Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 3

  Right. Torture Stairs climbed, a quick shower, after which her face remained red but too bad, and one final stop at the grocery store where, tossing a pound of flank steak (Reduced for Quick Sale!) into her cart, she wondered at what point in her life she wouldn’t stop at the grocery store on the way home from work.

  The point, maybe, when she was responsible only for herself, dressed in breezy, wide-legged trousers with a jacket thrown casually over her slim(mer) shoulders, having a quick meal of Chinese vegetables at a tiny hole-in-the-wall known only to locals before stepping briskly into the elevator of her modern apartment block, furnished with her usual cool, modern sensibility in tones of gray-blue and chalk-white.

  (Ha. As if. Hey, it was a daydream.)

  Should all that sound lonely and sad? Why did it sound good instead? Because Blake had made her think about it, that was why.

  She’d spent so many bleary-eyed nights, when Dyma had been a colicky baby, watching 70s sitcoms on late-night cable. Turned down low, so her mom and grandpa could sleep. She’d held her red-faced, grumpy infant with her shock of black hair that always stuck straight up and her legs that stuck straight out when she was mad, which was most of the time, thought about waking up at seven for school the next day, which was in about four hours, tried not to think about how differently this was turning out from what she’d imagined, and watched Mary Tyler Moore in her perfectly neat, elegantly arranged apartment, with a big M on the wall that proclaimed that this was a space that belonged to her and only her, hanging out with her work colleagues who were like family, at a job that always looked like fun, then talking things over with her wisecracking best friend. She’d thought how incredibly glamorous that life would be, and how she wasn’t ever going to have it.

  Mary’s life hadn’t actually been anything close to glamorous, she realized now. Less Sex in the City and Manolo Blahniks and more A Quiet Existence in the Midwest. Maybe that was the point, though. It had seemed attainable.

  Well, in somebody else’s reality. Except that her life was fine. She’d done great. Everybody always said how great she’d done. Everybody except her mom, who’d said, only a week or two before she’d suddenly succumbed to the heart attack caused by the lupus that had plagued her for so long, “You should get out of here, you know, spread your wings. Once Dyma graduates, why not? What’s holding you here?”

  “Well, you,” Jennifer had answered. “Grandpa. Everybody. Also, I have a great job now. Hey, this is my big step, right? I’m doing great.”

  “Except that you’re still here,” Adele had said.

  “I like it here,” Jennifer had answered.

  Her mom had just looked at her. Now, she remembered that look as she threw a max pack of TP and a bag of coffee into her cart, then a packet of egg noodles and a pint of light sour cream, a half-gallon of OJ, two family-size boxes of not-quite-Cheerios and two gallons of milk—feeding milk goats would have been more economical than Dyma’s milk habit, and how could one teenage girl go through that much cereal? She added a few regular old white mushrooms, wondered what the fancy ones actually tasted like, threw in some anemic-looking February tomatoes, looked at the avocadoes, and looked away again. She didn’t need to be buying any avocadoes, fat-wise or money-wise. She didn’t need to be making beef stroganoff, for that matter, but her grandpa liked it, and she might be feeling a little bit guilty about even entertaining the Mary Tyler Moore idea. He knew about it, too, thanks to Blake’s decision to barge in and mention his plan before he’d even talked to Jennifer about it. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to put off the discussion.

  She just wished her mom were still here.

  Always.

  Was it wrong to miss your mom so much, when she’d been struggling so long and had only been hanging on for the three of you? When you were thirty-four, with a grown child of your own?

  It was just that without her, without that person who’d loved you always and would love you forever, you felt so alone. Your buffer against the world, your safe place … it was gone.

  It wasn’t true. She still had her grandpa. She still had Dyma. Blake was going to help her get a new job. She was doing great. Lots of people were worse off.

  She added some broccoli to the cart. Dyma had been making noises about becoming a vegetarian lately. Hopefully she’d wait until she started college for that. Broccoli was cheap in February, though. Good for you, too. Nutritious and low-calorie. It had that bristly thing going on, and all those little sandy particles, but never mind.

