No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “Nice to see you, Evan,” her father Don said, his tone more genuine than his wife’s. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Nine years.” Evan shook the hand offered to him. “Thanks for having me.”

  “You know Candy and Rob Farnsworth,” Michelle went on, and Evan shook again. “And you must know Melody, too. She was in your class, wasn’t she?”

  “Cheerleader,” Evan said, still without smiling. “Hi.”

  “That’s right,” Rob said with the kind of heartiness that told you smoothing over awkward situations was his specialty. “Melody would’ve cheered some of those turnovers you caused. Brett Hunter,” he said, indicating the sixth person on the deck. “Looking into developing some lakefront. My daughter Beth, and Evan O’Donnell, who was quite the star linebacker back in the day. Now he’s turned into a boring businessman like the rest of us. Age happens, I guess. What was your high-school dream, Brett?”

  “Now, that’s embarrassing to contemplate,” Hunter said. He was a tall, lean guy with black hair cut short and that kind of silvering at the temples that people called “distinguished.” “I was going to be a lawyer like my old man. Then governor, as I recall. The stuff in between was hazy. People were just going to recognize my awesomeness. Cocky little twerp.”

  Evan smiled. He actually didn’t hate this guy.

  “What kind of business are you in?” Hunter asked him. “Word of warning, though. I’ll probably pick your brain.”

  “I’m not sure Evan will be as much help to you,” Candy Farnsworth said. “He’s a painter. The house kind.”

  Evan felt Beth stiffen up beside him. He’d swear she was poised to leap at Candy like a ninja, and the thought almost made him smile. “That’s right,” he said, absolutely deadpan. “Painting contractor. M&O Painting. Which makes meeting a developer not the worst thing that could happen to me.”

  Melody Farnsworth said, “I’m sure that’s true,” in the kind of tone that spelled Catfight brewing, and Evan wondered why she was bothering. Beth didn’t want this guy. That was why she’d brought Evan, the part she hadn’t said. Her mother had clearly wanted to fix her up. Did Melody think Beth would dump Evan right there at the table and make a play for the millionaire?

  Probably. People expected other people to do what they would do in the same situation, and Melody Farnsworth had been ruthless as long as she’d been pretty. In other words, all her life. He’d bet she’d taken other babies’ toys in the sandbox. He didn’t know, of course. She hadn’t gone to his daycare.

  Michelle said, “Don will get you a drink, Evan. But oh, my. This baby.”

  Evan looked down at his daughter. For some reason, Michelle was making goo-goo eyes at Gracie, and Gracie was doing her I’m-an-angel smile back. Gracie sometimes had no taste.

  “How old is she?” Michelle asked. “And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Eight months, just about,” Evan said. “Grace. Gracie.”

  “Oh, and her precious butterfly outfit,” Michelle said. “And those eyes.”

  “I was thinking of having her be a butterfly for Halloween,” Evan found himself saying, like a guy who’d never learned better. “Or a fairy, maybe. I saw some wings online. And a tutu. Pretty cute.”

  “Oh, my,” Michelle said. “That would be darling.”

  “I’d better get in here quick,” Don said, “before Michelle gets you too sidetracked, Evan. What can I get you to drink? Got some pretty nice white wine over here, and I can open a red.”

  Evan could have waited for Melody to say it, but he didn’t. “I’m more of a beer man, if you’ve got it.”

  “If I’ve got it?” Don laughed. “I’d better. They’d kick me out of Idaho pretty fast otherwise. Come on in and take a look. Michelle doesn’t think much of this idea, but I’ve got a beer fridge in the den. Anybody else?” he asked.

  “Now we’re talking,” Hunter said, draining the last of his glass of wine and setting it on the table. “This is what I signed up for.”

  Evan asked Beth, “Take Gracie for me?” and handed her over. And then he followed Don into the house. Having a beer with Don Schaefer. Wasn’t life interesting.

  It got even more interesting at dinner, which was filet mignon grilled with mesquite chips. Good, but no better than Russell’s barbecue. The view was better, though, especially since Beth was sitting opposite him. Beth and Wild Horse Lake, and his baby girl in her seat beside him.

