No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “No,” Evan said.

  “But why?” Beth asked. “Why did she take her in the first place?”

  “Did I mention,” Michelle said, “that she’s not the most rational creature? If ever I saw a woman who thinks with her ovaries. But that’s victim-blaming, and I’m not going to do it. I never realized how challenging it would be to refrain. She heard from her parents that Evan was coming after her, and she panicked. She never meant to leave Gracie forever, she says. What actually went through her head at the time is anybody’s guess. I suspect postpartum depression. She didn’t hurt the baby, give her credit for that. She left her with a father who could care for her, and she removed herself. And you should remember that,” she told Evan.

  “You’re right,” he said. His face and voice were without expression, but Beth already knew that only meant he was feeling too deeply, so he was shutting down. “I haven’t thought about that enough. Now I know.”

  “But when she thought she was losing Gracie forever,” Michelle said, “I think she panicked. She didn’t understand the legal system well enough, and she didn’t realize she’d get a chance to ask to see the baby. And that boyfriend.” The word was full of disgust. “If you can call him that. He told her, she says, ‘We should go get her, then. You should take her.’ Or course, who knows whose idea it really was. She’s going to blame him, obviously. She’ll always blame somebody.”

  “Mom,” Beth said.

  “You’re right. I’m doing it again. But I think they worked each other up, and that he probably got tired of her crying. My opinion. She didn’t say that. They drove by the house, she saw Gracie, and she says she took her impulsively. Again, who knows. She didn’t know she was sick, of course. She said Gracie cried and cried all night long, and Chris was shouting at her to make it stop, and she was afraid he’d hurt the baby when she wouldn’t stop crying.” She looked at Evan. “I think he may have shaken her, Evan. She didn’t quite say that, but I think so.”

  Evan went absolutely still. Beth knew how he felt, because she felt the same way. Frozen. “They checked her,” he said. “Carefully. The doctor said she was fine. Other than the ear and her temperature. He said she was fine. I’ll . . . I’ll ask, though. I’ll tell them.”

  “Good,” Michelle said. “I know you’ll feel much better if you do. I’m so sorry to have to tell you.”

  “What happened in the . . . truck?” Beth went on. “What was it about?”

  “She says,” her mother said, “that she wanted to take Gracie to the hospital, and Chris wouldn’t. He said they’d get in trouble. Because he was afraid he’d hurt Gracie, probably. And when she insisted, he hit her. April,” she added hastily as Evan froze again. “That part’s probably true, so give April credit again. I do think she wanted to get help for Gracie. I think she was terrified. And then Gracie’s eardrum burst, and there was blood, and Chris panicked too. April was blaming him, I think, in the truck, and he hit her again. I’m guessing he thought he’d be prosecuted for what he’d done to the baby, because he thought the bleeding was from the shaking. So he threw them out and ran.”

  Evan sighed, a long, drawn-out sound. “I should’ve hit him so much harder. I should’ve laid him out.”

  “Well, yes,” Michelle said. “I do think you might have. But then, you could have been in much more trouble, and what would happen to Gracie then? As it is, they’ll call it a struggle, and I’m sure you’ll be fine. And if you’re not,” she added, “well, Don will find you a good criminal attorney. We’re not going to let that happen.”

  Evan was smiling. Just a bit, but he was. “Not really your problem, though. You weren’t the one who hit him.”

  “No,” Michelle said. “But we’ll call you my proxy. I’m prepared to pay for the pleasure.” She stood up. “I need to get back. Keys, please, Evan.”

  He handed them over, and Beth said, “But . . .”

  “You’ll want to get Gracie checked again, of course,” her mother said. “And then Blake and Dakota are coming for you. In the helicopter, since it can land here. It’s all arranged. Call when you’re ready for them.”

  She left, and Evan said, “Back to ER, then. And I’m not leaving until we’re sure.”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Beth watched as Evan picked Gracie up so carefully. She may have gotten a little teary herself at the way he gathered his baby girl into his arms.

