Page 43 of No Kind of Hero
Hard. Fast. Just this side of rough, like he could get all the way inside her, like he could have it all. He let himself feel it. He let himself know it. And then he let it all go.
“Wow,” Beth said when Evan had helped her back onto the couch, when she’d cleaned herself up and pulled her clothes back on, and so had he. “That wasnotwhat I was planning.”
He cuddled her closer, his arm around her, and said, “You saying bringing a woman a burger and banging her brains out on the couch isn’t romantic?”
She laughed out loud, a sound like “Ha!” and then slapped a hand over her mouth.Thatwas classy.
He grinned, kissed her temple, and said, “You don’t have to laugh like a lady. I like you relaxed. I always have.”
When she heard it, he was already standing up. A complaint, and then the beginnings of a wail. He was off the couch and gone, coming back a few minutes later with Gracie wrapped in her quilt and still crying.
“I don’t have another bottle,” he said, bouncing his daughter in his arms. “It’s this cold she’s got. I should take her on home.”
He kissed Beth goodbye at the door while Gracie clung to him, and said with a faint smile, “We’ll do it better tomorrow. I promise.”
“I liked tonight fine,” she told him, because surely the New Beth was all about honesty. “I liked doing the yard with you. I liked helping get Gracie to sleep, too. And the rest of it wasn’t half bad.”
“Well,” he said, “we’ll work on that, too.” He kissed her again and headed on out to the van, straight and solid as always, and she stood and watched him go and tried not to miss him.
She was playing,though.Theywere playing. They weren’t getting involved, they were just putting their ghosts to rest. They weren’t lovers, even if that was how it felt. They were friends with benefits. Something she’d never done before, but it felt too good to miss. She already wanted him again, because she hadn’t touched him nearly enough, and she had a whole long time to make up for and absolutely no desire to be appropriate. Besides, Evan wanted her as inappropriate as it came. She knew it.
Anyway, she was practicing. Practicing being direct. Straightforward. Honest.
Real.
Just don’t take her out on the boat, and you’ll be fine,Evan told himself on Thursday morning. He’d dropped a still-snuffly Gracie off with his mom and was headed to the theater again with a monster tumbler of strong black coffee in the cup holder. His night’s sleep had been broken up about three times by a wakeful baby, but a guy who’d had that kind of sex with that kind of woman . . . that was a guy who wasn’t going to be complaining about much.
That was what it had been, and what it still was, he reminded himself. It was great sex, and if he was shifting in his seat thinking about the sight of Beth’s hair spread out behind her on the couch cushions, about the way she’d watched, hungry for the sight, as he plunged into her again and again, about the low moan she couldn’t help when he got it exactly right, and all the secret passion nobody else got to see?
Well, yeah. He had a thing for Beth Schaefer. That wasn’t news. Not to mention that he’d been deprived for a long, long time. It was no wonder that all he wanted was to do it again. Especially since she did too.
Because he was her repairman fantasy, that was why. Part of whatever she was doing here. That worked for him, so why not?
So why had he made this date at all, back there on a Sunday afternoon that felt like a month ago? When she’d showed up in her khaki shorts and flat sandals and offered herself up on a plate, why hadn’t he jumped right into being that redneck blue-collar tool-belt guilty pleasure like she’d wanted? Why the hell had he insisted on taking her out like they were . . . real?
He heard Dakota’s voice in his head. Damn it.
You were made to be a woman’s rock. That’s the man you are.
He wasn’t Beth’s rock, and he’d better remember it. He was her right-now do-me-good, and no part of the life she’d chosen for herself. He’d take her out drinking and dancing tonight, another redneck rodeo, and then he’d take her home and make some more of her fantasies come true.
All the same, he might have thought about what he’d say when she came to see him at the theater. She’d end up there again today. She didn’t have that much else to do, and she liked painting with him. When she got there, he’d show her the sample bit of the woodwork he’d painted yesterday, a trial run that he needed to photograph and send to Kristiansen for approval before he really went to town. She might even be impressed.
Except that she didn’t come. Not in the morning, and not by the time he was packing up for the night, sending off his crew. When hewasn’tgoing to get Gracie, because his mom was keeping her until nine-thirty.
It wasn’t a lot of time. Not even three hours. Just enough time to take a woman out, and then to take her home and end the evening right. Not enough time for any real romance, but they weren’t doing romance.
He thought that while he was in the shower, scrubbing the paint off his skin and from under his nails. He thought it while he shaved for the second time that day, because his beard was always heavy and Beth’s skin was so soft. But by the time he was buttoning the sleeves of his white button-down, slipping his wallet into the back pocket of his good jeans, and putting on his boots, he’d forgotten to think it.
He did have a moment when he left the house. When he turned back with a slicing pang of fear, because he’d forgotten Gracie.
Who was with hismom. Focus.
By the time he pulled up in front of Russell’s familiar white frame house with that shiny gray Audi in the driveway, his heart might have been putting in some overtime. And when he rang the doorbell, he might actually have had to blow out a breath.
And then she opened the door.
Well, hell.
