It also meant he had hair extensions, since they hadn’t liked the short look, even two months post-shearing. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of, but there you were. It was a good contract.
Late April, and Annabelle’s spring break was over. She hadn’t stayed with him for any of it, either. Their dad had kept on saying no, which was part of the reason Harlan had tickets to Belize after the shoot. He was going to get his Advanced Open Water dive certification, because why not, and because Owen had been right. College had been ten years ago, and there was no reason he couldn’t learn new things. Besides, he needed a change of focus.
He’d spent the past couple months restless and itchy despite his usual offseason gigs: volunteering with a group that helped military amputees with their rehab and with the local Special Olympics, spending a serious hour and a half every day in a high-intensity yoga or Pilates or barre class in which he was almost always the only man, and finishing up with a long, boring session of foam rolling. Plus a whole lot of swimming, and, always, running. Preferably on trails, the steeper the better, working on his speed and his agility. He’d started to learn Spanish, too, with some help from some of the vets he worked with, who found his accent hilarious.
“Ain’t no barrio in Fargo, ’mano,” Julio Vega had told him yesterday. “And it shows.”
Harlan had said, “However, I come from Bismarck,” in Spanish. Confidently, because that was one of the first things you did learn to say, as if people in foreign countries were always going around asking everyone where they came from.
Julio had said, “Fargo’s funnier, though.” Which was probably true.
He’d even done some real-estate shopping, but he hadn’t seen anything he liked. Which wasn’t good, because in another month, he’d be stepping up his training to the get-serious level, seeing as championships got won in the offseason and he didn’t plan to miss out next time. Not to mention helping Owen plan his football camp and getting tied up with minicamps.
This was his break, and he was blowing it. He needed to buy a house, so he could get himself moved into it. He needed to start working on a plan. He needed to organize his life.
He needed to stop thinking about Jennifer Cardello.
How could you get dumped after a mutually-agreed-upon one-night-stand? How would that even be possible?
It was probably just his pride, that he couldn’t seem to move on.
Yeah, it was definitely his pride.
When he’d carried her down the airplane steps in Wild Horse back in February, out into another freezing, snowy, gloomy day, the usual SUV had been there to meet them. But another SUV had been there, too.
With Blake Orbison leaning against the driver’s door, his arms crossed and not much smile on his face.
Harlan had paused a second, then walked over to the other SUV, his SUV, set Jennifer carefully on her feet as Dyma handed her the crutches, told the driver, “Two suitcases on the plane. Purple and black,” and only then turned to Blake to say, “Hey. How’re you doing.” Half cautiously and half, probably, confrontationally, because Blake had that I’m-the-quarterback-and-what-I-say-goes expression. Except that he wasn’t Harlan’s quarterback anymore.
He was Jennifer’s boss, though. On the other hand, if he was about to bully her, Harlan was sticking around.
Blake nodded at him and didn’t uncross his arms. “So,” he told Jennifer. “You didn’t stay in Yellowstone, huh?”
“Nope,” she said, her cheerful mask right back in place. “I can report, though, that the lodge is fine. Very rustic. Nice food. Good drinks. And you do see animals. You see a little too much of animals, if you ask me. I’d have taken pictures, but I kept having to run for my life.”
“Since she almost got killed by a bison,” Dyma said.
“A snowmobile,” Jennifer said. “But I didn’t, because Harlan tackled me. Which wasn’t my first surprise encounter of the weekend, or my last. Very eventful non-vacation. Why are you here, Blake? I was never going to be back at work until Tuesday. It’s Monday. And of course I didn’t stay in Yellowstone. You knew that, because I called and told you so. I told you exactly where I was at all times, and what the time zone change was, if any, and that I was available whenever you needed me. More available than I was in Yellowstone, since they barely have internet service, and I wouldn’t bet money on their cell reception, either. Also, I’m freezing and my foot hurts. What’s the problem, exactly?”
