Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  All right, then. So she’d had an unfortunate encounter with an NFL quarterback-turned-ruthless-businessman who was too compelling for her peace of mind. So what? Time to shake it off. Which she did, though it took all three miles of her ride home to get to that point.

  As soon as she opened the back gate, Bella was there, her ears pricked high and her tail going fast.

  “Hey, girl.” Dakota gave the dog a thump on the shoulder. “Did you and Dad have a good day?”

  In answer, Bella went and grabbed her rubber Kong, dropped it at Dakota’s feet, sat, and waited, her gaze riveted on the toy as if there would be a prize for Most-Focused Dog.

  “At least give me a chance to put my bike away.” Dakota was cold despite the earlier warmth of the day. She should have taken the time to change out of her clammy suit, but she’d needed to escape. She put her bike into the shed, and Bella, who’d followed her, dropped her toy again. Dakota picked it up by the grungy rope, gave it a toss, and said, when Bella came back, “One more, and that’s it until I change.”

  “She’s going to have to wait, because dinner’s ready,” her stepfather said from the back porch.

  “Hey.” She tossed the toy once more, then ran lightly up the back stairs and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “How you feeling?”

  “Oh, you know. Can’t complain.” He turned and hitched his way into the kitchen. “Stew in the crock pot for dinner, using up the meat from that roast. Came out pretty good, though.”

  “Five minutes,” she promised. She took her bag into her bedroom, stripped off her tank and shorts, caught a look at herself in the mirror, and recoiled in horror.

  There she’d been, looking like that, giving her “I wouldn’t stoop so low” speech to Blake-Bigbucks-Orbison. Her hair looked like a five-year-old’s after a long nap, her face was pale and nearly gaunt, and most horribly of all, she had a piece of water weed sticking out of the bottom of her suit like some kind of off-center green tail. Blake must have walked away from her and started laughing like a hyena. He’d had a girlfriend who was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and Dakota looked like she belonged in a Field & Stream dog handler feature. Possibly as the dog.

  She shook it off once again—she was getting plenty of practice today—took a lightning-quick shower, changed into warmer clothes, and went into the kitchen to have dinner with Russell.

  He looked at her and said, “That’s better,” which pretty much confirmed her suspicions. When they were eating, he said, “I got that new storage unit finished and stained for you today. Tried to move it out of the garage, but it didn’t work out. You’ll have to do it on the weekend.”

  She shot a glance at him, but he was focusing on his stew. “Sure,” she said easily. “Thanks for that.” He was moving more stiffly than usual, and Bella had her nose practically against his leg, which meant he was hurting bad. Probably from overdoing it. He must know he didn’t have to push himself that hard. She was perfectly capable of moving and hanging a storage unit. It wasn’t like she hadn’t told him so. She knew why he did it, and she didn’t know how to stop it. “How did the physical therapy go?”

  “Didn’t show. Again.”

  “Those jerks. Workers’ comp, right. Workers’ non-comp. I’m going to call them.”

  “No, you aren’t. I did it. Don’t coddle me.”

  She shut her mouth, and they ate in silence for a minute before she said, “I did something stupid today myself. Went for a swim after work and had a run-in with Jerry Richards. I met Blake Orbison, too.”

  Russell had been reaching for a knife to butter a roll. Instead, he knocked it off the table, and it fell to the floor with a clatter. Dakota was out of her chair, but Bella was faster, chasing the knife over the slippery linoleum until she managed to grab it. She brought back over to Russell, sat by his leg, and presented it to him.

  “Good girl,” he said gruffly, taking it from her even as Dakota handed him her own knife.

  “I know,” Dakota said. “Like I said. Dumb. I went for a swim out there, probably because Jerry told us not to.”

  “Orbison doesn’t own the water,” Russell growled. “It’s not his lake.”

  “It was his shoreline, though. I thought about Evan afterwards, and about you, too, and wondered why the heck I’d put both of you at risk just to jump off the rocks.”

