Beth, though—she’d been different. Caramel-colored hair with blonde streaks that looked natural, pulled up into a conservative twist. Blue eyes, a pretty smile, and class all the way. A law degree and family money, which meant she wasn’t after a meal ticket. Not like Courtney.
Forget that.
Beth. She was a little reserved, but that wasn’t bad. Sweet, he’d say. Wife material. The only problem was, his supposed charm wasn’t proving all that charming so far. Beth might have worn her hair down tonight, but whatever it took to make her let it down in any other way, he hadn’t found it. All that family pressure not letting her relax, maybe. Well, it was only the first date.
“Tell me more about the company,” he soldiered on now. “Why aren’t you working for it? I’d have thought that’d be a no-brainer.”
“You really think so?” she said with a wry smile. “They make salad dressing. Maybe that’s why I moved to Seattle and went into wills and trusts. That’s not necessarily interesting either, but at least it’s my kind of boring.” Her voice was slightly breathy, which was sexy, and so was her sleeveless blue sheath dress, in a conservative sort of way. She had great legs, too. Everything was there except a spark.
“So you’re just visiting,” he pushed on. Nobody’d ever called him a quitter. She didn’t live here, no, which wasn’t ideal from the courtship standpoint. But then, he didn’t live here, either. He was in Seattle as often as he was anywhere else except Portland, and a long-distance romance would be good. Keep it on the slow track, keep things from getting out of hand. “It sounded like your folks would love to have you back for good. Not even tempted? Your dad must be doing something right. It’s got to be rare in packaged goods for a company to be so successful selling only one product line, as dominant as the multinationals are.” He was putting himself to sleep here, and he didn’t think he was doing Beth any favors, either.
Her eyes strayed from his face, and her hand stilled on her fork. Not that she’d been eating much. She was slim to the point of thinness, and it was easy to see why. She’d barely touched her salad plate, and she wasn’t doing much better on her fish. It was a safe bet that the dessert menu would be passing them by.
When she kept looking away, he twisted in his chair to see… not much. A couple threading their way between tables behind the hostess, that was all. One of them was a guy with the build of a linebacker, and the other was a woman who had him taking a second glance. A whole lot of artfully tousled dark brown hair falling around her face like she’d just gotten out of bed, a pair of low-slung skinny jeans ripped strategically down the thighs, and platform sandals that made her legs look a hundred miles long. All of her looking like a red-flag warning of the very best kind.
When he recognized her, it was with a leap of excitement and—call it annoyance, neither of which he managed to suppress well enough. His swimming partner. Out with somebody else.
He turned his attention hastily back to Beth. How long had he been staring? “Pardon? You were saying?”
“Oh,” she said, shifting her own gaze back to him. “Nothing. You were asking about the business.”
“More wine?” he asked, picking up the bottle.
“Oh, no, thanks. I’m good.”
Wonderful.
He kept talking to Beth as well as he could manage, but her mind didn’t seem to be on the job, either, and it was hard going. If she’d been reserved before—now, she was stilted. His own attention might have divided, too, because there Dakota was in his peripheral vision. Shoving her hair back over one tanned shoulder, revealing a little more of a filmy white top that draped just low enough, plus a delicate silver necklace on a chain that caught the candlelight. Her hair was loose and wild in the very best way, and her eyes lit up with animation as she laughed and gestured at the guy with her.
“. . . Now we’re into this case, and it’s pretty hectic,” Beth was saying. She went on, but Blake wasn’t listening. Opposite him, Dakota had pushed her chair back, stood up, and touched her date lightly on the arm as she bent to tell him something, her blouse dipping with the movement and revealing a flash of cleavage, her wonderful mouth curving into a sassy smile. And then she was walking toward Blake, and right past him. And totally ignoring him.
