Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 9

Susan carefully balanced the boxful of books in her arms, aimed a hip in the general direction of her office door, and pushed. The door didn’t budge. Blowing a wisp of hair from her face, she tried to readjust the heavy armload of books and turn the doorknob at the same time. One book and then another tumbled from the top of the overstuffed box, and the whole armful tilted wildly when the door opened easily from the other side.

Lanna’s wide-eyed stare said it all. “Don’t ask for help, whatever you do.”

“I certainly won’t,” Susan agreed.

“I’m only the hired help. The assistant you pay to file her nails when we fail to get any big rush of customers on a Tuesday morning.” Lanna lifted the heavy box from Susan’s arms and headed toward their back stockroom. Susan followed, kneading the strain from the small of her back with her knuckles.

“You weigh less than I do,” Susan protested.

“So hire us a man. Or let me do the heavy work and lower the rent on my apartment upstairs.”

Susan motioned to the shelf where she wanted the box, but Lanna’s look said she already knew that. During the next few minutes, they catalogued still more cartons of books, wheeled them back into the shop on a dolly cart and began to shelve them. The two women exchanged a grin. Two years earlier, Lanna had walked into the store looking for a job; she’d been all of twenty-one, with a bubbly smile and not a goal on earth. At this point, she knew as much about the running of a bookstore as Susan did, and her own shop was clearly pictured in her mind…the shop she would have in a year or two. Professional distance hadn’t lasted long. Which made it easy for Susan to say, “I was thinking of raising the rent, actually.” Her tone was carefully neutral. “I mean since there are two of you up there now, I should get double the rent, right?”

Lanna turned a not totally unattractive pink, in keeping with her flaming hair and freckles. “He’s not living there. At the moment he just thinks he is.” She added brightly, “My mother’s coming to visit next week.”

“That’s nice. He’s adorable,” Susan added, and watched Lanna’s pink face turn crimson.

“He is,” Lanna agreed. “That’s just the problem. Pursue that one, Susan, and I’ll probably lose my job by telling my favorite employer to mind her own business.”

“Don’t risk that,” Susan advised.

“So what do you think I should do?” Lanna demanded promptly, and they both chuckled.

“Sow all the oats you want to until your mother arrives,” Susan suggested blandly. “Who cares that he doesn’t have a job? That he doesn’t have any permanent future to offer you? That if he moves in with you, you’re the one who will pay the rent and-”

“Thank you,” Lanna interrupted. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re worse than my mother.”

“I don’t mind your saying so.”

“Shut up, Susan. I’m enjoying making my Big Mistake.”

“Sure you are. He’s only been there two nights, and already you’re talking about kicking him out.”

“I was afraid you’d raise the rent,” Lanna said flatly.

“Hmm.” Susan shoved the last book in place. “I won’t make you throw him out yet. I’ll give him a week, because he is particularly adorable. Beyond that, I’ll put two bucks on your common sense.”

“Only two? Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m certainly glad we had this little talk,” Lanna drawled, and strode off deliberately toward the cash register. Susan chuckled, her hand on the dolly cart, ready to roll it back into the stockroom. “Hey, boss?”

“You want more friendly advice?” Susan called back disbelievingly.

“I wanted to tell you to stay off the ladder back there. All you have to do is raise my pay, and I’ll do all the restocking for the next thirty years.”

Susan muttered something indistinguishable. She’d nearly fallen off a ridiculous little stepladder the day before. Dizziness had come over her from out of nowhere. Having a total distaste for hypochondria, she had promptly ignored the incident-or would have, if Lanna had behaved more like an employee and less like a friend. It didn’t make sense, anyway. Occasionally, a closed elevator made her swallow hard, but she’d never had a problem with heights.

There had been a little problem getting to sleep lately, though. She and Griff simply hadn’t been able to rest. Sunday night he hadn’t come in until five in the morning, and had forced himself to go to work on Monday. Then he had spent all of Monday night searching for his son, and today there was still no word from Tom.

