Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,9

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, but 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