing had been said. "He's got himself an instant family there, baby and all."
"The baby belongs to my sister." Griff uttered the statement between clenched teeth.
These people didn't belong in his private life. No one did, he tried to tell himself firmly. An image of Liz shimmered in his mind's eye. Liz, wearing his bathrobe and holding Casie.
"Didn't know you had a sister, Griff," a young officer said.
Griff turned slightly to look at the shorter man. "The subject never came up." The look Griff gave him should have silenced them all.
It didn't.
"A lot of things haven't come up." C.W. winked. "Like, where've you been hiding that cute little number we saw you with. Liz, isn't it?"
Griff opened his locker, trying to ignore the men around him. "I wasn't hiding her. She's taking care of Casie for me during the day."
Ernie jockeyed himself into position in front of Griff. "What she doing for you at night, Griff?" A wide grin split his face.
"Aren't you due out on patrol, Ernie?"
But his abrupt tone had no effect on the two policemen, or any of the others who were listening.
"Let me know if you need any pointers, Griff," Ernie called over his shoulder as he went out, chuckling.
Griff swore under his breath, but not nearly as vehemently as he thought the situation warranted. Maybe she was getting to him after all.
And maybe there was no maybe about it.
Something would have to be done about that, he promised himself. Later.
Chapter Nine
It had crept up on him. Somehow, when he hadn't been paying attention, love with its steel-binding nylon tentacles had networked all through his soul, hopelessly enmeshing him and taking him prisoner.
He thought he had shored up his defenses rather well and that he was impervious to any assault. He had thought wrong. The walls had been breached with surprising ease. A child had managed it.
Griff looked down at his niece as she slept in her crib. She had been part of his life for a month now and in that time she had grown. In size. He had grown as well, grown emotionally. Liz had been right. He did care about the little girl. It would have taken a very hard heart not to, a heart like the ones he encountered when he was growing up. Ones with no love in them, at least not for him. The families he had been forced to stay with had been concerned with him only because he meant a monthly stipend from the government and another pair of working hands at home. He had meant nothing more to any of them. And he had gotten nothing more from them even when he had been willing to give. So willing at first. And then he had dammed his love up.
Until now.
A small smile spread across his face as he moved the covers over Casie's shoulders. She never seemed to stay covered no matter how large a blanket he used and how many times he placed it on her during the night.
Casie lay on her stomach, curled up with the stuffed animal he had just happened to pick up yesterday on his way to Liz's house. Buying the toy had been to-, tally out of character for him. He was doing a lot of things that were totally out of character for him of late.
He wasn't sure yet if he was comfortable with the change, he thought as he slipped out softly.
Liz was in the kitchen, making dinner. He wasn't sure just how that had come about, either. She had just appeared on his doorstep, groceries in hand. These days it seemed that she was always somewhere close by, in sight or if not, in mind. She haunted the caverns of his mind a lot and there too the odds were beginning to turn against him. He suspected that he didn't have a prayer against her, against the emotions she always seemed to churn up within him.
He stood in the doorway, silently watching her as she moved easily about his kitchen preparing dinner for the two of them. They saw each other every day. During the week it was because he had to drop off Casie in the morning and then pick her up again at night. Weekends he didn't have that excuse to hide behind. Once he'd set his mind to it, he'd learned rather quickly how to take care of Casie. He knew he didn't need to call Liz for help. And yet time and again, he found himself doing just that, using some triviality as an excuse. As hard as he tried to disguise his reason, he knew he was just rationalizing. He wanted to see her, wanted to be with her.
His need for Liz made him ill at ease. It wasn't like him. He had spent so much effort, so much time perpetuating his shell and here she was penetrating it. With his help. If he didn't need, he didn't get hurt. If he didn't have expectations, he couldn't be disappointed.
Why couldn't he remember that around her?
Liz didn't seem to need excuses. She just popped up, like tonight. She always seemed content and at ease with her actions.
But he wasn't that uninhibited, that unreserved. Twenty years of keeping his feelings in rigid check was a lot to conquer and there were times he doubted that he could do it, or that he had anything of value to offer someone as special as Liz.
Or that he could stand it if it all blew up on him, the way he firmly believed in his heart that it was destined to.
He knew he should leave before the roof caved in, for both their sakes, and yet, he just couldn't seem to make himself do it.
"You know that old adage about a watched pot never boiling?" Liz didn't bother to look up in his direction. Yet she knew the exact moment he had appeared in the doorway. She could sense his presence. It seemed to fill up the space around her.
He wondered how she knew he was there. He remembered hearing once that there were souls who were fated for each other, chosen at the beginning of time. Kindred spirits. Was that the answer?
No, he told himself, that was just a silly, romanticized theory. Yet she still knew.
