Page 92 of Silver-Tongued Devil
Evan was wrong. Not about Blake, maybe, but about her. She went out with Blake on Friday night because she wanted to. For once, she was doing what she wanted. Broken heart be damned.
Or maybe because Blake said on Thursday night, when he’d come home to find her painting the downstairs bedroom and pulled her first into the hot tub and then into his tree-trunk bed, “So do I get to take you out on the town Friday night? Seems to me you’ve still got something to make up for.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, trying to ignore the hand that was still lazily grazing her body from shoulder to hip, then traveling up again as if he didn’t know how that was lighting her up. “I don’t think I owe you anything.”
“Oh, really?” He shifted onto an elbow and began to focus his considerable attention on her breasts. “Not even teasing the hell out of me with that perfume and those jeans that barely covered you, showing me what would happen if I unbuttoned one single solitary button, when I was supposed to be paying attention to somebody else?”
“Not my fault that you—” She sucked in a breath as he shifted lower, cupped her breast in his hand, and started to work with his lips and tongue. “Went out with the—ah—wrong woman.”
“Mm,” he said. “Hang on a second, darlin’. Let me get you a little closer to a ‘yes.’”
Which was why, on Friday night, she was wearing those same distressed jeans, the little white blouse with its asymmetrical hem, and her platform sandals, walking into the Heart of the Lake with another big guy in jeans and boots. Except that this time, they were both with the right person.
And except that Steve Sawyer wasn’t sitting with Jerry Richards tonight. He was with Ingrid.
Dakota saw them as soon as she followed the hostess onto the patio. Strings of white lights in the trees, candles lit on the tables even though it was barely dusk. And Ingrid and Steve.
She hesitated for one second, and that was when Ingrid looked up and saw her. Her bee-stung lips compressed, and she flicked her hair back over her shoulder.
It was the hair flick that did it. Dakota’s chin went up. And Blake’s hand was on her hip, his voice in her ear.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured. “Straight on through like the warrior queen you are.”
Dakota did it. She put every bit of assurance she had into it, too. Her legs were long, and she used every inch to glide right past Steve and Ingrid and to the table where the hostess had stopped. Acornertable. The best table. When she got there, she sat down, crossed her legs, and shoved her hair back over her shoulder.
I can flick too,she thought.And I’m in the Fischer Gallery. Watch my smoke.
If that hadn’t been satisfaction enough, there was the look in Blake’s eyes. He took care of business first, because that was Blake. “I think we’re going to need a cold bottle of that Reserve Chardonnay of yours right quick,” he told the hostess.
“You bet,” the hostess said with the enthusiasm of a woman who’d been tipped very well in the past and knew there was more in her future. “Coming right up.”
She took off, and Blake made it even better. “I didn’t think I could like you any more or want you worse than I already did. I was wrong.”
“Are they looking over?”
“Yep.” He took her hand across the table and slowly threaded his fingers through hers. “And that woman’s so jealous right now, it’s turning her eyes green.”
“She thought she had the pick of Wild Horse. Turns out she’s got an also-ran.”
“That’s not why she’s jealous. She’s jealous because you’ve got what she’ll never have, and it ain’t Steve Sawyer.”
“Oh, yeah? So you mean, not you?”
“Oh, no. That’s not what I mean. I mean style you can’t buy. I mean strong to the core and kind to the heart and loyal to the bone. I mean more woman than she’ll ever be if she lives to be a hundred.”
She couldn’t breathe. “If you talk like that, I’ll…” And then she couldn’t think what to say.
Blake lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I don’t even need you to finish that sentence. We’re just going to sit here and have our dinner, and we’re not going to worry about what anybody else thinks or what anybody else says. It’s not about them. It’s about us.”
After that, he set out to make her forget that there was anybody else on that patio. He made her laugh, and he looked into her eyes, and when she was sipping at the remains of her second glass of wine and shoving her hair over her shoulder again, he looked at the chain in her ear, sighed, and said, “You know what, darlin’, I think we’d better be heading on home real soon, because I’ve got a long, slow date with your body tonight.”
“Oh?” He didn’t look impatient. He was sitting back, one elbow across the back of his chair, the other hand twirling the stem of his wine glass, his legs stretched out in front of him. “Is your knee all better?”
“My knee’s going to do what I tell it to. And the headboard of my horrible bed is all these branches. You ever notice that?”
A shiver went all the way through her body, and he sat there and watched it happen. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve had this vision ever since I swam with you that first day. Well, you could call it a vision.”
