From This Day Forward

Her mouth open in mid-sentence, Elena’s head swiveled toward Annie. “Huh?”

“Come shopping with me.” Though Elena was the sole support of her teenage sister and worked two jobs, she always managed to look chic.

Elena blinked. “Huh? What?”

Annie headed for her purse. “I need your help. New clothes. From the inside out. And from the department store, not the discount store.”

She didn’t miss the gleam in Elena’s eyes. “It’s a miracle!”

No, said a little voice inside Annie. It’s a man.

She didn’t know who quite yet, but she wanted one.

Despite her cowardly attempt at denial this morning, after yesterday’s experience she was certain she wanted love. And she was no longer content to wait for it to find her.

Chapter Three

“Goodbye, Mother. Tell Dad I’ll be waiting for his call in my office tomorrow.” Shaking his head, Griffin hung up the phone, wondering if his mother would get the chance to pass along the message.

Though Laura and Jonathon Chase were vacationing in Hawaii, the way they spent their days seemed just as separate as when they were in California. He’d seen it with his own eyes on his way home from his stay abroad. He’d spent a few days at their house on the Big Island where he’d observed his father dedicating long hours to the golf course in the same intense manner he dedicated himself as CEO of Chase Electronics when he was in Strawberry Bay.

Griffin didn’t know what his mother usually did with those hours alone in paradise, but today she was worrying about Annie. Did she seem bothered by the bank robbery? Did Griffin think she would be recovered enough to cater their upcoming fortieth anniversary party?

Griffin had nobly bitten back a question of his own. Why the hell his mother wanted to celebrate forty years of glacial matrimony was beyond him. Instead, he’d merely assured her that Annie appeared perfectly able to fulfill her obligations.

Now he just had to ensure that he didn’t take another trek to her cottage to verify that assertion for himself.

Because he already knew she was fine. Naked, but fine.

No. Of course she wasn’t naked. She’d been wearing clothes. Just nothing underneath them. And why that was and why it would so strongly capture his imagination was something better left alone.

With that resolve, Griffin opened a drawer and pulled out his address book. He would find something to do and someone—a woman—to do it with. After working at home all day yesterday and then spending a few hours in the office this morning, he should enjoy Sunday afternoon, after all. But then his gaze snagged on the calendar.

Not just any Sunday, damn it. It was the fourteenth. February fourteenth. A totally lethal day for any entrenched-for-eternity bachelor like himself. Taking a woman out on Valentine’s Day was a statement, easily misread as a commitment for at least the rest of the year. He shuddered, quickly slapping shut his address book. If he wanted to reclaim his single-man, casual-with-women lifestyle—that his workaholic ways suited him for—he couldn’t take the risk of a Valentine’s Day date.

Which is why he was aimlessly wandering around downstairs and considering heading back to the office when his younger brother bounded through the front door. “Hey, bro,” Logan said. “Have you seen my tennis racket?”

Griffin shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks, slid them out. He looked over his shoulder, picked up his feet, then finally pulled at the front of his shirt to peer down at his navel. “No. I haven’t seen your tennis racket.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Logan said. He jogged toward the staircase that led to his old room. “I can’t remember if I moved it to the condo or left it here.”

Just bored enough to exert the energy it took to follow, Griffin started climbing the first flight of stairs after him. “Tennis with Cynthia, I presume?”

Logan froze on the landing, then looked back down at Griffin, a horrified expression on his face. “That’s not funny either. This is Valentine’s Day, have you forgotten?”

“Well, uh, no.” But Cynthia had been his brother’s girlfriend for ten years. From what his mother hinted at, an engagement was just a nudge or two away. “You’re doing something with her later?”

Logan blinked, then spoke slowly, as if Griffin had lost some brain cells. “Val…en…tine’s…Day.”

“I know.”

“Well then you know that Valentine’s Day is lethal to any firmly entrenched bachelor. You told me that years ago. It’s not something I’ve forgotten, Griffin.”

Griffin felt a spurt of guilt. Was it right for him to have passed along to Logan his own romantic pessimism? “I know, Logan, but—”

“Gotcha.” His brother grinned. “The truth is Cynthia herself declined to celebrate with me today. She’s up for some local commercial tomorrow and she wants to spend all day in a cucumber—or was it carrot?—mask. But we did exchange appropriately mushy e-mails this morning.”

Mushy e-mails? Griffin decided not to touch that with a ten-foot pole. “So who are you playing tennis with, then?”

“Tom Sullivan,” Logan said. “He’s the cop who talked Dad into sponsoring the mentor program at the company.”

As their father’s right hand, it was actually Logan who had convinced the old man to employ at-risk, though high-achieving, high-school students as interns at Chase Electronics. Some of those former students were already out of college and very successful in their own careers, thanks to the partnership between Chase Electronics and the Strawberry Bay Police Department.

Thinking of the police led Griffin naturally back to recent events. “Would your buddy Tom know anything about the investigation into the bank robbery?” Griffin had told Logan about it himself, when he’d finally returned to the office on Friday.

Logan shrugged. “I can ask. How’s Annie doing, by the way?”

Griffin frowned. “How the hell should I know?” he asked in irritation, even though he’d wondered the same thing himself all morning, causing the report he’d been drafting to take twice as long.

Logan’s eyebrows rose. “Hey, it was just a question.” He glanced at his watch. “If I can find that racket, maybe I have time to check on—”

“Don’t bother.” For some reason, Griffin didn’t want his Valentine’s Day-free and not-completely-taken brother to visit Annie. “I’m going by there myself soon.”

Thinking back on it, he remembered Logan tolerating Annie pretty well when they were kids. So Griffin didn’t think it was fair for his brother to make a February fourteenth visit. She just might get the wrong idea.

“Whatever you say, pal.” Logan gave him one strange, thoughtful look, then headed up the stairs.

Griffin headed down them. He’d told Logan that he’d check on Annie.

At least it was something to do.

It took just a few minutes to cut through the oaks and climb up Annie’s steps. When he raised his hand to knock, the sound of loud, yet mild cursing floated through the closed front door. “Darn and darn and shoot, shoot, shoot!” Something clattered against the floor.

Eyebrows drawing together, Griffin knocked.

There was a moment of silence—an almost embarrassed silence, he imagined—and then the noise of odd, uneven footsteps. Clop click clop click clop click. Annie opened the door.

Griffin shoved his hands in his pockets, struck by an unbidden, unwelcome need to touch.

Honey-haired Annie was wearing pink. A soft, talcum-powder pink. A long-sleeved top criss-crossed her breasts and tied at the side of her waist like something a ballet dancer would wear. It revealed a V of pale skin at her neck and a very modest swell of cleavage. The top was tight enough for Griffin to make out the thin outline of her bra.

Yesterday vividly came back to him. The pang in his chest when she’d broken down, the fragile warmth of her in his arms, his hand stroking her back and the sudden realization that his palm didn’t bump over a bra strap. And then her realization of his realization. Her nipples had tightened into hard little pearls that had branded his skin.

Just the memory shot twin arrows of heat from his chest to his groin. Griffin set his jaw and ignored the sensation.

Forget all that. Think about today. She’s wearing underclothes today.

But the discovery didn’t make her any less appealing, not when she was in a matching short, swingy skirt that revealed a length of slender legs. The clop click clop sound of her footsteps was explained by the fact that the strap of one cute, high-heeled shoe was buckled, while the strap of the other shoe hung free.