“And you’re okay with that?” Damn. So much for listening to her smarter self.
“Not with him talking about Morgan like that,” Griff said, laying his fork and knife down on his plate with exacting care, as if he couldn’t trust himself not to smash it all to hell. “She doesn’t deserve his shit.”
“Neither do you, Griff.”
That shrug of his shoulders again. “But I can take it.”
Pow. Right in the heart.
Kinsey scooted closer to Griff on the bench seat, taking his hand in hers and laying her head on his shoulder. If she could have squeezed her body between him and the table’s edge so she could wrap around him like a blanket, she would have. Fuck Holden Beckett.
“But do you have to? You could—”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m trying,” she said. “I really am, but I can’t see it.”
“My mom’s gone. Grandma Betty’s gone.” Finally, Griff turned to look at her. Pain shone in his eyes as bright as a neon Bud Light sign at the hole-in-the-wall bar on Main Street back home. “He’s all that’s left.”
“What about Morgan and your cousins?”
“That’s different.” He turned his focus back to the table. “I watch out for them.”
“And your dad watches out for you?”
Griff didn’t say anything for a second, then let out a heavy sigh. “In his way.”
Wow. Just capital W. O. W. Wow. She had nothing she could say to that, so instead she palmed Griff’s face, his dark beard tickling her palms; turned him so he was looking at her again; and kissed him.
“You don’t always have to be the one watching out for everyone,” she said, her voice breaking. “You don’t have to sit by the campfire in the dark alone.”
He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Is that a promise?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “I guess it is.”
And she wasn’t just saying it to make him feel better. The truth of it was a warm, living thing inside her that filled her up with bubbles of hope until it was like she could float right out of the café. All of it came together the way answers always came to her in a rush of understanding that she couldn’t deny. She loved Griff Beckett, and she wanted to be by his side facing off sabertooth tigers and anything else that went bump in the night—and she wanted to start now.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going home.”
He didn’t ask. He didn’t take time to think about it. He just took her hand and hauled her out of the booth with that look in his eyes that made her want to strip down in the middle of the café and have her wicked way with him right the fuck now. Since getting arrested for indecent exposure and lewd activities wasn’t on her to-do list today, though, she kept it together—at least long enough to get almost all the way inside his front door.
Chapter Forty-Two
Griff
Three days later, Griff was in the shower letting the high-pressure jets set to peel-off-the-top-layer-of-skin beat against his back, working his way through two problems he couldn’t find the answer to.
The first one was if it was finally the right time to tell Kinsey he loved her. She’d said she didn’t want him to be alone at the campfire in the dark even after meeting his father. She wanted to protect him. He could bench-press her with one hand, but she had gone all feral on him.
He tilted his chin and let the water blast his scalp, a dumb-ass grin on his face. Thank God no one could see it. Still, he couldn’t stop smiling, because Kinsey wasn’t the type of person who would make that declaration if she didn’t care—or, maybe, even love him back. Right? It was a question that made his balls shrink just to think about answering. The safe bet was to keep going like they were. If he didn’t press the issue, she wouldn’t have to answer, and he still had hope.
Dangerous fucking thing that was, an unknown variable that could make everything blow up in his face.
The second problem was what in the hell his dad was up to. There was no way he’d just happened upon them at Wakin’ Bacon. Dad’s idea of brunch was adding a splash of coffee to his whiskey. The man survived on spirits and spite—any actual food intake was gravy. So Griff wasn’t buying the accidentally-ran-into-them excuse. His dad had been there—and on his worst behavior even for him—for a reason.
Griff took the bar of soap and scrubbed it across his chest, arms, and face, using more force than necessary as his frustration built up. Something was wrong, and it was just out of reach.
That’s when it hit him—that throwaway line of his dad’s about not getting attached. Holden Beckett had never given two shits about his or Morgan’s love lives before. This time, though, his dad had sent out a warning.
In the next heartbeat, Griff was out of the shower and halfway across the bathroom. The water pelted the tile walls as he looked through one eye—the other one had soap in it—to text his dad.
GRIFF: What did you mean by “don’t get attached” the other day?
DAD: Have you sunk so low that you need a dictionary for that phrase?
The man was never going to stop being an asshole, but that didn’t mean he got to add Kinsey to his list of targets.
GRIFF: Leave Kinsey alone.
DAD: I’m not the one you need to worry about.
GRIFF: Who?
DAD: She’s a somewhat smart girl, but corporate secrets aren’t meant to be leaked.
And there was his dad, fucking with his head, but Griff knew Kinsey. She wasn’t that person.
GRIFF: Bullshit.
His dad didn’t bother to respond with another text, and Griff just stood there naked and dripping in the middle of his bathroom, staring at his phone screen, reading the exchange over and over again. Archambeau was on the verge of something big. Everyone in the industry knew it after their last stockholder call, but the specifics had stayed under wraps.
“Complicated.”
That’s how she’d described what was going on between them. She had to balance being the new person in the lab with dating the head of R&D at Beckett Cosmetics. Even if people only thought it was for a bet, there would be questions, concerns, avenues of research that would be denied to her—and that would be if it went the best way possible. Margins were tight, and even a hint of a corporate double cross or leaking company intellectual property could result in Kinsey losing her chance at the career she wanted.
But it was more than that. Kinsey’s job was about more than just being her passion; it was her way of protecting her grandmother. That he could understand all too well. That’s what someone did for those they loved; they protected them and those they cared about—even when it hurt, even when it was the last thing in the world the person wanted to do.