No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “Here for both,” she said.

  He looked down, and her fingernails were navy blue. With sparkles. His grin started slow, and then it took over. “Well, damn. Did I let the wild woman loose?”

  “I guess you did.” She touched her braid. “What do you think?”

  “I think I love your blonde best, but I also think you should do what sets you free.”

  “I don’t have that much time left,” she said. “It’s now or never. It’ll fade a lot by the time I’m back, and anyway—I haven’t pierced my eyebrow. I haven’t gotten a tattoo.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and said, “But say I did. What should I get?”

  He took the last of his caution and threw it into the wind. “Aw, baby, that’s too easy. My name.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She had a hand on her hip now, and that silver hair seemed to be giving her some attitude. He liked it.

  “Yeah. Right there.” He touched her hip, or maybe he touched her ass. Could be. He had big hands. “Where nobody could see it but me. If I flipped you over and you had my name right there, inked all the way into you? That’s a hell of a welcome mat.”

  Her mouth had opened, and now, she snapped it shut. “You were never this nasty before. You were romantic.”

  “Hey. I’m romantic.”

  “Prove it.”

  He thought fast. “OK. Hang on, because here I go. I love how my bed smelled when we climbed back into it last night. I love how soft your skin feels under my hand. I love how you say my name. And if you got my name tattooed on you the way I want? I’d put yours on my arm. Right here.” He tapped his bicep. “Not where only you could see it. Where everyone could see it. And I’d be glad to do it.”

  She sighed. “I hate to admit it, but that was . . .”

  He helped her out. “Great. It was great.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe.” She was smiling, and so was he. On a scaffold, with the radio playing, the smell of paint strong in the air, and his guys spraying the opposite side of the auditorium. And he was . . . happy. He was happy.

  “Can I help?” she asked. She seemed to take in what he was doing for the first time, because she gasped, and that was pretty sweet. “Evan. It looks amazing.”

  “Yeah.” He let himself enjoy that for just a second. “Here. Tie in.” He handed her the other harness and helped her get into it, and if he enjoyed it and felt her up a little bit along the way? Well, there she was under his hands. “You get the fun part,” he said. “You can paint all the top part of this column with the gold. All the leaves and whatever.”

  “The capital. That’s what this decorative part is,” she explained at his look of amusement. “On a Corinthian column like this, it’s much more elaborate than on the Doric or Ionic. You don’t get these acanthus leaves on those.”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying not to laugh and totally failing. “Whatever it is. Paint it gold. I figured you’d like the metallic. Copper last night. Silver hair. Gold paint. And I’ll keep doing the blue over here on this trimwork.”

  “So pretty,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  They painted a while in silence, Beth concentrating with everything in her, and then he said, “By the way. Obviously, Kristiansen liked my idea, because we’re doing it. But he also liked the Zodiac. Actually, he said, ‘What the hell. It’s a chick thing, I guess. Do it.’ Close enough.”

  Beth said, “I’d be affronted by the ‘chick thing,’ but it is silly. Just for fun.”

  “Mm. Fun for me. Taurus setting Virgo free. That’s my favorite part.”

  She turned and loaded up her brush with more gold paint, carefully wiping off the excess the way he’d taught her all those years ago. “Again, I’d object, but I have to admit, that’s kind of how it worked out. And by the way, tell me he’s not on the practice team.”

  “Who?”

  She waved her brush, then settled in to painting leaves. “The Viking.”

  “You don’t know who he is?”

  “Nope.” More brushwork. “But I told Candy Farnsworth last night that he was a huge star, so I’m hoping he’s not the . . . kicker, or something.”

  Evan laughed. “Wide receiver. MVP last season.”

  She glanced at him sidelong. “MVP how?”

  “Most valuable player in the league. It’s kind of a big deal.”

  “Oh. Good.” She kept painting. Quick, neat, and careful. The way Beth did most things. “I’m saved. I made this whole speech.”

  “Uh-huh. Let me guess. About how she’d better look out, because I was going to set this town on fire.”