Her hips didn’t sway, exactly. That wasn’t it. It was the confidence. And that little bit of a blouse she had on. It fell asymmetrically over the waistband of her low-slung jeans, and she was showing a tiny bit of bare brown skin down there. When she got close, he could see that the jeans had a button fly. They sat so low on her hips that there was only room for three buttons, though. Those buttons were silver, and they were absolutely magnetic. Because above them was something else silver, he saw as she shifted her purse on her shoulder and her blouse rode up. The wink of a curved stud in the dimple of her belly button.
Lord have mercy. If there was one thing he was a sucker for, it was an innie belly button on a toned stomach. And if she pierced it… well, he was a dead man. His tongue wanted to go right there, and it wanted to stay there awhile before heading on south.
That honey-colored skin. That little curved barbell. Damn.
Some men loved breasts, and some loved legs. Those things were absolutely great, don’t get him wrong, but let’s just say he enjoyed a woman he could appreciate coming and going, and a girl with gorgeous skin made him stupid. He loved to look at it, he loved to touch it, and he loved to kiss it. And the softer and smoother it was, the more he wanted to do it.
He’d bet that chain was still in her ear, too. The problem was, there was so much there that needed to be kissed and licked and taken care of, and he wasn’t the guy who’d be doing it.
It felt like forever, but it was over in a couple seconds. She was past him, leaving behind the barest whiff of her perfume. Spicy and warm, dangerously potent and seriously sexy. It wasn’t the light, ladylike floral scent Beth was wearing. It was a whole lot more addictive than that.
Beth. Whoops. His manners had taken a hike, and she’d obviously noticed, because she’d stopped talking and was just looking at him.
He said, “Sorry. Long day,” smiled at her, and thought, Dial it back, horn dog.
“They can be that way,” she said, that dry note back in her voice.
“Would you like a coffee?” he asked. “Dessert?”
“No, thank you. In fact, it’s been a bit of a long day for me, too. Maybe we should get out of here.”
In another woman, it might have been a discreet come-on. In her, it wasn’t. He paid the check as Dakota walked by him again, and he didn’t look up, because he was with another woman who deserved his attention, and Dakota’s efforts were for the other guy anyway.
She wasn’t even the one who’d invited him to come swimming, he reminded himself when his mind tried to go straight to “jealous.” If she’d flirted with him… well, he’d flirted with her, too. Before she’d told him she didn’t want any part of him.
That was the old you anyway, he told himself. New life plan, remember? No more wild side. No more wild rides.
Fifteen minutes later, he was turning down the Schaefers’ driveway, with its discreet lighting buried in the greenery on either side, and ending up at the guest house beside the enormous pile of her parents’ place. He hopped out and walked Beth to her door. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he had been raised right.
He wouldn’t have had to be nearly as good at body language as he was to interpret the stiffness of her shoulders, though, and it didn’t take any skill at all to hear the undercurrents when she said, “Thank you very much for dinner. I had a nice time.”
He grinned at her ruefully and scratched his nose. “Well…”
She laughed, showing more animation than she had all night. “Yeah. You’re right. That wasn’t either of our best effort. But we can tell my mom I tried.”
“She giving you a hard time?” he asked, liking her better than ever.
“Oh, not compared to, say, a football coach trying to get his team to
the Super Bowl. But thank you anyway. You’re a very nice man.”
“I’m not that nice a man,” he said. “But I think I’m with a very nice woman.” He bent, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and said, “Good night. Thanks for your company.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said, then offered him a sweet smile and headed inside.
Why couldn’t he go for a woman like that?
When Blake pulled up the next morning outside a modest frame house painted a neat if unimaginative white, Russell was out the door with the brown dog before the SUV had even stopped. Cattle dog, Blake thought that was. She wasn’t beautiful, but she sure seemed loyal.
He hopped down from the truck and went to take the bag from the older man’s hand, but Russell jerked it away with an “I’ve got it.”
Ah. Pride. “Right,” Blake said, and didn’t open the door for him, either.
Russell urged the dog into the back seat, where she immediately lay down, and then hauled himself into the front passenger seat. Blake could tell it hurt like hell, but he didn’t say anything. He knew something about pride himself.