Sounding not at all like an assistant, or maybe Harlan just didn’t know what an assistant sounded like. Also sounding not at all like the sleepy, sweet, sexy woman he’d carried to her room the night before, her arms wound around his neck, her mouth dropping little butterfly kisses on his cheek.
He’d worried, last night, about letting her down easy. He’d been dead wrong, because she wasn’t even stopping there. She’d decided, apparently, to let him down hard.
When they’d been dropping Owen off in Wyoming, for example, and Dyma had run down the steps after him onto another patch of frigid, windy tarmac, and he’d turned, cuddled her up good and close, and kissed her good and hard. When Harlan had told Jennifer, sitting opposite him again and looking out the window with too much seriousness on her face, “I own this movie theater up in Wild Horse, you know.”
“I know,” she said, her face still closed to him.
“Kind of a fun place. I could do something this spring, maybe. Some kind of … sports film festival or something, team up with the resort. Could be good. That would mean I’d have to come to Wild Horse for opening night. Maybe when Owen comes up for that prom, too. Hey, we could be chaperones. That’d be a new twist. If you give me your number, we could get together. Go out to dinner at an actual restaurant again, now that I don’t have the hair. Not ski.”
She turned her head and looked at him. Her face was normally transformed by her smile, like … like daffodils in spring, or something.
Daffodils in spring? He was losing it.
Without the smile, she looked pale and drained, half of her normal warmth missing. There were purple shadows under her eyes, too, like she hadn’t slept well. She said, “I had a great time, Harlan. I appreciate it. I really do. You’ve been sweet, and you’ve been kind. It was an incredible night. I got what I wanted. I don’t want to want more.”
He hadn’t known what to say. He always knew what to say, or could at least come up with an approximation, but he was blank. And then Dyma came up the steps again, not crying, Jennifer refocused, and … that was that.
The whole thing ending with a whimper, not a bang. So to speak.
An hour later, in Wild Horse, in the snow, Blake told her, “The problem is that you’re on crutches. And that you ran off with Harlan Kristiansen, who’s probably the reason you’re on crutches. What the hell did he do?”
“Hey,” Harlan said. “I’m right here.”
“You took Dyma, too,” Blake told Jennifer, still ignoring him. “What’s gotten into you?”
Jennifer didn’t have her hands on her hips, but that was probably because she was on crutches. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Sweetly. “Maybe being fired?”
Dyma said, “Well, yeah, she took me. What was she supposed to do, leave me in Yellowstone? We didn’t go to any strip clubs or whatever you’re imagining. It was all extremely PG-13. She stepped on broken glass. What, Harlan cut her as part of his BDSM routine? Do you even know my mom? And by the way? If you’ve got something bad to say about Owen Johnson, don’t say it to me, because he’s taking me to prom. Also, he’s amazing.”
Blake glanced at her, possibly shelved whatever he wanted to say for another occasion, then looked back at Jennifer. “I told you. I am not firing you. I’m helping you transition. I told you I’d help you get another assistant job with a good guy. Harlan isn’t the kind of guy I meant. Not even close.”
“Uh-huh,” Jennifer said. Her face didn’t look white now. It was flushed. Maybe it was the cold, and maybe it was the temper. Harlan’s money was on
the temper. “I shouldn’t be his assistant, you’re saying. Because he’d, what, charm me, sleep with me, and dump me?”
“Well, yeah,” Blake said. “You know how I know that? By taking a look in the damn mirror, that’s how. He might get there sometime. I did, eventually. He’s not there now.”
“Which is fascinating,” she said, “except that he hasn’t asked me to be his assistant, he’s already charmed me and slept with me, and you could say that now I’m dumping him. Here’s a thought to chew on. Maybe that’s what happened, some of those times. Maybe they were dumping you, too, because you couldn’t give them what they wanted.”
Dyma looked shocked. What, Jennifer hadn’t told her? As for Blake, his mouth opened, and then it closed, and Harlan was in two spots at once. He was enjoying the sight of the quickest-witted ex-quarterback in the NFL lost for words, and he was also—well, a little hurt, if you wanted to know the truth.