  “And your mom,” Evan said, “is kinda wasted on Wild Horse. I’m just saying.”

  “I know,” Beth said, picking up the diaper bag and heading out with him. “But maybe not. I’ve been thinking about all that volunteering she does. She runs half of that town, when you add it up. There’s more than one way to be a powerful woman.”

  Evan didn’t draw an easy breath until the results of the CT scan came back.

  “It’s fortunate,” the doctor said, his face grave, “that the mother didn’t have her longer. That she went for help when she did. ”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “I realize that.” And if he saw April, he vowed, he’d tell her so. He’d thank her for getting Gracie out. There was what Beth had said the other day—wait, had that just been yesterday? Whenever. It applied here, he was pretty sure.

  When they were in the cafeteria again waiting for Dakota and Blake, with Gracie in his arms this time drinking a bottle of diluted juice, rubbing her head like usual and looking so much less wrecked than he felt, he mentioned it to Beth.

  “What you said before,” he said. “About how people justify what they do.”

  “Yes?” She was exhausted, too. It showed in the shadows under her eyes, the strain around her mouth. But she’d been with him the whole way. How had he ever thought she was anything like April? Beth had stuck. And when he’d needed her strength, she’d had it to give.

  “I think it’s better,” he said, forcing his tired brain to focus on this, “if April thinks she did right. If I tell her so. If your mom does. If she feels like she was a good mother, a protective mother. Even though we know she wasn’t, not really.”

  “Except at the end there,” Beth said. “That was real.”

  “It was, and I’m trying to remember it. But anyway. That idea might make it easier for her to not hang on so hard to Gracie, I’m thinking. Maybe. To not go for . . . custody, or whatever.” Custody. April was the mother. But after this—surely that wouldn’t count for nearly as much. Surely.

  “You’re right,” Beth said. She was drinking a chocolate milkshake, exactly like that first day in Robinson’s. And this time, she was drinking it all. “The less judged she feels, the more she might be able to let go. I think you’re right, and I think you’re smart. And I’d say it would take strength to say that to her. But then, you have strength.”

  “Not so sure right now,” he confessed.

  “Oh, Evan.” She laughed, although it was pretty shaky. “Of course you do. And I need to say this. This one thing.”

  “Yeah?” He wouldn’t have said he could feel anything else today. He’d have said he was all worn out on feelings. But something was happening in his chest all the same.

  “I think you’re the best man I’ve ever known,” she said. “And I love you.”

  Now, he knew he was feeling something. Because it ached. “Me too, baby,” he said. “Me too.”

  Beth went home with Evan and Gracie that night. He didn’t ask, and neither did she.

  There was no choice, though. She held him that night, and he held her, and she didn’t know who felt more comforted. The next day, she went and collected Henry again, and they took the baby for a long walk by the lake, cooked dinner together, and checked on Gracie in her crib before they went to bed. And talked almost not at all.

  When he reached for her, she came to him. He kissed her, long and slow and sweet, and she held his head and kissed him back, and then she rolled on top of him and kissed him some more.

  When her lips left his and traveled to his neck, when her hands were stroking over his shoulders and the biceps she
loved to touch, he sighed and said, “Have I mentioned that I love that you come to bed naked? Because, baby—you feel so good over me like that.”

  She smiled against his skin and kissed him a little better. There at the side of his neck, where he was sensitive and she was too. “I’m glad,” she murmured in his ear, then kissed him there and moved on down. Her hands on his chest, exactly the way he liked. Pleasing him. Memorizing him.

  For once, he didn’t roll her over. She felt his chest move as he sighed, and she took that for what it was. Pleasure, and relief. So she gave him more of both. She loved him with everything she had. With her mouth and her hands and every bit of her willing body. He held her, touched her, pleased her, and neither of them talked any more.

  Slow and hot and sweet, and when she was on top of him, rocking him the same way he’d rocked her, like his body was hers, like every bit of his pleasure belonged to both of them? When he closed his eyes and then opened them again, she knew it was because he wanted to watch her. He wanted to see this.

