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“Yeah. He was kind of beefy. A jock, you know. Sure,” she nodded, “he’d have gone to seed. How about your high school girlfriend?”
A certain wryness entered his voice. “Want to know the truth?”
Jo cocked her head to one side. “Yeah.”
“I married her. She still looks good.”
“You married right out of high school?”
Ryan dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Big mistake, but, yeah. I did.”
“Did Kathleen like your wife?”
“Hated her. The feeling was mutual,” he added. “Kathleen said Wendy was self-centered and shallow.” His mouth twisted. “She was right. Isn’t it a bitch, when your big sister is always right?”
“Is she?” Jo asked quietly.
He made a sound low in his throat. “I used to think she was. Hell, I think she thought her life was pretty damn close to a state of perfection.” There was that word again. “But you know the saying.”
“Pride goeth before the fall?”
“That’s it. Her pride is taking a real battering.”
Jo asked about their parents, and learned that their mother was dead of cancer and their father was still on-again, off-again employed, living in a run-down little place in West Seattle. “Likes to go to the bars. He was plenty mad when Emerald Downs closed.” Seeing her confusion, Ryan added, “The horse racing track.”
“Ah.”
“Dad’s your classic blue-collar, uneducated guy. He’s happy with what he is. Which,” Ryan’s grin was wicked, “irritates Kathleen no end. She’s spent a lifetime trying to improve him.”
“She hasn’t started trying to improve me yet,” Jo said thoughtfully.
“Oh, I’m making her sound worse than she is.” The skin beside his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “But here’s a piece of advice. Don’t leave dirty dishes on the counter.”
Jo didn’t admit that she already had one morning, when she hit the snooze button and overslept. They’d been washed, dried and put away when she got home. At dinner, she’d thanked whoever picked up after her. Kathleen had smiled and said, “We all have those mornings occasionally.”
Damn it, she wouldn’t feel guilty! She was working off any sins of commission or omission. Jo hadn’t expected the remodeling job to be as all-consuming as it had turned out to be.
“Did you really think the tile looked okay?” she asked.
“Better than okay. Hey!” He pushed away the half-full pitcher of beer. “Want to work for me sometimes?”
“Are you serious?” Both flattered and startled, she felt an annoying frisson of excitement. He liked her. Well, he liked the way she used bullnose tiles.
How easily she was pleased.
“Yeah.” He seemed surprised. “Yeah, I am. We have a guy we call for tiling, but he’s been unreliable. I’ve considered looking for someone else.”
“I’m a complete amateur!”
“Job you did in there didn’t look amateur.”
Darned if her cheeks weren’t turning pink. “Thank you. It wasn’t just me, though.”
“Wasn’t it?” Ryan asked shrewdly.
“Helen did most of the cutting.”
“Could you learn?”
“Well, sure.” Jo frowned. “Are you saying your sister is lazy?”
“Lazy?” She’d earned raised brows. “No. Just…used to the peons doing the work. It’s actually why I’ve been skeptical about her determination to be independent. Make sure she does her share.”
Jo nodded. “I will. Um…how often do you need someone to tile?”
After he gave her an idea what kind of hours and pay she could expect, she promised to think about whether she’d want to work for him, and they left it at that.
On the way out, they briefly discussed seeing a movie, but decided they had to get up too early in the morning. “Maybe Friday night?” Ryan asked.
“Sure.” Jo enjoyed the feeling of his hand on her lower back as he opened the outside door.
On the short drive home, Ryan asked out of the blue, “Here’s my profound question for the night. What do you want out of life?”
An audible hint of defensiveness crept into her voice. “A satisfying job, a nice home and good friends.”
In the darkness between street lights, she felt as much as saw his head turn. “Marriage? Kids?”
She wouldn’t lie. “Neither are for me.”
He was quiet for a moment, until he had to brake at a stop sign. “Why?”
“How many happy marriages have you ever seen?” she asked bluntly. “You and your sister are zero for two. My parents should never have married. My friends are in and out of relationships and marriages. If by some wild chance you are happy, then you face grief like Helen’s feeling now. What’s the upside?”
Pulling to the curb in front of his sister’s brick house, he set the hand brake. “Getting lucky. Having it all.”
“Can’t you do that without getting married?”
“No desire for children?”
Jo shook her head firmly. “I’m not maternal.”
“Until you have them…”
“You don’t know? Uh-uh. Haven’t you noticed how many people suck at being parents? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and I sure don’t want to be a failure at something I never intended to do in the first place.”
“You’re a hard woman.”
Did he mean it?
“No. Just…cynical.”
His voice became a notch huskier. “But you haven’t sworn off men altogether?”
“No.” Her own became thready. “I like companionship and, um, physical intimacy. Just so the man understands that’s all I want.”
His hand wrapped her nape. “Aren’t I the one who should be saying that?”
Sounding breathless as he gently kneaded her neck, Jo said, “That is traditional, I believe.”
“I don’t mind breaking tradition.” He bent toward her. “If you don’t.”
“It seems to come naturally to me,” she whispered, just before he kissed her.
Oh, so softly, his lips brushed hers, nipped, coaxed and teased. She sighed and even moaned as she nibbled at his lower lip, felt the brush of his shaven cheek, the erotic sensation of his tongue touching hers. He took his sweet time and let her take hers. She was boneless by the time he lifted his head.
