No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “If you were in family law, you wouldn’t have to ask. My wife said I had to change or she wanted a divorce.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think? We got divorced. She’s relaxing with somebody else. They go for walks. Another overrated activity. I’ve also been on the phone with you for six unbilled minutes now. Next Monday, then. Fifteen days of toilet painting ought to do it.”

  Fifteen days was plenty. It was Monday now. That was a whole week more. Time to help Evan paint and . . . everything. She’d fantasized about great sex during her breakdown, right? And she actually knew that Evan gave more than he received. Well, he’d used to, and to say that she wanted to find out if it was still true was an understatement. Six more days would be fine. She’d made her position perfectly clear to Evan. Perfectly clear to herself, too. She was here for a good time, like the man said. They both had their eyes open.

  “I can’t,” she said instead. “I have eighteen-point-five days. I’ll be back next Thursday afternoon.” She started painting again, since the words weren’t going to fly back into her mouth and get unsaid.

  A long silence, then Simon said, “I’ll email you Marjorie’s information.”

  She stroked her roller over the wall another time that it didn’t need. “I’m not able to receive email.”

  “Everybody’s able to receive email.”

  “Except I’m not.”

  “Where are you? Outer Mongolia?”

  “Far away. Far far away.” She held the phone a foot from her ear. “Hello? Simon?”

  “Do not pretend to lose me,” he said.

  “I can’t hear you. I’m hanging up. See you on Thursday.”

  Evan came through the door while Beth was talking. When she shoved the phone back into her overall pocket, there was a faint pink flush on her cheeks and a spark in her eyes. He was a fan. He leaned against the door, even though he should be getting straight back to work—not to mention propping the door open—and asked, “What?”

  “Nothing.” She came out of her stall and swished her roller around again in the pan. There wasn’t enough paint left, so he tipped the five-gallon bucket and filled the pan again, which made her eye his biceps. Well, he could hardly help noticing. Or flexing a little for her. Every man had his weak spots.

  “I may have—” she said once he’d finished and she’d coated her roller again. She took a breath and started over. “I may have just told my boss I wasn’t cutting my vacation short. Which could cost me my partnership, the one I’ve been working toward for six years, but you know.” She waved the roller in a careless motion, and a tiny spray of droplets hit the cloth, Evan’s overalls, and his face. “Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.” She dropped the roller back into the pan and looked around. “Rag?”

  He reached down for a rag and a spray bottle of water, and she took them out of his hands, misted the rag, put a hand on his shoulder, and wiped off his cheek, then smiled at him, rose on her toes, and kissed him gently in the spot she’d painted. “There. Sorry. A little overenthusiastic with my declaration of . . . whatever that was.”

  “Mm.” He wasn’t exactly hating this. “You get to be enthusiastic.” He had a hand around her waist. If she was going to kiss him, he was going to hold her. “Really? You don’t get to be a partner if you take your vacations? That can’t be right.”

  She stepped back and went to pick up her roller again. “Welcome to the shark tank.” She was still going for bold and brave, but he knew his Beth.

  “Hey.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t you think that somebody as smart as you, who works as hard as you, is going to make it no matter what? Is anybody there better than you? I don’t believe it.”

  Her blue eyes got too bright, and she blinked a couple times. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve never said no. They say jump, I ask how high. College, law school, the firm. The firm especially. I don’t even know what I want or what I feel anymore. But the thing about that is—it works. I know it does. It always has.”

  “A-plus student?”

  “Yeah.” She took her hand back, rubbed her palm on her overalls, then fiddled with her roller. Nervous. She’d been brave, and now she was having second thoughts. “You know about that, though. That was how you did football.”

  He knew what he wanted to do now. He wanted her not to look at him. So he picked up his own roller and got back to work. “Football was a long time ago,” he said with his back to her.