Griff remained leaning against the doorjamb. "What about the old adage?"
"It goes for a watched cook."
"You were planning on boiling?" he asked, amused.
She turned in his direction and batted her lashes at him in an exaggerated manner. "That depends on what you had in mind after dinner." With her free hand, she reached for the colander to drain the spaghetti.
It would be so easy, so very easy to slip into a pattern, to let himself pretend that this could go on forever, just the three of them. A home. A family. Wasn't that what he had once yearned for?
Yes, and what he had been continually shown that he couldn't have. The realization, finally hammered home, had drained him, had made him empty. He didn't have what she needed, what she deserved. It was too late for him.
The spaghetti could wait. This was more important.
"You're frowning again."
"Sorry." He straightened and crossed to the table she had set. Ever efficient. A whirlwind on legs.
"Don't be sorry." Quickly, because it was getting sticky, she rinsed the spaghetti and set it aside. "Talk. What are you frowning about?" Deftly, she switched off the sauce she had prepared. Picking up a knife, she began to slice small bits of cheese to use as garnish.
Griff sat down on a chair and leaned back. "Nothing."
She sighed. "'Nothing' again." She came up to him, waving the paring knife in front of her as an extension of her words. "You know, I've told you my entire life story and I still don't know anything about you other than the fact that you're a policeman, you have a niece and are very protective of a sister you won't talk about."
Griff shrugged, unaffected. I can't let you into my life any more than I already have, Liz. Even that's too much. "That's enough to go on."
Her eyes narrowed beneath the wispy bangs. "No, it's not."
Taking her wrist, he tactfully directed the knife she held away from him. "You get a bit too animated for my taste."
She put the knife down on the kitchen table behind her. "You're changing the subject."
Obviously she wasn't going to let him. "And not doing very well at it," he added, growing more somber. "There's nothing to tell."
She saw the way tension outlined his jaw, making it almost rigid. Oh, yes, there was, there was a lot to tell. She continued to cajole gently, even though she wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Why wouldn't he share himself with her? Why did he have to keep a part of him locked away? Didn't he know she only wanted to help him?
"There has to be something to tell." She smoothed down the kitchen towel she was using as a makeshift apron. "You didn't just drop out of the sky a month ago. You have to have a past."
"That's just what it is, Liz. Past. Gone. Dead. Leave it there."
His eyes told her to drop the subject, but she couldn't. She returned to the sauce and stirred it in silence for a moment, thinking. "You weren't very happy in the past, were you?"
"No."
"Why?"
"It's no concern of yours."
"So you keep telling me." She swung around in exasperation. The spaghetti pot rattled on the counter as she accidentally hit the protruding handle. She pushed it back farther without even looking at it. "And maybe it isn't. And maybe I should have my head examined for caring enough to be concerned." She bit down on her lower lip, biting back a few swear words she would have liked to heap on his head, words that Would change nothing. "But I am concerned. I want to know."
He couldn't understand. He kept fighting her at every turn, and still she kept coming. Like Rodan in those ridiculous Japanese movies. Except that she wasn't an ugly, twenty-foot-tall creature. But she still had the power to destroy him.
"Why?"
She wondered how he would look wearing dinner instead of eating it. "Because I care, you big idiot!"
He forced himself to look away from her.
"Don't."
"Easy for you to say," she cried bitterly. "But it doesn't change anything. I still care."
He had to see her face. Maybe he could understand if he looked at her face. "Why?"
She crossed to him and put her hands on either side of the chair he sat on. Her face was inches away from his. "Because I think you need someone to care."
A distant memory stirred within him. Those were almost the exact words the social worker had used when she had told Sally and him that they were going to stay with a foster family. "And you've appointed yourself."
She heard the sarcasm and knew it was his defense mechanism. It's not working Griff, she told him silently. "That's me. A committee of one." She forced herself to smile as she searched his face for some sign that he understood, that he would open up to her if she worked at it hard enough.
He threaded his hands through her hair, framing her face. "You're going to get hurt."
"My decision."
She was making it hard, so very hard to keep away. He wanted to love her, wanted to try, but couldn't. Something wouldn't let him. Fear. "I don't believe in long-term obligations."
"Oh?" Her mouth curved in amusement. She no longer believed that, even if he thought he did.
"Yes, 'oh.'" He kissed her eyes closed one at a time. His actions belied his words.
Her head began to swim. She hurt with needs that only he could soothe. "Then whose baby is that in the next room?"
He knew where she was going with this and he didn't want her to. "My sister's." Griff rose abruptly. She didn't back away an inch. Not in distance, not in cause. She stood with him, toe-to-toe.
Liz smiled smugly and crossed her arms before her. "I rest my case."
"You have no case."
"No?"
"No."
Liz rocked back and forth on her toes. "If you say so."