Russell didn’t say much on the ten-minute drive to the resort, which meant Blake didn’t have to chat. Fine by him. He liked guys who didn’t yap at him, and he especially liked guys who didn’t feel the need to yap about football. He liked talking just fine when there was a point to it. When he was talking about a game plan, say, or a business strategy.
Or when he was talking to a woman. That worked. Not like last night with Beth, which had been too much like hard labor for both of them. Out at the rocks with Dakota, though? Now, if he’d been taking her home last night, if he’d been telling her exactly how much he appreciated her in that little white shirt and those jeans with their three silver buttons, and exactly what he wanted to do about it. How he wanted to touch her, and how he wanted to kiss her. If he’d been smelling her spicy-sexy perfume, watching her eyes darken, hearing her breath come faster, like his hand was already there, sliding inside that blouse, stroking over all that warm, smooth skin…
Yeah. That was the kind of talking he could get into.
Except that somebody else had been taking her home. Except for that.
Russell finally said something when Blake was unlocking the gate out at the new marina, although it was just, “The place is looking pretty good. Guess it’ll change the town some.”
Blake looked back at the staggered line of honey-stained wooden building that was the Wild Horse Resort. It did look good. Plenty of windows, including in the soaring lobby with its distinctive slabs of greenish-gray slate making up floors and counters, with the wood to warm it up. That had been the idea, and it worked.
It looked exactly like his vision, and pretty damn close to perfect. The resort followed the edge of the shoreline, its manmade contours softened by plantings and fronted by marina and beach, with eighteen holes of magnificent golf course off to one side. None of it too obtrusive. No gleaming towers of glass rising too many stories high. Rustic luxury, that was the idea, its beauty coming from, and blending into, the land and the lake around it.
He said, “Not everybody’s happy about those changes, I know.”
The older man shrugged lopsidedly and stumped his way along the wooden dock, surefooted despite his crooked body. “Tree-huggers. What good does it do to protect the environment if the town’s dead? Who’s going to be here to see it? When the mill went, half the jobs went with it. I didn’t hear those folks from California worrying about that. Probably had a party.”
“Well, to be fair,” Blake said mildly, “they’ve got a point. Even from a business point of view—we’re selling natural beauty up here. Can’t do that if the lake’s a mess, and the air’s got to be clear, too, no bald spots on the mountains from clear-cutting. Nature in all her glory, that’s what looks good to a guy who’s been sitting in his car on the freeway for three hours a day the other fifty weeks of the year.”
Russell didn’t answer that. He was looking at the boat. That was a thing of beauty in itself. Gleaming white, her lines as sleek as a thoroughbred’s. A Rolls-Royce in the convertible fishing boat world, to mix a metaphor, if a Rolls-Royce on the smaller side.
Russell was still looking, but all he said was, “A lot of boat for this lake.”
“That’s true. On the other hand, I haul her over to the coast, and she’s ready for a cruise to Alaska. That was the other thing I had in mind.” Blake had come out and got her ready to go before picking Russell up, and now, he did take the bag from the other man and set it in the stern before climbing aboard and offering a hand. To his relief, Russell accepted the grip on his forearm, because Blake couldn’t see any way he’d have made it otherwise. The weathered face tightened, but the grunt that escaped him on swinging into the boat was quickly muffled. All the same, the sweat was standing out on his upper lip when he turned and ordered the dog, “Bella. Jump.”
She leaped neatly into the boat, and in fifteen minutes, they were in the teak-lined cockpit, motoring out into the center of the lake and headed for a cove on the far side. The twin diesels purred, the sound discreetly muffled up here in their luxurious surroundings. Russell hadn’t made a comment on the cabin as they’d passed other than to ask, “How many does she sleep?”
“Five. Two doubles, and a single for crew. Two heads.”
“Huh. Like I said. A lot of boat for the lake. Open water, though… yeah. You had her out in the ocean yet?”