Susan’s smile faded. She was becoming far more familiar with Sheila’s voice over the phone than she had ever expected to. In the meantime, Griff had called his attorney about getting custody of the kids. The phone had been ringing constantly; there had been Tiger and Barbara to soothe… Through all of it, Susan was achingly aware that Griff was increasingly terrified for his son, and hiding it well. A lump clogged her throat. She would have done anything on earth to relieve that unbearable anxiety for him…

Business picked up around noon. It always did, about the time she and Lanna were trying to snatch a sandwich and had given up on customers in favor of restocking and bookkeeping. Susan was already convinced the store could support a part-time worker in addition to her and Lanna, particularly with Christmas coming. She wanted more time with Griff as well, and the house was a bundle of work. A small sign in the shop window said she was willing to consider applications, but that merely produced a flood of money-hungry students who added to the chaos around noon.

At quarter after one, she closed the door to her office. With a wilted sandwich in her hand, she called Griff. They discussed the weather, her business, his business, and traded anecdotes to make each other smile, all in the space of five minutes. Very carefully, they skirted any mention of Tom. If there had been news, obviously Griff would have offered it.

Susan walked out into the shop a few minutes later to find that Lanna had evidently thrown out every customer in the place except one. Lanna never threw out a good-looking male.

The boy was hovering near the door, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn-out jeans. His dark eyes were hollowed out with tiredness, which didn’t take anything away from his outstanding good looks. With his shock of blond hair, the beautiful eyes and his clear, strong features, he was a beautiful boy. Brazenly sexual as only a seventeen-year-old male can be, the kind of boy Susan would have run from when she was a teenager. She saw all of that, but did not really think about it. All her attention was focused on those eyes raised to hers, anxious, exhausted, and a terrible mixture of terrifyingly young and all too suddenly old.

Susan stood stock-still for all of a second and a half, praying that he would let her help him. She was beside Tom in seconds, then hesitated, a helpless blur of tears in her eyes. She knew Griff’s oldest child so little, and doubted very much that he would let her throw her arms around him. His finger touched her sleeve uncertainly.

“Susan? I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I came to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have-”

Reason was tossed by the wayside. She grabbed him and hugged him close. “Thank God you’re all right.” She hugged him again, hard, and finally drew back her hands still on his arms. “We’ve been so terrified that something awful had happened to you!”

Tom drew in his breath, his dark eyes miserable. “I should have called. Dad’s probably furious…”

“Not probably,” Susan admitted quietly. “Your mother is equally upset. We’ll deal with that later. You look exhausted, honey. Have you eaten?”

He shook his head, but his face had taken on a little color from her full-hearted welcome. “Not since yesterday. I came here… I don’t know why. I just had this feeling from the first time I met you that you were someone I could talk to.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way.” She led him to her office and closed the door. He slumped in a chair as if he were too tired to move again, and Susan couldn’t miss the blatant relief on his face when he realized that she was not going to bombard him with furious questions.

In the bottom drawer of her desk, she stashed peanut butter and bread for those days when she couldn’t get out for lunch. She made Tom three sandwiches and poured him a cup of coffee. While he was eating, Susan picked up the phone, sending a reassuring smile across the desk when his frantic look telegraphed Wait, I’m not ready…

Griff’s secretary had to fetch him from a meeting, and his impatient bark into the phone made Susan feel like laughing. “Tom’s here!” she announced with sheer bubbling pleasure. “He’s here at the shop. He’s totally exhausted and starving, but he’s fine, Griff. After he eats, I’m going to take him home. He belongs in bed or I’d bring him over- What? Of course.”

She passed the phone to Griff’s son, who hesitated, biting his lip before taking the receiver, looking at Susan fearfully. Yes, you can, honey…

Reluctantly, he put the receiver to his ear. “Dad? I-” There was a long silence, but by the time Tom handed the phone back to Susan, more color had returned to his face; there was even the smallest hint of a smile. “He’s going to kill me,” he informed Susan, but the prospect clearly wasn’t as painful as he’d thought it would be.

