Only Bachelors Need Apply

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“A heck of a lot more than Mrs. Currant does. She doesn’t even know what an end around is.”

Joanna remembered. Vaguely. Tyler’s father had been the star high-school quarterback. She’d helped him memorize the playbook his senior year, no minor accomplishment. “I’m a little rusty these days, tiger. I think it would be best if I left the coaching to someone else.”

“What about you, Kris?” Tyler tossed him the football. “You wanna take a shot at coaching?”

He caught the ball awkwardly, then studied it as if it was a foreign object that had fallen into his hands from outer space. “I don’t think so, kid. Maybe your coaches will get their act together again and everything will be okay.” He returned the pigskin with a wobbly throw.

“Yeah, I suppose. Guess they usually kiss and make up.”

A painful knot formed in Joanna’s throat. If things had gone as she had dreamed ten years ago, Tyler would have had a father to coach his football team and teach him the finer points of quarterbacking. But as an eighteen-year-old, she’d had no idea how quickly a dream could be shattered. Pregnant, she’d been abandoned by the boy she’d thought she loved. He’d told her in no uncertain terms that a man would be a total lunatic to want to marry into her eccentric family.

Tyler peered down at the weld Kris had just completed. “So what are you doing with these bikes?”

“I’m trying to create an independent suspension system for a smoother ride,” Kris replied. “You want to see how it’ll work?”

“Sure.”

Their blond heads close together, the two males bent over the bikes, talking enthusiastically about things Joanna didn’t understand. From a cluttered workbench, Kris picked up one of several books, flipping through the pages as he explained heliarc welding and suspension systems.

She felt like a fifth wheel and slipped out the door without either of them noticing she was gone.

It was better that way. She knew Tyler needed male role models in his life. But she didn’t want to get attached to Kris herself. There was no future in it for her, only heartache and ultimate rejection.

As the week progressed, Joanna concentrated on inspiring twenty-eight fourth graders with the rudiments of American history, comparing Indian culture to recent efforts at ecology, thus combining the prescribed science unit with social-studies requirements. A couple of meetings with the principal were thrown into the time-and-stress equation, along with an irate parent who didn’t believe in homework, much less the value of regular school attendance.

Joanna barely gave any thought at all to her new tenants until Saturday arrived and Agnes announced the evening’s plans.

“I think Kris is totally cool, Mom.” Tyler perched on the edge of a kitchen counter and tossed his football from hand to hand. With so much high-voltage energy, he couldn’t always sit in a chair.

“That may be so, dear, but your grandmother had no right to invite him to dinner tonight without asking me first.” To emphasize the point, Joanna brought her knife down hard on the potatoes she was slicing to cook with the roast that was already in the oven. She had not intended to spend what little free time she had on a Saturday cleaning house and cooking a formal meal.

Of course, she could have refused to participate in this charade. But her mother had become so upset when she threatened not to be at home that Joanna had relented. Agnes’s emotional state often seemed on the brink of hysteria, particularly since Joanna’s father had died. Grief apparently intensified peculiar behavior.

“Grandma told me she’s just trying to be neighborly.”

Matchmaking was closer to the truth.

“She invited the other two guys, too. Ol’ pinchnose Percy—”

“Don’t call him that, Tyler. Percival is a very nice man. He’s just a little shy.”

“That other guy, Larry, sure isn’t bashful. Man, he acts like a big know-it-all. Always talkin’ and telling me what a great mom I’ve got.”

Joanna slid her son a questioning look. “Kris doesn’t say things like that about me?”

“Naw, we talk about important stuff.”

“Oh, thanks, I’m glad to hear that.” Joanna was upset at the stab of irritation that shot through her. Kris had no reason to talk to Tyler about her. None at all. She should be grateful they had other topics to discuss. After all, she had managed to avoid seeing her tenant for the last several days. It wasn’t important that her gaze always drifted toward his workshop when she drove by the rental property. She really wasn’t trying to catch a quick glimpse of him.

Obviously, he wasn’t all that interested in her, either. Since that first night, when she’d turned down his dinner invitation, he hadn’t asked her out.

Tyler dropped to his feet and snitched a couple of olives from the relish tray. “I’m helping him learn how to throw a spiral pass.”

“Football?”

“Yeah. He’s not very good. He said he never learned to play when he was a kid.”