  She laughed. “It sounds bad when you say it. I was passionate, though. If I’d done that in court, the jury would have come in for me all the way. It was fairly awesome.”

  “I’ll bet. And you can just keep on defending me. I kinda like it.”

  “Well, on that note.” She dipped her brush in the gold paint again. “While I was waiting for the color to set up, or whatever hair color does, I made a call to a colleague at my firm.”

  “Uh-huh.” He switched brushes, started in on the body of the column, which he was picking out in cream. “Multitasking.”

  “Yes. And since she’s not licensed in Idaho—which I am, by the way, so you know—she called somebody who knew somebody here in town, and that somebody sent me over some documents. All pretty basic. I just need Gracie’s birthdate and her middle name, and April’s full name and birthdate, and the best address you’ve got for her. You can text them to me. Gracie does have your last name, right?”

  The fun was gone, just like that. Talk about your bucket of cold water. “Yeah. Grace Amanda O’Donnell.”

  “Grace Amanda,” she said. “Pretty.”

  “Yeah.” He painted in silence for a minute, then said, “You went ahead.”

  “I thought it was a thing I could do. A thing that might help. You need to do it, Evan. What you’ve done up until now . . . it’s normal. If I didn’t know that, I heard it this morning. Fathers or mothers, if the other parent leaves? You’re trying to take care of your kids, make a living, and you don’t want to rock the boat or stir up trouble. But you can end up in trouble. It’s important. Otherwise—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I get it.” If he hadn’t before, the coldness deep in his gut would have told him. “So what do you need?”

  “For you to sign the petition for custody in front of a notary. In this case, in front of that attorney. And don’t worry,” she added hastily, “I can get her to come meet us and do it. I thought we could do it over at Blake’s tonight.”

  “At Blake’s?”

  “Well, yeah. I talked to Dakota, and she and Russell want to do the affidavits. Blake too. I interviewed them on the phone and typed things up. One attorney—well two, counting me—one visit, four signatures, and we’ve got this. At least the first step. The next part’s mine.”

  This was going too fast. He was barely hanging on. “What’s that?”

  “I file the petition tomorrow at the courthouse, with the affidavits attached. And then comes the tricky part. Where do you think she is? April?”

  “She went to her parents’,” he said reluctantly. He didn’t want to think about this. Doing it felt like sticking his hand into a nest of rattlesnakes. You didn’t do that.

  Unless your baby girl was in there. If it was your baby girl? You climbed right into that nest, and you did anything you had to do. He asked, “Are you sure? That it wouldn’t be better to wait? If April went a year, say, without seeing Gracie. Wouldn’t that be a stronger spot?”

  “Judges want kids to know both parents. Especially their mother. Unless she’s drug-addicted or seriously abusive, they want family reunification. If April comes back, if she wants Gracie, unless there are special circumstances like that, they’re going to give her some kind of custody. If you make the power move now, though, while she’s running away from her responsibilities and she just wants out, my sources say you’ve got a good shot at sole legal custody.
She’d get to have Gracie for some periods—some visitation—but you’d get the say.”

  When she put it like that, how could there be any other answer? “Then let’s do it,” he managed to say through the tightened-up mess that was his chest. “Because I need the say.”

  His baby girl. Not with him.

  No.

  It wasn’t quite eight-thirty on Friday morning, and the parking lot of the professional building near the courthouse wasn’t a quarter full. Which didn’t matter anyway, because Beth hadn’t driven. She’d walked the twelve blocks from Dakota’s house with Henry, enjoying the fact that she could. There was a hint of autumn in the air already, and she was wearing a purple Wild Horse Resort sweatshirt from Dakota’s closet over her jeans. The huge old trees that shaded the sidewalks in the town’s older neighborhoods, though, hadn’t started dropping their leaves yet, and the kids were already out riding their scooters and bikes along the sidewalks as if determined to make the most of their last week of freedom. It was all very small-town. All very serene. It was nice.

