Well, that thought brought him up short. He didn’t belong with Nicole and Connor. This was temporary. A blip in his life. Nothing more. Once it was over, he’d go his way, she’d go hers and they’d never have any of this again.
Funny.
That should have made him feel better.
It didn’t.
“How much longer before the kitchen’s ready?” Nicole asked.
“Not long,” Griffin muttered. It seemed his cousin didn’t give a damn about Griffin’s plans. Lucas wanted this job wrapped up so he and his wife could go visit their cousin Jefferson in Ireland.
So now there were six guys working every day on Nicole’s place and in a matter of days, it would be complete. Added to that, in another week or so, Rafe and Katie would be back in Long Beach. This little interlude, or whatever the hell it was, was almost over.
“Good,” Nicole said. “That’s…good.”
He looked into her eyes and saw the same glimmer of mixed emotions that he was feeling. “Yeah, it is.”
“Want a story!” Connor shouted and Griffin shifted his gaze to him.
Strawberries stained the little boy’s face and clung to the wisps of hair falling across his forehead. Innocence shone in the eyes so much like his mother’s, and Griffin felt that soft slide into affection pick up speed. This was what he’d wanted to avoid. Hell, he had plenty of practice disentangling himself from women. But with a kid, things got messy.
Walking away from Connor’s mother would be hard, but Griffin would be able to do it with a clean conscience, because Nicole understood. How the hell did you make a toddler understand that you weren’t a part of his life anymore? How did you wean yourself away from playing with the boy? From wanting to protect him?
Big mistake this, he told himself. He should have held back from getting involved in anything more than sex with Nicole. But how could he not care for the boy when he was so much a part of the mother who already had Griffin twisted into knots?
“Looks like you need a bath first, kid,” he finally said with a laugh.
“Yes, he does,” Nicole agreed, already standing to free her son from the chair.
“I’ll do it,” Griffin offered before he realized the words were coming from his mouth.
“It’s my turn,” Nicole reminded him. “You had bath duty last night.”
He tried to shrug away the offer as if it was no big deal. “If it’ll get me out of doing the dishes…”
“No baf!” Connor cried.
Griffin smiled. He could remember being a dirty little boy and fighting to stay that way. And he remembered his mom, harried and busy, overseeing five boys and cleaning the kitchen. But his father had been there to take over bath time and assist in getting Griffin and his brothers into bed.
Pretty soon, Nicole would be on her own again with no one to turn to for a break. For help. Griffin wouldn’t be around. He’d be off somewhere in whatever house he bought, filling his nights with anonymous women and meaningless sex—and Nicole and Connor would go on with their lives without him.
Something hard and cold settled in the pit of his stomach. Felt like he’d swallowed a lump of ice. Well, she wasn’t on her own yet, he thought, and heard himself say, “No. No tradeoff. Why don’t you go sit down and have a glass of wine? I’ll take care of Connor and the dishes.”
Tipping her head to one side, Nicole looked at him, a confused smile on her face. “What’s the occasion?”
He undid the strap across Connor’s lap and lifted him out of the seat. Instantly, the little boy hooked his arms around Griffin’s neck. The ice in his gut melted a little at the wordless expression of trust from Connor.
“Not an occasion,” Griffin said finally, “just a favor.”
Nicole walked toward him. “Is this the kind of favor one friend does for another?”
“Is that what we are?” he asked, disbelief coloring his words. “Friends?”
“What else is there?” she asked.
He didn’t know the answer, either. The only thing he was sure of was that she wasn’t just his friend. She was more than that. How much more, he didn’t really want to think about.
“Well, now,” Griffin murmured, lifting one hand to cup her cheek, “that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?”
As he carried Connor out of the room, he felt Nicole’s gaze locked on him, and he wished to hell he had an answer to his own damn question.
*
Connor smashed the sand castle with all the vigor of a rampaging Viking. Chortling with glee, he rained tiny fists down onto the damp sand, and Griffin laughed aloud watching the destruction. He turned his head to see if Nicole was watching and when their gazes locked, even from a distance there was nearly a physical punch that hit him hard. He didn’t understand it. Usually he would have moved on well before now. Griffin didn’t stay interested in a woman once he’d had her. But Nicole was different.
He kept waiting for whatever it was between them to cool off. It hadn’t. If anything, it was heating up. She was in his mind all the damn time. He slept with her every night, listening to the soft sighs of her breath. He woke up with her every morning, his arms wrapped around her as she snuggled in close, allowing him to take in the scent of her peach shampoo with every breath. She was ingrained in him now. She’d become a huge part of his everyday world, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Hell, he couldn’t even think about anything but Nicole.
If he wasn’t on vacation already, he’d be damned useless.
Even here, surrounded by the dozens of people still on the beach as the sun began setting, Griffin was hard put to keep a grip on his hormones.
“Do more, Griff!”
Connor’s voice dragged Griffin back from the danger zone in his mind. Looking at the smiling face of the little boy staring up at him with adoration, Griffin felt a completely dissimilar kind of jolt. Nicole was hitting him on a lot of levels, but Connor was arrowing straight into Griffin’s heart. A different kind of danger entirely. One just as treacherous.
“Okay, little man,” he said and scooped the cold sand together into a haphazard tower. Connor’s tiny hands worked with him, patting and slapping at the sand. “Gonna help me, are you?”
“Me do it!”
“Attaboy.”
When his phone rang, Griffin was almost surprised. When he was working, the damn thing was ringing all the time. But since his vacation started, he’d practically been living in a vacuum. A very sexy, very confusing vacuum.