  Did she let up? She did not. “But that was how you did it. I know it. You gave it everything. I’ll bet it’s how you do this too. Your company, I mean. Who was here yesterday, on Sunday, meeting with the customer? And I’ll bet it’s how you’re a dad. I’ll bet there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for Gracie, because I know you. How is coming back early from my vacation any different from saying, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right’?”

  He considered that. “When it sucks your soul?”

  She laughed. “Well, there’s that. And by the way, I had an idea for in here. Another idea.”

  “Shoot.” He kept painting, even though this bathroom was taking way too long. You could say he wasn’t in any hurry to leave.

  “I was thinking that each stall could be its own little world.”

  “Uh . . .” He gave her some side-eye. “How long are you picturing somebody staying in there?”

  She sighed. “Evan. Have you timed women in the restroom? When there isn’t a line, so you feel like you need to hurry up and free up the stall? Men just go in there, pee at the urinal, zip up, and leave. A woman is in there. She flushes, and then she fixes her clothes, and then she goes out by the sink and fixes them some more. Plus makeup.”

  “I’m taking your word for it.” Beth was right. She wasn’t fantastic at the romantically mysterious woman-thing. Too bad he liked that about her.

  “So anyway,” she said, “you could have your favorite stall.”

  “OK. You’re losing me in the weeds.”

  She waved her roller again, seeming to forget what had happened last time. “The Zodiac. You paint the constellation, and you have somebody paint in the description.”

  He wanted to love her idea. “Uh . . .”

  “You have twelve stalls to work with. It’s perfect. Painted on that marble background you talked about, on a sort of scroll.”

  “What’s painted?”

  “Well, all right. Take me.”

  “I would, but we’re painting.”

  “Ha ha. Pay attention. You write ‘Virgo’ at the top, with the dates, in black paint with a fine brush or even a Sharpie, and then in the scroll, you put something like, ‘Your tender heart shields its secrets from all but the lucky few. Nature reminds you to play, and animals remind you to love.’ Like that. All positives.”

  “And you just made that up.”

  “Well, no. Obviously it’s what they say about the sign. I just made it more poetic.”

  “But you don’t believe in astrology.”

  “You don’t have to believe in it to know it. Everybody knows what their sign’s supposed to be about.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sure you do. You’re Taurus. And—oh. ‘Love Signs.’ That should be on there too. Like for Virgo, you put, “Determined, loyal Taurus has the patience to set shy Virgo free.’”

  Well, yeah. That was true. “Is that so,” he said. “I like the sound of that. But you did make that up.”

  “No. I may have, uh . . . looked it up, once upon a time. In between work, you know.”

  “Uh-huh. When you weren’t being responsible and hardworking and were thinking about being set free instead. So if you’re not making it up, do me.”

  “See? You’re interested. You can’t help it, even though you don’t believe in it. All right.” She wasn’t even pretending to paint now. She looked into the distance, frowned a little, and said, “Your steady, reliable nature reassures everyone around you. You hold tight to those you love, while working wi
th your hands keeps you centered.”

  “You did make that up. That can’t be my . . . whatever. Sign.”

  She was looking smug now. “Except it is. And your ‘Love Signs’ says, ‘A Virgo mate demands all your patience and concentration, but her sighs and trust are your reward.’ Except that’s too long.”

  “And except that it’s supposed to be for a woman,” he managed to say. Because, damn. That part was true for sure, at least the way he remembered it, and he wanted to use all his patience and concentration again. Starting now.

  “Oh. Right.” She finally started to paint again. “Forget the Love Signs part. Otherwise, half the ladies will be coming out of the restroom looking for a new man. We’re going for a romantic evening here, not Breakup Central when their guy’s a . . . a Gemini, or something equally horrible that thinks ‘shy Virgo’ is boring. I’ve been on that date.”

  They painted a while in silence until he said, “Somebody could probably paint that, I suppose. Somebody with good handwriting.”

  “Like me. I could do it. Anybody as neat as me.”

  “Mm.” More silent painting, and then he said, “Is that true? That patience and concentration thing?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, is that really Taurus and Virgo, or did you make it up?”