  She texted a few words into her phone, and a minute later, as she was tying Henry’s leash to a spindly new sidewalk tree, a fiftyish woman opened the glass door. Joan Armitage, presumably. One of two partners at Armitage, Caskell, LLC. Intimidating, and not.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you Beth?”

  “Yes. Joan? Thanks. Just a second.”

  “Oh, bring him in,” Joan said. “We can always use some doggie love.”

  “Thanks.” Beth untied Henry, then came over and shook hands.

  Joan crouched and gave Henry the kind of ear rub he liked best. “Aren’t you a gorgeous boy.” She stood up. “Come on in.”

  “I appreciate you making time,” Beth said as they headed inside.

  The other woman smiled, softening her severe features, though her tone was still matter-of-fact. “Professional courtesy plus your dad? The firm does some of his work, the employment pieces, so that was an easy decision. You mind the stairs?”

  “Not at all.”

  It was an effort to keep pace. Joan, neatly but comfortably dressed in gray cotton pants, a blue tunic with a beaded collar, and sandals, practically ran up the two flights. “Although it is my busy season,” she said at the top, not sounding a bit winded. “January and August: prime divorce time. Every single year.”

  “I can see January,” Beth said, following Joan down the hall and through another locked door into a small reception area, as yet unmanned, then down another quiet hallway. “Stressful holidays, family mess, wanting a fresh start. People tackle estate planning in January, too. But why August?”

  Joan shrugged and gestured Beth into an office with a view around the curve of the lake, with Blake’s new Wild Horse Resort in the background. “Some of the same reasons. Too much family, reality versus fantasy. Spending too much on a vacation that turned into your kids fighting in the back seat, and maybe you don’t even get vacation sex anymore. Financial stress, kids in daycare over the summer. Disappointment, resentment, and money worries. The relationship killers. Speaking of which—sit down, and we’ll take a look at what you’ve got.”

  Beth had Henry lie down at her feet and handed over her file, and Joan put on a pair of rectangular reading glasses and studied the documents one after another, setting each neatly face-down afterwards.

  “Right,” she said at the end, picking the pages up and tapping them together, then handing them back to Beth. “Good stuff. Blake Orbison was a smart addition, even if his testimony only covers the past few months. And even though no judge will consider Evan’s mother unbiased, the fact that she’s been providing daily care to Grace will help mitigate that. So Mom never came back at all? Pretty unusual. Normally Dad’s the runner. Are we sure she’s still living?”

  Beth hesitated, then opened her purse, pulled out a dollar, and handed it over. “Guess this makes me a client,” she said with a smile that was only slightly nervous. “Just to be on the safe side.“

  Joan leaned back in her black leather desk chair, stuck her legs out in front of her, and rocked a little as she studied Beth. “Uh-huh. You checked her out.”

  “Through a friend.” Actually, an investigator for Kentworth, Docherty, but Joan didn’t have to know that. Beth never did anything irregular, but she’d done this anyway, instructing the man to “just bill me directly on this one.” Her pulse rate had kicked up even as she’d dictated the Social Security number, name, and birthdate, half of her expecting to be questioned. Or, for that matter, to be fired. This was in no way legal. Andrew Hogan, the ex-cop investigator, had sounded unfazed, though, which made Beth wonder exactly how far over the line other people skated.

  They’d been lucky that Evan had remembered April’s Social Security number and birthdate, of course. “Math skills,” he’d said when Beth had commented on it. “Or my one freak talent. I remember numbers.”

  Now, she went on to tell Joan, “A background check didn’t turn anything up. Wherever she is, she’s quiet. No rental applications. No criminal activity, but she never had that. None in the past, either.”

  Joan nodded. “Nothing but running out on her kid. Not that common in a mom, like I said, unless it’s drugs. Are we sure?”

  “Yes. Well, I’ve never met her, but Evan says he’s sure. The baby doesn’t have any problems.”

  “Dad have any abuse issues?” Matter-of-fact still, and Joan’s gaze was level.

  “No.” Beth repeated it. “No. If he did, Dakota would know. Russell would know. And I’d know, too.”