“Emotionally, I mean,” she went on to say, proving that this was, yes, still Jennifer. “Because obviously, I believe you gave them what they wanted physically. Like Harlan. I mean, obviously you’re both athletic and good-looking and all. And attentive. At least I’m assuming, in your case, Blake. Which is someplace I’ve never wanted to go, so I’m backing off now, extremely fast. But still. Maybe they were just using you, was my point. Not that you were using me,” she told Harlan, shifting even further back to Jennifer-mode. “I was all clear. I am all clear. And now,” she told Blake, “I’d really, really like to get in this car and go home. I need to get my foot better by tomorrow, if I’m going to come into work.”
Dyma looked like she was dying to say something. She also looked like she had no idea what it would be.
“You do not,” Blake said, with the kind of strain around his mouth that you normally saw deep in the fourth quarter, “have to come into work tomorrow. You’re on crutches.”
“I hurt my foot,” she said. “Not my brain or my typing fingers. Tomorrow, I start setting you up to live without me. That was our deal, and I honor my deals.”
So that had been it. She had a new job. He knew that from Owen, who had taken Dyma to the prom. An image that could make a guy laugh, if he’d felt like laughing. Owen had probably had the best-fitting tux in the place, since his had been custom-made. Only possible way he’d have squeezed into one at all, of course. He also probably had a prom picture in a cardboard frame on his mantel now.
And Jennifer had chaperoned. Alone, as far as Owen could tell, when Harlan had asked in a hopefully casual manner.
She was working at some salad-dressing company, Owen said, which sounded like one hell of a comedown from working for Orbison. Probably not scheduling any private jets. Probably worrying like crazy about paying Dyma’s tuition, too. And if he couldn’t help worrying about her himself, some nights when he hadn’t swum far enough or run fast enough? She was a special person, anybody could see that. She was the kind of woman who shouldn’t have to be so surprised that a guy had wanted to show her a good time, in bed or out of it. She was the kind of warm, sweet loving a regular guy, a normal guy, should want to come home to. She might be baking cookies, and she’d look so good in that apron. Not his type at all, but she sure as hell ought to be somebody else’s. Somebody strong, so she didn’t have to hold up the whole sky by herself. Somebody steady, so she didn’t have to focus on surviving every day, and so she’d have somebody to hold her if she needed to cry, and she could let her guard down a little.
You see. He had a problem.
Especially when he put on his final sprint, a block out from the house, soaked to the skin, his running shoes covered with mud and his hair streaming with rain, turned into the drive, and found a white subcompact sitting in front of the gate.
A rental, most likely. Nobody would actually buy a car that boring.
A white subcompact with somebody in it.
In fact … Jennifer.
30
Life Comes Calling
He tapped on the window, and she jumped like a character in a slasher movie who’d just met the guy with the claws.
After a second, though, she rolled down the window and said, “I didn’t recognize you at first. How is your hair that long?”
“Extensions.”
She stared at him like, yes, a woman who’d just been told that a guy had sat in a salon chair to get hair extensions so he could have long, wavy blond locks. He said, “Long story. Tell you later. Here, I’ll open the gate for you.”
He pressed his thumb onto the sensor pad, waited until she’d driven through the wide double gates, and jogged up the drive to the house behind her thinking, Play it cool. Not something he normally had to tell himself. He’d have sworn she was the last woman to show up without notice and expect a guy to … what? Have another no-strings fling with her, because she was in town, and she was bored?
If that was it, he wasn’t doing it. She might think he had no self-respect, but she was wrong.
Then she climbed out of the car, dashed through the rain and up the broad stone stairs to the covered entryway, and he stared at her and thought … Well, maybe dinner.
She looked good. She was wearing jeans and the same cream-colored sweater she’d worn in Yellowstone. The same snug sweater, and … well, yeah. He’d forgotten, he guessed. Had she looked like that before? Like all of that?
