He had a strange, nagging suspicion that the same observation could be applied to this case if he looked at another meaning of being blown away: having the wind knocked out of him. The woman across from Griff made him feel that he was positively sur-rounded even though she remained sitting in her chair,
It was the way she looked at him when she talked, the way she sailed ahead, asking questions. She didn't seem to entertain the idea that perhaps she had no business asking the things she was asking.
And it was the way she gestured when she spoke. If she ever lost the ability to talk—an absolute godsend if it ever came to pass, he mused—she could still make herself understood. There were gestures and motions accompanying every sentence she uttered. And she uttered a hell of a lot of them.
Griff studied her thoughtfully over the rim of his mug, wondering just what it was that made him so wary around her. She was his exact opposite. Flamboyant, animated, bubbling over with enthusiasm. Yet that didn't put the edge into the situation. No, he dealt with exact opposites every day. Most people were not as reserved as he was. There was something more at work here. There was something about her that made him very, very nervous and he had a healthy respect for his own intuition.
Without quite knowing why, he felt that there was a very real danger of his being blown away by this very exceptional woman.
While she talked, Liz could feel his eyes on her, dissecting her. From the consternation on his face, she judged that he felt confused and not very pleased.
Liz nodded toward his mug. "Something wrong with the coffee?"
"No, why?"
"You're frowning over it. Or is it me that's making you look so cross?"
Enough. He had encountered less probing when he had interviewed to join the police force. He set his mug down. He thought he did it with finality. "It's been a long day, Ms. MacDougall—"
He thought wrong.
She was off and running with another topic. "Well, now, I've held your baby—"
"My sister's baby," he corrected tersely, and even that correction didn't make him happy. This baby had no place in his life, or Sally's.
Well, she wasn't in Sally's life right now, was she? She was in his.
Liz steamrolled over his protest as if she hadn't heard it. "Which automatically allows you to call me Liz." She drained her coffee. "Or Elizabeth if you prefer to be formal."
He thought longingly of tape, the large, heavy-duty kind used to wrap packages that were sent through the mail. Applying the wide tape in a strategic place might just bring a halt to her nonstop stream of words.
"Elizabeth," he began again, searching his soul for patience because she had come to his rescue when he needed it.
Liz nodded her head. She might have known. "You prefer to be formal. I had a hunch. I, of course, prefer to be informal." There was mischief in her eyes as she made the statement.
"I wouldn't have guessed." His sarcasm couldn't be held in check any longer.
She was impervious to his attempt to constrain her. His mouth was no match for hers and they both knew it. "Liz."
He stared, lost. Was she talking to herself now? He wouldn't doubt it. "What?"
"Call me Liz," she encouraged. "It's only one syllable and not very hard."
He sighed, placing his large hands flat on the table. "What apparently seems to be hard is making a getaway from here."
So why wasn't he getting up and leaving? It wasn't as if she had him tied to a chair, for heaven's sake. Yet he remained seated. He didn't quite know why.
Was this man really so eager to head for the hills? She was receiving some very contradictory signals from him. Verbally, he was saying that he couldn't wait to be away. But she was getting a distinctly different impression from his body language. Especially when his eyes washed over her.
"Oh, were you trying to leave?"
"Before the turn of the century, yes," he muttered darkly.
If his retort was meant to put her off, it failed. "Any wounded bears in your family?" She rose and took the two mugs to the sink.
"I have no family."
She turned to look at his expression. It warned her that she couldn't cross this barrier. She hesitated, considered, and then crossed, intrigued by the No Trespassing sign she perceived. "I take it your sister and Casie belong to the stork who brought them?"
He laughed despite himself. "Does anyone ever get to have the last word with you?"
She shut off the running water and put the mugs on the drainboard. Reaching for the kitchen towel to dry her hands, she grinned. "Nope."
"I didn't think so."
A plaintive, insistent cry emanated from Liz's bedroom.
She draped the dish towel on a magnetic hook hanging from the side of the refrigerator. "That would be your niece."
Time to go. Suddenly, a deep dread filled him. He didn't welcome the idea of staying home alone with the child. Weighing the two evils, if he were being honest with himself, Griff decided that despite the verbal barrage, staying with Liz was actually the less odious of the two. Almost eager to escape a moment ago, he hesitated now, casting about for a solution.
"How much is your weekend rate?"
Liz was about to lead the way to her bedroom. His inquiry, out of the blue, made her stop in her tracks. She looked at his face, trying to read what was going on behind that strong, impenetrable exterior. She thought she discerned a flash of apprehension in his eyes before the curtain went down again. He was probably one hell of a poker player. "I don't have a weekend rate."
The wail from the bedroom became more urgent. So did his thoughts. "Would you consider—"
Griff stopped. He was panicking. He had never done that, not in all his years on the force. Not since he was a child. What was the matter with him? Casie was, after all, only a six-month-old baby. Besides, he was sure that Sally would be coming back as soon as she fully realized what she had done. There was no reason to feel this apprehensive about the matter.
Liz could sense the feelings he was experiencing, or at least she thought she could. Her face softened and she smiled encouragingly at him. In a gesture meant to comfort, she put her hand on his shoulder.
"There's nothing to it, Griff. And you can call me anytime if you run into trouble."
She felt the muscle beneath her hand become rigid. Now what had she said wrong? she wondered in mounting exasperation. Here she was offering to help and he was acting as if she was about to embark on a crime spree. She couldn't decide whether he was just a clumsy, helpless male who was rather sweet and definitely out of his element, or a total neanderthal type whom she could wash her hands of completely.
But then, she knew she couldn't do that. She had never abandoned anything that needed help, not even that mean-spirited dog she had found on the way home from school when she was a child. In a way, Griff reminded her of that dog. The German shepherd hadn't trusted anyone either and it had taken a lot of patience, understanding and loving on her part before she finally brought the dog around. But once she had, he'd stayed with her for the duration of his life, giving her his undying loyalty.