  “You lose the job?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Blake didn’t seem like he minded. Hopefully he told Jerry that. And I’m sure he doesn’t know who I am other than one of his peons, no matter how many letters I wrote or how many phone calls I made. He obviously doesn’t care how negligent his contractors are or how many workers get injured on his watch. We all know he’s a bottom-line guy.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got no problem, then, other than all that mad you’re still hanging on to like it’s going to get you somewhere. What is there to feel so bad about?”

  “I told you.”

  “Jumping off the rocks? Doesn’t sound like that big a deal to me. You gotta be a rebel some way. It’s in the blood. Look at me. I was ten times the outlaw you’ll ever be, right up until seventeen years after I had a kid. What was I, fifty? You’re fine.”

  “Do you really think it’s in the blood?” She asked it quietly. That was the other thing that had nagged at her all the way home. “That I can’t change?”

  “Change what? Who’s saying you need to change?”

  “Nobody. But you know—Mom. My father. Sperm donor. Whatever. It’s pretty clear that I don’t come from the clean end of the gene pool.” She looked him in the eye, finally, and he looked right back at her, his gaze, as always, as straight as his back wasn’t. “I’m reckless, Dad,” she admitted. “You know I am. I keep feeling like one push will send me off to the wild side, and I can’t afford the wild side. How did you stop?”

  “How do you think? When something mattered more. How you feel isn’t who you are. What you do is who you are. Take it from an alcoholic.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed. “Still?”

  “Every damn day. I feel the urge, and I don’t do it. Here’s another way to look at it. Find somebody who likes your wild side. Somebody who wants a wild child. Why should you give up the best part of you, the free part? For who? For a bully like Jerry Richards, who pushes his wife around and probably took the belt to his kids? For that lawyer you were going out with? Screw him. Screw ’em all if they don’t like it. Go find yourself somebody who wants to see that part of you. Go be Dakota someplace besides your glass.”

  “I can’t afford even to be Dakota in my glass. You know that. That isn’t what the people want.”

  “Then find different people.”

  They finished dinner, and Dakota bit her tongue not to say anything at the way Russ hauled himself out of his chair and hobbled into the living room to watch TV, Bella shadowing him every step of the way. She tossed the Kong for the dog until Bella was—well, not satisfied, but panting—then washed the dishes, watched half an hour of a Mariners game with Russ to be companionable, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and headed to bed.

  All right, to her workroom, but only because she had to look. She shoved her feet into flip-flops, stepped over the baby gate that kept Bella’s paws safe from glass slivers, and entered her domain.

  Twelve feet by fourteen, order in every inch of it, and passion in every breath she took here. This was where she came to life. With her glass.

  Her new storage unit, a labyrinth of zigzagging supply cubbies as complex and pleasing to the eye as an Escher print, was in the garage waiting to make it even neater. Russell’s hand was everywhere, from the frames setting off her most inspired pieces to the prosaic dividers along the wall that separated the precious panels of stained glass. Panels she bought on the occasional trek to Seattle, spending far too much money every time for a woman who was slowly, painstakingly paying down her stepfather’s precariously balanced mortgage debt. But she had to have the glass or she couldn’t breathe. And she always made back the co
st of her materials, and more, too. Eventually.

  She walked down the row of racks, arranged along the spectrum, ending up as always at the golds and, farther along, the roses and reds. The most expensive colors—and the most beautiful, especially when they swirled and bubbled with hue and texture. She crouched before her pink rack and carefully shifted pieces.

  There. That was it. The palest pink, brushed with darker color. The outer shell of the conch that would reveal its heart of deep rose starting on Saturday. She had the vision in her mind, and she had to do it. She had to.

  Customers sometimes asked to see her sketches, occasionally even for an autographed version, and looked skeptical when she tried to explain that she didn’t sketch. She saw. The design happened only when she was ready to create, when she laid out the squares of glass on her work table and drew the pattern. Customers couldn’t understand, because she couldn’t explain. How could you describe the anxious minutes and hours beforehand, when you found yourself delaying the start because you feared not being able to transform the perfect vision in your head into the fragile medium of glass, always only one clumsy misstep away from not reaching your ideal? And how could you possibly explain the relief, the freedom of actually starting, of taking that leap no matter what?