  “It’s really them. Supposed to be. Like I said, I looked it up when I was young and romantic. Completely unscientific, of course.”

  “Before or after we had sex?”

  He heard the little explosion of her laugh. “That would be before. There’s more to it. I could have sort of . . . memorized it. Words to cling to, or exceptional attention to detail in daydreaming. One or the other.”

  “That’s a whole lot of words,” he said, “but not the words I want to hear.”

  She sighed. “Embarrassing.”

  “But you’re a badass now, right? A wild woman with gray nail polish who hangs up on her boss. You can do embarrassing.”

  “Oh, man,” she moaned. “Don’t remind me.” He couldn’t see her inside the stall, but she sure was making him smile. She came out for more paint again, and he had to smile some more, because she had paint on her nose, and drops of white speckled her bare forearms.

  “What?” she asked.

  He reached for the damp rag in his back pocket and wiped the spot off the tip of her nose. “Just getting you sexy enough to tell me the good stuff.” He shoved the rag back into his pocket. “OK. Let’s have it.”

  “You think I’m still that shy girl,” she said, working on her roller some more like a . . . well, like a shy girl. “I can say all kinds of things these days. You should hear me.”

  “I’m waiting to hear you,” he pointed out.

  She straightened up, but she was looking over his left shoulder, and he could see the flush mounting as she spoke. Fast, rattling it off like she was reciting the dictionary. “’A Taurus man loves setting his Virgo free. Taurus’s nearly obsessive attention to detail and dedication to getting the job done right allows shy, tender Virgo to relax and savor her pleasure. It is a lucky Virgo who wins devoted Taurus as her first sexual partner, for she will surely experience the ultimate in sensual fulfillment.’ They’re all flowery like that,” she said, still not quite meeting his eyes. “And it’s crazy, as if every man born during a certain month is the same. But you could say it was reassuring at the time. Made me think about . . . well, everything a dedicated, obsessive Taurus might, ah, do to get somebody to the ‘ultimate in sensual fulfillment.’ Which turned out to be a whole lot.”

  “They got one thing right,” he said.

  “What?” She finally looked at him.

  He needed to check the scaffolding. He needed to check the guys. He needed to paint more than this bathroom. And he needed to stay right here. “That I loved setting my Virgo free.”

  Beth finished helping Evan paint the restroom before noon, and when they’d finished, he looked at her and said, “There’s nothing I’d rather do than take you home right now. And I can’t. I need to check my guys. I need to get up on that scaffolding. I need to eat my sandwiches fast so I can get back to work, and then I need to do it. And I’m going to miss you during every minute of it. So you know.”

  “Hey,” she said, going for casual and knowing she was failing, “I told you I only had the morning.”

  He put a hand on her cheek, his eyes so warm, and said, “You got a good afternoon planned? Going to be a wild woman some more once you wash the paint off?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Hiking. Swimming. I’ve developed excellent muscle tone. It’s been a goal.”

  Babbling. She was babbling, just because he was standing so close, and she was staring at that strong neck, the little indentation between his collarbones that she wanted to touch with her lips. Not to mention that he had his other arm around her and was pulling her up into him like he hadn’t just said he needed to get to work. He said, “Tell you what. I’ll show you mine, and you show me yours.”

  “That’s a . . . promise,” she managed to say before his mouth descended on hers in a kiss that melted her bones. And then he stood back, smiled down at her like a guy who’d forgotten he didn’t do that, gave her a little slap on the butt that made her jump, and said, “If you don’t get out of here, though, I’m going to be forgetting all those responsibilities of mine. You coming by to help me paint tomorrow morning, though?”

  She opened her mouth to say, “Of course.” Then she closed it and opened it to say, “No, I’m busy.” Then she thought, Who am I kidding? and relapsed into silence.

  Evan was looking a little amused, a little alarmed. “All right. What?”

  “Nothing. I need to . . . go swimming. I’ll let you know about tomorrow.”

