He somehow looks both insanely sexy and adorably tousled as he comes into the kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants and sniffing at the air.
“Good morning!” I greet. “I figured flapjacks would be a perfect cabin breakfast.”
He eyes the griddle with a mournful look. “I don’t do that.”
“Pancakes?” I ask, confused.
“Carbs.”
I eye his flawless physique. “Okay, well, that tracks. Bacon and eggs, it is.”
“Thanks,” he mutters, heading over to the coffee pot. But then he stops short to ask, “Where did you get all this breakfast stuff?”
He eyes me up and down with a disapproving frown. “And Christmas pajamas?”
“I hit Cal-Mart first thing this morning for groceries, period stuff, and warm clothes.” I glance down at the Santa- and holly-covered fleece PJs I was happy to swap out for my less than daytime-appropriate outfit from last night. “I think I bought enough food to last us until Christmas. But if you want anything else, you can just give me a list and maybe an advance on the money you promised to pay me.”
He tilts his head. “If I give you the money up front, how do I know you'll come back from the next Cal-Mart run?”
“How do I know you’re going to pay me what you promised?” I shrug and crack the first of four eggs into a bowl. “If we’re going to live together until Christmas, we’ll both have to learn to trust each other.”
“Trust,” he repeats with a bitter tone as he grabs a mug from the cabinet above the coffee pot. “That’s not something I fuck with.”
“Then you probably shouldn’t have invited some random roadhouse girl to spend Christmas week with you,” I answer dryly. “There’s still time to back out if you want. When I texted Candy to tell her I was staying the week with you, she just said to let her know if I wanted to pick up any last-minute shifts if you changed your mind.”
Actually, Candy said when he changed his mind—as if it were inevitable. She also sent several Bitmojis, including one of her avatar stewing in a jar of jam labeled, “SO JELLY.”
Long silence. Then Griff just takes a seat at the cabin’s slab wood table.
I figure he’s done with the subject. But when I set his breakfast down in front of him, he says, “Next time you want to go to Cal-Mart or anywhere else, just give me a list. I can get you anything you need. Anything. All you have to do is ask, Red.”
My heart stops. It doesn’t feel like we’re talking about food and period staples anymore.
“Sit down. Keep me company,” he says before I can come up with an answer.
So that’s what I do. As nervous as I thought I’d be spending time with a criminal biker, Griff is surprisingly easy to keep company. We chat about the colder-than-usual weather and his thoughts on here versus Los Angeles, where he grew up after his parent’s divorce. He’s been living in Nashville for over a decade, and he still isn’t a fan of seasons, he tells me.
“Especially last night, when I had to ride here in the freezing cold after giving some rando my jacket.”
“It was only five minutes, and I’m sure your tough Reaper blood kept you warm,” I tease back.
“Kind of hard to act tough with icicles hanging off your nose.”
We laugh and talk at the table, then move over to opposite sides of the couch to watch TV.
That’s when I find out about Griff’s weird entertainment values.
“I decided about ten years ago to stop watching stuff I haven’t already seen at least once unless it’s for a job,” he tells me, snatching up the remote from the side table where I abandoned it when he came out.
I squint. “So you haven’t watched anything new in ten years?”
“Not much,” he answers. “I . . . uh . . . work security for this one country music act, along with Waylon and a few of the other Reapers. He’s been on tour all year, but sometimes I have to go with him to premieres or watch TV shows his agent sends to him. His team’s trying to get him to do more acting stuff.”
“So, is that why I didn’t see you at the roadhouse until yesterday?” I ask. “Because you were catering to this country star?”
“Yep,” he answers, his voice terse.
“Well, that’s an interesting side hustle.”
But Griff doesn’t seem to feel like talking about it. He pushes off the couch. “Anyway, my Dad’s got a pretty big DVD collection. Let’s just watch one of those. And hey, you want to get us something to drink?”
We spend the next few days sipping on wine and whisky, smoking a seemingly never-ending stash of joints Griff kept producing out of nowhere, and watching DVDs.
Strangely, I can tell a lot about both Griff and his father by the movies he picks out for us to watch. Mostly crime films and stupid comedies from the early 2000s—the kind of movies my grandma didn’t allow me to watch growing up. I get the feeling Griff was raised to value ruthlessness, winning, and the kind of women you don’t have to work too hard to get.