For what he’d put his father through, he deserved the good tongue-lashing that was coming, but it wasn’t appropriate for it to come from Susan-thank heavens. Once he was fed, she arranged for Lanna to stay at the shop and close up later, and browbeat Tom into driving home with her rather than following in his own car. It was just as well. The moment his head hit the headrest he was out, one dead-tired pup who couldn’t even raise an eyelid.

Susan just looked at him, at every stop sign, every red light, every bottleneck in traffic. That he had come to her in time of trouble touched her, and as she pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, she studied his sleeping face again, still so white with strain. Every protective instinct she’d ever had surged to the surface. She knew why she felt such special sympathy for Tom. This was a younger version of Griff slumped so exhaustedly in the car seat. A young man already determinedly independent, throwing himself violently into life… and foolishly tearing himself apart because he’d made a mistake. No, she didn’t know what had made him run off, or where he had been for the past five days. She didn’t need to know.

She knew Griff. And suddenly understood why Griff occasionally came home frustrated and angry after having lunch with his son. Two of a kind did not always blend well.

A bit of running interference was in order. For the first time in relation to Griff’s children, Susan knew she had something to offer of herself. Finally, she felt that she was part of the family. Griff actually needed her; Tom actually needed her, and she wanted so very much to be there for both of them.

“I…thought she was pregnant,” Tom said haltingly, his eyes boring into the Oriental carpet in the living room. “That’s what she told me. Like, I’d used…protection, Dad, but it’s not one hundred percent reliable…and when she told me…” He hesitated. “It wasn’t that hard to get an ID that said I was twenty-one. I bought it for five bucks from one of the kids at school. Candice wanted to get married, and I thought that was what I wanted to do, too. We planned to cross the state line and just…and, like, no, I couldn’t come to you. Or go to Mom. Mom, I never…and I knew you’d raise the roof, that you’d find some way to stop me. Too young, no money, no college… I knew what you’d say. But all I could think of then was that Candice would be left with a kid, that I’d have wrecked her life, wrecked her chances for going to school…”

Griff surged up and out of his chair, his dark eyes aching with hurt as he ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Dammit, Tom,” he growled. “I can’t believe you didn’t know you could come to me with that kind of problem. That you didn’t trust me-”

“I’ve always trusted you. It wasn’t like that.” Tom jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, stretched out his long legs and rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if the frustration of trying to communicate with his father was familiar. The gesture angered Griff as well as hurt him; Susan could see it in his eyes, but for the moment she stayed silent. “Look, Dad. I couldn’t come to you. It was my problem. My life that was affected. Not yours. I had to do what was right in my eyes…”

“You didn’t think our lives were affected when we didn’t know whether you were dead or alive for five days?” Griff snapped.

Tom’s eyes went desperately to Susan’s, not for the first time that evening. With his hair freshly washed and his clothes hanging on him loosely enough to announce that he had lost several pounds in the past few days, Tom still looked exhausted, half boy, half so clearly man. Susan’s heart went out to him. “Just go on,” she said gently. “Tell us what happened after that, Tom.”

“We didn’t get married,” Tom said flatly, his eyes following his father’s restless movements. Griff could not seem to sit still. Alternately facing his son directly, or pacing, he finally leaned back against the fireplace and tried to stay calm. Tom resumed speaking. “I… The first night Candy seemed to get ill. And by the next day…she wasn’t pregnant.”

Susan made a small sound of distress. “Lord, she didn’t miscarry, Tom?”

“No. Like, I guess she wasn’t ever pregnant, really. She just wanted to get married, and that was the way she…”

“She got her period,” Griff interpreted bluntly.