  She gave him all her love, and he gave it back to her. Slowly, and then not so slowly. And at the end, when she was gasping, when he had hold of her hips, was driving into her, setting the pace at last, and the contractions took her? She felt him shudder, felt the strength of his hands on her, his urgency. She read the intensity in his ice-blue eyes, and she saw her name on his lips. She loved him.

  And later, when they were lying together in the dark, wrapped around each other like one person still, he said, “It’s Tuesday.”

  She turned her head and kissed his chest. “Yes.”

  “And you’re going back.”

  She closed her eyes against it. “I have to.”

  “Does it help,” he asked, “if I tell you I don’t want you to go?”

  She laughed, an involuntary huff of breath, and felt him stiffen. “It doesn’t help,” she said. “It hurts. But I’ve put in six years of sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week, and three years of law school before that, all for this. It’s nine years of my life. All my adulthood.”

  His hand was on her hair, stroking it. He was hurting, but he was comforting her, too. Because her pain was his own. “You think so,” he said, “but your adulthood is so much more than that. It’s the strength of you, and the way you care. The way you do the right thing, and the way you see people.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut again, but this time, it was to keep away the tears. “I love you,” she said. “Did I say that?”

  “But not enough to stay.”

  It wasn’t an accusation. It was acceptance. And it hurt her that he couldn’t get angry anymore. “I can’t,” she said again. “But I want to see you. I need to see you. And Gracie. Next year, I’ll be a partner, and I’ll . . . we’ll . . .” She couldn’t finish that. She didn’t know what came next.

  “What happens then?” he asked. “When you’re a partner? What’s different?”

  “It’s . . .” she said slowly. “It’s a goal, and it’s another beginning. You don’t have to work as many hours. That’s why they make it so hard. To see who’s willing to do it. Who’s able to do it. Who has what it takes.”

  “Who’s willing,” Evan said, “to give up everything.”

  “For a while. And then you scale back to fifty, sixty hours. Which would feel like so much less.”

  “Will it make you happy?”

  Her hand stopped moving on his chest, and it was a long moment before she said, “I haven’t asked myself that question in so long. It’s never been the point.”

  He didn’t ask her the obvious question. Shouldn’t it be the point?

  “Let’s see if we can make it work,” she said, her voice a breath in the darkness. “Don’t break up with me, Evan. Please.”

  “Oh, baby,” Evan said, and his voice was so sad. “I couldn’t. And anyway, you deserve your life. You deserve to get what you want.”

  On Wednesday, Beth left him.

  Early, because it was a seven-hour drive to Portland. Too far for a commute.

  He hadn’t lain awake the night before. He’d been too exhausted for that, still, and he thought she had been too. But in the gray light of dawn, he’d held her warm body close to him and told himself, One more time. You can do this one more time. You’ve done it before.

  But it felt like the first time. It felt like a layer of skin being ripped off, exposing every nerve. Raw, ugly, and so painful. And he was going to have to man up and take it.

  He cooked her breakfast, and she poked at it, ate barely half in between feeding a quickly recovering Gracie her rice cereal, and said, “I need to go to Dakota’s and clean up some. Pack up, too. And then take Henry home and say goodbye to my folks.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Tell your mom thanks again for me. Doesn’t seem like enough to say, but tell her.”

  “I will. Henry’s going to miss you guys,” she said as Gracie waved her spoon, dribbling cereal. Henry leaped into action, and Gracie laughed all the way from her belly.

  Evan said, “Gracie’s going to miss Henry, too. Someday, I’ve got to get her a dog.”

  “I’ll come back,” Beth said. “Thanksgiving. We could . . . maybe we could cook.”

  “We could,” he said, trying and failing to keep his heart from twisting, that ache from taking over. “We could have my mom over, maybe. That’d be a switch for her. And your parents, if you want.”

