Page 54 of Silver-Tongued Devil
It was that reckless streak again. It was her wild side, the side that refused to cower, that raised her head and her fists and fought back. And the side that wanted Blake Orbison with a ferocity beyond reason.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll go with you.” What was the worst that could happen?
He smiled, then, and that smile did the same things to her it always did. And then he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and put it in her hand. “That’s for your shell. I meant what I said. That thing—it’s mine.”
She unfolded it, but she didn’t have to. “I said a thousand.”
“And I said fifteen hundred. I told you, darlin’. You’ve got to tell me you’re worth it. You’ve got to believe it. I’m telling you that I do.”
He stood up before she could say anything else, and she got up, too. What else could she do?
At the door, though, he turned to her. “So you know. Everything else I said tonight? That was true, too.”
“Uh… what would that be?”
He put a hand out, brushed her hair back from her face, and let his fingers drift down her cheek, and it was an effort to keep from leaning into that hand. He said, “Tell you the truth, I can only remember some of it. But I remember I meant it.”
She fought to keep her eyes from closing. “I’m going to have to think about that.”
She was falling into his eyes, drowning in his heat, and he wasn’t smiling now. “You do that,” he said. “You go to bed tonight and think about me. You can know that I’ll be thinking about you, too. And when I do… we aren’t stopping. You can think about me imagining how you’d look when you’re lying back on my bed with your arms up over your head, with your eyes closed and your mouth open, making all those little noises for me. You can think about how good your legs are going to look when I’ve got my hands on your thighs. You can think about many times I’m going to make you come, and how many ways I’m going to wear you out.”
There wasn’t enough air in this room. She needed to say something. Anything. “You’re kind of pushing your luck, aren’t you?” she finally managed.
It was more than a smile this time. He laughed. “Always, baby. Always. I just can’t help it. And you make me want to do it. You make me want to stand over there on that wild side and say, ‘Come on over, Dakota. Come on over here, darlin’, and let me show you how.’ I want to go there, and I want to take you with me.”
Did he kiss her, then? He did not. He walked right out the door and left her with that.
She stood there looking at the closed door for a full minute before she turned around and headed for bed like a sleepwalker.
Friday night.
No pressure.
Dakota spent all day Tuesday thinking about what to do.
Did she plan out her next glass piece? No, she did not. Did she think about which galleries she might approach, now that she had not only her collection of flowers, but the image of the shell to show them? Nope. Did she work through Russell’s budget in her head, now that she had another sizable check in the bank, and consider M & O’s schedule for the rest of the summer? Not even once.
Did she even reconsider the wisdom of going out with Blake?
No. She didn’t. Instead, she spent nearly nine hours painting his walls and thinking about clothes. And makeup. And manicures. And waxing. And hair. She told herself that the check should go to the mortgage company even as she wondered how much it would cost if you did absolutelyeverything,beauty-regime-wise, and then tried to calculate how much it would be if you did the minimum. She ran through a mental inventory of her closet and her bathroom drawers, thought about Michelle Schaefer and her probable subscription toVogue,and got a mental image of Michelle and every other female dinner guest mentally going, “Dress Barn. $49.99.” And then told herself that didn’t matter, that she was more than her external appearance, and knew even as she gave herself the talk that “inner beauty” was one thing, and Michelle Schaefer’s living room was another.
And what did she do in the end? Did she put a thousand toward the mortgage and five hundred toward reinvestment in glass supplies, like any prudent woman would do? Did she go for that bare minimum, buy a new dress on sale, give herself a pedicure, and figure the shoes she had were good enough? Not a hope. She took off Thursday at one o’clock and drove to Spokane—spending moneyandnot earning it, double whammy—spent three full hours shopping and nearly three more getting beautiful, didn’t get home until nine-thirty at night, and took off even more time on Friday afternoon to finish the job.
No, not finish thejob.She’d set the job back, in fact. She wasn’t even done with the upstairs, and she still had the whole downstairs to go. On the other hand, whatever Michelle Schaefer or the other plucked, painted, coiffed women at Blake’s dinner party thought of her, she’d know she looked good.
Blake drove back to the little white house in the shabbier part of town at six-thirty Friday night, questioning himself the whole way.
He’d been planning another trip this week. Instead, he’d put it off.
Why?
So he could take Dakota out.
Why?
Because he wanted to.
Got no reason not to trust you with my girl,Russell had said. Don’t give me one.Blake had a feeling Russell wouldn’t approve of the life plan. But the fact was, Blake wasn’t going to get anywhere with it until he got over this… obsession.