  What kind of restaurant did the Snow Lodge at Yellowstone have? Didn’t matter. A free restaurant, that was what. Maybe she should feel guilty about allowing Blake to send her off on this obviously trumped-up vacation, but she couldn’t. She was good at her job, she’d worked hard for him, and anyway, Blake was a grown man who did what he wanted. If he wanted to send her off to look at wild animals for a couple days, who was she to object? She’d be broke again soon enough, especially with Dyma’s housing to pay for—another stab of pure fear at that one—unless she took him up on the Portland idea.

  Which was impossible. It was crazy. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t even know anybody in Portland, and Portland rent was insane. She’d read about it. She didn’t even have a four-year college degree. Who was going to hire her for some Mary Tyler Moore job, whatever Blake said?

  “Hey,” Stacey Bathurst said, and Jennifer jumped. She’d barely noticed she was at the checkstand, and had been loading groceries onto the belt by rote.

  “Hey,” she said back. “How’s it going? How’s Isaac doing with his last semester?”

  Stacey sighed and kept scanning groceries. “I keep telling him, you can still screw this thing up, buddy, and the U of I can tell you they don’t want some party kid, and they’re sure as heck not going to give you any money, and you’re going to be right back here working for nine bucks an hour, but he’s not listening. I know we were seniors ourselves once and exactly that stupid, but I can’t remember why. How about Dyma?”

  “Not too bad,” Jennifer said. “So far, anyway. She wants out of here so bad she can taste it, though, so that helps. Also, you can’t work for NASA or whoever without a whole lot of school, and nobody else but U-Dub is offering realistic money, so that helps.”

  She felt, as usual, about sixty-five years old. She was a good fifteen years younger than Stacey, and, no, she hadn’t been stupid when she was a senior. She’d been stupid before then, but as a senior? She’d been running home right after school so her mom could get to her swing-shift job. Starting dinner before her grandpa got home from the day shift, and taking care of the world’s most stubborn toddler, a child to whom the words, “Wait a minute” meant, “Let’s have a tantrum.” Trying to get her homework finished in between, and sneaking in half an hour to do some last-minute studying for the SAT.

  “SAT prep should be a high-octane, full-on affair.” She’d read that on a test prep site. She’d laughed.

  She’d gotten a scholarship too, though. She just hadn’t been able to make it work.

  “So what’s new with Blake? What does the house look like? Do you have pictures? What did Dakota seem like, coming back from the honeymoon? On a yacht. In Hawaii. Can you even imagine?” Stacey asked, and the kid bagging the groceries almost visibly pricked up his ears. No surprise. Blake Orbison was the most exciting thing to ever hit Wild Horse.

  “The house came out great,” Jennifer said.

  “Is she pregnant yet?” Stacey asked. “I swear, that guy could look at me and I’d be pregnant, and I’m not even sure the equipment’s working right anymore.”

  “They’re very happy.” Jennifer knew she sounded stiff, but how could she be anything else?

  Stacey sighed. “I guess you have to be discreet, huh?”

  “That’s the idea,” Jennifer said. “Good luck with Isaac.” And escaped.

  And, no, not because she was in love with Blake Orbison. He was an exciting guy, sure. He was a kind guy, too, under the swagger, b
ut he was the most confident man she’d ever met, and she didn’t have it in her to push back the way he needed pushing. She liked him, but Blake would be work.

  Dakota Savage, though? Dakota had enough spine for anything. The two of them always seemed to be on an adventure, and let’s face it, when you looked in the dictionary under “adventurous,” it didn’t bring up a picture of Jennifer Cardello. She wasn’t the type.

  She was the type, though, who had Mark Mathison in her grandpa’s living room, watching TV with him and waiting for Jennifer to cook dinner.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, but didn’t get off the couch.

  She was so not taking Mark to Yellowstone. She was not. She was being Mary Tyler Moore. Footloose and fancy free. Even though Mary had died years ago, and the show had been over since the 1970s, which made the Mary-life she was wishing for the rightful dream of somebody who would be sixty-five now. She didn’t care. She was at least being Mary for one weekend, even if she had to have drama to get it.

