Talking to Ryan was easy, listening easier yet. Eventually, talk moved to the personal.

“You didn’t have a significant other?” he asked.

“Nobody serious.” Jo didn’t tell Ryan “serious” wasn’t in her game plan. “You?”

Ryan shook his head. “I’ve been divorced less than two years. Most of my spare time until recently was spent with my kids.” A ripple of emotion passed through his eyes. “My ex remarried and moved to Denver this summer.”

“Can she do that?”

“Regrettably, yeah.”

Their food arrived, and once they started eating, Jo didn’t ask any more about his kids. Obviously he missed them. But because they lived half a country away, she wouldn’t have to have anything to do with them. Maybe this relationship had more promise than she’d thought….

Dear Reader,

Perhaps I shouldn’t confess such a thing, but I’m at an age where I’ve gotten…settled. I like my life just the way it is. But as we all know, stuff happens.

I’m also at an age where I particularly value my friendships with other women. The way women connect with each other and offer quiet support has always interested me. I’ve been fascinated by the history of the westward movement, covered wagons to early settlements, which has become the topic of women historians who write about quilting bees and church socials and shared child care while the wagons rolled.

All of this came together for me when I conceived this trilogy. Women, settled in lives that should have been permanent, now find them disrupted by divorce, death and ambition. Three women, who now must scrimp financially, come together to share a house while they build new lives.

What these women find is something unexpected: friendship. That’s what UNDER ONE ROOF celebrates—the support we women have always offered one another, whatever else life throws our way.

Good reading!

Janice Kay Johnson

Taking a Chance
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Taking a Chance

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

JO DUBRAY WAS suddenly terrified. Not just nervous, as she’d been at eighteen when she moved into a dorm room with a girl she’d never met. No, she was so scared her hands were actually slick on the steering wheel of her Honda and her heartbeat was drumming in her ears.

What had she been thinking, to commit to living with a group of total strangers?

Pulling up in front of the house, her car piled high with all her worldly goods, she still liked the neighborhood. She made herself notice that much in an attempt to calm herself, to say, See? The decision can’t be that bad.

Not far from the university, this particular street was narrow and edged with sidewalks that twisted and buckled to accommodate the roots of old maples and sycamores. Lovely old homes peeked between leafy branches.

As Jo parked in the one-car driveway, the house itself pleased her as much as it had the only other time she’d seen it, during her fleeting, find-a-place-to-live visit to Seattle. A classic brick beauty, built in the 1920s, the house had the run-down charm of an elderly lady whose proud carriage denies the existence of a sagging hemline or holes in her gloves. Wood trim, once white, peeled. The retaining wall that supported the lawn six feet above the sidewalk had crumbled and the grass was weedy and ragged, shooting up through overgrown junipers someone long ago had planted to avoid having to tend flower beds. But leaded glass windows glinted, the broad porch beckoned and dormers poked from the steeply pitched roof.

Despite an inner tremor, she carried one suitcase up to the house as a sort of symbol: I’m moving in. Then, on the doorstep, Jo hesitated. She had a key, but she didn’t feel quite right using it yet. In the end, she rang the doorbell.

Kathleen Monroe, her hostess/landlady/housemate, a tall elegant blonde, answered the door with a warm smile. “Jo! You’re here at last! What did you do with your car?” She peered past Jo. “Oh, Helen must have found a spot on the street. That’s great. You can unload without hauling everything a block. I’ll need you to move before morning so I can get my car out of the garage, though.” Her brilliant smile lit her face again. “Come on, I’ll take you up to your room, as if you don’t know where it is. But on the way you can meet Helen, who makes up our threesome.”

Jo crossed the fingers clutching her suitcase. Not having met the third housemate had been one of her reservations about taking the plunge. But Kathleen hadn’t found another woman when Jo had made the commitment, so it had been a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Given the fact that she was quitting a full-time job in San Francisco to go back to graduate school at the University of Washington, Jo had taken it. She couldn’t afford a condo to herself. Anyway, it might be fun to have roommates again, she had told herself at the time.

“Oh, and you haven’t met Emma yet, either, have you?” Kathleen continued, in the same friendly way. “Let’s stick our heads in the kitchen—Emma’s starting dinner.”