  Of course, Candy Farnsworth was also beside him, and Melody was across the table too, so life wasn’t exactly a hundred percent perfect. The conversation right now, in fact, was about all the people they knew, about who’d been at the cocktail party for the Friends of the Lake and who’d been missing.

  “I thought Blake was going to be more involved with the group,” Michelle said. “Blake Orbison,” she told Hunter. “At the Resort, of course. At first he seemed so enthusiastic. He made a very generous donation. It’s been a real disappointment that he hasn’t come to the last two events. Yes, he still contributes, but sometimes the best present is your presence, as they say.”

  “Maybe he was busy,” Melody said, and Evan didn’t miss the smile she hid daintily behind her napkin, or the way she accidentally brushed Hunter’ hand with her own.

  “You interest me strangely,” Hunter said. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Orbison yet, and I sure would like to. That’s one of the reasons I’m in Wild Horse, if I’m going to put it on the table, but the guy runs around more than I do. If I could get on the same page with him, that’d make my investment decision a whole lot easier. Golf, now. Golf would be good.” He asked the older men, “Do either of you ever go out with him? That’s a sweet course he’s built, and if we could play a casual eighteen holes, I’ll bet I’d know a whole lot more at the end of it. I’m sure I’d lose, but I’m prepared to give it up for the cause.”

  “Blake has his own social life,” Melody said. “For now, anyway.”

  “He can be hard to track down where you might expect him to be,” Candy agreed. “Making your money in sports must be so different from making it in business. You tend to run in different circles right from the beginning. That’s certainly what we’ve seen with Blake. But then—a locker room is a democratic place, socioeconomically speaking.”

  Gracie, who’d been making some warning noises, picked this moment to start fussing, and Evan was just as glad to pick her up.

  Women could be poison. Why the hell didn’t they just come out and say it? If you duked it out in the parking lot, at least you’d know who’d won, and the wounds would heal quicker, too. He focused on thinking that, because thinking anything else wasn’t going to help him right now. And he still wasn’t even sure he liked Orbison. He bounced Gracie on his knee, started on his salad, and breathed.

  Beth hadn’t been eating for quite a while. She hadn’t been talking, either, but she did now. “What Melody and Candy are referring to,” she told Hunter, “is that Blake’s living with Dakota Savage. He spends most of his time with her and her stepfather Russell when he’s here, and Dakota and Russell don’t belong to the Friends of the Lake. But as it happens,” she went on, ignoring what Evan was pretty sure was a kick on her ankle from her mother, “you’re lucky tonight after all, because Evan is Dakota’s partner in their painting business. Her stepfather Russell is the ‘M’ in that ‘M&O.’”

  “There we go,” Hunter said, not losing a bit of his good humor. Like he’d read all the undercurrents, and they were fine by him. Because why not? “I knew I had an ulterior motive tonight. Small towns and their two degrees of separation, huh? They’re not always the ones you’d expect.”

  “Dakota and Blake are babysitting Gracie tonight, in fact,” Beth said. “So if you’re interested in getting to Blake, Evan probably knows him better than anybody here.”

  Gracie was getting louder. Evan got up from the table and jiggled her some. That cold just wouldn’t go away, and it was still making her cranky. Or maybe she was picking it up f
rom him.

  “Really?” Melody said. She looked at her mother, then back at Beth. “Sorry. It’s always so confusing. I would have assumed . . .”

  Beth was opening her mouth, but Evan had had enough. Gracie had quieted down, but he didn’t sit. He still had a few bites of filet mignon on his plate, and he still had most of his second beer left, too. The sun was low, the clouds tinged with pink, the lake glowing silvery blue, the temperature that just-right cooling off after a hot day. It was all beautiful and perfect, except it wasn’t. He asked Melody, “What’s confusing you? Maybe I can help you out.”

  “Why don’t you hand me that gorgeous baby, Evan, and finish your dinner,” Michelle put in, which showed at least that she had better manners than the Farnsworth women. But then, her dog had better manners than the Farnsworths.

