No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2) Page 14

  “The one you have is working beautifully. All right, you don’t have a husband yet, much less children, but if you set your mind to it and start making better choices, that will happen too, and you’ll have it all. You’re so close. You’ve worked so hard.”

  The last piece fell into place. Another snick of that lock. “No, Mom. I won’t have it all. My head isn’t smart enough. That’s what I’ve found out. I’ve got to go with my heart.”

  “That is the absolute . . .” Her mom was lost for words at last. “That is . . .”

  “Yeah. Probably. But I’m shriveling up. I’m drying out. I see it happening, and it scares me. No. It terrifies me. I’ve tried and tried and tried . . .” She was getting weepy now. “To do everything . . . right. My whole life. And I can’t. I keep seeing that scoreboard, and I can’t even get it to zero. I can’t even get it to positive. I just keep . . .” Her chest was so tight she could barely breath. “F-f-failing.”

  Her mother was staring at her as if she didn’t know her. “Are you about to get your period? Because, darling. Those are hormones talking. You? Failing? You’re an achiever. You’re a winner.”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “Yes. They’re hormones. They’re me needing to be a woman. To be a person. Not just a winner.” She shook her head in frustration. “I can’t say it right. I can’t explain. But I know. My heart’s been so . . . tight. Like it’s scrunched up into a little ball, and if I so much as poke it, as look at it, it’ll break, and I won’t be able to fix it. And that terrifies me. I can see now. I can see what’s wrong. As hard as it’s going to be—and it’s so hard, Mom—I need to smooth out that scrunched-up ball. I need to loosen it up. I need to let it go and be . . . not perfect. And I need you . . .” She hauled in a breath. This was the most incoherent speech she’d ever made. She was a good speaker. Just not today. “I need you to love me,” she said, her voice breaking on the words. “Even if I’m not perfect. Even if my hair isn’t right and my nails are purple and my bra straps are showing. Even if I’m not a partner. Even if I fail. I need you to love me. Please.”

  “Of course I love you. That’s not the question. It’s because I love you that I have to tell you where you’re going wrong. Elizabeth. Listen to me.”

  Beth shook her head. Back and forth, hard enough to loosen the pins that were barely holding up her hair. “I can’t. I just can’t. And I want to take Henry. Please. I need . . . company.”

  “Your new friends aren’t enough company?” Her mother’s tone was sharp, and Beth flinched.

  “I have to go, Mom,” she said. “Can I take Henry? Please?”

  “Of course you can. But darling. Stay for dinner. Let’s talk. You’re not being rational. I’m worried.”

  “I will,” Beth said. “But not tonight.” She was already in the kitchen collecting Henry’s food, his bowls, his leash and bed. When she came out, her mom was standing in the same place. And for once, she looked like she didn’t know what to do. Like her foundation had been all the way rocked.

  Beth knew exactly what that felt like. She set down Henry’s things and went to her mother. “Mom.” Her voice was gentle. “Can I have a hug?”

  A hitch of her mother’s breath, and her arms came around Beth. Beth held her, rocked from side to side, squeezed tight, and let herself feel the connection and the love that she knew was down there, however deep. “I love you so much, Mom,” she said, the lump rising in her throat again. “I care about your opinion so much. Yours and Dad’s. It’s so scary for me to look into my own heart and see what’s right when I know you don’t see it. I want you to be proud of me.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” her mother said, and her voice wasn’t steady either. “How could I not love you? You’re my baby. Always. But that’s why I can’t let you do this. This is a mistake. Trust me. Don’t throw your life away.”

  So close, and still a million miles away, and Beth’s tears dried, even though the hollow ache in her chest remained. “It might be all wrong,” she told her mother. "You could be right. But that’s why I have to try. I have so much more I need to do. So much more I need to be. I don’t even know what it is yet, but I know I have to do it.”

  “And it’s housesitting at some . . . some . . .”

  “Yep.” Beth stepped back and swiped at her eyes. “Some not-very fancy little place a long way from the lake, one that belongs to people who don’t move in your circles. Although I suspect you’re going to have to rethink Dakota.”

  “We’ll see. Girlfriends aren’t wives.”

