Page 60 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“Only if you want to. They look real good, but you look just as good barefoot. Whatever you want. This one’s for you.”
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and searching, then said, “You mean that.”
Something twisted hard in his chest. “Yeah, baby. I do.”
“I’m going to take my shoes off, then,” she said. “Because my feet hurt.” She smiled at him, which lit up her face in that way her smile always did, and there was that twist again. It might have been his heart.
He took her through the salon and dumped the food on the galley island, and she looked around at the mushroom-colored leather of banquettes and couch, the profusion of rich, polished teak, and said, “I’m seriously impressed.”
“Bring that wine up to the flying bridge,” he said, pulling out a couple wineglasses and a corkscrew, “and we’ll get out of here.” He took off his own boots and socks. “Barefoot style.”
The summer sun was setting as he sat in the captain’s chair, maneuvered out of the slip, and headed across the lake with Dakota on the banquette beside him. “Open up that wine, darlin’,” he said over the purr of the big engines, “and we’ll start this evening off the way it ought to have been.”
She got the cork out, poured him a glass and handed it to him, and sat back with her own, her back against the banquette, her pretty ankles crossed, and one arm behind her head. Her skin glowed amber in the fading light, as beautiful as that day on his deck, and she’d been right. This was the right choice.
He drove the boat out, leaving the lights of Wild Horse behind. The white prow sliced through the water, as graceful as a dolphin, and the rose tint of alpenglow was settling over the mountains ahead of them. And Blake didn’t try to talk. He just drove, looked at Dakota’s red toenails and bare legs, and wondered why he’d planned his night any other way.
He was almost sorry when they reached the quiet cove, cut the engine, and dropped the anchor while the last remnants of twilight glowed purple and indigo. Dakota might have felt the same, because she sighed and said, “That was good, and this wine’s better. I guess you’ve schooled me on what ‘the best you’ve got’ really means.”
He looked at her, lying there looking so lazy and peaceful, and had to smile. She said, “Yeah, I just got it. Don’t say it. It’ll be cheesy, and it’ll spoil the mood.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go below and warm up that dinner. I’ll do my best not to be cheesy, we can drink some more wine, get ourselves relaxed and a little bit drunk, and you’ll be giving this ol’ boy a damn good Friday night all by yourself.”
She stayed quiet, though, when they were sitting at the dinette, sipping oak-aged Chardonnay as rich and buttery as the fish, with a tart lemon finish that was pure delight. They speared bites of grass-green asparagus and tiny, perfect white scallops, and finally, Dakota put a hand up, pushed her hair back, and turned to look at him.
Her face was at its most solemn again. Beautiful in a different way now, in the way the high mountains were beautiful, snow-capped and austere. “This is exactly the evening I’d ask for,” she said. “You’ve made me feel special. Thank you. But if you’re going to live here, you’re going to hear about me, if you haven’t already. And I want you to hear it from me.”
His heart picked up, and not in a good way. “All right. I’m listening.”
She looked across the cabin, though there wasn’t much to see, because it was full night outside the big windows. The boat rocked gently in a breath of evening breeze, the water slapped against the hull, and Dakota rubbed a hand down the stem of her wineglass and said, “I told you that my brother and I came to live with Russell when I was fifteen. Riley was seventeen. I was in foster care for a few months until we got it all sorted out, but I told you that, too. I came into the middle of sophomore year that way, and in a town as small as Wild Horse, the fact that you’re in foster care isn’t exactly a secret. I was… not so accepted, but that wasn’t new. We’d moved a lot, Riley and me, before we’d settled down with our grandmother. Before she took us for good.”
“What happened to her?” Blake asked. “Your mom?”
“She died.” Dakota took another sip of wine, ate another bite of fish. “And after a couple months, our mother took us to Russell’s and dropped us outside his door. Which sounds harsh, but trust me, she did us a favor. Being with her was never any kind of stability.”
“Is she still around?”
“Oh, from time to time. But I don’t have any money, so I’m not too interesting. Plus she doesn’t like women. And Russ won’t let her in the door.”
“Whoa,” Blake said. “She doesn’t likewomen?You’re not ‘women.’ You’re her daughter.”
“Yeah, well, not everybody’s cut out for motherhood. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
“No. It doesn’t. In the scheme of things that matter, it doesn’t.”
Blake tried to imagine what your life would have been like if your mom abandoning you was the least of it, and failed. And Dakota went on, ”So anyway, I got out of foster care, eventually, and I could move back in with Russell. And with my brother.”
“Riley.”
“You remember. Yeah. Riley.” She took a breath. “Anyway, I was with him again, and I got to know Russ some, even though I was still being… careful, the way you are at first, when you’re new. But I made some friends at school, and things got better. I even went out, girls and boys. I turned sixteen, and I didn’t have good clothes, but I wasn’t too awkward, like some girls are when they’re teenagers. I had good skin, you know. Good teeth, good hair, good bones. A pretty good figure. I was doing all right, because for girls, looks help. And the captain of the football team had a locker right next to mine. Savage. Sawyer. Alphabetical.”
“Ah.” He was gripping his own wineglass pretty tightly. He relaxed his hold and took a sip.
“Yeah. He was dating Ingrid already, of course. You heard that. They were both seniors. She was a cheerleader, very pretty. Both of them were blonde. You know the type. Youwerethe type.”
“I was never that type.”