  She paused, the baby’s spoon in the cereal, before Gracie’s banging on the highchair tray jolted her into movement. “Isn’t that something?” she said. “I couldn’t have imagined either of us thinking that a week ago. I guess good things really can come out of bad times.”

  “I guess so.”

  But when he stood in the driveway with Gracie in his arms and watched Beth climb into her gray lawyer car, it didn’t feel true. Nothing that hurt this bad could be good. It wasn’t possible.

  Beth rolled down the window and said, “Goodbye. I love you. Bye-bye, Gracie-girl.”

  He could see the pain in her eyes, but he couldn’t help her. He told his daughter, “Wave bye-bye, Gracie. Say goodbye to Beth.”

  It was Friday, it was ten-thirty in the morning, and Beth had been back at work exactly . . . well, it depended if you counted in hours or days. It hadn’t been a full day yet, but let’s see. Noon until eight yesterday, getting caught up. And she’d been here since seven this morning.

  So, yeah. Ten and a half hours. And this past hour should count twice.

  She was on one side of the conference table in the best conference room at Kentworth, Docherty, the one with the view of Pioneer Square. Felicia Diaz was at the head of the table, and Marjorie Sinclair was sitting opposite Beth, looking at the view and not looking after her dogs.

  Right now, Marjorie was talking, and one of the pugs—Princess—was barking. Beth wasn’t sure which sound was more annoying.

  “What I want to know,” Marjorie was saying in her rasping voice as she stroked the malodorous pug on her lap, “is why the foundation isn’t set up already. I told this girl—” She flapped a hand at Felicia—“exactly what I wanted, step by step. I did half the work for her, and she hasn’t finished. Probably hasn’t even started.”

  “The work is continuing,” Felicia said. She was doing a good job of maintaining, but there was a dark flush on her cheeks that wasn’t blusher. “We’ve been researching other successful breed rescue organizations to detail the steps necessary in order to spend your money wisely. If you’re concerned about the time and effort it’s taking, you may want to consider using your foundation to make donations to established organizations. Something like the ASPCA could be one place to start.”

  Princess barked louder, and Marjorie said, “Princess, quiet.” Which had no effect at all. The other pug, the inappropriately named Duke, who was asleep near the door with all four fat little legs splayed out under him, let out a mighty snore and followed it up with a release of some of the most noxious gas Beth had ever had the privilege of inhaling. Felicia,
who was closest, tried her best for a few seconds, then turned away and took a gulp of water.

  Marjorie, not surprisingly, didn’t seem to notice. She said, “The ASPCA? I don’t think so. If my money’s going to rescue a bunch of pit bull halfbreeds who should have been drowned at birth, I might as well give it to my sons. I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I need you to do what I tell you to do. Maybe now that this girl’s here—” She waved a diamond-encrusted hand at Beth—“something will happen. Work ethic, that’s what’s missing. Exactly the same thing as the difference between a breed rescue organization and the ASPCA. The Protestant work ethic built this country, and all the dilution since is killing it. Killing it.”

  “If that’s me,” Felicia said, her normally cheerful voice tight, “I’m not diluted. I’m one hundred percent Latina.”

  “What I said,” Marjorie said.

  Beth stepped in, because Felicia looked ready to lunge. She wasn’t sure whether Felicia would strangle Princess first or get her hands around Marjorie’s scrawny neck, but either way, it was going to be bad. “We’ll be giving you progress reports,” she told Marjorie. “Weekly.”

  “As long as you do it,” Marjorie said. “I’m not paying some padded bill. Honesty. Hard work. That’s what I’ll pay for. When I spot one of my gardeners leaning on his shovel, I fire him, and I don’t care if he’s sending money home to his family in Mexico. He should have thought about them before he started loafing.”

  Beth made a note on her legal pad. Princess had stopped yapping, but Duke was snoring now, and Beth had a headache pounding ominously on one side of her skull. She said, “Will do” and looked at Felicia, telegraphing Go on and take charge as best she could over the racket in her head.