  “Not necessarily. In any case,” Joan went on while Beth was still grappling for an answer, “if she alleges that, given the running away, you’ve got a can of worms even if it isn’t true. But we’ll hope not. Just a heads-up. Meanwhile, you’re all set. File and serve notice, and we’ll see what happens. No rental applications means she’s probably with the parents, that the thought?”

  “Yes.” Beth was still trying to recover. “She’s on the helpless side, apparently.”

  Joan studied her, and Beth heard the thought and rejected it. Victim material. She might very well have thought it, too, if it had been anybody but Evan, the man who’d written the book on self-control, not to mention decency. “Anyway,” Joan finally said, “if you don’t turn her up, you move on to serving notice by publication. Four weeks, but it’s still better than waiting.”

  “I’ve got a process server lined up,” Beth assured her. “We’re good to go.”

  “You won’t be handling the actual hearing, though, I assume,” Joan said.

  “No.” Beth busied herself straightening the already-straight stack of papers and returning them to their folder. “I’m not in town for long, and of course, this isn’t my specialty. I wanted to get Evan started in a less . . . a less daunting way. More personal. But he’ll do the rest with you. I appreciate you checking over my paperwork.”

  “As long as he comes on down and gets himself set up with me,” Joan said. “Shoot me a copy once you’ve filed, and I’ll take over once I hear from him. He’ll be less likely to follow through, though, if he didn’t pay for what you’ve done.”

  “No,” Beth said. “It was a favor.”

  “And your idea.” Joan’s gaze was level.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure he actually wants to cut ties?” Joan asked. “I see that you want him to, but I don’t see him sitting here.”

  Beth could feel the heat rising into her cheeks in a way it never did if she was on the other side of that desk. She went for rationality, for logic, but it wasn’t easy. “What I see is a man closing his eyes and hoping she’ll stay away. If I’m wrong, if some part of him wants his family back? He won’t follow through, and that’ll be my answer. But I think I’m seeing something I see all the time in estate planning. Wishful thinking. The mom who thinks everybody understands her wishes and that her kids will share, so she doesn’t have to write it down. Except they don’t, and you end up with two sisters-in-law fighting over a cu
t-glass vase that costs a whole lot less than your time to sort it out, and telling you it’s ‘the principle of the thing.’ They’ll go through the house on the day of the funeral and whip that crocheted spread right off the bed. At least my client’s dead by then and doesn’t have to watch.”

  Joan smiled, and the hard moment passed. “Yep. The plus of this job is the repeat business. The minus is—well, the repeat business. Watching creatures of habit make the same mistakes over and over again.” She stood up and shook hands. “If you think he really does want her gone, and you really don’t think she left for a reason—tell him not to drop it. I understand the urge, but advise him to resist. Motherhood’s a strange condition. Just ask me. I have three grown kids. By this point, I’ve done pretty much everything I’d advise a client not to. Pesky things, human emotions.”

  Beth was still turning the conversation over in her mind when she handed over the manila envelope to the process server an hour later, crossed her mental fingers, and sent him on his way. She’d called Evan to doublecheck before she’d filed the petition, and he’d said, “Do it.” So surely it was the right move.

  Joan served a different clientele. That was why she expected the worst. Family law attorneys only saw couples who didn’t want to be together, while estate planning attorneys saw people with estates to plan. Which was a more functional thing, even a happier thing in a way, despite the death part.

  She’d never thought that much about her selection of specialty. There’d been an opening, they’d wanted her, she’d taken it, and she’d liked it. Death and taxes were the only certain things in life, and she didn’t want to do tax law or bankruptcy. Estate planning might involve planning for death, but death happened whether you planned for it or not, and meanwhile, you were helping. She could see the load lifting from her clients’ shoulders when their affairs were in order, and she liked being the cause of that. She liked making plans, creating order from chaos, just as she suspected Evan liked making houses look better. Estate planning was like a big jigsaw puzzle. An interactive jigsaw puzzle. Or . . .