Page 49 of No Kind of Hero
“Tiara,” she said absently. “I’m no princess. My dad’s good at business. He makes money. He has a house. You have a house. He employs people. You employ people. So what?”
“Three people,” he felt compelled to point out.
“Still.” She finally took a stab at her trout, lying crispy-brown across her plate in tempting perfection. “There’s a reason women think that men who work with their hands are hot. You know what itreallyis. They’re all jealous.”
“Ah . . . that would be because . . .”
She took another good drink of wine, and there that second glass was, gone. He refilled it and topped up his own, and she said, “You want to know what I really thought of Dr. Anderson St. Clair?”
“You know,” he said, “I think I do.” The Farnsworths weren’t sitting all that far away, and Candy had her eye on the two of them. Which suited him fine.Watch this,he told her silently.Watch your princess toss her crown right down and walk on over to me.
“I thought,” Beth said with deliberation, “that he was too thin. And that he wasn’t quiet enough, or strong enough. That he didn’t have shoulders that made me want to hold onto him, or eyes that burned all the way into me. If the plane had crashed, I didn’t think he could’ve saved me, and if my tire had blown, I didn’t think he could’ve changed it. He didn’t make me wish there was a dance floor so I could find out what it would feel like when he pulled me up close. He didn’t make me catch my breath when I thought about him taking me home. Because he also didn’t have hands that know exactly how a woman wants to be touched. And he didn’t have a mouth I wanted all over me.”
He dragged it out a little longer. Foreplay was underrated. “What kind of doctor was he?”
“Gynecologist.”
He smiled. He had to. “Well, baby,” he said, feeling those copper-painted toes grazing the leg of his jeans, a whisper of secret sensation there under the table, “I can change your tire, and I can carry you out of that plane. I have those hands, and I sure as hell have that mouth.”
She took another bite of trout, and this time, she lingered over it as if she were tasting it for the first time. He could almost taste it himself. Crispy on the surface, flaky-white underneath, caught that day and delicately delicious. She took a sip of wine, and he watched the movement of that slim throat as she swallowed it down and wanted his lips there, his fingers brushing down that column of neck, his hand circling it ever-so-gently, but sending a message all the same. He took a bite of steak himself, but he wasn’t exactly paying attention, because she was twirling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, looking at him from under her lashes and from behind that curtain of hair, and saying, “I bought this dress today.”
Her voice was breathy, barely there. As if all of this was giving her a thrill, and as if she was right out there. He said, “Yeah?” and held her gaze. The way she liked. The way that burned all the way through her.
“And,” she said, “I didn’t buy anything else.” Another bite of trout. Another long, slow sip of wine. “Because I wanted to come out with you and tell you what you wanted to hear.”
“And what’s that?” One careful step after the other, inch by delicious inch right up to the edge of that cliff.
“That underneath this dress, I’ve been scrubbed down with salt, I’ve been waxed all the way home, and I’m wearing absolutely nothing but some very soft, very silky body butter. And you know what butter’s good for.”
The candle flame was a ribbon of white dancing in the evening breeze, but it wasn’t as hot as what was burning between them. The night was closing in, but it wasn’t as dark as the fire twisting down low in his gut. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what butter’s good for.”
She dropped her eyes again, then raised them to him and gave him a slow, secret smile that pulled him right into her web. Her toes were stroking down his calf, and her copper-tipped fingers were playing with her fork. “It’s good,” she said, “for easing your way in.”
It was too public here, Beth thought. Candy was watching them, and the deck was crowded with locals and summer visitors. The lights winked around the edges of the building, and white candles flickered, casting pools of light into the center of shadowed tables. She toyed with her trout, and then she ate it, because it was exciting to sit with Evan, to say nothing, to touch his leg with her foot under the table, and to have himnottouch her.
A month ago, on the laughable chance she’d have done something like this or, worse still, said it? If the man hadn’t responded more than that, she’d have crawled away and hid her head. She knew, though, what Evan was doing. He wanted this at least as much as she did, but he was making her wait, and making himself wait, too. He was making her wonder. Because Evan was patient, and he was confident. She’d teased him, and now he was teasing her.
He refilled her glass again sometime in there, and poured a little bit more for himself. She said, “Did we drink it all?” and he smiled at her and said, “We’re sure working on it, baby. Don’t you worry. We’ll get there.”
The music over the speakers was decades old, and it was as sweet and slow as Evan’s smile, and with as many undercurrents. By the time he’d paid the check and she’d finished that last glass of wine, every cell in her body was humming, and all of her was set to his frequency.
He put his hand over hers on the table, almost the first time he’d touched her since they’d got here, and asked, “Ready to go?”
“Yes,” she said, and when she stood up, her legs trembled. She might be a little bit drunk, and she might be a whole lot carried away. She held his arm all the way down the stairs in the dark, all the way to the dock. The music played, she stepped carefully in her heels, and Evan stopped halfway to the boat.
“What?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. He just took her in his arms. More slow music, and then Frankie Valli over the speakers.
“You’re just too good to be true,” came the crooning voice, and Evan was moving, dancing with her in the dark, on the dock. Slow and close, while the breeze lifted her skirt and the stars burned overhead. Around and around in careful circles, but still too close to the edge, to the deep, dark water.
Beth Schaefer, slow-dancing on a dock with Evan O’Donnell in full view of the cream of Wild Horse. Beth Schaefer losing her heart, and halfway to losing her mind.
The song ended, another one started, and Evan whispered in her ear, “Let’s go.” Which was her part, except it wasn’t. He held her hand over to the boat, helped her in, and cast off as she pulled her sweater on at last. And then he looked at her, reached into a side compartment, handed her a blanket, and said, “Cool out on the water. And I’m going to burn it up getting us home.”
The buzz of the engine as the white boat cut through the dark water. A scattering of stars winking overhead against the black night, the nearly-full moon a silver disk low on the horizon. And Evan, quiet, still, his hands sure on the wheel, sending the boat like an arrow all the way across the lake. In another few minutes, he had them moored at his slip, was jumping out, then handing her out again with that same strong arm.
In his van, then, leaving the pumping, too-loud music from the Yacht Club behind them and taking that drive to the little blue house. But this time, he didn’t say “Come on” and wait for her to follow. He gave her his hand out of the van and held hers all the way up the driveway and through the door.