Considering Kris’s athletic physique, and how successful he’d been in a very competitive bike race earlier in the summer, Joanna was surprised. He seemed like he would excel at almost anything, sports included.

Overall, he was the most puzzling man she had ever met. One minute he was flirting with her, ignoring her obvious desire to be left alone, and then he did just the opposite. Ignored her for days at a time.

Meanwhile, in spite of her best efforts, she couldn’t get him out of her mind.

Kris made it a point to arrive at Joanna’s house first, before the competition showed up for dinner.

A concrete path led past flower beds still bright with fall colors, including late-blooming roses on well-tended bushes. The house itself, nestled among the pines, was modest in size and of modern log construction. A long porch and a picture window looked out over the front garden. Behind the house, a treecovered slope rose steeply to the top of a ridge.

Kris had the feeling he was visiting Goldilock’s cottage. The house wasn’t anything like the sterile, high-rise condos where he had grown up. There was a homey coziness he had never experienced, and he envied Joanna what surely must have been a more idyllic childhood than his own. Even the fresh smell of baked goods wafting out through the open window reminded him of all he had missed. His mother’s cooking talents had been pretty well limited to what she could boil on a Bunsen burner.

Oddly, the roof of the house was festooned with whirligigs—ducks and roosters and other strange wooden characters whose arms spun with the lightest breeze. Interesting aerodynamics, Kris mused, wondering if their combined power could be harnessed into a source of electricity, like miniature wind generators, and pumped into the household wiring.

He was still considering that possibility when Tyler answered his knock on the front door.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?” the youngster said in greeting.

They exchanged a high five. “About the same as it was two hours ago when you were over at my place.”

“Yeah, right.” Tyler’s quick smile matched the more reluctant one his mother so-infrequently displayed. “Come on in. Mom’s in a tizzy that Grandma invited all you guys to dinner.”

In a way, so was Kris. He would have preferred a private invitation. He didn’t like the idea of sharing the evening with a couple of other bachelors on the make. But then, he’d learned a long time ago anything worth having was worth working hard for.

“Kris, dear boy,” Agnes crooned, sweeping into the living room. Her long skirt nearly reached the floor and the bracelets on her wrists jangled like a gypsy dancer’s. With every step she seemed to create a happy song. “So sweet of you to come early.”

“Always hungry for a home-cooked meal.”

“Of course. And Joanna is a wonderful cook, too. Have I told you that?” Agnes shook her head as though she couldn’t remember how much touting of her daughter she’d done. “She’ll make someone a fine wife, you know. So talented.”

He suppressed a smile. “I’m sure you were a very good teacher, Agnes.”

“Grandma makes great cookies, don’t you?” Tyler interjected. “Especially when you forget and put two bags of chocolate chips in ’em.”

“Go on with your flattery, young man.” As she took Kris’s arm, she giggled, a high-pitched, girlish sound. “Of course, my dear departed Alexander never once complained about my cooking. Did you know, he and I once served more than a hundred needy families Thanksgiving dinner, almost all on our own? I must have cooked twenty turkeys myself. We kept those big ovens over at the school cafeteria going for days. Mercy, what a time we had.”

Agnes rambled on about the event as though it had been yesterday, while Kris suspected it had been many years ago. But he liked knowing Joanna’s parents had tried to help others. In contrast, his family had mailed in substantial checks to ease their social conscience, keeping themselves safely ensconced behind the ivory towers of academia.

Maybe this year for Thanksgiving, instead of going home, he’d find someplace where they were feeding the homeless and see if he could help. He wondered if Joanna would be willing to join him.

Joanna’s appearance at the kitchen doorway didn’t slow the tale Agnes was telling. The older woman simply kept on talking. It didn’t seem to matter that no one was listening.

Mentally clicking off Agnes’s chatter, Kris took in the sight of her daughter. Joanna’s hair was pulled back, and there was a light sheen of perspiration on her perfectly oval face, as though the kitchen was overheated. Her cheeks glistened. She radiated good health and something else Kris couldn’t quite identify. He simply knew she was a lovely, intriguing creature worth a great deal of study.

“You’re early,” she said, searching his face as though questioning his apparent social faux pas.

He met her gaze steadily. “I was hoping you might need some help with taste tests.”