‘Yes.’ The hint of steel in her sister’s voice surprised her. ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we, Theo?’ Becca’s hand rested on her stepson’s shoulder, and it gratified Lyndsey to see him nod furiously. ‘We’re going to bathe Nora and tuck her into bed, so we can enjoy movie night and stuff ourselves with buttered popcorn.’
‘Mom’s letting me see the new James Bond.’ He gave a conspiratorial grin. ‘Don’t tell Dad. He reckons it’s too old for me.’
‘She won’t say anything.’ A red-hot blush stained Becca’s cheeks. ‘My sister’s good at keeping secrets, aren’t you?’
For a second, she was home again, newly graduated from university and waiting to start her first job, coerced by her precocious thirteen-year-old sister into covering up the fact she was drinking and smoking with her equally delinquent friends. The sensible, responsible action would’ve been to tell their parents, but the never-ending need for her sister’s approval had still been at the forefront of her mind.
‘I never thanked you, did I? It’s taken me all these years to realize how much you had my back and I treated you like—’
‘It’s okay. Not now, Becca,’ she pleaded. Her emotions were on edge, and she didn’t need them tipped over the cliff by apologies for things that were water under the bridge. Lyndsey plastered on her brightest smile and squeezed Griff’s arm. ‘Let’s go paint the town red.’
‘Happy to oblige.’
They strolled outside and she struggled to maintain her bright façade when the early evening sun picked out flashes of bright blue and rich golden brown in Griff’s eyes as they roved appreciatively over her. He wrapped his arms around her and his long, lingering kiss sizzled all the way to her toes.
‘If this was Christmas, you’d be the gift sticking temptingly out of the top of my stocking, begging to be yanked out and played with right away. They say patience is a virtue, so I’ll be a good boy.’ He stepped back, opening the passenger door of his beat-up truck with a flourish. ‘Perhaps we’ll do a reversal of the Cinderella story and it’ll turn into a gold carriage at midnight.’
‘I hope not. This is what won me over that first day. Your unpretentious vehicle . . . and you.’ Lyndsey’s voice broke.
‘Hey, you’re not goin’ to cry, are you? Did I say something wrong?’
No, you’re being your normal wonderful self, and I want you in my life so badly it hurts, but it’s not going to work so we’ve got to stop now.
His face turned to granite.
‘Of course not, I—’
‘So, tell me if I’m right. Was it your plan to share my bed tonight, then walk out in the morning with nothing more than a thank you?’
The bitter words struck like repeated blows from a blunt object. Griff’s scathing gaze bored through her skin, leaving Lyndsey nowhere to hide. If she stupidly asked how he’d guessed her intentions, that would demean them both. From day one, they’d been attuned to each other, so it made sense they’d end things the same way.
‘I thought we were on the same page these days, but I guess I don’t fit into your neat little plans for an organized life. I thought I’d finally got it right with a woman. Even started imagining how we might make this work long-term.’ He grasped her wrist. ‘Are you going to lie and tell me you didn’t do the same?’
She supposed she could try to make him understand, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t matter. Griff shook his head as she stayed silent.
‘I didn’t guess you to be a coward.’ He let go of Lyndsey and slammed the door that he’d opened for her, then ran around to jump into his truck, leaving her standing there. Griff revved the engine and shot off down the driveway, kicking up a shower of gravel to sting her bare legs.
‘What’s going on?’ Becca reappeared on the porch, holding Nora, wrapped in a white towel ready for her bath. ‘Why are you still here?’
She stared helplessly at her sister and couldn’t have spoken if someone paid her a million pounds.
* * *
The red mist cleared from his brain, and Griff jerked the steering wheel hard to the right and pulled off the road. He’d been so desperate to get away from Paradise Valley he was damn lucky he hadn’t killed himself — or worse still, someone else — with his reckless driving. Paradise? That was a damned joke.
In the past, women hadn’t always appreciated Griff’s straightforwardness, but at least he’d never led one down the garden path before slamming it in her face. That’s what he’d experienced tonight, and boy, did it ever sting. He’d tried his best to give her space, to be patient, but clearly it hadn’t been enough.
He caught sight of his sad, disillusioned face in the rear-view mirror. Tonight, Lyndsey had wiped away every gain he’d made over the last few years with her fake smile and cruel plan to take him to bed again before dumping him. According to a slew of clichéd country music songs, he should head to the nearest bar and drown his sorrows in a whisky bottle. Not an option that held any appeal for him.
Flicking on his indicator, he turned the truck around and drove, well under the speed limit, back home. His gloomy mood lifted a few notches as he caught one of his favorite small birds homing in on a luckless worm in the freshly hoed vegetable garden. Its name made him smile to start with — tufted titmouse. A spiky blue crest resembling a mohawk gave it an eccentric appearance, along with a jaunty black patch above its beak contrasting with pretty silver-gray feathers.
He should probably eat, but the thought of food turned his stomach. Griff’s feet took charge and led him, unsurprisingly, towards the workshop. Lyndsey’s mosaic panel was waiting for him to work his magic. He had the last few pieces of glass to cut before the design was in place, then he’d be at the point of gluing everything down. Once that was complete, the panel had to be grouted, another exacting process, and left to dry before a final cleaning and polishing.
Something of his old doggedness, the persistence that made him so successful in his former job, resurfaced. He couldn’t accept Lyndsey’s stubborn conclusion that she didn’t have room for their relationship in her busy life. He’d fight for her. Make her see they had something too special to toss aside. How to go about that was a million-dollar question, but perhaps when his homage to Lyndsey was finished, he’d know what to do about her, and them.
Griff shrugged off his suit jacket and hung it up out of the way. With his leather apron and safety glasses in place, he settled on his stool and set to work. He placed an uneven rectangle of azure blue glass in front of him and picked up his first tool, a brass oil glass cutter to mark the cutting lines for one of the waves, a process called scoring. The skills needed for this part of the job were the same as he’d learned in his stained-glass work, so by now they were second nature. After scoring the glass, he’d break it with running pliers, then grind down any lethal edges before repeating the sequence with the next small piece. If things went well, he’d end up with an abstract representation of the Caribbean Sea. If they didn’t, he’d have more offcuts in the bin to work with another day.
The sound of an owl hooting outside made him stop and check the time. Two a.m. He took off his safety glasses and lifted his hand to rub his tired eyes. Inches from touching them, he stopped himself. Glass dust and eyes didn’t mix. He’d made that mistake once when he was first starting out, and didn’t plan on doing it twice. It would’ve been made worse by the fact that his fingers were also covered in grout from where he’d applied it to the gaps between every tiny piece. The mosaicist who’d taught him some of her tricks explained that many people chose to apply it with a palette knife or sponge, but she preferred the more intimate connection of using her fingers. It was a little riskier in terms of cutting himself, but tonight he’d emerged unscathed.