Definitely dinner.
He opened the stainless-steel door, studded with rivets and looking like it belonged on a boxcar, and she followed him in, saying, “I’m not commenting on your house.”
“Yeah. I know it’s weird.” He pulled off his muddy shoes, dripped all over the limestone, and said, “Five minutes to take a shower.”
“Probably ten, if you have to comb out the extensions.”
“Yeah, keep it up. I’ve never heard that from anybody before. Make yourself a cup of coffee or something. There’s an espresso machine built in next to the fridge.”
“Of course there is,” she said.
He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. Five minutes later, when he was coming out of the shower, his phone vibrated on the bathroom counter.
Annabelle. Not right now. Not happening. He let it go to voicemail.
When he came down again, Jennifer was standing near the kitchen, in the two stories of glass-and-steel-and-stone expanse that was the main living area. She’d dropped her purse onto a barstool and was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the full length of the house. At not much, because it was raining. He said, “There’s a good view of Mount Hood on a clear day,” and she jumped again.
If she was here to seduce him, fling-wise or otherwise, she wasn’t doing a great job of it. She proved it by saying, “Actually, I need you to point me to a bathroom. It’s all this rain. Too suggestive. I looked around for one, but all I found was the biggest, emptiest pantry I’ve ever seen, like it was built for preppers who fell down on the job, a laundry room that’s about the size of my apartment, and an elevator. I got exhausted from opening doors. Why does your house have an elevator?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Here you go.” He showed her the way, then came back into the center of the room, ran his hands over the legs of his jeans, and thought, Now what?
He’d been the one in charge, before. No question. Rescuing her. Buying her dinner. Flying her around, which she’d liked. Taking care of her foot. Taking her to bed. And she was in his house now. She’d come to him. So why wasn’t it feeling like that?
Because of the way she’d left, that was why. Even though he’d been the one setting those limits. The emotional ones, not the sexual ones. The sexual ones had been fine. The emotional ones had … backfired.
This was why being honest was such a bad idea, especially when you were dealing with women who didn’t understand the rules and didn’t play the game. It was also why she needed that regular guy with the steady job. She needed to do the cookie thing, to put all that warmth and swee
tness and humor someplace where it would pay off. He’d tell her so, as soon as she came out. That he didn’t know why she was here, but she should know that he still wasn’t that guy, and whatever she had in mind, it probably wasn’t going to work out.
Right. Plan.
She came back, running her hands through her mass of ringlets, shaking off the rain, showing off all that body, and he said, “Let’s get a drink and sit by the fire.”
So, not exactly according to plan.
She’d almost turned around so many times today.
Driving the hour and a half to the Spokane Airport. Standing in the security line. Waiting for her rental car. Sitting outside that seriously sleek, high-tech gate, buzzing the house, and nobody answering. For an hour. And most of all, when she’d been waiting for him in a house that had to be well over ten thousand square feet, with more hard surfaces and echoing space than you could imagine any house in the world possessing, unable to find a bathroom and having to pee so badly that she nearly ran outside to do it.
She could ask him on the phone, she’d told herself. Where she didn’t have to see his face. She had his number now along with his address, thanks to Owen. She could have done that instead of spending her whole weekend and too much money on this. What was she trying to achieve?
She couldn’t even have said, and now that she was here, she really couldn’t say. Also, surely no man had ever filled out a T-shirt and jeans with quite that much lean, sculpted muscle. His shoulder-length hair lay damply around his square-jawed face, and even knowing he’d done hair extensions couldn’t wreck it. The man just couldn’t help giving off testosterone rays.
Which was not her problem. And it was too late now to second-guess this. She said, “I don’t need anything to drink. That’s not what I’m here for. I need to ask you to take a DNA test.”
He stared at her. She thought, Lift your chin. Look him in the eye. And did it. Instead of running screaming.
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 23