The kitchen was shabby like the rest of the house, the linoleum yellowed and peeling, the cupboards painted a peculiar shade of mustard and the counters edged with a metal strip. “I’ll be remodeling as I can afford it,” Kathleen had promised Jo when she’d showed her the house initially. “If you’re interested in pitching in with painting and such, I’d welcome you.”

Jo had agreed, liking the homey feel to the high-ceilinged rooms, the scuffed oak floors, the pine table in the kitchen laid at the time for breakfast with quilted mats and a bouquet of daisies in a vase. It might be fun to help the house regain her grace.

This time, however, Jo wouldn’t have noticed if Kathleen had painted the cupboards purple. She was too nervous about meeting her landlady’s fifteen-year-old daughter. What if she had spiked hair, a dog collar and listened at all hours to Eminem at top volume?

No dog collar, but Jo was more shocked than if the girl had worn one. She was painfully thin. Her head looked too large for her pathetically skinny body, and her pale-blond hair was dull and thin. The sight of somebody who had to be recovering from a serious illness—or starving herself to death—stirring spices into a pot of what smelled like spaghetti sauce was beyond weird. She cooked, but did she eat? Why hadn’t her mother said anything about her problem to Jo when she’d mentioned having a teenage daughter?

Kathleen gave no sign now that anything was wrong, either. “Emma, meet Jo Dubray. Jo, my daughter, Emma.” Her voice was proud, her smile allowing no option but for Jo to respond in kind.

“Emma, how nice to meet you. I hope you don’t mind having a stranger down the hall.”

“Well, you won’t be strangers for long, will you?” Kathleen said brightly, not allowing her daughter to respond. “Now, let’s say hello to Helen and then I’ll let you move in.”

Jo gave a weak smile over her shoulder at the teenager, who was rolling her eyes. Then she let herself be led toward the stairs.

“Oh,” Kathleen tossed out, as if the tidbit were trivial, “did I mention that Helen has a daughter?”

She hadn’t.

Anxiety cramped anew in Jo’s breast. How much more had Kathleen not thought to mention?

“No,” Jo said. “How old?”

“Ginny is six. She’s just started first grade.”

Oh, hell, Jo thought in acute dismay. A teenager had sounded okay; she’d be hanging out with friends most of the time, anyway, wouldn’t she? Jo didn’t remember being home much herself when she was fifteen and sixteen. But a six-year-old was another story. She’d be watching Disney movies on the TV and bringing friends home after school so that they could shriek and chase each other around. She’d interrupt at the dinner table, ask nosy questions and pop into Jo’s bedroom, her private sanctum, without the courtesy of a knock.

Jo didn’t want to have children herself, which made the idea of living with one unsettling.

Struggling to remember the details of their agreement that would let her move out if she hated living here, Jo almost bumped into Kathleen, who had stopped in the doorway of the small, back room she’d called the den.

Jo peered around her.

A woman who looked about thirty sat at the desk, staring at an open phone book in front of her. A gray sweatshirt hung on her, and the one vibrant note in the room, her auburn hair, was bundled in a careless knot, as if it were an inconvenience instead of a vanity. A thin, pale child leaned against her. When she saw Jo and Kathleen in the doorway, she ducked behind her mother in apparent panic before peeking around her shoulder to stare with wide eyes. The woman didn’t even look up.

“Helen,” Kathleen said, in a voice that had become notably gentler, “I’d like you to meet our new housemate. Jo Dubray, this is Helen Schaefer and her daughter, Ginny.”

Helen lifted her head, but slowly, as if it ached. Her gaze took a minute to focus on Jo. The smile looked genuine but wan. “Oh, hi. I’m glad you’re here.”

Ginny hid behind her mother.

“Nice to meet you,” Jo said insincerely.

On the way up the stairs, she whispered, “Why’s the girl so scared of people?”

Kathleen touched a finger to her lips. “Ssh. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.”

Jo felt sick to her stomach. What had possessed her to think this was a good idea? For the same monthly rent, surely she could have found a room somewhere that, however tiny, would have been hers alone.

Companionship, she had told herself. Instant friends, even, in this new city.

Oh, God. Instead she was going to be living with a perky Princess Grace look-alike who was in serious denial, an anorexic teenager, a sad woman and a first-grader whose huge, vivid eyes showed secret terrors.