A simple "thank you" would have sufficed here, she thought, then wondered how Griff would react to being compared to a dog. She had a hunch she knew. It made her grin again.
He didn't need pity or someone talking to him as if he were some bumbling idiot, although he grudgingly thought that the description might have fit in this instance.
"I can handle it from here. It'll be all right." Griff stood abruptly. The chair legs scraped against the kitchen floor as he backed up.
It sounded more like a command. "Plan to hold a gun on her if she doesn't follow orders?" Liz asked, her eyes dancing.
He couldn't decide if she was laughing at him or not, so he said nothing. Instead, he turned and walked to Liz's bedroom.
When he opened the door he saw that the room wasn't what he had expected. Somehow, he thought things would be scattered around, a testimony to the whirling dervish who normally slept there. Instead, the room, done in pale blues, grays and whites, echoed of softness, of womanliness. It made him acutely aware of the fact that he had been neglecting a very healthy, demanding part of himself.
Impatiently, he dismissed his thoughts.
Turning, he found her right behind him, so close that all he had to do was lean forward to kiss her. For a moment, he thought he was going to. In one unguarded moment he almost went with an impulse in stead of leading with his mind. Leading with his mind had always been the safest route for him. Emotions, yearnings, those were things to keep locked away. They formed attachments and attachments formed trouble. He couldn't get hurt if he left no openings in the fence around him.
He struggled with himself and won.
She felt it, felt the tension, the electricity, perhaps even the warring factions he was enduring. They certainly matched her own. She held her breath, her eyes on his, willing him to make that first move. She found that she was more than ready to meet him three quarters of the way, but that first move had to be his.
He turned away and she wanted to kick him for being a coward. There could be no other reason he hadn't kissed her. She had seen the desire flare in his eyes, had felt his gaze hot and wanting on her face. Why hadn't he followed through? What was he afraid of?
Well, there was a baby to see to, so her own needs had to go on hold. "You want me to check her out before you take her?" She came up beside him.
He wasn't following her again. Damn it, why didn't the woman talk straight? "Check her out?"
Casie was waving her hands about. Liz took one of them and curled her fingers around it. Casie gurgled in recognition.
"To see if she's wet. Or would you rather do the honors yourself?" Liz raised her brow questioningly, barely hiding her amusement.
Griff took a step back from the chair-surrounded bed, as if to give her room. "No, that's okay, you go right ahead."
"You're all heart." She reached for a diaper from the pile on the nightstand. "It's made of stone, but you're all heart."
"How would you know what my heart's made of?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low.
He shouldn't have even bothered answering her, he told himself. Yet he had. Why was he allowing this woman to get under his skin this way?
She deposited the wet diaper into the blue diaper pail, and glanced over her shoulder. "Then why didn't you kiss me just before?" The question exploded from her lips.
Nice going, Liz. You really know how to play hard to get.
Well, she had gone this far, no use leaving the rest dangling in the air. "You wanted to." Expertly, she tucked the baby's bottom onto the new diaper and secured it.
If ever a woman deserved the label "impossible," it was the one before him. "I also wanted to strangle you a minute ago, but I didn't do that, either."
"Murder's against the law." She smoothed own Casie's dress. "Kissing isn't."
In a duel of words, he knew he was outmatched. The past half hour had taught him that. Still, he didn't back off. "Maybe it's against mine."
"Laws are made to protect people."
"Exactly."
She turned, a challenge in her eyes. "Are you afraid of me?"
He should have just ignored her, should have just taken his niece and driven away. Instead, he met her challenge head-on. He had done smarter things in his time.
Afterward, when he tried to explore his reasons, he wasn't sure why he had done it, why he had walked into the lion's den and exposed himself to the danger that lurked within. Maybe it was to show her that he wasn't afraid. Maybe it was to show himself. Maybe it was just to silence her for a moment. More than likely it was because he really wanted to, because the question of what it would be like to kiss her had lingered in the back of his mind ever since she had winked at him yesterday afternoon.
And when he could think, he also realized that his earlier assessment about being blown away had been very, very accurate.
The kiss had not been gentle. There had been anger in it, then passion and wonder had begun turning around in his head like a fiery kaleidoscope that temporarily removed him from the real world. He had meant to silence her. He had never meant to wound himself.
But he did.
There was a laugh on Liz's lips when he began to kiss her. It vanished as his unbridled desire, naked and raw, surged up to meet her. Kissing Griff was like being sucked into the center of a tornado. There had been no time for her to prepare for what was happening, no time for her to build up to this. No way of knowing that there were going to be bombs bursting in air.
His kiss ripped her away from her bedroom and transported her to Oz in one mind-blinding flash. Anchoring herself by putting her hands on his arms, she rose up on her toes, letting herself go, letting herself fall into the swirling abyss that he created for her.
Hungers rose, full-bodied and demanding, within Griff. He cupped the back of her head with his hand, tipping her face up toward his and his kiss ravaged her and devastated him. Over and over, his lips met hers. The assault was merciless and yet he wasn't the master here. Something else was. And that something scared the hell out of him. Sweet as her mouth was, he forced himself to pull away before there was nothing left of him.
Reality slowly came into focus. In an effort to pull herself together, Liz pressed her hands against Griff's chest. To her pleasure, the beating of his heart was erratic. Her own heart had just broken the sound barrier.
"Maybe I'm the one who should be afraid," she whispered, her voice unsteady, her pulses refusing to subside to a normal rhythm.
He looked down into her face, the temptation to kiss her again, to make love to her, almost too great to resist. Which was exactly why he had to. No ties. No binds. Not on him.