Page 38 of No Kind of Hero
“Well, you may be hiding out at his place. Rumor has it he’s trying to get you to head their legal department.”
“Nobody would believe that.”
Another sigh. “Girl, where did you grow up? Smurf Town? People think other people do whattheywould do. If Carol-Anne could have caught Jason Whatever’s attention, she’d have been on him like white on rice. It’d never occur to her that you wouldn’t. You know half her problem with you anyway is that you don’t have that pudgy roll around the middle. She can wear all the sheath dresses she wants. We still see that roll, and we all know if her Spanx ever split, she’d come bursting out of them like a hot dog that got left in the microwave too long.”
“And I’m too skinny, which is just as bad.”
“Chica, you are crazy. With Anglos? No such thing as too skinny, and sure not to Carol-Anne and her Slim-Fast ass. My point is that she’ll believe it, it’ll scare her, and she’ll kiss your ass instead of trying to throw you down the fire stairs. Plus she won’t keep her mouth shut, and the other partners will hear, and I’ll make my Wise Latina face and say, ‘Beth asked me not to discuss her plans, and I can’t break her confidence,’ and they’ll all think it’s true.”
“Except that Man Bun probably has a supermodel,” Beth tried weakly.
“Bet he doesn’t. Anyway, ever since Bill Gates married Melinda, everybody’s decided that geek boys want geek girls, and you’re the geekiest. It’ll work, and I’m going to do it. All you have to do in exchange is come back and do the pug part. That Marjorie wants to set up a pug rescue thing. Did I mention I hate little dogs? And that they hate me? If I turn up dead in the pound covered with hundreds of teeny-weeny teeth marks, you’ll know what happened.”
“I can do that dog part. I have my parents’ Viszla with me right now, lying in the shade watching me mow this lawn.”
“I don’t know what a Whizz-Bang is, and I don’t care. I didn’t need to hear about your parents and their doggie, either. Too disappointing. I liked my millionaire idea.”
“All right,” Beth said. “Tell Carol-Anne I told you in the strictest confidence that I was having the best sex of my life, and I’ve already started consulting with him on his work. Oh, and tell her he has ways of doing it that I never heard of before.”
“Whoa. Truth or lie?”
“Well, I hope it’s true. I haven’t necessarily heard of everything. I haven’t necessarily heard ofmuch.The bar’s not that high, but don’t tell her that.” Ooh.DidEvan like to do any of those things in the books she was reading? He hadn’t done them at twenty-four, but she’d been inexperienced and he’d been careful—usually. They were both a whole lot older now, though. He’d been pretty damn take-charge today, and personally, she was up for some experimenting. “Tell her I have beard burn all over my inner thighs,” she decided, “and I have to rest up after every time.” She was jumping off that cliff again. Without a parachute. Was this the reputation she wanted?
“I thought you were mowing the lawn. Never mind,” Felicia added hurriedly. “I don’t want to know. I’ll just make up my own juicy details. Or stick with the one about the thighs, because that’s got the ring of truth. EvenIbelieve it. And there’s that beard. Maybe that he uses his long hair to . . . Nah. I got nothing there.”
“Ick,” Beth was laughing. “Me neither. No. Leave the man bun out of it.”
“Right. But remember. Dogs. Your part.”
“Dogs,” Beth agreed. “Large or small. I can do that. I’m all about the dogs.”
Evan was more than a little late getting back to work. That tended to happen when you sneaked home on your lunch break like you were seventeen and cutting class. Which had usually been because you were dying to get your hands all over that girl in some back seat or storage closet or absolutely anyplace else you could find. And the fact that he was thirty-four and still doing it? Well, it had felt about twice as important to get Beth naked today as anything had seemed when he was seventeen, so there you go. Desire, factor of two. He was good at math.
Even so, when he pulled up outside the theater after being gone too long, he didn’t get out of the van right away. He pulled a deliciously rumpled Beth close one more time, kissed her hard enough and deep enough so she’d remember he’d been there, trailed his lips over to her neck and kissed her a little more, then said into her ear, “If I come for you, are you going to climb out your window for me again?”
“Hmm,” she said, strands of golden hair falling out of their knot, all of her looking relaxed and dreamy and like way too much fun, “maybe you could try climbing in instead. That could be a real . . . surprise. I’m staying out at Dakota’s dad’s place.”
“Ah.” Something a whole lot like satisfaction filled him. “We heading all the way over to the wrong side of town, are we?”
“Could be we’re heading to the right side. For somebody with some catching up to do, that is. You volunteering to help me out with that?”
“Oh, yeah.” He needed to get out of this van and back to work. Instead, he twined a honey-colored strand around his finger, rubbed his thumb over its silky softness, and said, “Going to come help me paint tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” She gave him a faint smile, hopped down from the van, then leaned back through the open window and said, “But only because I like the way you take my clothes off.” And sauntered away with a whole lot of hip and a whole,wholelot of short shorts and long legs. Like a boss.
How could you call that fair?
When he finally made it into the theater, José didn’t say anything, of course. He usually didn’t, which was one reason Evan liked working with him. He just shook his head and whistled along to the song on his headphones. Except that Evan could swear he was whistling “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and putting some extra expression into his painting, and there might have been some grin being suppressed there, too.
When April had taken off on him and Gracie back in January, José’s wife Maria had sent in enormous foil-wrapped care packages every Friday for months as if Evan would starve otherwise. He’d swear, too, that every time she saw him with Gracie, she muttered something in Spanish that sounded like a curse on April’s head. Evan had the feeling he’d be a happy topic at José and Maria’s dinner table tonight. He was a private guy, but right now, he didn’t care. Let them talk.
He ignored the whistlingandthe grin, picked up his tools, and got to work, and if he put in an extra hour and a half that evening? This was a priority job, and of course he wanted to satisfy the client. That was the roof over his baby girl’s head. It didn’t have anything at all to do with somehow making himself good enough for the Schaefers. He wasn’t going down that road again.
By the time he finally got to his mom’s at six-thirty, she had Gracie over her shoulder, and his daughter had a fist stuffed in her mouth and a look of misery on her face. When she saw him, she smiled, started crying, then smiled again, like she wasn’t sure which one to stick with.
“Good,” Angela said, handing Gracie over with a sigh. “She’s got a little cold. Going to be fussy tonight. She sure has been today.”
“Have you?” Evan asked Gracie, holding her up high overhead the way she liked, then letting her down and giving her some snuggle time. “You got a snuffly nose and being a monster for your grandma?” In answer, she grabbed hold of the sunglasses he’d shoved into the collar of his T-shirt and did her best to stick the end into her mouth. “That’s how you get germs, you know,” he told her, handing her a giraffe rattle from the couch and taking his sunglasses back. “Thanks,” he told his mom. “Sorry I was late.”