  They were her dream babies, so nebulous before she made them real with her tools, her patience, and the magic of the soldering iron so they could glow against the light. So they could come to life. Before she let them go to somebody who, she hoped, would love them half as much as she did.

  Her fingers itched to create her piece now. Right now. But if she started, she’d be here all night. She knew herself. Her body ached with the fatigue of a day of physical labor, capped off by her swim and her ride home, and she had another day just like it tomorrow. She had responsibilities to more than herself, and always—always—to more than her vision.

  There was more than one kind of love. Creation was one thing. People were another.

  Saturday, she promised the glass before stepping over the gate again, kicking off her flip-flops, and heading to bed. This one project for love, and then the next in the line of simple, nonthreatening flowers and birds, of fan lights and cattail-bedecked sidelights that the public expected. The ones rich owners would snap up to adorn the front entries of their lakeside “cabins.” The ones that paid for the most expansive panels of glass and let her excuse all the time and money she spent here.

  But when she put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, she saw a sliver of unstained background crackling with texture, and then a shell, so close-up you were almost dreaming it, its swirls and bands and spikes made up of pale and darker pinks… and that deep, secret swell of rose leading to the mysterious, pulsing life within. She saw a conch.

  Blake climbed down from the Explorer on Friday morning, ignoring the protest from his knee, and headed into Wild Horse Bait & Tackle. He’d spent most of the past couple days flying to various meetings for Sundays, his sports bar/restaurant chain—also known as “what he was supposed to be doing”—and he’d be in more meetings today for the stretch-goal project that had had him waking up at night wondering what the hell he’d been thinking. Today was lunch with the mayor and city council to talk about the plans for the resort’s grand opening on the Fourth of July. If he was going to have to be charming again, he needed something to look forward to afterwards. A willing woman in his hot tub would do it, but he was working toward a goal here that took his wild side off the table. That pretty much left fishing.

  An old-fashioned bell on the door chimed out a welcome when he walked into a space that was a bona fide throwback. Linoleum on the floor, a long wooden counter at the front, a whole wonderful section devoted to fly-tying, and what looked like a surprisingly good equipment selection.

  A couple guys conferred over tackle, both outfitted by L.L. Bean and showing “tourist” like it was written on their backs. The older man behind the counter, though, had been cut from different cloth. He’d been talking to a man of about his age in a plaid shirt and paint-splattered white cap, accompanied by a medium-sized brown dog that sat at his feet, ears pricked like it was taking in every word.

  Both men shut up at Blake’s entrance and looked him over. Probably the clothes, since he’d flown straight in from a franchisee get-together in Seattle. He’d left the suit coat in the truck after getting off the jet, but he was still a little bit designer for Wild Horse. He’d even shaved this morning.

  “Hey,” he said, and both men nodded. The dog just looked interested.

  “Help you?” the man behind the counter asked.

  “Sure hope so. I’m looking for whatever I’ll need to go after salmon this weekend.”

  The two men looked at each other, and then the owner—he had to be the owner—scratched the back of his head and said, “Well, now, you can go after ’em all right. Whether you get ’em, though…”

  “Yeah,” Blake said. “That would be the idea.”

  “What kind of a boat you running?”

  “Hatteras GT54.”

  He’d swear that the old-fashioned ceiling fan overhead stopped moving, such was the stillness in the air. “You’d be Blake Orbison, then,” the owner said. Everybody looked tense. Including, Blake could swear, the dog.

  “I would be,” Blake said.

  “I’ve seen that rig,” the owner said. “Now, Hatteras makes a mighty fine boat, don’t get me wrong, and I can’t say I wouldn’t pay cash money just to take one out and put her through her paces. But, all due respect—it takes more than a boat, and that thing’s so new, she practically still has the stickers on. City guys—I usually suggest they go out with a guide, learn the lake before they go wild.”

