No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “No, of course not. Blake’s left for the office, and I’m sitting on his deck looking at the . . . I never know exactly what mountains I’m looking at.”

  “Uh . . . those would be the Rockies.” Was Dakota high? Very relaxed.

  “Oh.” Dakota laughed. “No. I’m in Portland.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize.” Well, this was a disappointment.

  Or not. She’d think of another way. This was . . . well, crazy, probably, but it felt important.

  “Why?” Dakota asked, sounding more alert now. “Did you need something? You’re still in Wild Horse, right? Still on your . . .” She hesitated. “Vacation?”

  No choice. Plunge in. “Yes, and the thing is, it’s actually started to feel more like a vacation and less like a breakdown. But you don’t take a vacation at your parents’ house. At least I don’t. I can feel myself getting younger with every day I stay here, and not in a good way.” Then she realized what she’d said. “Of course,” she stammered, “not for you. That was different, I know, when you lived with your . . . with Russell.”

  “Beth,” Dakota said, laughing. “Stop. Of course it was different. Your situation’s nothing like mine. I get yours completely, believe me. I resisted moving in with Blake like crazy because he had so much money, and I didn’t trust myself to resist the allure of that and . . . well, Blake, and to make good choices. And I was sleeping with him. If I had your parents, with the princess bed your mom probably still keeps made up for you just in case you want to crawl back in there? I’d stay far away.”

  “Oh,” Beth said again, and then she laughed. “I knew you were the right person to call. So here I am, with less than two weeks left”—she refused to give in to the pang that caused—“and I like it here. I mean, I realized yesterday that it’s true. I was running on a trail, and there was a meadow full of Black-Eyed Susans with butterflies all over them, and then I ran into the shadows, into the evergreens. Both of those things—they . . . they stopped my heart a little. Or they stopped me. Figuratively. They made me look. I like it here.”

  “I don’t know why you wouldn’t.” Dakota’s tone was uncharacteristically dry.

  Another stab, and Beth wanted to stammer an apology, an excuse. Instead, she stopped and thought. “I wish you were here,” she finally said. “I wish I could see your face. I called you because I knew you’d understand, but you understand too well, of course, and I’m causing you pain.”

  “All you had to do is say that,” Dakota said, “and you stopped doing it. So—yes. Wild Horse hasn’t always been . . . hospitable to me. It’s a whole lot more comfortable now, but I still like Portland much better. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Russell’s still there, I’d probably never go back except to lord it over the populace. But you’ve felt awkward for the exact opposite reason, and the same one. Because you don’t feel like you’ve earned the spot you have there. Even though”—the dryness again—“that spot’s different from what mine was.”

  “Yes. How can you be so much smarter than I am about this?”

  “Some things,” Dakota said, “you don’t have to go to college for. Some things, in fact, you probably learn better if you don’t go to college.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Beth said with a sigh. “And if you go to law school, you really get stupid.”

  Dakota laughed out loud. “All right. So now that we have all the family skeletons out of their closets and rattling around—let’s get down to it. You’re sleeping with Evan, and you get nothing but a big fat ‘yay’ from me for that. But you’re doing it like you’re stuck in the past. Still at your parents’. Still sneaking out.”

  “No, I’m not. Sleeping with him, I mean. We’re not going out until tomorrow night. Never mind,” Beth went on hastily, because the thing with Evan was too precious and fragile to share. She’d never been one of those girls who spilled her heart, even to her friends. Which made this conversation harder, but maybe that was another change she needed to make. Gradually. “That’s not the point. Or it is, but I need to be . . . moved on in other ways. I’ve been stuck, and maybe I’m coming unstuck, but I’d do it better someplace else. I could stay at Blake’s resort,” she realized, “but that’s not right either. Do you know anybody who’d have a . . . an in-law apartment, maybe? Something normal? Something in town, that I could pay rent for? Or maybe if there was something I could do in exchange for a person on vacation. Pet-sitting? Yardwork?”