In the large bedroom that looked down on the overgrown backyard, Jo set her suitcase on the floor and said firmly, “Tell me.”

Kathleen hesitated, then sat in the overstuffed, flowered armchair beside the dormer window. “Helen is really very nice, and Ginny won’t be any trouble. Poor thing, she’s as quiet as a mouse.”

“What,” Jo asked, with a grimness she failed to hide, “is wrong with her?”

“Ginny?”

“Both of them.”

“Helen was widowed recently. About three months ago.” Kathleen made a face. “I felt sorry for her. But I should have consulted you.”

“It’s your house.” A fact that Jo had thought wouldn’t matter. All for one, one for all. That’s what she’d imagined.

Echoing the absurd, visionary sentiment, Kathleen said plaintively, “But I want us to live together as equals. All of us.” She sighed and looked down at her hands, fine-boned and as elegant as the rest of her. “I didn’t really want us to take on a child. For one thing, we don’t have another bedroom, unless we make over the den for her. For the time being, she’s sharing with her mother. The thing is…” Troubled lines creased her forehead, and at last she said with a faint, twisted smile, “I suppose I…identified with her. In a way we don’t have anything in common, because as far as I can tell, Helen loved her husband, and he died instead of deciding…” She stopped, apparently choosing not to say what her ex-husband had decided. “But we’re alike in that we both suddenly find ourselves on our own, with the horrifying knowledge that we have no real job skills and are rather lacking in everyday competence. Do you know, the last job I held was in college, when I waited tables at the sub?”

Shocked, Jo asked, “What have you been doing?”

“Being a wife.” Kathleen met Jo’s eyes, her expression stark. “Putting on charity luncheons. Entertaining. Being a wealthy businessman’s prop.” Her laugh was brittle. “Sad, isn’t it? I’m half a century out of date.”

Jo could think of a million things to say, starting with: How did you let yourself be used like that? But they didn’t know each other well enough for her to be so tactless.

“Helen,” she said instead. “Is she always so…withdrawn?”

“No. Oh, no. She was nerving herself to call her attorney, who hasn’t been doing what he should be. He was their attorney—Ben’s, really, and now she’s thinking she shouldn’t have left so much in his hands, but she’s having a hard time being assertive enough to insist on more control, or to fire him.”

Being assertive had never been hard for Jo, who had difficulty imagining turmoil or timidity over something as simple as firing an incompetent lawyer.

“Is her little girl always like that?” she asked.

Kathleen hesitated. “She’s very quiet,” she said at last. “I don’t think she’ll bother you.”

The expression in those big, sad eyes would bother Jo, but she only nodded.

“Emma…” Her question—questions—died unspoken in the face of Kathleen’s blandly inquiring expression.

“She’s trying to take Ginny under her wing, but that poor child is very shy.” Kathleen’s brow crinkled. “I worry about how she’s doing in school. At home, she doesn’t want to be away from her mother even for a second. She stands out in the hall when Helen goes in the bathroom.”

An image of the little girl just waiting, a small insubstantial presence with that haunted gaze fixed on the closed door, flickered through Jo’s mind. She almost shivered. Ginny reminded her of a kid in a horror film, she couldn’t remember which. The kid had probably turned out to be a ghost. No, what Ginny reminded Jo of was herself, in the year after her mother had died.

Kathleen shook her head and then smiled with the brilliance of a hundred-watt bulb. “Well. Can I help you carry stuff in?”

Tempted to snatch up her suitcase and flee, Jo ran through her options and came up with no viable one. It might not be so bad. She could stay for a few days, a week, see how it went. Maybe Helen wasn’t as lost in grief as she seemed. Maybe the little girl was just painfully shy. Maybe Emma…

Here, Jo stuttered to a stop. Maybe Emma would sit down at the table and tuck into the spaghetti tonight? Maybe she was recovering from a debilitating illness and not anorexic at all? Feeling a surprising sting of sadness for the girl with the sweet smile and fragile body, Jo couldn’t believe any optimistic possibility.

But maybe living here would work. At least long enough to find something else.

“Thanks,” she said. “I have a bunch of boxes.”

Kathleen stood. “Then let’s go get them.”

EMMA DIDN’T EAT dinner. She’d nibbled so much while she was cooking, she felt stuffed, she said. Her mother didn’t argue, although Jo thought she saw strain briefly on Kathleen’s face. Why didn’t she make her eat? Jo wondered.

