Page 8 of No Kind of Hero
She nodded once, then went on desperately, because he was still looking at her, “So do you have a day off? And I know that’s obvious, too. I just can’t think of anything else to say.”
“Yeah. Finished a job last night. Took a run.”
He was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt. He’d always been ridiculously tall and broad-shouldered, even when he’d been fifteen, and more so when he’d been twenty-four. He’d filled out since then, though. In the chest, shoulders, and arms, mostly, because he sure wasn’t fat. He was just . . . big.
He took Gracie’s hand off his chin again, and Beth said, “She seems really curious. Really, uh, active.”
He actually smiled a little. “Yeah. She’s a busy thing.”
The women in front of them were finally paying. Beth indicated the counter and said, “I think it’s your turn.”
“Right.” He stepped up and said, “Chocolate milkshake, please.”
“That sounds good,” Beth said. “I think I’ll get one, too.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and she realized she’d said it aloud as if they’d still been having a conversation.
Oh, man. She was channeling Rain Man here. She was going to sit at home, replay this in her mind, and cringe. Audiobooks would be necessary for sure.
“Two,” Evan said to the girl behind the counter. She had a ring through the edge of one nostril and a stud in her eyebrow. Beth tried to imagine coming home with those and failed utterly. Of course, it wouldn’t go over big at Kentworth, Docherty and Valentino, either. Not before you’d made partner. Not even afterwards.
Wait. What had Evan said? “Oh, really,” she said, “no. I can get my own. I didn’t mean for you to—”
“I can afford a milkshake,” he said.
“I know you can afford a milkshake. But you aren’t buying mine just to show me you can. That’s stupid.”
“Guess that’s what you have to expect. Not all of us went to law school. If you talk real slow, I might be able to pick it up.”
“All right,” she said. “That’s it.”
She surprised some expression from him at last. All his face registered was “startled,” but that was something.
The girl stuck the two metal tumblers onto the old-fashioned shake machine, then turned back and said, “Eight dollars.”
She had dark blue nails. Nobody had ever toldher,“In Estate Planning, our clients expect us to look like attorneys, not like we’re headed out clubbing.” Beth didn’t look like an attorney now, though. Her nails weren’t painted blue, pink, or anything else. They weren’t painted at all. She wasdefinitelydepressed.
She knew she was keeping the girl waiting, not to mention the two girls in line behind her, but for once, she wasn’t going to care. Evan reached into the back pocket of his shorts for his wallet and pulled out a ten, and Beth said, “No” and told the girl, “Two separate transactions.”
“I said I’ve got it,” Evan said. It was more of a growl, really.
“And I said two transactions. You want to put me in the wrong. I get it. Well, go ahead, I guess. But you’re not buying my milkshake.”
The girl behind the counter sighed, resignation written all over her heavily-made-up face. “Which is it?”
Beth said, “What I just said,” and handed over her debit card.
She should have let Evan go first. He’d been first in line, and he was the one holding the baby. But he was also the one who’d caused this whole thing, and she was sick of being polite. It had worked just great for Anne Eliot. Here in the twenty-first century, though, it just got you run over, and she was tired of getting run over.
Beth had taken her milkshake and gone. Good. Evan didn’t need to see her anymore. What right did she have to show all that attitude with him?
He handed over the ten and shoved aside the nagging sense that he’d been a jerk. The look on her face. Confusion, hurt, anger . . .
Yeah. He’d definitely been a jerk. He stuffed two bucks into the tip jar as a sort of blanket apology to women, grabbed his own milkshake, and headed out to the deck.
Gracie had started to fuss and chew on her hand.Diaper change. Bottle,he thought as he shoved open the door with the milkshake hand, stepped outside, and . . . stopped.
There was the red jogging stroller at the back, beside a table he’d picked so Gracie could look at the ducks. And beside it, at another of the little iron tables, sat Beth, with a dog lying under her chair.