  She’d like to do yardwork. She pictured herself in a baseball cap pulling weeds, harvesting vegetables. Possibly canning something. If she knew how to can. You could get botulism if you did it wrong, though. Scratch the canning.

  “You are possibly the only person in the world,” Dakota said, “who’d move out of a primo guesthouse on the lake so you could do pet-sitting.”

  “Yes, and I just explained why. I’m also helping Evan paint. Although I’m not sure how much I’m helping. He seemed to think I was distracting him yesterday.”

  “Ah,” Dakota said, sounding even more satisfied. “Oh! Wait. Wait.”

  “What?” Beth asked in alarm. Dakota sounded like she’d stepped on a bee.

  “I’ve got it. Right. This is it. Again, a major step down, but there you go. That’s the point. You’d be necessary. Back surgery. Not there. Place needs care. I don’t want to do it. Blah blah. You get the picture.”

  “Uh, Dakota. You’re not making sense.”

  “Butterflies,” Dakota said, sounding distracted. “On flowers. How do you do it so it isn’t cheesy, like some scenic postcard? There are blue butterflies, right? That pale, bright blue? On deep purple orchids? Maybe. I have to go. I need to take a walk.”

  “Glass,” Beth realized.

  “What? Yeah. Thanks. Good idea. Oh, the house. Russell’s. He’s not there, and I only go there for the workroom. When I do glass, I won’t do anything else. Inconvenient. Also dirty. Also weeds. There’s a key under the mat.”

  “That’s secure.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dakota said, “if there’s anything worth stealing, alert the media. It’ll be a first.”

  “I’ll do it,” Beth decided, that unfamiliar recklessness taking her over once more. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done. House, yard. I’ll get busy.”

  “Five-oh-four Cedar,” Dakota said. “Behind Bonner Building Supply. If you don’t want fancy, that’s your spot. Oh, and wear some of my clothes, too, while you’re at it. Evan will like it a whole lot better. I’ll say one thing about Wild Horse. You’re the only woman in it with an everyday wardrobe worse than mine. At least than it used to be.”

  “You sure?” Beth asked dubiously. “Wouldn’t wearing your clothes make him feel like he was sleeping with his sister?”

  “This is Evan we’re talking about. He’ll notice you look hot. He won’t notice it’s my shirt. Trust me. I’m losing my butterflies,” Dakota added abruptly. “I have to go. You go on, though. Move. Now. It’ll help.”

  And she hung up.

  At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, Evan still hadn’t seen Beth. But that definitely wasn’t a sinking at his heart when he got her text.

  Be there a little later.

  Because he wasn’t going there.

  It was eleven-thirty by the time she showed up. When he heard her soft “Hey” from below, he turned on the scaffolding with entirely different emotions than he’d had the other day.

  She wasn’t wearing her overalls, and she wasn’t wearing her khaki shorts, either. She had on short black shorts and a pale yellow skinny-ribbed tank top that showed double ribbons of ice-blue bra strap. And her flat sandals, but who cared with those legs? Those shorts were short. Her hair wasn’t in its braid, either, or the twist he’d seen when she was dressed up. It was in a messy knot at the nape of her neck with tendrils falling around her face. A knot that looked like it was held up with about two pins.

  When he got his tongue unstuck, he said, “If you paint in that, I’ll mess you up.”

  “Pr
omise?”

  He was already down from the scaffolding, and he’d been right to wear jeans today. She liked him in jeans, and she liked his chest, and he wanted to show her absolutely everything she liked.

  He didn’t kiss her, because José and Danny and Mike were all watching. Beth said, sounding demure and sweet and looking anything but, “I decided I wasn’t that helpful yesterday.”

  “Maybe not at painting.” He tried not to look down her shirt at that hint of cleavage. Or at all that thigh. Or at that place that wasn’t quite shoulder and wasn’t quite breast, that tender skin that, if you kissed it just right, could make a woman arch her back and moan.

  She smiled. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “You know I do. I was about to go to lunch.” He hadn’t been, but he was now. “Twenty minutes on a bench by the lake. What do you say? You don’t mess yourself up, and I get to look at you.”