  “Well, there you go,” Blake said. “I’m not all that much of a city guy. That rig might be new, but she’s not my first. My first—now, she was a bass boat, and that’s being charitable. Only room for two, and one of ’em had better not be fat. It’s been what you’d call a gradual upgrade.”

  “Thought you were from Portland,” the owner said.

  Everybody else, including the city guys, was still listening, and Blake didn’t allow himself to feel a stab of annoyance. Par for the course. Attention was the price you paid for that twenty million a year. Put that way, it was a mighty small price.

  “Nah,” he said. “Virginia boy, by way of Mississippi. Did a few years in Georgia, too. I know lakes a little, and I know oceans a little more. But I sure don’t know Idaho, and I don’t know Chinook and kokanee, either, but I’d like to.”

  The owner looked at the guy in the paint cap, who was standing stiffly, canted to one side. Old injury, probably. “Nah,” Paint-Cap Guy said to the owner. “You go on. It’s over and done with.” Which was cryptic.

  “You sure?” the owner asked him, ignoring Blake.

  Paint-Cap Guy didn’t answer, just shoved off the counter, limped a couple steps forward, put out a hand, and said, “Russell Matthews.” Nothing wrong with his handshake, whatever was messed up with the rest of him.

  The owner hauled in a breath and said, “Larry Nagle here. This is my store.”

  “I figured,” Blake said, staying patient.

  He spent a half hour after that asking questions, listening, and amassing a collection of flies, flashers, herring to use as bait, and a whole lot more. The two city guys left, but Paint-Cap Guy—Matthews—stuck around for all of it, along with his dog. Moving slow and rough and not talking much, but what he did say seemed worth listening to.

  “You want to troll slow out there,” Matthews said. “Call it one-point-three, one-point-five a hour. And this time of year, the Chinook are maybe thirty, fifty feet deep, that’s all, so you don’t want to go too far down.”

  “Good to know,” Blake said. “Now, here’s the real question. Best spots?”

  Larry and Russell looked at each other, and even the dog seemed to be holding her breath. Blake said into the silence, “I’m happy to pay for a guide, if you know somebody who wants to e
arn a couple hundred bucks tomorrow or Sunday to show me the ropes. Either day works for me, and anything he catches on his own line belongs to him. I’ve got rods and all out on the boat.”

  “You got a license?” Russell asked.

  “Yes, sir. Sure do.”

  “Well, hell,” Russell said. “For two hundred bucks, I’ll go out with you. Bella comes too, though. My dog.”

  Blake cast an eye at her. Nobody could have called her noisy, and she’d moved about two feet this whole time. “Long as she doesn’t scare the fish.”

  “Nah.”

  “You sure, Russ?” Larry asked quietly.

  “For two hundred bucks, I’d strip naked and do a lap dance,” Russell said. “I’ve got a mortgage.”

  “There you go, then,” Larry told Blake. “You can’t do better than that. Russell doesn’t get out much anymore, but nobody knows the lake better.”

  “Can’t get into those low boats, that’s why,” Russell said. “A Hatteras, though—I might be able to haul my ass on board her. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” he told Blake. “Pick Bella and me up at my place.”

  Blake thought the timing over for a second. He had a date tonight, yeah. But he wasn’t expecting it to last all night. He had a game plan, and for the marriage deal, he was pretty sure, it would involve going slow. He was going to have to be a gentleman. He hoped he still remembered how.

  “Sure,” he said. “Except I don’t want the lap dance.”

  When Dakota had arrived at the resort on Wednesday morning, they’d let her in. So there was that. She hadn’t seen Blake again during the next couple days, which was good. As long as she managed to behave herself, she could probably finish the job without getting herself, her partner, and their entire crew fired.

  “Got any plans for the weekend?” she asked Evan as they were cleaning up on Friday afternoon. It was as hot as ever, but she’d save her longing for the lake until she got to City Beach. No place for the high jumps out there, but on the other hand, you weren’t risking your livelihood.