The teenager puttered in the kitchen, cleaning up, while everyone else sat around the table twirling spaghetti on forks and making conversation. Jo felt as if Emma were the ghost at the feast. Two ghosts now, she thought morbidly, both children. Every time she looked at Ginny, who ate with tiny, careful motions, taking sips of milk only after shooting wary glances around, Jo was sorry. Happy children were bad enough, but unhappy ones were worse, she was discovering. She longed for the pathetic girl to bound out of the chair and interrupt the adults with a noisy announcement that she was going to go play Nintendo. Loudly. In the next room.

“What good spaghetti!” her mother said. “Thank you, Emma.”

Everyone murmured agreement. Emma smiled with apparent pleasure and offered seconds.

Kathleen tapped her glass of milk with her spoon. “I propose that we have a round-table discussion after dinner. We can talk about rules, expectations, pet peeves…whatever anyone wants.”

Jo shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“Why don’t we clean up first?” Helen said, in the first minor burst of initiative Jo had seen from her. “Emma cooked. She shouldn’t have to wash dishes, too.”

Wash dishes? Aghast, Jo took a more comprehensive look at the kitchen. No dishwasher? Was it possible?

It was.

She dried while Helen washed and Kathleen put food away. Emma, shooed from the center of activity, sat with Ginny and murmured to her, her head bent and her ash-blond hair forming a curtain that hid both their faces. Twice, though, Jo caught sight of Ginny peeking around the teenager to fix anxious eyes on her mother. To make sure she was still there, Jo supposed, and hadn’t slipped away.

As her father had.

Helen didn’t say much as they washed, but she seemed…normal. Present. She gave Jo a couple of shy smiles, apologized when she bumped into her, and asked once, “Are you all moved in?”

Jo thought of the pile of boxes in the corner of the upstairs bedroom and the larger pile of boxes and furniture she’d left in storage in San Francisco and shook her head. “I meant to get here earlier in the afternoon, but traffic into Seattle was awful.”

They had one of those innocuous conversations where they discussed the rush hour and the respective traffic jams in the Bay area and Seattle. If she didn’t look toward the starving teenager and terrified first grader, Jo could almost feel reassured.

The women were just pouring cups of coffee and herb tea—soda for Ginny—when a knock on the front door made Jo jump. Seeming unsurprised, Kathleen said, “I’ll get it,” and left the room. She came back a moment later, followed by a man.

And what a man, Jo thought with a burst of pure, disinterested admiration. Well, okay. Maybe not disinterested.

Broad shoulders, heavy-lidded, smiling eyes, thick, dark-blond hair streaked by the sun, and a craggy, intelligent face interested her very much.

“Jo, my brother, Ryan Grant,” Kathleen said, rolling her eyes. “He gets lonely and can’t stay away.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” the man said mildly. Gray eyes met Jo’s for a strangely electric moment before he turned to hug Emma. “How are you, kiddo?” he asked in a low, gruff voice in which Jo recognized gentleness.

“Uncle Ryan!” Emma’s pixie face brightened. “Cool! Are you lonely?”

“Nah. I just like all of you.” He touched Ginny’s shoulder. “Hi, Hummingbird.”

Hummingbird? The tiny bird’s quivering energy seemed the farthest thing from Ginny’s repressed, frightened self.

But the name provoked a small smile, quickly hidden but startling.

The man—Kathleen’s brother—smiled in return, seemingly content, and said, “Do I get a cup of coffee?”

“There’s spaghetti left,” Emma told him eagerly. “I can warm some up for you if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’ve eaten.”

“We,” his sister said sternly, “were just going to have an official round-table meeting to discuss rules.”

“I can make up rules,” he said obligingly.

“You don’t live here. Contrary to appearances.”

“I’ll referee.”

With a tartness Jo appreciated, Kathleen said, “Unlike men when they get together to play, women rarely need a mediator.”

Jo could see the resemblance between sister and brother, both what she thought of as beautiful people. Kathleen, though, had the carriage and confidence of someone who had grown up with money—the easy poise, the natural ability to command, the chic French braid—while her brother had shaggy hair and wore faded jeans, work boots, and a sweat-stained white T-shirt under a torn chambray shirt, hanging open. His hands were brown, calloused and bleeding on one knuckle. He looked like a working man. Intrigued, Jo continued to watch their byplay as Kathleen told him with mock firmness that he could stay and eavesdrop, but not contribute—unless he wanted his name on their chore list.