  Something seemed to be funny, because he could swear she stifled a giggle that had a lot more to do with that girl who’d run up the driveway in her cowboy boots than with the shadowed-eyed, too-thin lawyer who’d stood in the lake beside him like even water couldn’t get her wet. “I don’t have any lunch,” she said, the corners of her mouth still trying to curve into a smile he was fairly sure he’d find irresistible. “But I could watch you . . . eat.”

  The last word was barely a breath, and there was practically steam coming out of his ears. “Nah,” he said. “One sec.” He took off his hat and yelled up to José, “Lunch. Half an hour,” and got a flap of José’s hand and a grin. And then he grabbed his lunchbox and took Beth out the door.

  When they got out onto the sidewalk, she flipped down the sunglasses she’d had resting on top of her head and matched her steps to his, walking so close her arm brushed his. He had to take her hand then, didn’t he? Since she was right there. And when he did, she moved in closer, sighed a little, and seemed to melt another couple degrees.

  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.

  Lunch, he told himself, and they headed a couple blocks over to the lakeside path, where he snagged a bench in the shade. Beth sat down, tucking one leg up under her, and touched a hand to those tendrils of hair. And her nails were lavender.

  Her toenails, though were shell-pink. He wouldn’t have said he had a thing for feet. Before.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, and he was a little surprised. He’d expected her to open with an apology for not coming to help him paint, even though he’d never asked her to.

  “Thinking your feet are pretty,” he said. “And that you got wild with your nails again. And that I like your hair. And that shirt.”

  Another secret little smile. “The shirt’s Dakota’s.”

  “Oh. I guess I never checked it out that well.” He checked it out this time, though. Was there anything more irresistible than that shadow between a woman’s breasts, all the more intoxicating because you weren’t supposed to look at it? Your imagination instantly went to what she’d do if you pulled that shirt down just a few inches and ran your fingers along the edge of a low-cut bra, then bent her back over your arm and kissed her there, where her skin was so soft.

  At least his did.

  He finally opened his lunchbox, handed her half of one of his sandwiches and his water bottle, and asked her, “So did you come by looking that hot because you decided you’d torture me some? If you did, it’s working.”

  “Maybe.” She wriggled on the bench, and her shorts rode up a half-inch more. “I had a nice evening last night without you. Do you want to hear about it?”

  “Only with everything I’ve got.”

  She took a dainty little nibble on her sandwich, and he could tell she was wearing lipstick. Pink. He’d always loved kissing her long enough to eat her lipstick all the way off, and if he found a smudge of it on his white T-shirt later? He didn’t hate that reminder of where she’d been. Or how she’d gasped into his shoulder when he’d been kissing her neck, and she’d left that mark.

  She said, “I started out lying in the hammock in a short skirt. I’d have had to be careful if it weren’t so private out there, but since I was all alone, I could let my skirt ride up all the way and not worry about what I’d be showing anybody who walked by. I was reading this book about a powerful man and a woman who liked him that way. It was very . . . detailed. All about the many, many ways he showed her his . . . power. And I enjoyed it a whole, whole lot. I drank a glass of wine while I did it, and then I took another glass into the bathtub with me. I had a long soak by candlelight, and I thought about my book, and about you, and I washed myself really well. I paid myself a lot of attention.” She looked at him from under her lashes. “Is this interesting you?”

  He tried to answer, but had to clear his throat. He grabbed for the water bottle, took a swig, and said, “I’m wishing you weren’t telling me at this exact moment. We’re in public.”

  “Well, yes,” she said with that demure little Mona Lisa smile. “We are. I figured I could entertain you during your lunch hour better than . . . what are their names? Your crew?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He couldn’t remember anyway. The blood supply to his head had been diverted. “Tell me the rest.” ‘In public’ be damned.