  She’d never done drama. Her parents had done drama. Not her. No, sir. She was the go-between, the smoother-over, the suck-it-up-and-get-it-done girl. She was a no-drama llama. Which was precisely why Mark Mathison was still on her grandpa’s couch, looking handsome, kicked-back, and sheriff’s-deputy-like, and she was exactly as not-single but not-married as ever, four years after he’d first sat his butt down there.

  She could swear she heard her mom whispering in her ear, “You go for it, baby. Now’s your time. Make your move.”

  It was time to own her redhead.

  4

  Family Dynamics

  Harlan couldn’t believe he’d agreed to spend Super Bowl weekend in Yellowstone. Not just in Yellowstone, either. In a lodge full of people, with a temperature outside like the frozen tundra, and without a TV. Without the internet. Probably without room service.

  He blamed Owen.

  “We can ski,” Owen had said on Wednesday night, after Harlan had lost at pool to Dane and everybody else had gone to bed happy. It had hurt every fiber of his whole self, but he’d done it, hadn’t he? Shouldn’t he get some kind of reward for that?

  Owen had been right. It had thrilled Dane. It had thrilled Amy. It had thrilled the kids. It would probably thrill the whole damn county, by the time they were all done talking about it.

  “I don’t like to ski,” Harlan had answered.

  “Everybody likes to ski,” Owen said. “Sure, it’s cross-country, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It all depends how you do it. Plus, you got wilderness. First national park in the United States. World Heritage Site, like the Great Barrier Reef.”

  “The Great Barrier Reef,” Harlan said. “Now, that sounds good. It’s warm, right? It’s Australia. Let’s do that instead.”

  “I can’t,” Owen said. “Calving season.”

  “Only you,” Harlan said, “would spend his offseason doing something even harder than football, and with worse hours. Right, I’ve decided. I’m going to Australia.”

  “Aw,” Owen said, “you don’t want to do that. You came to visit me, right? Got to be a reason. Yellowstone. Mountain trails. Challenging terrain. Bison around the bend forcing you to detour, reminding you what life used to be like out here. Also forcing you to use up some adrenaline stores getting out of there. A bison can run as fast as a horse, except that they’re not running away. You thought the bull was bad. No fences in Yellowstone.” He looked extremely happy at the thought.

  Wyoming people were nuts. Too bad bears hibernated in winter, so Owen couldn’t try outskiing a grizzly.

  “All right,” Harlan said, since Owen clearly couldn’t understand why anyone would be reluctant to freeze his ass off outrunning angry wildlife, “I don’t just not like to ski. I can’t ski. There you go. Happy? The bison’s going to be charging me, and I’m going to be falling over like the most pitiful rodeo clown ever. There goes my fancy contract, once I’m trampled by a bison. Stupidest way to die I ever heard of. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe he’ll just break my pelvis.”

  Owen said, “You’re kidding. You can’t ski? Man. I can’t …” He started to laugh, and then he kept on laughing. They’d had a few beers during the evening, sure, were shooting one last game of pool before bed, because there wasn’t much else to do ten miles outside Wheatland, Wyoming, in February, but it took more than a few beers to give you an excuse to laugh like a hyena if you weighed 307 pounds. It took about twelve beers, probably. Not that Owen would drink them. Owen’s dirty secret was that he was no kind of hardass off the field, and no kind of badass, either. When Harlan had asked once, Owen had said, “I grew up on a ranch, bro. What do you expect?”

  Now, Harlan said, “Stop it. Lots of people don’t know how to ski. Bet your parents never skied. Bet your third-grade teacher never skied. I grew up in North Dakota. My dad sells farm equipment. Did I mention that it’s flat in North Dakota?”

  “Dude,” Owen said, “you’re a freaking Super Bowl MVP. You get to go other places now. On airplanes, even.” Another bizarre facet of Owen’s personality? He didn’t swear much off the field.

