From This Day Forward. Christie Ridgway

that voice almost sobbing “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” all rolled into one ball of nearly unbearable noise.

      She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears and then suddenly someone was holding her. Griffin. He was warm and he was big and she couldn’t believe she was gluing herself against him, but there it was.

      It was his luxurious, sandalwood-and-something-else scent that finally dispelled the remembered stench of gunfire and it was his voice, “I’m sorry, Annie. So sorry, Annie,” that finally banished the echoes of yesterday’s sounds.

      His big hand was rubbing her back and she finally found the nerve to look up at him. She tried a smile, but it quickly wobbled off. “I guess I’m not as over it as I thought.”

      “I shouldn’t have sprung the picture on you like that.” His hand smoothed down her back again.

      She should move away, but her legs wouldn’t seem to obey her mind’s commands. And her mind! It wasn’t behaving either. It seemed to have forgotten this was Griffin Chase, vice-president of Chase Electronics, the biggest employer in town, who she was snuggled up against. It seemed to have forgotten this was Griffin Chase, the unattainable prince in every one of her adolescent Cinderella dreams.

      Instead, it registered heat and size and male and something inside her—something warm and liquid—seemed to be rising and falling all at once.

      “Forgive me?” he asked. That one side of his mouth kicked up when he smiled, a bit rueful, and he started to run his hand a third time down her back.

      A hand that abruptly halted midway. Midway, where a bra strap would usually be.

      They both froze. Annie was suddenly, acutely aware not only of the lack of a bra strap, but also that her bare breasts were against his hard chest, with only two thin layers between them. At the thought, her nipples, nestled so closely to Griffin, tightened.

      Oh, mercy. She jumped away from him, the soles of her shoes crunching against pieces of ceramic mug. Her face felt flushed and she crossed her arms over herself as she looked down at the mess on the floor. “I…” She couldn’t think of anything to say.

      “It’s okay,” he said. Maybe his voice was a bit hoarse, maybe not. “Let me take care of it.”

      Take care of what? But Annie’s brain wasn’t firing with all the necessary cylinders even as he strode to the broom propped in one corner of the room and then strode back to start sweeping up the mess at her feet. She didn’t prevent him from cleaning, but merely stepped clear of the debris as she giddily recalled the hardness of his chest and the heavy warmth of his hand and how comforting and…and…um, pleasing it had been to feel Griffin against her.

      She didn’t stop him from opening the cabinet under the sink, either. He had to toss the contents of the dustpan, after all, into the oversized white garbage pail.

      The garbage pail that, she belatedly remembered, was almost overflowing with ice-cream-covered undergarments.

      “Oh!” Annie said, dashing forward. She’d even gingerly pawed through the mess with tongs at one point, desperate for something wearable, so that several bras hung drunkenly over the edge to reveal a pile of ice-milk-sodden, but clearly recognizable panties. “I don’t…I’m not…”

      Griffin looked at her, his brows raised. “You don’t?” He looked back at the contents of the can. “You’re not?” He looked at her again. “I can…see that. I just don’t understand why.”

      Why? How could she possibly tell him about what had gone through her mind yesterday when she was lying on the bank’s floor? Annie chewed on her lower lip, feeling completely foolish about those silly vows. Then someone, a sainted someone in her book, rapped impatiently on her front door. Without a second’s hesitation, Annie grabbed at the opportunity to escape what now seemed horribly embarrassing and completely unexplainable.

      “Company!” she said brightly, pasting on a cheery smile. Then she turned and ran to see who it was, as if the man she’d once adored from afar hadn’t just discovered her naughty, though totally innocent, secret.

      On the other side of Annie’s front door stood two dear, familiar figures—her mother, Natalie Smith, and Annie’s best friend, Elena O’Brien. “Mom, Elena. Come in, come in.”

      With a surge of relief, Annie ushered them inside. They were just the people to remind her of the real Annie Smith. The ordinarily patient and ordinarily shy Annie Smith. She wasn’t the unfamiliar creature who had tossed her clothes away yesterday any more than she was the half-naked woman who’d found herself in the arms of Griffin Chase this morning.

      Her mother and Elena would help her remember that.

      Annie’s mom looked at Annie closely, an unfamiliar frown on her pretty face. “Honey? Are you all right? You look…different.”

      “No, I don’t,” Annie denied quickly. I’m the same. Nothing has changed. “I told you yesterday, Mom, I’m fine. A-okay. Peachy-keen. Hunky-dory.”

      “You left out tutti-frutti.” Elena grinned, her sassy smile bright against the golden color of her skin. Her Mexican mother and Irish father accounted for her straight black hair and blue eyes.

      “Still,” Elena continued, “your mom wasn’t going to stop worrying until I drove her over here. I told her nothing could shake you—” Her eyes widened as she caught sight of something over Annie’s shoulder. “Whoa. Maybe I was wrong.”

      Annie swung around slowly to find Griffin coming into the room. It’s not that she’d forgotten him, exactly, but she hadn’t quite yet figured out how to explain his presence or how to respond to him. Particularly now that she knew he knew that what she wore beneath her skirt and T-shirt was exactly zippo.

      But he took the uncomfortable situation out of her hands by walking directly to Annie’s mom and lifting her off her feet in a grizzly-worthy bear hug.

      “Griffin!” her mom cried. When he set her down she lifted up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “You’re home.”

      “And completely devastated to discover that in the two years I was gone you had retired.” He smiled down at her. “Any chance I could entice you back? At least just to fill the cookie jar?”

      Her mother laughed, and under the cover of their continuing conversation, Elena sidled over to Annie. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

      Annie rolled her eyes. “I told you yesterday. He gave me a ride from the police station.”

      Elena’s brows rose. “What about last night? Any additional, uh…rides?”

      Annie lightly slapped her friend’s arm. As if a man like him would look at her twice in that way! “Of course not. Griffin merely came over to check on me this morning. It was a neighborly thing to do.”

      Elena’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Neighborly?” she asked, her voice skeptical.

      Before she could scold her friend again, Griffin turned away from Annie’s mom to look at the two younger women. “And this is?” He was asking for an introduction to Elena, but his gaze was only for Annie.

      Suddenly, beneath her clothes, her skin prickled. She was naked. He knew it, she knew it, it was a secret only the two of them shared, and it only made her feel that much more exposed.

      Annie swallowed as more tickles of awareness rose on her bare flesh. “Griffin, this is—this is my friend Elena O’Brien.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as squeaky to them as it did to herself. “Elena, may I introduce you to Griffin Chase.”

      There was a funny little smile on Elena’s face as she stuck out her hand to shake Griffin’s. “Brother of Logan, I presume?”

      That caught Griffin’s attention. His eyes narrowed. “You know my little brother?”

      Elena gave a casual wave of her fingers. “We go way back. Be sure to give him my best.”