Ryan chose to pull up a chair just outside the circle when the women sat back down at the table. He hovered behind Ginny and Emma, elbows resting on the backs of their chairs, his quiet murmurs eliciting giggles that Emma let peal and Ginny buried behind a hand.

Kathleen had grabbed a pen and spiral notebook, now open in front of her. “Well, let me say first that I’m really glad you’re both here.” She smiled warmly at first Helen and then Jo. “I think this is going to be fun.”

Jo had thought so, too, until she’d nearly chickened out before knocking on the front door. Despite her apprehension, she let herself believe that it really would be. Both girls still knew how to laugh. Whatever troubled them, they weren’t beyond hope. Sure, she hadn’t wanted to live with kids, but they weren’t hers. She’d probably see them only at meals—and apparently Emma wouldn’t be sitting down with them for hers, if she ate any at all.

“Now,” Kathleen continued, “I genuinely don’t want to be in charge. I hope we can agree on how we want to run the house, the levels of cleanliness and noise and privacy we all find acceptable. It’s one reason I chose both of you, women close to my own age. I thought we’d be likelier to enjoy the same music, have the same…well, standards, I guess.” She looked around. “I’ll start. I figured we should divvy up chores.”

They decided each would cook dinner two nights a week, with Sunday either a joint effort or an everyone-on-their-own day. Other meals, they’d take care of individually. The two who hadn’t cooked would clean the kitchen together after dinner.

“Unless Ryan invites himself,” his sister said dryly, “in which case he can clean up. By himself.”

“Hey!” he protested. “I’ve been known to bring pizza. Or Chinese takeout.”

“You should see his refrigerator at home,” Kathleen told the others. “Beer, cheese, mustard… Classic male on his own.”

The question, Jo decided, was why such a gorgeous man was on his own at all. He had to be in his early thirties. Guys with wicked smiles and tall powerful bodies like his had been snapped up long before his age. So…what was the catch?

Oblivious, thank goodness, to Jo’s speculation, Kathleen added, “And I hope everyone will clean up after themselves in the morning and after lunch?” The question was more of a tactfully phrased order.

Jo and Helen murmured assent.

Otherwise, they agreed that everyone would pitch in on Saturday mornings to clean house. Bedrooms would be sacred to their owners—knocks were mandatory, and a closed door should be interpreted as a desire for privacy.

Very conscious of Ryan Grant’s interested gaze, Jo said, “We should discuss our schedules as we know them, so we’re not all trying to use the bathroom at the same time. Fortunately, my first class isn’t until 9:00 this semester, but that may change.”

She’d made the decision to go back for a graduate degree in library and information science. She’d been lucky enough to have risen from page—her job while in high school—to clerk and finally branch manager in a San Mateo County public library. She loved books and libraries. What she hated was knowing that, although she had the same responsibilities as branch managers with master’s degrees, she didn’t get equal pay. And she wasn’t going to be offered any more promotions, or ever have the chance to rise to director. In fact, if she were to move, she would never be offered even a comparable job. Jo was too ambitious to settle for what she had.

Two years of penny-pinching, with full-time graduate school and part-time work, and she would be a degreed librarian. No more subtle condescension. Jo had every intention of ending up director of a major library system. The only drawback to moving away from the Bay Area was that she was farther from the only family she cared about: her brother Boyce, who lived in San Francisco, and her aunt Julia in L.A. But once she had her master’s degree, she could go back to California.

She’d worked until the last possible day. Today was Saturday; Monday she started classes.

In response to Jo’s suggestion, Helen said, “I start work at 9:00, too. Ginny’s bus picks her up at 8:25. I usually leave right after. I guess the three of us will be the ones fighting for the bathroom.”

Emma’s bus left at what seemed the crack of dawn. Apparently high school started obscenely early and let the kids out before two o’clock. Kathleen, too, left the house by 7:30.

“I’m looking for another job.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t seem to convince anyone that I have the skills when I haven’t held paying jobs. The fact that I’ve darn near run several charities doesn’t seem to impress anyone. Anyway, I’m going to check books out of the library so I can learn to use some other software packages.”