  “I went to the Saints, remember?” Harlan said. “And then the Bucs. Out of Nebraska. Which also isn’t ski territory. Not a lot of skiing around New Orleans, or Tampa Bay, either, except water skiing, which suited me fine. There are lakes in North Dakota, and somebody’s always got a boat. You want to go water skiing? I’m your guy. Or scuba diving. I can do that, too. Why didn’t I think about the Great Barrier Reef before?”

  “You’re thirty-one years old,” Owen said. “Your non-skiing college days were ten years ago.”

  “I am not. I’m thirty. And you say that like I’m old. I’m only five years older than you.”

  “For four more days, and then you’re six years older. But I’m more mature. I know that, because I have a ranch. But seriously? You’ve never skied?” Owen missed his shot and stood up straight. “Wait. Wait. I’m getting it. You’ve never done it because you wouldn’t be instantly good at it, and your whole freaking life is about being good at stuff.”

  Harlan said, “You done guidance-counseling me? Step aside. I’m about to run this table.”

  Owen leaned on his cue. “Go on, then. Who’s stopping you? I saw you make that heroic effort and miss that easy one earlier. Is that still hurting?”

  “No.” It wasn’t true, but never mind. “I have a strong ego.”

  “You know,” Owen said, sounding meditative now, sipping on that third beer, “I always thought so, but …”

  Harlan made his shot, lined up the next one, and said, “Trash-talking me isn’t going to work. I’m sorry that your Christmas present to your brother didn’t work out. That’s me changing the subject.”

  “See,” Owen said, “I totally thought he’d go for it. Amy loves Yellowstone. That was the only time I could get for them, Super Bowl weekend, but I thought—perfect. Fun with the boys, plus a couple romantic nights snuggled up in the lodge, away from it all. He always says he doesn’t like pro football, that there’s no purity in it, so I thought he’d love not being forced to watch me. Of course, now I’m not playing, so …”

  Harlan knocked the six ball into the corner pocket, then stood up and stared at Owen in disbelief. “You really don’t get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “It’s not about watching the game. It’s that it chaps his hide, knowing you made it and he didn’t. He’s on the ranch full time now, and you’re in the NFL, when he was supposed to be the star. All-State tight end, right?”

  “What? Dane’s happy, man. Happier than me, probably. He sure likes to tell me so. He looked pretty happy tonight.”

  Harlan sighed. “Because he won. Because he was here in this room with you and me, and he won.”

  “Oh.” Owen was still looking surprised. Either that or sleepy. Owen wasn’t the world’s most expressive guy. “Huh. He’s the big brother, though. Never lets me forget it. So what should I do about the Yellowstone thing, do you think?”

  �
�Ask him if he’ll trade you for a trip to Hawaii instead, to use once it’s … whatever season is best to leave a ranch. Hawaii’s always pretty much the same, whenever you go. That’s why it’s Hawaii. And ask him whether he wants to take the kids or not. That way he doesn’t feel so guilty about not wanting to, because Amy can say no. I bet she wasn’t too excited about that ‘fun with the boys’ part. That woman wants romance.”

  “Amy? She knows better. She’s got four boys. She’s married to a rancher. She’s married to Dane.”

  “I know two things,” Harlan said. “Football and women. Yeah, she wants romance. She wants to be swept off her feet.”

  “See,” Owen said, “that’s the kind of thing that makes people hate you. Why do you get women the way you do?”

  “Because I like them,” Harlan said.

  “Everybody likes women.”

  “No, they don’t. Lots of guys are irritated by women. They tune out when a woman talks. You can see their brain clicking off behind their eyes, the moment when they start thinking about sex or cars or the game or whatever. They don’t pay attention, maybe because the stuff she cares about doesn’t seem important. They tell her what she ought to think, or how she ought to think. If you don’t like the way somebody thinks, you don’t really like them. And, see, I think women are awesome. Sure, they don’t necessarily think the same way guys do, straight line. They think more … laterally, too. They don’t just think about what you just said, they think about why you said it. They make more connections than men do. It’s interesting.”

  He understood most women, anyway. Other than his mom. He’d thought he did, but it had never occurred to him that she’d leave her kids. Never in a million years.