  “Beth.” He had her hand again. “Wednesday night. And come see me tomorrow. Please.”

  She left, thought, Grownups. You are both grownups. Homeowners. Professionals. Parents . . . Oh, wait. Parent. She drove home in what might have been a daze, changed into her workout clothes, run straight up a mountain with Henry romping at her side and her “Screw You” playlist in her earbuds until her lungs and her thighs were both burning, and ran down the hill again with long strides that ate up the ground. Then she drove home once more, ripped her shoes off on the dock, and jumped into the lake, clothes and all.

  She gasped at the shock of the cool water, turned around, and laughed out loud at the sight of Henry leaping off to join her, his floppy ears streaming out behind him and his streamlined brown body quivering with excitement. He paddled out to her, and she treaded water and told him, “Henry, we are physical creatures born for joy, and nature brings us happiness. You’re probably a Virgo. Let’s swim.”

  Henry didn’t answer. Well, not exactly. But he swam with her, alternating between funny snorting noises and yips of pleasure, and when she finally returned to shore and staggered out of the water, her clothes and hair streaming, Henry shook all over her and his surroundings in canine ecstasy, making her jump, scream, laugh, and feel a little more of that joy. And when she took herself into the cottage and straight into the shower, wrestling her wet clothes off under the spray, she thought, I do so have a personality. I can so relax. I don’t even need a man with me to do it.

  But it would be nice.

  The next morning, she woke up to the sound of a jay calling.

  It was early. Very early. The pink tinge in the sky, the silver of the lake told her that.

  She could see it because for once, she hadn’t closed her curtains last night. Instead, after an evening with her hammock, her smutty book, some cheese and crackers, an apple, and an utterly delicious glass of chilled Pinot Gris, she’d undressed in the late midsummer twilight, lit candles on the edge of the bathtub, and had soaked, drunk another glass of wine—slowly, savoring every sip—played music, had lustful thoughts, and hadn’t read her book anymore. She didn’t need fictional fantasies. She had the real thing. After that, she’d dried herself slowly and thoroughly, rubbed lot
ion over her entire body, padded naked into the finally-dark bedroom, and done some long, slow, luxurious yoga by the windows in the light of the moon.

  It had been like a spa. A spa for one. It had been sensual, and exciting, and daring in a completely new way. And nothing she’d done—even though she’d made her absolute best effort—had soothed the ache from three days of serious sexual frustration.

  Plus, there was her heart. That could have been part of it too.

  Which was one reason why, in the silver-pink light of dawn, she stood and looked at the shining surface of the lake again and thought, Wait, what? Like when you kept fitting key after key into a lock, and the last one on the ring finally slid effortlessly home with that snick of a perfect fit.

  She checked her phone. It was only six-thirty. You couldn’t call anybody at six-thirty, at least not the person she wanted to call. She scrambled three eggs, dumped them in a pan with spinach and feta cheese, put two pieces of bread in the toaster, sliced strawberries, sat down, and ate the whole thing.

  The lake was still beautiful, just as it had been on that morning ten days ago when her phone had woken her, her mother had called her, and she’d stood in the nude and looked out at the view. The mountains were still green. The sun was still shining. And she wasn’t stuck anymore. The woman who had done yoga in the dark, in the glorious nude, looking at the moon? That was somebody new. Beth needed to hang onto her for another day, and after that, she’d focus on hanging on for one more. One step at a time on that new path, and never mind that the road ahead was hidden in the mist. One step at a time, and you wouldn’t go over the cliff.

  Unless you wanted to sky-dive.

  By eight-fifteen, she’d sneaked into the big house to retrieve Henry, taken another walk with him to see the flowers and listen to the birds, and made coffee. And then she called Dakota.

  “Hey,” Dakota said, sounding extremely . . . relaxed. “How are you?”

  “Too early?” Whatever Dakota and Blake’s birthdates were, Beth had a feeling their Love Signs matched up. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what your schedule is now.”