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Speakman then invited him to stay for dinner.
Before Griff could accept or decline, Mrs. Speakman said, “Oh, darling, I’m sorry, but I didn’t notify Mrs. Dobbins that we’d have a guest and she’s already left for the day. I thought the idea was to keep Mr. Burkett’s visit here a secret. Manuelo is one thing, but…”
Looking flustered for the first time since she joined them, she searched for excuses not to sit at the table with him. Apparently she had no qualms over having carnal knowledge of him, so long as she didn’t have to eat with him. “Besides,” she added lamely, “I’ve got a massive amount of work waiting for me upstairs.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Griff said. “I’ve got plans. In fact, I’m already late.”
“Then don’t let us keep you any longer,” Speakman said.
Laura Speakman stood up. She seemed relieved that he was leaving, and possibly just a bit ashamed over her inhospitality. “You should be hearing from me in about two weeks, Mr. Burkett. How can I reach you?”
He gave her his phone number, the one Turner had connected in the shabby apartment. She wrote it down on a slip of paper. “I’ll call and tell you where to meet me.”
“In two weeks?”
“Thereabouts. It could vary a day or two either way. I’ll be using an ovulation predictor kit to test for an LH surge.”
“LH…?”
“Luteinizing hormone.”
“Ah.” As in “I see,” when actually he didn’t have a clue.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to predict the day, but it might be short notice.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Her eyes skittered away from his, and that was when Griff figured her out. She could play hardball with the big boys up to a point. She could have her menstrual cycle, and ovulation, and his sperm count talked about freely in technical and practical terms. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty, to actually climbing into bed with a stranger, she turned pure female. Which to him was reassuring.
She said good-bye and excused herself. Speakman offered to escort him to the front door. When they reached it, he said, “I’m curious, Griff.”
“About?”
“What you’ll be thinking about as you leave here. Will you be considering what to buy first?”
Actually, what he’d thought as he’d driven away from the gray stone mansion was that, even though they looked like reasonable and intelligent people, it was probably a good thing that Foster and Laura Speakman couldn’t reproduce, because both of them were fucking nuts.
Who would do this? Nobody, that’s who. Not when there were scientific methods of fertilization available. Not when you had the money to pay for those methods. Maybe in Bible days this was the way to go when you couldn’t have a kid. But not today, when there were options.
By the time he’d reached his destination, he’d almost convinced himself that he would never hear from the couple again.
Almost.
“Another?”
He glanced up. The cocktail waitress had returned. He was surprised to find the glass of bourbon empty. “No thanks. A Perrier, please.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
I’ll be right back. She had used that expression twice, not knowing that the seemingly harmless phrase was like salt on an open wound to him.
His mother had said those words to him the night she left. For good that time.
She’d often stayed away for days at a stretch, leaving without so much as a “so long,” returning without explanation or excuse for her absence. He never got too upset or worried when she wasn’t around. He knew that when she got tired of the current boyfriend or vice versa, and the guy either kicked her out or simply moved on, she would come home.
When she did, she never asked how he’d been, or what he’d been doing while she was away. Was he okay? Had he gone to school? Had he eaten? Had he been frightened by the storm? Had he been sick?
One time, he had been. Sick. He got food poisoning from eating an opened can of beef stew that had been left out too long. He puked till he passed out, then came to on the bathroom floor, lying faceup in diarrhea and vomit, a knot as big as his fist on the back of his head from the fall.
