Beach House No. 9. Christie Ridgway

had contracted, and though she’d been quaking beneath his touch, she’d opened her mouth wider, succumbing to the insistent demand of his. Beneath her bikini top, her nipples had stiffened, and she’d pressed closer to ease the ache.

      When his fingers had tightened on her skin, she’d thought his touch might be tattooed there forever, and her only regret was all the other places he’d yet to make contact.

      Then in a move as aggressive as the kiss itself, he’d put her away from him. She’d staggered back, dazed, her gaze on his stiff back as he’d stalked off.

      It had taken two hours and a cup of black coffee to realize he’d been using sex to scare her away. Well, not exactly sex…okay, it was exactly sex. A kiss, she realized now, a kiss from Griffin, could be as intimate as any full body connection she’d had with another man. Her nerve endings were still smoking from it.

      “Don’t look at me like that,” Griffin barked.

      She felt a blush rise up her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      He rolled his eyes, then stalked farther into the room and threw himself down on the couch. “What will it take to get you out of here? You’re making me nuts. I can feel you all the way at No. 9.”

      “That’s ridiculous.” Lust couldn’t travel that far, could it? A governess’s lust surely didn’t have that kind of power. One spoke Jane’s name in a hush, and heretofore her sexual desires had been fairly muted as well. “It’s just your guilt talking.”

      He rocketed to his feet. “You deserved that damn kiss, walking around with all that skin, and especially with that…that…” His vague gesture seemed to indicate her hair.

      She put a hand to it. “I can’t help that it’s fuzzy,” she said in a defensive tone. “And anti-frizz serum makes it sticky.”

      “What the hell are you talking about?”

      “I don’t know.” It was true. With him in this small room, the air crackled with an energy that was messing with her brain synapses. “I thought you were complaining about my hair.”

      “It’s not your hair.” He glared at her. “It’s your mouth. Can’t you do something about that?”

      She put her hand over her lips, embarrassed all over again. Ian had once commented on it as well. “A former boyfriend called it a silent-movie-star mouth,” she heard herself confess. At the time, she’d pictured photos of famous actresses of the era with their waiflike features and bow-shaped lips and been uncertain what to think.

      “God knows I want to tie you to some railroad tracks,” Griffin muttered.

      She imagined his hands on her, winding rope around her wrists and ankles, and another flare of heat shot over her skin. Her palms were sweating, and she buried them in her pockets. Oh, Jane, she told herself, looking away from his tight jaw and angry eyes, we’re definitely not in the library stacks anymore.

      “This is ridiculous.” He was muttering again, and now he began to pace about the room. “There’s got to be some way for me to get out of this.”

      Thoughts of bondage fled. Jane was here so Griffin wouldn’t get out of this! If he ducked his obligations, she’d lose her chance to recoup her reputation. Worse, some might misconstrue his failure as a result of something she’d done. If she left Crescent Cove without seeing Griffin through to his deadline, her good standing would be further harmed. Irretrievably, maybe. No doubt Ian Stone would be the first to proclaim that she’d left yet another author in the lurch.

      Alarm refocused her mind on important matters, and she crossed to the album that Rex Monroe had delivered to her. “Griffin’s tear sheets from Afghanistan,” he’d told her, meaning copies of every article published during his embedded year. She’d been eager to read through the pages, figuring that by familiarizing herself with what he’d written she’d be better able to help shape his memoir.

      “The only way to get out of this,” she told Griffin in a firm voice, “is by getting to your contractual obligation. By telling this story.” With that, she flipped open the volume.

      On Our Way, the first magazine article’s headline read. Beneath it was a photo of Griffin, clean-shaven, smiling, his arm around an exotic-looking, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. The caption identified her as Erica Mendoza.

      “On our way,” Jane repeated. Puzzled, she looked up.

      Griffin’s gaze swept over the photograph, then settled back on her. “You didn’t do your homework like a good governess should, did you, Jane?”

      “Uh… Maybe not.” His agent had phoned, and she’d leaped at the opportunity, then rushed to Crescent Cove once she’d realized Griffin wouldn’t take her calls. She touched a fingertip to the lovely face so close to his in the picture. “Who’s this?”

      “The original book deal was supposed to be like the articles themselves,” he answered. “A ‘he said, she said’–style account of our embedded year.”

      “He said, she said,” Jane repeated. “Our embedded year.”

      “Right,” Griffin agreed, his voice impassive. “Our embedded year. He said, she said.”

      She waited, watched him take a breath.

      “But now…” Griffin said. “She’s dead.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      GRIFFIN WATCHED Jane rock back on her heels as shock settled on her face. Such an expressive face it was, those big eyes wide, her soft lips parting on a sudden breath. She had a baby’s skin, fair and fine-pored, molding the delicate bones of her cheeks and the clean edges of her jaw. Despite her bluster, her fragility didn’t stand a chance against him.

      Hell, he bet he’d have her running by nightfall.

      “What happened?” she asked.

      “That story you’re so eager for me to write, honey-pie?” Griffin gestured at the album of collected magazine pieces, though he avoided glancing at the photo of Erica. “I better warn you, it’s got blood and gore.”

      Jane flinched. For a second he thought he might have scared her off with just that, but then she drew out one of the dining chairs and took a seat. A cool cucumber once again. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

      A sudden urge to bolt cramped his gut, but he rode out the impulse. This was one of two memories of that year he didn’t have to stave off with rock ’n’ roll blasting through a pair of earbuds or the monotone chatter of news from his big-screen TV. While an auto’s backfire could have him crouching to protect himself from small-arms fire, or the cry of a seagull take him straight to the nights when the monkeys shrieked from the craggy mountains surrounding the base in Afghanistan, thoughts of Erica raised a wall between him and the rest of the world.

      “We each had a different sponsoring magazine, both owned by the same publishing company,” he said, moving back so he could lean against the nearby wall. “The newsweekly was paying my way. Erica was the first embedded war journalist on assignment for what’s generally considered a women’s fashion publication.”

      Jane glanced at the collection of tear sheets. “Brave lady.”

      “Dogged.” He didn’t want to examine too closely right now what, exactly, she’d been so determined to accomplish, so he pushed the question away. “It’s a man’s world out there. Every ten or fourteen days, we rotated to a slightly larger base for a chance at a hot meal and water to wash with, but the rest of the time it was MREs and our own sweat. The guys pissed into PVC pipes stuck in the ground.”

      Griffin eyed Jane, trying to picture her among the soldiers in his platoon. Erica had been bold and bawdy, coping with the almost-adolescent sexual bravado of the young men by telling jokes so dirty they could almost make him cringe. Jane, on the other hand… She’d probably faint dead away.

      As