  Nobody paid her any attention. Evan didn’t lose his temper, not anymore. His fuse was long. It had to be. But when it came to Dakota? That was another story. He could feel that last quarter-inch of fuse burning through.

  Melody shrugged, looked at Hunter from under her lashes, and said, “I’m sure it seems silly to you, but people talk in small towns. They’ve noticed that Dakota doesn’t seem to be doing any house painting anymore, but who can blame her? When somebody like Blake Orbison comes along, most women would quit the day job, if they didn’t have professional ambitions. Personally, I can’t imagine, but everybody’s different, I suppose.”

  “That’s true, honey,” Candy said. “But there’s not as much a person can do without a college degree these days. You can’t blame Dakota for that.”

  “For what?” Evan asked. “What are we blaming her for exactly? For dumping me and snagging Blake, is that the idea? Or for quitting her job and becoming a sugar baby? You might want to ask Blake how all that went down. You could even ask Dakota, if you’re all that curious. Or you could decide it’s none of your business, and that talking like that makes you look exactly the same as it did in high school.” He looked at Hunter, who he’d swear was nothing but amused, like Wild Horse was putting on a show for his benefit. “Thing about small towns is—you can’t hide. Everybody’s known you since kindergarten.”

  “Or in Dakota’s case,” Candy put in, leaping to the defense of her daughter, who was looking like she couldn’t believe her ears, “since high school. Michelle and I both used to tell our daughters, ‘You’ll never know how important a reputation is until you lose it.’ Luckily, they never did.”

  Michelle was trying to say something, but Evan was done. “You’re right,” he said. “Melody’s got the same reputation now that she’s had all along. Congratulations.” He said to Michelle, “Gracie’s letting me know that it’s time to go. Thank you for dinner, but I’m going to eat and run.” Beth had started to get up, and he told her, “You stay and finish your dinner. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He picked up Gracie’s car seat and headed for the door. He hadn’t wanted to come, and he’d been right. They’d all just sat there and let it happen. Beth. Her mother, and her father. Like it was normal to shame the people who didn’t fit, who would never fit. Normal to make those little comments, to smile those little smiles. Well, it wasn’t normal to him, and he was gone. Now they could talk about him.

  It was dim in the house with evening closing in. As he walked through that over-the-top living room and the piano that nobody normal could have owned because it required too much space, tiny lights went on at the baseboard. Motion sensing. The same thing up the stairs, down the hall. Apparently being rich meant never being in the dark.

  The hell with it.

  Then he was in Beth’s bedroom again, had Gracie’s bag and her in her seat, even as she set up a wail and fought him. “Just hang on,” he told her, struggling to get her arms through the car seat’s straps and fasten her in. “You’re going to have to scream until we get out of here. I’m about to scream myself, tell you the truth. Two minutes.”

  He got her in and stood up, and there Beth was in the doorway. Her chest heaving in her blue dress, her silver hair shining in the dim light like a . . . a unicorn. Something too polished, too perfect. Not real. That made him madder than ever, at himself this time. What had he been thinking? This was nine years ago all over again, like he hadn’t learned a single damn thing.

  “You said you wanted my help,” he told her over the sound of Gracie’s wails. “But I can’t help with this.” He pushed past her and was down the stairs again, the lights winking on ahead of him and off behind him like they were shoving him out the door.

  Fine. He was happy to go.

  “Evan,” Beth said. “Hang on. Wait.”

  “No,” he said, putting Gracie in the van and fastening her in, then slamming her door and opening his. “I’m thirty seconds away from . . . I need to be gone.”

  The last thing he saw as he pulled out was Beth in his rearview mirror. Standing in the middle of her parents’ circular drive in her pretty dress, her hands lifting out from her sides, then falling against her thighs. Rich. Sad. Hopeless.

  Maybe he was a jerk. No, he knew he was a jerk. But it didn’t matter that he’d been inside her house tonight instead of waiting outside her window. It was exactly the same, and so was he.

  Sucker for women.

  He’d left. Left her here like she was part of it. She was hurt, and she was mad. And not just at Melody and her mother.