  She dropped her eyes, then looked at him out of the corners of them and touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, and he thought he’d explode. “I went into my bedroom,” she said. “Naked, and still a little . . . wet. I didn’t turn on any lights, and I didn’t close the curtains, because I wanted to see out, and I wanted to pretend that somebody could see me. Somebody I wanted to have . . . watch. I did some very slow, very stretchy yoga, and I kept my music on, and I looked at the moon. You could say I did some dreaming with my eyes open. All I know is, I enjoyed myself with every single inch of me. I let the poses wash over me and take me over. Take me deep.”

  He may have forgotten to eat his sandwich. He may have.

  She put a hand up and ran it along the neckline of his T-shirt, a feather-light touch, and said, her voice husky and low, “And do you know what I wished?”

  He knew what he did. “No.”

  She was still touching him, nothing inappropriate about it. Her foot was tucked up under her thigh, and there was about an acre of slim leg and creamy skin on display right there, because the black shorts had ridden up so much, they might as well have been bikini bottoms. He looked down her shirt, then down to the juncture of her thighs, and burned hot.

  “I wished,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “for you.”

  Finally, she took a bite of her sandwich. And he sat there and tried to breathe. Then he pulled out his phone, held it in his palm, looked down at it, and started to type.

  She stopped eating, and she stopped looking like Alternative Beth, too. “That was my best effort,” she told him. “And you’re checking your messages?”

  He shoved the phone back into his pocket and his sandwich back into his lunch box and said, “No. Sending one.” Then he stood up, took her hand in his, pulled her to her feet, and said, “Come on.”

  They walked the three blocks to Evan’s van in silence, and for once, he didn’t adjust his speed to hers. He was moving fast. Like he meant it. She had to hurry to keep up, and she was glad.

  When he opened the door for her, she climbed inside. And when he climbed inside, he grabbed her.

  No other word for it. He was half out of his seat, kissing her right there on Main Street, his hand on her thigh pulling her closer, his thumb stroking over the sensitive skin right up there at the top, and she was already gasping.

  He said, “My house. Now. And I’m not hurrying. I’m going to touch you everywhere. Slowly. You’re going to burn.”

  “Yes,” she said, hardly able to form words. “Please.”

  He didn’t say anything else. He got even more still for a second, and then he put the key in the ign
ition and drove. Ten blocks or so, stopping at the signs when he had to, under control as always. Somebody else might not have seen the pent-up intensity in his body, but she saw it, and it made her shiver. He hadn’t even started, and she was already burning.

  By the time he pulled into the driveway of the neat little blue-gray house, its gleaming white trim showing off that attention to detail, she was halfway gone. And when he looked at her, those eyes hard, and said, “Come on,” without one single bit of politeness . . . well, she climbed down out of the van and followed him straight through the front door.

  The second he’d slammed the door behind them, he picked her up off her feet, one big hand closing over the curve of her bottom like he had a right to it, the other arm around her back, his hand behind her neck, and he was kissing her. Nothing civilized about it, dark and deep and nearly savage. She was making some noise into his mouth, and his hand moved up, yanked at her hair, and the pins fell out. Exactly like she’d imagined.

  Her hair was falling around her shoulders, and he wrapped a hand in it, pulled her head back, and kissed her more. She was dimly aware that he was moving, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. He was kissing her too hard for that, taking her over, and she wanted to go.

  When she tipped right over and her back hit the bed, though, she noticed that. And when he was over her, slipping her sandals off, his hands on her insteps, holding her there . . . she noticed that, too.

  He wasn’t kissing her. He was holding her feet. And then he was dragging them slowly apart, spreading her legs, and she thought she’d come right there.

  “Evan,” she started to say.

  “No,” he said.

  She shut her eyes, then. She had to. His hands had moved to her ankles, closed around them, and then he was stroking up over her calves, stopping at her thighs. She was spread wide, and he was kissing the inside of her knee, his lips warm and hard there, one strong hand around each of her thighs and moving up.

  Feather kisses on the inside of first one thigh, then the other. His hands were still holding her, and all she wanted was for it never to stop, except that she needed him to go on.