Page 46 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“You’re way over the line,” she informed him. She was getting more than annoyed now. “If I wanted to do the wild thing with Blake, that wouldn’t be your business. Women can have recreational sex too, you know. It’s a thing. It’s the twenty-first century, even in Wild Horse.”
“Some women can,” he said. “You can’t.”
All right. Now she was mad. “Excuse me? Ican’t?Did somebody die and make you my keeper?”
Evan’s ice-blue eyes were perfectly calm, and so was his face. Infuriatingly. “I didn’t say you couldn’t have sex. I said that if you had it with him, it wouldn’t be recreational.”
“And you know this how? Because you’re in my head? You are not in my head.”
“No. I know it because I know you. You’re romantic.”
She felt, she really felt, as if the anger were going to blow straight out of her ears. She didn’t even know what to say.Yes, I can so have recreational sex,wasn’t the response she was going for, and neither wasnone of your business.Unfortunately,shut upwasn’t, either, though that was the one she was longing for right now.
Fortunately, Russell stepped in. “Evan’s not telling you what to do.”
“You think?” she muttered, and stabbed at her pasta, since stabbing Evan with her fork while he was holding Gracie was out of the question. He was eating again himself, looking about as emotional as a boulder.
“He’s just trying to tell you how men are,” Russell said. “Don’t get me wrong, Orbison’s a pretty good guy. Rich guy, though. Guy who’s used to getting what he wants.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think I’m clued in on that.”And how.She should tell him that Blake had come right out and said it, except that it would only show that Evan was right. “If you’re going to LA, that’s the main thing. Let’s just focus on that, OK? You’ll focus on that, I’ll focus on that, and maybe even Evan will focus on that, once he gets himself out of big-brother mode, or dad mode, or whatever that’s supposed to be.”
“Just watch it,” Evan said. “And if you need to switch jobs, tell me.”
She sighed. “Thanks. I think I got it. I appreciate your concern. Now back off.”
Blake switched the garment bag and duffel to his left hand and stuck the key in the door with his right. He tried to turn the key, but it didn’t go anywhere.
Huh. Dakota had left the door unlocked? ItwasWild Horse, but still. He pulled out the key, turned the knob, and stepped inside.
She’d left lights on downstairs, too. She wouldn’t have left the house unlockedandlit up, surely. She must still be here, even though it was six-thirty Monday night. But if she was, where was her truck?
His heart was pounding, which was annoying. Also stupid. His dinner meeting had canceled, he’d come home early, and she was still here. So what? It wasn’t like she was waiting for him. He hadn’t let her know he was coming back. He’d figured she’d be long gone.
“Dakota?” he called out, and got no answer. He headed upstairs, and his pulse rate went up a little more.
The lights were off in his bedroom, though, and he hit the switch and tried to ignore the depth of his disappointment. It was pointless. He’d already been through all this, and he’d made his decision. Dakota wasn’t the right woman. Look at her dream life: adventuring around the world. The exact opposite of the life plan he’d laid out for himself. He was already doing enough running around, and it was time to settle down anyway. If he was going to have that life, an adult life, he needed a home-loving woman, a settled woman who’d cure his restlessness. Somebody like Holly Samuels, the twenty-seven-year-old whom he’d been set up with last night in Chicago. A warm, pretty brunette with kind blue eyes and a good sense of humor, Holly worked for a children’s charity, and her parents donated to the symphony and the ballet. See? Perfect.
All right, notHolly,exactly, but somebody like that. She’d checked all the boxes, including the ones Beth Schaefer hadn’t: she was brunette, and she’d actually seemed to be attracted to him. He’d liked her, too. He’d liked her fine. She hadn’t been quite the right match—for one thing, he might actually have togoto the symphony and the ballet—but then, he was picky. He was getting warmer, though. He just had to keep working at it, and he’d get there. He hadn’t failed to hit a major life goal yet.
A relationship with Dakota, a woman who was all wrong for that life goal, would be nothing but a distraction and a waste of time, and he didn’t do distractions or waste time. As for anything else—that wasn’t going to work out well for her, and he might be arrogant, but he wasn’t an asshole. He hoped. So that was enough of that idea. Period. Case closed.
If he needed somebody to help him with that wild side—well, he knew how to get that, too. Random sex with a pretty stranger had lost its appeal quite a ways back—seemed a man actuallycouldget too much of a good thing—but he wasn’t blind to the possibility. He just didn’t want it that much. Getting old, maybe. His testosterone levels dropping.Thatwas a horrifying thought. It had better not be that.
His bedroom looked good, though.Reallygood. The walls were the same warm gray she’d painted his office, the trim a crisp white, and it looked clean and masculine, the way she’d promised.
And then there was the iris. She’d hung it in the window closest to the bed, next to the mirror. His flower, the ruffled petals opening to reveal that dark, secret heart. It was his, and it was here.
He did his usual lightning job of unpacking—anybody who’d been on the road as much as he’d been for the past twelve years knew how to pack and unpack—and changed into comfortable old Levi’s and a faded Devils T-shirt. He’d stick around tomorrow morning until Dakota showed up, he decided. Maybe she’d have suggestions about what else to do in his bedroom. Curtains. Things like that.
He headed barefoot down to the kitchen, where the lightwason, opened a bottle of Laughing Dog IPA—Idaho did beer pretty well, that was one thing—and went out onto the deck. The slanting rays of the evening sun were shining through the trees and making the lake glow a rich blue, and it all looked great. He’d kick back, drink his beer, and look at it, and tomorrow, he’d do an extra-long workout that would take care of the urge to pace.
The sliding door was unlocked, too, and he was just suppressing a pang of irritation when he registered the noise. The sound of a running motor. He knew that sound.
He headed over to the nook where the hot tub sat, screened by a row of bamboo growing in pots. He went around the bamboo, and… whoa.
She didn’t even have the jets on. She was stretched out in the middle of the huge six-person hot tub, facing him. Her eyes were closed, her lips were parted, and she had earbuds in her ears, the cord plugged into the phone sitting safely on the edge. Dark hair streaming down around her and floating on the water, skin like amber honey, curves like… like exactly what a man wanted to see when he came home after a long day.
She was naked, but that wasn’t the main thing. One hand was drifting lazily over a perfectly small, perfectly shaped erect brown nipple that was giving him heart palpitations. The other hand was…