  She headed back into the entryway, through the living room where she’d never played, because her toys had been confined to the family room and her bedroom, and out to the deck. Everybody else was still eating, still talking. Her dad had refilled the wine glasses as if that would make it better.

  “Did Evan leave?” her mother asked. “Or is he upstairs with the baby? Sometimes they just need to cry it out.”

  “No,” Beth said. “He left.” She sat down again, looked at her steak and her wine, but didn’t pick up her fork or even her glass.

  “I think we made him uncomfortable,” Melody said. “I’m sorry. I guess it is a sensitive subject. I shouldn’t have referred to it, but I wasn’t sure, and it’s so awkward when you don’t know.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” her mother said.

  Something bizarre was happening in Beth’s body. A numbness, a prickling in her arms, and a strange heat. As if her blood were actually boiling in her belly and migrating to her head. It took her a second to recognize what was going on. It wasn’t a stroke. It was rage. Like in another few seconds, she’d have fire shooting from her eyeballs.

  It was as if the words were coming from somebody else. Or maybe they sounded so strange because they were being forced out through her tightened throat. “Oh,” she said to Melody, “I think you could have known. I think you did know. Evan was never involved with Dakota. Her big brother’s dead, do you realize that? He was about all she had, and he’s dead.” She looked at Brett Hunter and said, “He died in combat. He died a hero. He left a dad who loved him. He left a sister who’d been in foster care alone, who’d had a rough time. And he left a best friend who would’ve done anything for him, including look out for Dakota. That was Evan. Even before Riley died, Evan was there for Dakota. I’m sure you remember that, Melody. Maybe you never asked yourself why that was. And after Riley died? Evan stepped up more. That doesn’t make him less than some people. It makes him more. It always will.”

  Melody’s color was a little higher, her voice a little tighter. “Well, see, that’s all I needed to know. That’s all I was asking. Brett wanted to know about Blake, and I wasn’t sure Evan was the person to ask, because Dakota isn’t painting with Evan now that she’s moved in with Blake. It was a perfectly obvious interpretation, and I’m not the only one who’s made it.”

  “Which you’d know.” This rage . . . it was crazy. She could have lifted a car. She could have thrown Melody over the deck. “Because you’ve been talking about it. Why? What do you care? What did Dakota ever do to you?”

  Melody still had shiny dark hair, and she still had a p
retty face and a prettier body. She was prettier than Beth all the way around, and men liked her better. Then and now. But at least she didn’t look perfect anymore. Something to do with her expression. “I don’t air dirty things at the dinner table,” she said. “At a party. If I did, I could tell you exactly what she did.”

  “And I could tell you that I don’t believe you,” Beth said, “and I never have. I could tell you why Dakota isn’t painting with Evan, too. It’s not hard to know. All you have to do is look around and drop your prejudice.” She told Brett, “Dakota Savage is Native American. She’s also always been poor. Some people seem to think that matters.” She was on a roll now, telling Melody, “Why isn’t she painting? Because she’s an artist, she’s doing great with that, and she’s going to make a major name for herself before she’s through. But she doesn’t talk about that, or about Blake, because it doesn’t make her feel better to make other people feel worse. She’s never had anything, and she still doesn’t need to look down on anybody now that she has a kickass career and an NFL quarterback. Her life isn’t a competition.”

  “So she’s perfect. Right,” Melody said, just as Michelle said, “Honey, this isn’t the time or the place. Your language.”

  Beth put her napkin on the table. “This is exactly the time and the place. I’m so tired of this. We aren’t in the . . . the nineteenth century. We aren’t in England. Nobody here is some kind of lord. All anybody has is some money, and so what?”

  “I think it’s a little more than that,” Candy put in. Still looking unruffled, but she wasn’t that way inside. Beth could hear it. “There are some things that matter more than money. Things like behavior and reputation and decorum. Things like manners.”

  “Screw reputation,” Beth said. “Screw decorum. I’m calling out unkindness. I’m calling out rudeness. If that’s what I see, I’m saying so.”