  Now, Beth wasn’t touched. She was mad. “You think what you want. Dakota’s had the last laugh so far. I’d bet you my bonus that within a few months or so, you’re going to have to be nice to her, and so is everybody else.”

  “Nonsense. I’m always nice.”

  “No. You’re civil. You’re going to have to be nice, because I’d bet money Blake is going to marry her. He bought her diamonds. He bought her a Maserati. He thinks she’s great.”

  Her mother uttered the faintest of ladylike snorts. “Men buy women things. Certain women. He hasn’t bought her a ring, has he? How would you know how he feels? She moved straight in with him, I notice. You don’t like the saying about the cow and the milk, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still true.”

  “If Blake needed to marry somebody to get her to sleep with him. Somehow I doubt it. Anyway, Dakota’s too smart to fall that hard for somebody who doesn’t think she’s wonderful. She’s way smarter than me, I’ll tell you that.” Her mother would have had something to say, but Beth didn’t let her. This was pointless. “And on that note, here’s something else for you. While I’m over there at her house? Evan O’Donnell could come in my window.”

  “In your . . .” Once again, her mother was lost for words. “Don’t tell me.”

  That giddy balloon was lifting Beth again. She’d said it. She’d done it. New woman. “Nope. He never came in. I climbed out.”

  “But I put you on the second floor.” Her mother could hardly have looked more appalled.

  “Evan was strong,” Beth said. “He caught me.”

  If Beth had been eighteen, she’d have huddled on her bed after an episode like that, weeping, writing in her journal, and playing angsty music. Now, her remedies were a little different. An hour after she’d left her parents’ house, she was mowing Dakota’s—well, her stepfather’s—somewhat weedy lawn, sweating in the late-afternoon sun and itching from the million tiny blades of cut grass sticking to her shorts and her legs. At this moment, she felt absolutely nothing like any possible fantasy of a serene, grounded woman in touch with nature. But she also didn’t feel eighteen.

  When the buzz started in her pocket, it took her a minute. The mower’s electric motor was noisy, and there was a whole lot of vibration there, too. She finally recognized the buzz for what it was, pulled her phone out of her pocket as she was making a turn at the sidewalk, and just about cut the orange extension cord. She swore and jerked the mower before the realization clicked in.

  Oh. Right. Stop pushing down the handle, and it stops. Electric mowers were supposed to be idiot-proof. She’d researched how to use this thing online—she’d never actually mowed a lawn before—and they’d said so. Make sure to hold the cord in one hand, out of the way of the blades, when making turns, the site had said. Her month away wouldn’t be much of a—whatever this was now. Recharging period? Reboot?—if she electrocuted herself.

  The vibration and noise ended, but she still heard the echoes of them in her buzzing head. And of course, by the time she looked at the screen, the phone had gone to voicemail.

  Evan, she thought with a leap of her heart that was also not serene at all. But it wasn’t Evan, and, no, she wasn’t disappointed, because he was working late. He’d said so. Working late so he could take her out tomorrow.

  Felicia Diaz, her phone said. She didn’t listen to the voicemail, just called back.

  Somebody who was really focusing one hundred percent on that reboot might have ignore
d the call, but Felicia was a friend, or at least as much of a friend as a woman working eighty hours a week could afford. Felicia had started at the firm a couple years before Beth, had made partner the previous year, and had a way of discreetly rolling her eyes during meetings with the more self-important partners that had reduced Beth to hastily stifled giggles more than once.

  “Hey,” she said when Felicia answered.

  “Hey yourself,” Felicia said. “Whatcha doing right now? I hear rumors. Tell me they’re true. Make my day.”

  “Mm,” Beth said, smiling already. “Some of them might be true.”

  “Tell me it’s more chocolate cake and hot scuba instructor and less Zen retreat, because I know which one of those you need and which one you probably did. So come on. Right now.”

  “Mowing a lawn. And it’s hot. Next I’m weed-whacking.”

  Felicia sighed. “I knew it was too good to be true. But listen. Are you quitting?”

  “What?” All Beth’s Nature Girl relaxation vanished. “No. I’m on vacation.”