“Nope.” He didn’t mention the boat’s big sister, the GT 77 he kept out in Hawaii. He wasn’t actually a pretentious asshole. At least he hoped not.
“Huh,” Russell had said again, and that was all.
Now, Blake said, “Portside compartment over there’s got a thermos and a couple cups in it. You could pour us a cup of coffee. I put a little whisky in there to take the morning edge off.”
Russell pulled them out, but said, “I brought my own. Coffee.”
“Plenty for two.”
“I don’t drink.”
Blake shot a quick glance at him, but Russell’s craggy, lined face was expressionless under the same white cap he’d had on when they’d met, daubed with what looked like years’ worth of splatters. Blake accepted his cup of spiked coffee, watched Russell pour his, which was black and smelled strong enough to dissolve paint, and said, “I guess that’s why you stay away from the painkillers, too. Good move if you can handle it, but it takes some doing. I went a few rounds with the Vikes myself, and they had me on the ropes for a while before I beat ’em. More than one way to drown your sorrows, but all of them turn out about the same, I guess.”
“What was that?” Russell asked. “Ankle?”
“Knee. I’ve more or less got a peg leg there now. That thing’s pretty much destroyed.”
“Devils aren’t my team,” Russell said. “I didn’t follow all of it. Hard on a man to retire before he’s ready, though.”
“You got that right. That what happened to you?”
A long pause, then Russell said, “Guess there’s no reason you’d remember. You’ll want to head on over to shore now.” He pointed to a deep indentation in the shoreline. Not many houses out here on the far side of the lake, halfway to Montana and miles of winding lakeside road from the highway. Not developed, which gave Blake a curious divided feeling, the outdoorsman in him enjoying the hell out of that, and the businessman in him seeing the opportunity.
He turned the wheel, eased up on the throttle, and said, “No reason I’d remember what?”
“Broke my back. On a job about six months ago.”
“I’m guessing there’s more to it,” Blake said slowly when Russell didn’t go on. “What job?”
“Coeur d’Alene. That Sundays you built out there.”
It was a shower of cold water right down Blake’s own back. That had happened on his watch? He tried to remember if he’d heard anything about it, but he couldn’t. Six months ago, he’d been thinking about other things. Like a knee destroyed in the fina
l minutes of an otherwise uneventful win on Thanksgiving weekend, and another quarterback taking the Devils to the Super Bowl. Like the team losing that game, one they should have won. Like a ring Blake should have been adding to the one sitting in a box in his dresser drawer. The only one he’d ever win. As much as he’d thought about anything through the haze of a dozen Vicodin a day.
Suck it up, he told himself. You blew out a knee. He broke his back. And you’re the one with all the consolation prizes. He cut the engine at a muttered word from Russell and said, “I’m sorry,” knowing how lame it sounded. “I didn’t remember. Tell me now.”
“No point,” Russell said. “It’s over and gone.” He’d said that to the tackle shop owner, too. Over and gone. He went on, “Everybody’s got his own stuff to think about. Tends to drown out the other guy’s. That’s life. Let’s fish.”
Check it out, Blake thought. See if there’s something you should’ve known about, that you need to know now.
It took a while for the constraint to lessen, but it did. Being out on the water helped, and so did the kind of male companionship Blake missed most, the brotherhood of doing a thing together. One person wasn’t a team, but it helped. And so did Bella, oddly enough. Sitting still and absolutely attentive, her gaze fixed on Russell no matter what, until they put the rods away and he told her, “Go on, then. Go for a swim,” and she sailed into the lake with a mighty leap. She paddled all the way around the boat, then did it again, the happiest dog in the world, before she came back on board and shook joyously all over that pristine Hatteras deck.
He should get one of those, Blake thought, and knew he wouldn’t. A dog was ridiculous for somebody who spent his life flying from one place to another and one house to another, and his days in boardrooms, in restaurants, and on jobsites. He’d turn into one of those Hollywood stars who had a personal assistant to fetch his lattes and walk his dog. Ridiculous.
Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1) Page 5