Page 13 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“She giving you a hard time?” he asked, liking her better than ever.
“Oh, not compared to, say, a football coach trying to get his team to the Super Bowl. But thank you anyway. You’re a very nice man.”
“I’m not that nice a man,” he said. “But I think I’m with a very nice woman.” He bent, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and said, “Good night. Thanks for your company.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said, then offered him a sweet smile and headed inside.
Why couldn’t he go for a woman like that?
When Blake pulled up the next morning outside a modest frame house painted a neat if unimaginative white, Russell was out the door with the brown dog before the SUV had even stopped. Cattle dog, Blake thought that was. She wasn’t beautiful, but she sure seemed loyal.
He hopped down from the truck and went to take the bag from the older man’s hand, but Russell jerked it away with an “I’ve got it.”
Ah. Pride. “Right,” Blake said, and didn’t open the door for him, either.
Russell urged the dog into the back seat, where she immediately lay down, and then hauled himself into the front passenger seat. Blake could tell it hurt like hell, but he didn’t say anything. He knew something about pride himself.
Russell didn’t say much on the ten-minute drive to the resort, which meant Blake didn’t have to chat. Fine by him. He liked guys who didn’t yap at him, and he especially liked guys who didn’t feel the need to yap about football. He liked talking just fine when there was a point to it. When he was talking about a game plan, say, or a business strategy.
Or when he was talking to a woman. That worked. Not like last night with Beth, which had been too much like hard labor for both of them. Out at the rocks with Dakota, though? Now, if he’d been takingherhome last night, if he’d been telling her exactly how much he appreciated her in that little white shirt and those jeans with their three silver buttons, and exactly what he wanted to do about it. How he wanted to touch her, and how he wanted to kiss her. If he’d been smelling her spicy-sexy perfume, watching her eyes darken, hearing her breath come faster, like his hand was already there, sliding inside that blouse, stroking over all that warm, smooth skin…
Yeah. That was the kind of talking he could get into.
Except that somebody else had been taking her home. Except for that.
Russell finally said something when Blake was unlocking the gate out at the new marina, although it was just, “The place is looking pretty good. Guess it’ll change the town some.”
Blake looked back at the staggered line of honey-stained wooden building that was the Wild Horse Resort. Itdidlook good. Plenty of windows, including in the soaring lobby with its distinctive slabs of greenish-gray slate making up floors and counters, with the wood to warm it up. That had been the idea, and it worked.
It looked exactly like his vision, and pretty damn close to perfect. The resort followed the edge of the shoreline, its manmade contours softened by plantings and fronted by marina and beach, with eighteen holes of magnificent golf course off to one side. None of it too obtrusive. No gleaming towers of glass rising too many stories high. Rustic luxury, that was the idea, its beauty coming from, and blending into, the land and the lake around it.
He said, “Not everybody’s happy about those changes, I know.”
The older man shrugged lopsidedly and stumped his way along the wooden dock, surefooted despite his crooked body. “Tree-huggers. What good does it do to protect the environment if the town’s dead? Who’s going to be here to see it? When the mill went, half the jobs went with it. I didn’t hear those folks from California worrying about that. Probably had a party.”
“Well, to be fair,” Blake said mildly, “they’ve got a point. Even from a business point of view—we’re selling natural beauty up here. Can’t do that if the lake’s a mess, and the air’s got to be clear, too, no bald spots on the mountains from clear-cutting. Nature in all her glory, that’s what looks good to a guy who’s been sitting in his car on the freeway for three hours a day the other fifty weeks of the year.”
Russell didn’t answer that. He was looking at the boat. That was a thing of beauty in itself. Gleaming white, her lines as sleek as a thoroughbred’s. A Rolls-Royce in the convertible fishing boat world, to mix a metaphor, if a Rolls-Royce on the smaller side.
Russell was still looking, but all he said was, “A lot of boat for this lake.”
“That’s true. On the other hand, I haul her over to the coast, and she’s ready for a cruise to Alaska. That was the other thing I had in mind.” Blake had come out and got her ready to go before picking Russell up, and now, he did take the bag from the other man and set it in the stern before climbing aboard and offering a hand. To his relief, Russell accepted the grip on his forearm, because Blake couldn’t see any way he’d have made it otherwise. The weathered face tightened, but the grunt that escaped him on swinging into the boat was quickly muffled. All the same, the sweat was standing out on his upper lip when he turned and ordered the dog, “Bella. Jump.”
She leaped neatly into the boat, and in fifteen minutes, they were in the teak-lined cockpit, motoring out into the center of the lake and headed for a cove on the far side. The twin diesels purred, the sound discreetly muffled up here in their luxurious surroundings. Russell hadn’t made a comment on the cabin as they’d passed other than to ask, “How many does she sleep?”
“Five. Two doubles, and a single for crew. Two heads.”
“Huh. Like I said. A lot of boat for the lake. Open water, though… yeah. You had her out in the ocean yet?”
“Nope.” He didn’t mention the boat’s big sister, the GT 77 he kept out in Hawaii. He wasn’t actually a pretentious asshole. At least he hoped not.
“Huh,” Russell had said again, and that was all.
Now, Blake said, “Portside compartment over there’s got a thermos and a couple cups in it. You could pour us a cup of coffee. I put a little whisky in there to take the morning edge off.”
Russell pulled them out, but said, “I brought my own. Coffee.”
“Plenty for two.”