Tom lowered his head. “She tried to pass the cramps off as the flu, and I…” He let out a weary sigh and dragged his fingers roughly through his hair in an almost exact imitation of his father. “But she wanted to get married anyway. To some extent, I still felt a responsibility. All the same she could have been pregnant, because of me. Everything suddenly got confused in my head…”

His eyes met Susan’s. “You felt that you’d been taken for a ride by someone you believed you loved,” she suggested gently.

Tom looked at her gratefully. “I wanted to do the right thing. Maybe it would have meant I couldn’t go to college, but, like, I’m not stupid, and I’m not lazy. I could have supported her. But I never saw Candy as…calculating before. I never imagined she would lie to me about something so important. I thought she loved me. I never knew she saw me as a ticket to the right side of town because my last name is Anderson.”

Oh, honey, your father knows that story, if only he could see it. Griff and Tom passed the conversational ball back and forth like players in a tennis rally, while Susan sat back, exultant when they scored in communicating with each other, anxious when one of them missed a shot. At least they were trying. Griff loved his son so much, but his natural instincts of love and compassion were shunted aside as guilt told him to play Victorian paterfamilias-stern, rigid, authoritarian. And Tom so clearly respected and loved his father, but his pride was involved; he was smarting from having had to come home with his tail between his legs.

Susan leaned back in the tufted wing chair with her legs curled under her, her chin resting in her palm. For a few seconds, her mind blanked out the war. She was exhausted; she’d been through her share of trials earlier. Sheila had been furious that Tom had come to Susan first. To a woman he barely knew. And then her son had gone to Griff; Sheila was a poor third. She’d spent an hour late that afternoon closeted with Tom, but she took the time to hurl a few choice words at Susan before slamming out of the house…without Tom. The accusation-that Susan had deliberately and maliciously come between mother and son-had hurt. Badly. From the very beginning, Susan had promised herself she would never do anything to interfere with the relationship between the children and their mother. Of course, there had been more to Sheila’s tirade than that. She might as well have used knives instead of words, all of them intended to pierce deeply and twist in the wounds…

Then Griff had come in, exhausted and drained. Normally, he required very little sleep, but three days with almost no rest was beginning to take its toll. His rumpled hair, the circles under his eyes, his tie askew, the deep lines in his forehead… Love for him surged through Susan, coupled with a desperate wish that he would take a less belligerent tack with his son.

Tom would live here from now on, but things were going to be very different for him. Griff expected to know where he was; Tom would not spend his nights with his girlfriend; he would stop skipping school…

“Dad. Come on,” Tom said defensively. “Like, I messed up. I said I was sorry, and I am. I did a stupid thing, but as for skipping school-you know I got straight A’s last semester. I’ve already got enough credits for college, it’s not like I missed anything.” He paused, squaring his shoulders, and suddenly looked his father straight in the eye. “And I’m not all that sure I want to go on to college anyway.”

“Suddenly you don’t want to go to college?” Something had snapped in Griff; Susan could see it and instinctively leaned forward.

“No, I’m not sure I do,” Tom said flatly, a belligerent spark in his eyes. “Four more years of school? For what? I can go to work and make some money.”

“And just what kind of money do you think you could earn without an education? I swear to God, if I had known about this girl-”

Tom stiffened. “Leave Candice out of it. I-”

“Griff. Tom.” Both pairs of blazing eyes shifted unwillingly in her direction. “You’re both tired, and I think you’ve had enough. We can talk some more tomorrow…”

“Stay out of this, Susan!”

The command was delivered curtly, in a voice both cruel and cold. Susan felt the blood drain from her face as she stared in disbelief at Griff’s dark eyes. There was no softness of I-take-it-back. He meant it. She felt as if she’d suddenly been relegated to the role of outsider, a third party who mattered not at all at the core of his life. The hurt went swift and deep; she would have preferred a knife wound.

“All right.” She stood up, cast a wan smile meant to reassure Tom, and started walking toward the stairs.

“Susan…”

She heard Griff, but once she was out of sight she could not take the stairs fast enough.