Page 41 of No Kind of Hero
She swayed, and she sang. “Big girls don’t cry.” A song whose lyrics she knew by heart, because she’d played it over and over again back at the University of Washington during those first weeks of law school. When she’d cried enough tears to fill an ocean of regret, had tried to cry away her cowardice and Evan’s pain and the loss of both their dreams. And had known that there weren’t enough tears in the world.
Evan leaned against the doorjamb and watched her. Her eyes were closed, but her arms were wrapped around Gracie, cradling her so carefully. His little girl was nearly asleep. He could tell that from the relaxation in her body. But she was falling asleep with a handful of Beth’s blonde hair clutched in her fist, and Beth was singing, soft and low. A song that had been popular that summer, about a woman leaving a man behind to pursue her own life. A song that said the fairy tale was over, because the princess was running away. A song he’d turned off every single time it had come on the radio.
And Beth was sad. He heard it in her honey-sweet, husky voice, saw it in the set of her shoulders and the naked emotion on her face when her shifting feet turned her his way. She slowed at last, stopped singing, and kissed Gracie on the top of her head, then brushed her cheek over it, the same way he always had to do, and said in that same low voice, a little falter in it, “You’ve got such a good daddy. He’s going to love you forever, too. He’s good at that. You can cry if you have to. He’ll still be there.”
He shoved off his door frame, and he couldn’t even say how he made it to her side. He was there, taking Gracie gently from her arms and cradling her close, then wrapping an arm around Beth, too, and holding both of them. Kissing Beth’s forehead, feeling the trust in the way she put her own arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. He kissed her once more and told her, “I’ll put her to bed.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “I’ll get the burgers. And the beer.”
Slow down,he told himself as he picked up Gracie’s diaper bag and took it into Russell’s bedroom.You’re not stupid anymore. You don’t need to do this.Rein it in.He spread out Gracie’s quilt on the plain blue bedspread, set her gently onto her back, covered her with a blanket he pulled from the linen cupboard, then arranged a barricade of pillows at the edges of the bed. Her mouth pursed, her eyelids fluttered, and she gave one of those deep baby sighs, then was still.
When he came back, Beth was sitting cross-legged on the couch, beers poured and two foil-wrapped packets of burgers and fries sitting neatly on plates in front of her on the coffee table. She had the remote in her hand and was flipping through the Netflix offerings. Which was better. They didn’t need to dive so deep. Deep was dangerous.
She looked at him, pushed her hair out of her face, and asked, her voice back to something less vulnerable, “How aboutGentlemen Prefer Blondes?Or is that pushing it too much?”
“Not pushing it for me,” he said, sitting beside her. Not too close, and not too far. He’d decided he liked watching her put the moves on him. He wanted to see it again. “This gentleman prefers them, anyway.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “It’s Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.”
“Then I’m probably good.”
The movie was actually not half bad, and the scenery wasn’t exactly painful, either. There was a reason everybody still knew Marilyn’s name. He just hadn’t realized she’d been so funny. And when Beth finished eating her hamburger—allof her hamburger—she lay back against the arm of the couch, shoved a cushion under head, and—yeah. She draped her legs over his lap.
“If you need another beer,” she said, sounding a little sleepy, “it’s in the fridge. But I’m too lazy to get it for you.”
“Nah. I’m good.” The brunette was singing a song now, and it was pretty funny too. After a while, though, the screen froze. “Hey,” he said, then realized Beth had paused it.
“Question,” she said.
He stroked a hand over her smooth calf, down to that slender ankle, and held it. “Shoot.”
“Which one do you like better? Jane or Marilyn? I read an article once about what a man’s choice said about him. I mean, which of their characters in this movie.”
He scrutinized her for a minute. “Feels like a trick question.”
She laughed. “No. Honestly. Just tell me, and then I’ll tell you what the article said.”
“All right. Marilyn. No contest. But then, like I said . . . it’s all about the blondes. Now tell me what kind of hole I’ve dug for myself.”
She stretched her legs out a little more comfortably, like she loved snuggling up with him. “No hole. What the article said—it’s not about blonde and brunette, at least not according to this woman. Opinion piece, you know. Jane Russell in this movie—she’s bold, she’s smart, and she’s completely confident in her sexuality. Well, they’rebothconfident in their sexuality, but Marilyn would be peeking back over her shoulder with her robe slipping off and her eyes all wide, so a guy would make his move and feel powerful, you see? And Jane—she’d be walking up to him with her hand on her hip, look at him from under her lashes, and say, “Got room for two?”
“Yeah. Huh.” He considered that a minute. Beth and her research, but he had to admit, it was pretty interesting. “So you get a guy who wants to pursue and wants to feel like he’s in charge. But he also loves that she’s sending him those signals. He still wants to know she wants him. She’s a little more of a tease, maybe.”
“Mm. Maybe. So you like that?”
“Only with everything I’ve got.”
“So when I was a little forward today . . .”
“See?” he said. “Iknewthere’d be a trap. Iknewit was going to get personal. You want to know why you set me on fire so bad all that time ago, and why you still do?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind hearing. And after you told me, I could tell you. If you wanted to hear.”
“I could want to hear. And I could want to tell, too. Since it seems I’m still pretty crazy about a certain kind of woman. Maybe a woman like you.”
His hand might have moved beyond her calves now. It might have been on her thigh, while the other hand held that ankle. What was it about her ankles that got him like this? “What do you think about an ankle bracelet?” he asked.
“What?” She laughed. “I don’t think they’re in style anymore, are they? I never know. Anyway, I thought we were talking about, um . . .”