“You are a very sexy woman, Jo Dubray,” he murmured, nuzzled her ear.
“Me?”
“Oh, yeah.” He seemed to be enjoying the texture of her hair as he ran his fingers through it. “Definitely you.”
“You’re, um, not so bad yourself.”
She loved the rumble in his chest when he laughed. “Am I something like a good book?”
Jo tried to sound dignified. “Isn’t that better than a home run?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head doubtfully, the grooves in his cheeks betraying his amusement. “I think we need to work on how to give compliments.”
It never had been her strong suit. Her mother, she didn’t remember that well. Her father had never said anything more than, “Looks good,” or “That’s fine.” Never once had he beamed with pride in a small accomplishment of hers, or lavished her with praise. How did you learn to say, You’re wonderful, if you’d never heard it?
“Okay, how’s this?” Jo kissed Ryan’s neck. “You’re hot.”
“I already knew that.” Now he was openly grinning. “Emma tells me I am. She likes it when I drive her places, because the other girls say I’m hot.”
“Well, they’re right. And I do believe someone is peeking out the front window.”
“So they are.” He sounded regretful. “So much for making out with you.”
“Another time?” Did she have to make it a question when she’d intended to be oh, so cool?
“Count on it.” He kissed her again, hard, hinting at passion that was less playful.
A moment later, she let herself into the house and watched his pickup pull away.
Companionship and physical intimacy. Could she enjoy such tepid pleasures with Ryan, and not make the fatal mistake of falling in love?
CHAPTER FOUR
ONE WEEK AND a couple of dates with Ryan later, Jo was contemplating the less than absorbing problem of whether a given title should be classified in the Dewey Decimal 500s, as a scientific work, or in the 200s, as a metaphysical piece of crackpot science, when the knock came on her bedroom door.
“Come in,” she said, turning in her chair, pleased with the interruption and hoping it would be lengthy.
Emma came in, Ginny behind her.
“We’re going for a walk,” the teenager said. “We thought you might like to come.”
Jo hesitated. A stroll down city sidewalks with a first-grader and a high school girl was not her idea of a thrill a minute. On the other hand, it was a beautiful fall day, and besides… Her gaze slipped back to her open textbook.
“Sure! Thanks for asking.” She rose, a little embarrassed at her alacrity. “Just let me grab a sweater.”
Neither girl’s mother was home from work yet. Jo knew the two often went for walks in the afternoon, sometimes to Cowen Park, or to the grocery store to buy a Popsicle for Ginny, or just to wander, she supposed.
Today they set out the eight blocks to Whole Foods, a treasure Kathleen and Helen had pointed her to shortly after her arrival. The huge grocery store on Roosevelt specialized in organic and earth-friendly foods and toiletries. Cosmetics weren’t tested on animals, and the produce department had the most incredible mountains of glorious fruits and vegetables she’d ever seen. The bars where shoppers could construct their own wraps and salads were to drool for.
Head tilted back to look up at the leafy canopy, touched with the pale yellow of autumn, Jo decided aloud, “Maybe I’ll buy a scone. Have you tried them?”
She immediately felt guilty. If Emma had ever eaten anything like that, she didn’t now. But it was really hard never to talk about food. Maybe if people did, she’d be tempted, Jo thought, trying to justify raising a subject that was seldom mentioned around their house.
Ginny walked just ahead beside Emma, holding her hand. Her brown hair was French-braided, probably courtesy of Emma. She looked over her shoulder. “What’s a scone?”
“Um…sort of a sweet biscuit. Really dense.” A blank look told Jo she needed to elaborate. “Not fluffy and light like bread, but heavy like…”
“Mom’s bread when it doesn’t rise right,” Emma finished.
“Oh.” Ginny nodded, satisfied.
“And you can get them with blueberries or cranberries or bits of orange. They’re scrumptious.”
“Scrumptious,” Ginny repeated, in her solemn way.
Jo bent to pick up a whirlybird seed pod, fallen from a maple. Tossed in the air, it spun gently to the sidewalk.
“Oh!” Ginny said again, with more animation. Letting go of Emma, she picked one up, too, and threw it. She almost smiled, watching its spinning progression.
They stood there for five minutes, playing. Jo felt a little silly when she saw laughing faces in a passing car, but, after all, she’d started this. And Ginny looked absorbed and happy, in her quiet, withdrawn way.
In the next few blocks, Jo and the two girls talked about hairdos, books and why an Indian woman who lived in the neighborhood had a dark spot on her forehead. Jo had to admit Ginny and Emma were easy to talk to—easier than she’d expected, but maybe that was because they weren’t normal children, either of them. Death shadowed both, in different ways, subduing them. Making them more thoughtful, Jo would have liked to think, but the truth was, Emma seemed to think and talk about little except food and how fat she was. Except, Jo amended, when Emma was with Ginny—then she seemed more child than teenager.
In the fourth block, Ginny stopped. “Oh!”
Her favorite word, Jo thought dryly, before she saw the sign, too, easily read even by a first grader. In block print painted on cardboard, it read, Free Kittens.
“Can we look at them?” Ginny whispered.
Sensing dangerous territory, Jo hesitated. “Uh…”
“Sure,” Emma said, hurrying forward with the smaller girl towed behind. “We can ask, anyway.”