“I can’t do much but write a letter or send e-mail on a computer,” Helen admitted timidly.

Why wasn’t she surprised? Jo thought uncharitably, then was ashamed of herself. She had no idea what Helen Schaefer had been like before her husband died. Perhaps grief had changed her personality.

To make amends, Jo asked, “Where do you work, Helen?”

“At Nordstrom. Do you have Nordstrom stores in California? It’s an upscale department store. I’m in the children’s department.”

“So you work on commission?”

“Partly.” Her smile showed a shy prettiness Jo hadn’t suspected. “I’m actually pretty good at it.”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I do?”

Jo couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. What do you do?”

The smile that touched his eyes seemed to be for her alone. “I’m a contractor. We do remodeling. Mainly residential.” With a sidelong glance at Kathleen, he added, “I would love to work on this place, but my sister won’t let me.”

“I can’t afford you.”

A frown tightened his face, and Jo knew she was forgotten. An old argument was apparently resuming. “I’m not asking to be paid.”

“I know you’re not,” his sister said gently. “But I can manage. I’ll let you pitch in on a Saturday afternoon. I won’t let you send in your team and swallow the expenses.”

“Stubborn,” he grumbled.

Yes, but Jo had to admire her roommate for not accepting charity, even if it was from her brother.

“We’re all going to help,” she chimed in.

“Uh-huh.” He spared her a glance. “My sister can’t drive a nail. What about you?”

Jo knew that frustration at having his desire to help thwarted was behind his scoffing, but she hated it nonetheless.

Her chin rose a fraction and her eyes met his. “As a matter of fact, I can. I can use a table saw and change the oil in my car, too.”

A glint of something in those gray eyes briefly softened her irritation, but then he said in a hard voice, “Can you update the wiring? Tear up the roof and replace the shingles? Fix cracks in the foundation?”

No. She’d never done any of those things and was pretty sure she couldn’t—for one thing, she was scared of heights—but Jo was fired up enough to lie. She had her mouth open when Kathleen saved her.

“Don’t pick on Jo. I’m the one who said no. If the roof leaks this winter, I’ll save my pennies to replace it next summer. The bank okayed the mortgage, which must mean the appraiser didn’t see dangerous wiring. And of course the foundation is cracking! The house is eighty-plus years old. I don’t think it’s going to fall down any time soon.”

Emma’s head swiveled as she watched first her mom and then her uncle. Eyes already too big for her face were wide, and Jo wondered what she was thinking. Did an argument, however mild, frighten her? She seemed to like her uncle Ryan better than she did her mother, so perhaps she was hoping Mom would be bested. Or, heck, in a teenager’s self-centered way, maybe she just resented living in a shabby house when she could have a gorgeous, remodeled showplace to bring her friends home to.

If she had any friends. People didn’t just become anorexic without other problems, did they? Assuming that’s what was wrong with her.

Ryan abruptly shoved back his chair, lines carved deep in his forehead. “Well, since I’m not any use here, I think I’ll get home and let you women decide which room you’re going to paint first.”

Kathleen started to stand, too. “Ryan…”

“It’s okay.” His grin was resigned. “I wish you’d get it through your head that I can afford to take a hit for you and Emma, and I’d feel happier if you’d let me. But I guess stubbornness runs in this family.” He ruffled his niece’s hair. “See? It’s not your fault, kiddo. You inherited it.”

She smiled uncertainly up at him. Ryan kissed Emma’s forehead, gave his sister a passing hug, and let his gaze linger on Jo with a certain deliberation as he said, “Good night, all. Kathleen’s right. I’m always here, butting my nose in. Call me on it if I’m a nuisance.” With a last nod, he left. A moment later, they heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.

Kathleen laughed, the sound wry. “That’s my brother.”

And wouldn’t he make life here more interesting, Jo thought, more conscious in his absence than she’d been in his presence of the way he’d seemed to charge the room with energy. Oh, hell, be honest, she told herself: with the way she had responded to him.

What’s more—miracle of miracles—she had a feeling he’d been attracted to her, too.

Maybe she wouldn’t regret moving in here after all.

She cleared her throat. “I have a proposal. What do you say we show that brother of yours what we’re made of? Let’s tackle a job next weekend. Maybe the upstairs bathroom? Isn’t that one of the projects you had in mind, Kathleen?”