  “Because there’s a rumor that you’re turning down clients, and that’s not like you. You know what this takes. One more year and you’ve got it. I’ve seen the list, and your name’s at the top. And you didn’t hear that from me. You’re this close, girl. Don’t throw it away now. Or at least, if you do, make sure that’s what you want. I can’t believe it is.”

  The partners voted on who made it and who didn’t. That was no secret. “The list is . . . already out there?” Beth asked, her voice faltering.

  Felicia snorted. “You know this place. Document, document, document. While everything important, of course, happens down below where the sharks feed. Which is what’s going on. Carol-Anne, I’ll bet, spreading the word that you’re off having a nervous breakdown. Possibly institutionalized. Excuse me, ‘admitted to a treatment center.’ Ain’t nobody needs to have that floating around.”

  “Uh . . . she is?”

  “What, you’re surprised? You shouldn’t be. She’s never going to stop trying to knock you out of your spot, and you can’t afford to give her the ammunition. She’ll never be as good as you, but there’s no reason you can’t both make it. Unless she stops sucking up to the senior partners, and that’s never going to happen. But try telling her it isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s the only way she knows how to play. So listen. Simon handed me a file today. Marjorie Sinclair. Ring a bell? He said I could ‘pull you in’ on it when you got back, and maybe you’d be back sooner than you’d said. I got the feeling he wanted to give it to you. Which means your vacation, or whatever it is, is good for me and bad for you. Even though I hate little dogs. Yappy, nasty ankle-biters. Why couldn’t she love cats? Or monkeys? Or better yet—gorillas, far away in the Congo. I could put my heart into gorilla welfare.”

  “Wait.” Beth had long since stopped noticing the heat and the itchiness and the half-mowed lawn. “What’s Carol-Anne doing? Exactly?”

  “What does she ever do? Taking that little bit of truth, whatever it is, and twisting it into a noose. Poisonous bitch. I hope she chokes on it.”

  “Well, I’m coming back in less than two weeks, so Carol-Anne can go . . .”

  “Fuck herself?” Felicia asked cheerfully.

  Beth was the one snorting now. “Well, yes.”

  “All right,” Felicia said. “But she’s not the only one who can play the rumor game, and I need the practice anyway. I’m going to ask her if she’s heard that you’re cuddled up with one of the guys from Accent Technology. Possibly on his boat, or maybe just in the love nest.”

  “What?”

  “The guys the firm just did the IPO for. Keep up. The beardie one. He was hot. Jason something.”

  “He had a man bun.”

  A heavy sigh. “He’s worth over a hundred million dollars.”

  “I don’t care. Ick.”

  “Well, you may be hiding out at his place. Rumor has it he’s trying to get you to head their legal department.”

  “Nobody would believe that.”

  Another sigh. “Girl, where did you grow up? Smurf Town? People think other people do what they would do. If Carol-Anne could have caught Jason Whatever’s attention, she’d have been on him like white on rice. It’d never occur to her that you wouldn’t. You know half her problem with you anyway is that you don’t have that pudgy roll around the middle. She can wear all the sheath dresses she wants. We still see that roll, and we all know if her Spanx ever split, she’d come bursting out of them like a hot dog that got left in the microwave too long.”

  “And I’m too skinny, which is just as bad.”

  “Chica, you are crazy. With Anglos? No such thing as too skinny, and sure not to Carol-Anne and her Slim-Fast ass. My point is that she’ll believe it, it’ll scare her, and she’ll kiss your ass instead of trying to throw you down the fire stairs. Plus she won’t keep her mouth shut, and the other partners will hear, and I’ll make my Wise Latina face and say, ‘Beth asked me not to discuss her plans, and I can’t break her confidence,’ and they’ll all think it’s true.”

  “Except that Man Bun probably has a supermodel,” Beth tried weakly.

  “Bet he doesn’t. Anyway, ever since Bill Gates married Melinda, everybody’s decided that geek boys want geek girls, and you’re the geekiest. It’ll work, and I’m going to do it. All you have to do in exchange is come back and do the pug part. That Marjorie wants to set up a pug rescue thing. Did I mention I hate little dogs? And that they hate me? If I turn up dead in the pound covered with hundreds of teeny-weeny teeth marks, you’ll know what happened.”

