Page 31 of Silver-Tongued Devil
His eyes were hard now, his mouth set. “Right, it was rude of me to ask you about your ethnic background. I apologize. But the way you see those birds and the flowers you make, the way you see this stone… it all fell into place. I wasn’t judging you or calling you names. I was just trying to get at why you’re the way you are. It was acompliment.”
“You think you’re doing better,” she said, “and you’re digging yourself in deeper. There’s not actually an Indian gene for ‘appreciation of nature.’”
“All right. I stand corrected. I stand pretty damn embarrassed, too.”
She shot a quick look at him. He actually seemed like he meant it. He went on, “Maybe you could come sit down in my ugly green kitchen and have a cup of coffee with me and tell me why that stung so bad. And before you answer, I’ll say one more thing. Maybe I said it because I’ve been thinking too much about how you look. It’s different, and I like it, and I keep noticing it. You could say it’s been at the forefront of my mind.”
He’d actually thought for a minute that she was going to turn around and walk out. Walk out on the job and the money, even though she needed it, and badly, and he knew why. What he’d said still didn’t seem so terrible to him, but for some reason, it had been. It had hurt.
She didn’t exactly leap into his arms at his apology. Instead, she stood for a second, hovering like a dragonfly poised over a pond, ready to dart away. She was solid, and she was quicksilver. Both things. And he was holding his breath.
“Nothing to talk about,” she finally said. “Show me the upstairs, if you don’t mind.”
The ease, the responsiveness he’d felt while she’d been crouched beside him, his hand brushing hers—they were gone. She’d dressed for distance today, and he wanted the other Dakota again. The one in the ugly swimsuit and the messy hair, the one who laughed at him and teased him back. Even the one who faced him down and gave him a piece of her mind with all that passion he wasn’t supposed to talk about.
He wasn’t getting that Dakota, clearly. “Sure,” he said, and led her up the staircase, down the hallway, railed off from the great room downstairs but with the same view that had made him buy. He opened the double doors at the end of the hall and said, “Master. This is the other room I really care about.”
She walked into the middle of the enormous room, glanced at the California king bed—which, yes, had legs made of sections of tree trunk, and a headboard of intertwining branches that was uncomfortable as hell—and he could see when she noticed the huge mirror hung on the wall to one side of the bed. She moved on hastily to the wraparound windows with their lake view that took up most of two walls, and the deck outside. Everything about her body language now said “tense,” as if she’d imagined that chase and tackle herself, as if she’d looked into that mirror and watched him taking her clothes off, had seen him behind her, kissing her neck as she’d knelt on the bed, and none of it had been a positive experience. And yet he’d swear…
“Bathroom,” he said, indicating with his head. “Dressing room.”
She went in and looked, and he didn’t follow her, because he could tell it would make her even more uneasy. Anyway, he knew what she’d be seeing. More of the stonework in the bathroom and double shower. She came back out of the bathroom again and said, “A gray, but a taupe gray, is what I’d do. White trim. Very crisp, very masculine, very simple, and it would be fine with this gray carpeting. I’d probably keep that for all the bedrooms and other rooms up here, whereas the hallway would be the same color as downstairs. You’ll harmonize, because you’ll have the shades of taupe, but it’s not all the same. Or we could do it all the same, if you’d rather.”
“No,” he said. “Gray’s good.”
She nodded. “Show me the rest of what’s up here to make sure.”
He did, and then they went down to the bottom level, to a second office, the media room, the game room, and a fourth small bedroom and bath, all of them opening onto the lake view.
“Taupe gray down here too,” she said when she was standing in the game room, which was dominated by a mahogany bar more suited to a drinking establishment and enough chairs and tables to set up your own sports bar, plus a pool table, another fireplace, and a TV that defined “big screen.” “At least that’s my suggestion.”
“Go for it. Sounds good to me. Don’t you wonder one thing, though?”
“What’s that?” she asked cautiously.
“How much drinking do you really want to do?” He smiled at her, trying to get that ease back again. “That’s what I always wonder when I see houses with this much bar.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “It wouldn’t be what I’d do with the space, but people want to fill it up, I suppose. And I thought athletes and drinking basically went together.”
“Not if you want to perform. And I do tend to want to perform. So what would you do?” He leaned a hip against the mahogany bar and took her in. Waist and hips and long legs in those cowboy boots. And when she turned around… yeah. Call him a dog, but he was still going to be looking at that. He could mind his manners, but he couldn’t mind his mind.
“Me?” she said. “Well, pretty obvious. I’d use it as a studio. All this natural light, all this window space where you could hang your pieces, all the wall area for storage. Since I don’t have a teepee. And by the way? If you think that last thing was subtle, you’re wrong.”
“Ah.” He rubbed his nose. “Yeah. Maybe I mentioned I was sorry about the Indian deal. And I’ll just say… you’re cutting me off at the knees here. All my best stuff, purely wasted.”
“I’m keeping to the point. Which is to accept your apology.” She took a second, then said, “Maybe I overreacted, too. It’s just that around here, people say these things.”
“To you.”
“Yes. And my father was Lakota. At least so I hear. The reason for my name. It’s my mother’s fault that my last name is ‘Savage,’ but that didn’t help. And if you don’t mind, that’s all I’m going to say about that. I can send you a written estimate for the painting, or I can tell you right now, or both.”
That was a whole lot to think about. “Tell me now.”
“Five thousand two hundred fifty. Plus paint and materials.”
He blinked. It wasn’t much, but it was a little on the high side for Idaho. “Yes,” she said, “you can get another estimate. Go get it from Steve Sawyer, or anybody else. It might be cheaper. It won’t be as good a job. Plus, there’s that rush fee.”
His smile started slow and grew, and finally, she smiled back, let out her breath, and asked, “How’d I do?”
