Page 42 of Silver-Tongued Devil
This time, he laughed. “Well, darlin’, let me keep working on it, and I’m sure you’ll find yourself moving past that obstacle and finding yourself some reason. But it’s not going to be this one. I’m guessing Russ isn’t going to want to be beholden, so I’m going to need your help. Or could be he’s going to worry about my motives, so I thought I’d better go right to the source on that.”
“Uh-huh.” She was eating again, and he thought she was smiling. “He’s going to ask you about your intentions like some kind of old movie, and you don’t want to squirm. Let me put your mind at rest. I already told him I wasn’t prostituting myself for him. I told him fifty bucks a shot doesn’t go that far. I’d never pay it off.”
He realized that his mouth was open and snapped it shut. She was still eating, and she didn’t look one bit vulnerable now. This was all badass. “What am I supposed to say to that?” he complained. “That it’d be a whole lot more than fifty? That’s what we call a no-win conversation. That’s a big ol’ pit that a man would never climb out of.”
“I know.” She was trying not to smile, but she wasn’t succeeding. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. You reminded me, that’s all. But you’d really do that? What if they can’t fix it with surgery?”
“Then we tried, and I get a physical therapist for him, get him a better doctor, get him to the pain clinic to see what they can do for him without narcotics. I do what I can, is what. I do what I ought to do.”
She’d stopped smiling. She was holding her plate on one knee, but she took the other hand and set it on his forearm, and her expression was completely serious, and somehow… shining. That golden glow he’d only seen when she’d been talking about her art—that was what he was getting now. That glow was something special. Something beautiful.
“I shouldn’t have joked,” she said. “I guess I was trying to make it less… to feel less about it. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anybody who’d do something like this. This is… you don’t know what it’ll mean to Russ. You don’t know how hard he’s had to fight.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. She hadn’t let go of him, and he wanted her right there. “I do. You think I don’t see him, the man he is, and you’re wrong. He’s a hell of a guy.”
“He took me in, you know.” Her eyes were bright, and their legs were so close, they were almost touching. He could feel every bit of her spirit, the shining core of her, and it was pulling him closer as if he were magnetized. “Before our mom dumped us on him—Riley and me—Russ went to the tavern every day after work. He didn’t go to work drunk, but he spent every night drunk. I bet that’s not news to you. I bet you heard that already.”
“I did. But people don’t have to stay stuck in what they used to be.”
“No. Maybe not. He was what they call a functional alcoholic, but he’s not one now. Or rather—he’d say he still is, but he fights that fight and wins it every single day. And you know why? Because they said he couldn’t keep me. He could keep Riley. He was Riley’s dad. But I was a girl, I was fifteen, and I wasn’t his, and that’s a recipe for risk. He had to go to court to be my guardian, and they said no. I was in foster care for months until he could prove he was able to stay sober, and if it hadn’t been for Riley…” She stopped, maybe because her voice wasn’t steady anymore. “Russell did that, and I know it was the hardest thing he ever did. He did it for Riley, and he did it for me. Do you know how much that means to me?”
Somehow, her legsweretouching his now, or his were touching hers. She still had her hand on him, too. She was right there, and he was going to drown in her eyes, in her passion.
“I know how much,” he said. “I’m adopted.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t… I didn’t know that. I thought—”
“That everything had been easy. You aren’t wrong. Everythinghasbeen easy. It’s just that I know how lucky I am that it has been.”
“It can’t have been. You must have worked so hard.”
“I’d have told you I did. But when you can see the rewards right there, when you can see it all falling in your lap if you just keep pushing… that’s not the same as working for it when there’s nothing falling in your lap, when those rewards aren’t coming, when you’re fighting just to keep your head above water. It’s not the same at all. Not the same as what Russell’s doing. Or what you’re doing for him.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Wow,” was what she finally came up with. “Uh… I’m doing a serious re-think here.”
He smiled. “Nah. I’m still that guy you thought. But maybe I know I’m that guy.”
“No. You’re not the guy I thought.” She seemed to realize for the first time that she was pressed up close to him, holding him, because she sat back, tried to laugh, and said, “And thanks. For Russell… thanks. Even if it doesn’t work out, even if he can’t get better, thank you for being willing to try.”
He could see her pulling back into her shell again, and he couldn’t stand it. “Know what I’ve got upstairs?” he asked.
“Oh, geez. I can’t wait. The mind boggles. You know, you don’thaveto convince me that you’re not a great guy. I could preserve my illusions.”
He laughed out loud. “I’ve got a swimsuit, that’s what. I’ll bet you do, too. If you didn’t have to look at my undershorts, maybe you’d put on that truly terrible swimsuit of yours and jump off my dock with me. I got all tired there, all that scary emotion. I need something to perk me up and somebody to break the rules with, or else I need a beer.”
“What rules?”
“Sign right there on the dock. No diving.”
“There is not.”
“There is. There purely is.”
“You can’t break the rules in your ownhouse,”she protested, but she was laughing. “Speaking of which, I still have two-thirds of that house to go, and I’ve got this ruthless employer. You should see him crack the whip.”
There she was, teasing, and she still had those two little rings and that chain in her ear. She still had that mouth, too. And he wanted to go swimming with her. “Well,” he said, “you’re in luck, because I’m heading out again tonight and not coming back until Tuesday morning. You can finish your shellandpaint my house this weekend, get all caught up. You’ve just got to promise me that you’ll show me the shell when you’re done. I get first dibs.”
“It’s pink.” She was looking at him from under her lashes, and wasn’t that a beautiful sight? “It could be a little sexy, too. It’s sort of looking into the… interior. It’s, ah… smooth. And pink. Like I said.”