“But…plumbing…” Helen protested, in her soft, uncertain voice.

“We’re smart women.” Jo looked from one to the other. “I’ll find a how-to book. How hard can it be?”

Kathleen’s smile was the most genuine Jo had seen from her. “Those sound like famous last words. But you’re right. We can learn. I’m game. Helen, what do you say?”

“It might be fun,” Helen agreed tentatively.

“Emma?” Jo asked, when her mother didn’t.

The teenager shrugged with a hint of sullenness. “I don’t know how to do anything.”

“You can learn,” Jo said.

Her mother gave a decisive nod. “Then let’s go shopping tomorrow night. We can pick out a new vanity and sink and what-have-you together. Home Depot, here we come!”

CHAPTER TWO

“UH-OH,” JO WAS the first to say.

She knelt with one strip of the ancient, cracked linoleum in her gloved hands. Beside her, Kathleen gaped in horror at the rotting floorboards beneath where the toilet had been pulled up.

“What’s ‘uh-oh’?” Helen asked from the hall behind them. Ginny peered around her.

Hovering outside the bathroom door, Emma asked eagerly, “Did you do something bad?”

“Great. Wonderful,” Kathleen muttered.

“It’s okay.” Jo was already envisioning the work to be done. Way more than she’d signed up for, considering this wasn’t her house, but she wasn’t the quitting type. Besides, she wanted to take a shower again someday. With false confidence, she said, “We’ll tear the boards up and lay down plywood.”

“What if the beams underneath are rotting?”

Brutality was sometimes necessary. “We call your brother.”

Kathleen’s jaw hardened. “Then let’s pray,” she said, and began yanking up the linoleum again.

Jo couldn’t quite figure out why Kathleen was so determined not to accept Ryan’s help. Pride—sure. She’d been a dependent wife, now she wanted to show the world she could manage very nicely on her own, thank you. But her determination also struck Jo as a sort of competition—I can do it better than you can. A childish game. When you got right down to it, wasn’t it a little silly that three women who knew nothing about construction were refusing to let a willing contractor help gut the bathroom, just so they could prove…what? That they could do it, too? Could do it better?

Yeah, right, Jo thought with humorous derision. Do it? Maybe. Make a dozen mistakes? That, too.

“Well,” she decided, while Helen was carrying the tattered roll of linoleum out, “we’ll definitely need the circular saw. But let’s pry a few boards up and see how bad it is.”

The first board splintered—well, disintegrated was probably closer to the truth. Squished into pieces. But under it, the thick, rough-hewn beam looked solid. Jo pulled out nails and moved on to the next board. Somehow, as the only one with any know-how whatsoever, she was ending up doing most of the work. But she’d always enjoyed doing simple projects like building a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in her last condo. She’d been proud of the results. This was more than she’d bargained for when she had shrugged and said, “Sure, I don’t mind helping,” during that interview/visit this summer. But, heck, it wasn’t as if she had any friends with whom to spend a sunny Saturday, and she liked a challenge.

“It looks okay,” she announced, after the second board shattered with a soggy sound. “These boards weren’t rotted quite through.”

Kathleen sank back on her heels and sighed. “Thank God for small favors. Okay. Tell me what to buy, and I’ll go back to the lumberyard while you and Helen pull up the floor.”

Jo measured the dimensions of the bathroom floor. “Ask somebody what kind of plywood you should buy. Tell them we’re tiling on top of it. Oh, and what kind of nails. Get a circular saw…”

“But we already bought a saw,” Helen protested.

“That was a jigsaw. We can’t cut big pieces of plywood with it, not and make straight lines.”

“Oh.”

Kathleen was busy writing notes. “We’ll probably need the tools when we work on other projects anyway. We should have bought one in the first place.”

“The thing is,” Jo paused, the hammer suspended in her hand, “we really need to get a plumber.”

Kathleen looked dismayed. “A plumber? Why?”

Jo put it in simple language. “Something was leaking. I don’t know what.”

“But you know we’ll never get anyone out here on Saturday or Sunday. And that’ll leave us without a bathtub or shower, never mind a toilet upstairs, until next weekend at least, when we have time to tile.”

“Uncle Ryan could fix it,” Emma said. “If you’d let him.”

