Page 74 of No Kind of Hero
And for once, he didn’t even resent it.
They walked home, and he kept his arm around her. He put Gracie to bed, and Beth helped him do it. Then he shut the door and took her hand, and he took her to bed.
Darkness except for the moonlight coming through the window, showing her to him in shadow. Her arms twining around his neck as he kissed her, that silver hair spread around her. The way it felt to tug at the bow at the back of her neck, and the sight of her pale skin when he pulled the halter top down. His hand covering her breast, her lips parting when he leaned in for a kiss. Her sigh when he rolled her over, and the thrill that was a zipper sliding down a woman’s back, nice and slow.
Pulling that dress all the way down, then coming back for the strappy little sandals and sliding off first one, then the other. The urgency in her face when she rolled onto her back again, rose to unbutton his shirt, tugged it off him, then ran her hands over his chest, his shoulders, his arms as if she were memorizing him.
She was bold, and she let him know how much she wanted him. It was in the soft hands that pushed him onto his back, the mouth that kissed his lips, his neck as she lay over him wearing only a pale-blue thong. Her hands and mouth hungry on him, and his hands all over her. The way she kissed him, open-mouthed and holding nothing back, the way she held his head in her hands like she had to dive into him, like she couldn’t get close enough.
He didn’t know who got his jeans off, just that they were gone. They kissed and they touched and they loved like it was their last chance ever. When his mouth was on her and she was holding his hair, saying his name, he knew he was the only man who would do. And when he was sliding inside her at last, threading his fingers through hers, and she didn’t close her eyes and watched him do it, he knew the same thing.
He rocked her like her body was his own, like her pleasure belonged to him. When she sighed, he felt it, and when she moaned, the thrill was his. And when, finally, she was grabbing the comforter, twisting the fabric in her hands, and crying out? He was the one calling her name then. He was the one spiraling up like a rocket, and he was the one exploding into a thousand pieces and falling to earth in a shower of silver sparks.
Shattered. Finished. Whole.
When she was under the covers with him, wrapped around him, knowing he loved it and also knowing that this time, there was no way anybody could make her get up and leave, she said, “We never did get to the part where you come in my window. And here I’ve been thinking about that all this time. Sad.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her. Gently, and so sweetly. “Maybe we could get a rain check from Dakota. If she and Blake took Gracie tomorrow night, I could come through your window like a beast.”
She thought about that a minute. Itwasa pretty enticing idea. “That would mean we couldn’t go out, though, and I want to go out. I want to go dancing, because that’s one we’ve barely gotten to. I want to dance with you, and have you touch me like you wish you could touch me more, and wait all night for you to finally take me home. I want you to kiss me in the parking lot. I want to have to wonder if you’regoingto wait. Or . . . what.”
He was smiling again, and he was over her again, too. She did love the sight of Evan over her. “Tell you what,” he said.
“Oh, good,” she said with a happy sigh.“Yourfantasies. Let’s have them.”
“Right, then. Here we go. If you got in my van, and I was driving us to the bar?” He wasn’t looking quite so gentle now. In fact, he was looking a little . . . intense. ”If you reached under your dress and pulled off that thong real slow, handed it to me, and told me it was mine? I’d lock that thing away, and then I’d go on and take you out. I’d dance with you as dirty as you could ever want. I’d kiss you in the parking lot and make you wonder if I was going to put you on the hood and do you right there. And then I’d drive you home and show you what your knees were for. Oh, yeah. I’d do all that and then some.”
She smiled, kissed his neck, and said, “You keep talking like that, and you’ll get everything you ever wanted.”
He smiled back, nice and slow. “I don’t know. I want a lot.”
“Mm.” She yawned, and he said, “Yeah. Long night.”
“Yep. But it sure turned out right.”
He rolled onto his side, snuggled her close, and was asleep between one breath and the next. Her last thought before sleep took her was that one thing hadn’t changed. He was still here, and she was still visiting. But at least they both knew it.
The first time Gracie woke up crying, Beth registered it only dimly. The second time, she woke up.
She opened her eyes in the gray light of dawn, which meant that it had to be six. She’d slept in, but that wasn’t what had her sitting up. Beside her, Evan was already throwing the covers back, and in another moment, he’d headed out the bedroom door and down the hall in his underwear.
It was the screaming. She’d heard Gracie cry enough by now to know the difference. And what she’d told Evan once was true—response to that kind of crying was hard-wired. At least, she was out of bed, reaching for her clothes, and in Gracie’s bedroom as quickly as she could get there.
Evan had the baby on the changing table and was fastening the tabs of a clean diaper, his hands quick and sure, and then he was stripping the butterfly sleeper off her and dropping it in the hamper. And still Gracie cried, thrashed, and tried to roll over while Evan reached for an undershirt and worked to get it over his daughter’s head.
He seemed to have it under control, so Beth headed into the kitchen without asking and began to fix a bottle. When Evan appeared, his hand splayed securely over Gracie’s back as she continued to cry, Beth handed the bottle to him, and he sat in the rocker, murmured something soothing and low, and offered his daughter the bottle.
Beth made coffee to the creak of wicker interspersed with squalls, and wondered how on earth you did this. How alone would you feel? What choice would you have, though? That was obvious, looking at Evan. No choice at all. You could do more than you’d thought, because it had to be done and there was nobody else. But what would that responsibility take out of you? She didn’t know how big a three-week-old baby was, but surely tiny. Surely.
“I know you probably wanted to do something today,” Evan said when she brought him his coffee and set it on the side table, “but it looks like I’m headed to urgent care. She won’t even take her bottle.”
“This looks so—so wrong,” Beth said as Gracie started crying again and shoved the bottle away with an impatient hand. “It seems bad. What do you do?”
“Take her temperature,” Evan said. “She’s pretty hot. As long as it’s not too bad, I sponge her down and wait until eight when I can take her in. She’s sick, that’s all, and ‘sick’ looks worse in babies, because they can’t tell you, and because they cry.”
And because you care so much,Beth thought. “Here,” she said. “Give her to me so you can get dressed.”
“Thanks.” He handed her over. “Try with the bottle again, will you? I’ll take her temperature before anything else, though. I need to check that.”