  “I can do that dog part. I have my parents’ Viszla with me right now, lying in the shade watching me mow this lawn.”

  “I don’t know what a Whizz-Bang is, and I don’t care. I didn’t need to hear about your parents and their doggie, either. Too disappointing. I liked my millionaire idea.”

  “All right,” Beth said. “Tell Carol-Anne I told you in the strictest confidence that I was having the best sex of my life, and I’ve already started consulting with him on his work. Oh, and tell her he has ways of doing it that I never heard of before.”

  “Whoa. Truth or lie?”

  “Well, I hope it’s true. I haven’t necessarily heard of everything. I haven’t necessarily heard of much. The bar’s not that high, but don’t tell her that.” Ooh. Did Evan like to do any of those things in the books she was reading? He hadn’t done them at twenty-four, but she’d been inexperienced and he’d been careful—usually. They were both a whole lot older now, though. He’d been pretty damn take-charge today, and personally, she was up for some experimenting. “Tell her I have beard burn all over my inner thighs,” she decided, “and I have to rest up after every time.” She was jumping off that cliff again. Without a parachute. Was this the reputation she wanted?

  “I thought you were mowing the lawn. Never mind,” Felicia added hurriedly. “I don’t want to know. I’ll just make up my own juicy details. Or stick with the one about the thighs, because that’s got the ring of truth. Even I believe it. And there’s that beard. Maybe that he uses his long hair to . . . Nah. I got nothing there.”

  “Ick,” Beth was laughing. “Me neither. No. Leave the man bun out of it.”

  “Right. But remember. Dogs. Your part.”

  “Dogs,” Beth agreed. “Large or small. I can do that. I’m all about the dogs.”

  Evan was more than a little late getting back to work. That tended to happen when you sneaked home on your lunch break like you were seventeen and cutting class. Which had usually been because you were dying to get your hands all over that girl in some back seat or storage closet or absolutely anyplace else you could find. And the fact that he was thirty-four and still doing it? Well, it had felt about twice as important to get Beth naked today as anything had seemed when he was seventeen, so there you go. Desire, factor of two. He was good at math.

  Even so, when he pulled up outside the theater after being gone too long, he didn’t get out
of the van right away. He pulled a deliciously rumpled Beth close one more time, kissed her hard enough and deep enough so she’d remember he’d been there, trailed his lips over to her neck and kissed her a little more, then said into her ear, “If I come for you, are you going to climb out your window for me again?”

  “Hmm,” she said, strands of golden hair falling out of their knot, all of her looking relaxed and dreamy and like way too much fun, “maybe you could try climbing in instead. That could be a real . . . surprise. I’m staying out at Dakota’s dad’s place.”

  “Ah.” Something a whole lot like satisfaction filled him. “We heading all the way over to the wrong side of town, are we?”

  “Could be we’re heading to the right side. For somebody with some catching up to do, that is. You volunteering to help me out with that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He needed to get out of this van and back to work. Instead, he twined a honey-colored strand around his finger, rubbed his thumb over its silky softness, and said, “Going to come help me paint tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.” She gave him a faint smile, hopped down from the van, then leaned back through the open window and said, “But only because I like the way you take my clothes off.” And sauntered away with a whole lot of hip and a whole, whole lot of short shorts and long legs. Like a boss.

  How could you call that fair?

  When he finally made it into the theater, José didn’t say anything, of course. He usually didn’t, which was one reason Evan liked working with him. He just shook his head and whistled along to the song on his headphones. Except that Evan could swear he was whistling “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and putting some extra expression into his painting, and there might have been some grin being suppressed there, too.

  When April had taken off on him and Gracie back in January, José’s wife Maria had sent in enormous foil-wrapped care packages every Friday for months as if Evan would starve otherwise. He’d swear, too, that every time she saw him with Gracie, she muttered something in Spanish that sounded like a curse on April’s head. Evan had the feeling he’d be a happy topic at José and Maria’s dinner table tonight. He was a private guy, but right now, he didn’t care. Let them talk.