“He’ll promise to come and then not show up until tomorrow evening.” Kathleen sounded waspish.

Jo raised a brow, but didn’t comment on this assessment of Ryan Grant. Instead she pointed out, “Tomorrow evening would be better than Monday, when one of us would have to be home to let a plumber in.”

“That’s not true, anyway!” Emma’s face flushed red. “He always comes when he says he will!”

“You haven’t known him as long as I have,” her mother said crisply. “If he were more ambitious, he wouldn’t still be working with his own hands. He’d be running the business instead of driving nails.”

“He likes working on houses!” the teenager cried.

“If he wanted to be successful…”

Apparently he didn’t, at least to his sister’s standards. Maybe he didn’t like wearing a white shirt and tie and spending his day sending faxes and talking on a cell phone.

On the other hand, Jo amended, maybe he was one of those irresponsible jerks who’d rather go fishing on a nice day than show up to do the work he’d promised to. Just this summer, when she put her condo up for sale and needed to lay a new vinyl floor in the kitchen, the first two days she’d stayed home from work to let workmen in, they had neither come nor called.

Her interest in Kathleen’s brother waned. Not much for lazing around herself, she liked workaholics, not playboys.

Still…

“You’d better call him,” she advised.

Kathleen made a face. “Oh, all right.” As she backed into the hall, she explained, “Emma, it’s not that I don’t like Ryan…”

“You don’t!” the teenager cried. The venom in her voice startled Jo into swiveling in time to see bitterness transform the fifteen-year-old’s expression as she finished, “Maybe he has dirt under his fingernails sometimes, or he smells sweaty, or he doesn’t know what to wear to one of your parties, but he’s nice!”

Kathleen seemed frozen in shock. “I’ve never said…”

“You have!” her daughter flung at her. “I heard you and Dad! You were embarrassed by Uncle Ryan! Just like you’re embarrassed by me!”

With that, she turned and ran. Jo heard the uneven thud of her feet on the stairs, and then the slam of the front door.

None of the women moved for what seemed an eternity. Ginny had her face pressed into her mother’s side.

Kathleen finally gave an unconvincing laugh. “Teenagers!”

Helen smoothed her daughter’s hair. “I was awful when I was thirteen.”

“Me, too,” Jo admitted. “And when I was fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen…” Actually, she hadn’t quit rebelling until at eighteen she’d realized that her father didn’t even notice her snotty comebacks or sulky moods. She wasn’t upsetting him, she wasn’t even making a blip on his radar screen. That’s when she left home and never went back.

Looking unhappy, Kathleen left the room. A minute later, her voice floated up the stairs. “I left a message on Ryan’s voice mail.”

“Okay,” Jo called back.

Helen and Ginny made repeated trips up and down the stairs, carrying boards from which Jo was careful to remove all the nails. In her quiet way, the six-year-old seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d hold out her arms and wait for Jo to pile on a child-size load, then carefully turn and make her way out of the gutted bathroom. Sometimes she even went ahead of her mother, or reappeared before her.

Kathleen had been right, Jo had discovered: Ginny wasn’t any bother. Living with her was more like having a mouse in the house than a child. Tiny rustles marked her presence.

Once, when Ginny reappeared ahead of her mother and stood waiting patiently while Jo pried at a stubborn board, she felt compelled to make conversation.

“Your mom says you’re in first grade. How do you like it?”

“I like to read.”

“Really? Better than recess?” The hammer slipped and banged her knee. “Ow!”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yes!” Jo moderated her voice. “Not permanently. I just…whacked myself.”

“Oh.” Ginny cocked her head at the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.

“So, what do you do at recess?”

The solemn gaze returned to her. “I stay in if Teacher lets me.”

Jo sank back on her heels. “You stay in?” she asked incredulously. She could remember how much she’d longed to be outside, pumping herself so high on the swing that she momentarily became weightless, or skipping rope with friends to nonsensical songs that still had to be sung perfectly.

Ginny’s face showed no expression. “Kids make fun of me.”

Jo frowned. “Have you told the teacher? Or your mom?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Why not what?” Helen asked from the doorway, her voice dull, as if she had to force herself to ask. She often sounded that way. Jo wanted to shake her sometimes and say, Wake up! But what did she know about grief?

Knowing Helen wouldn’t care enough to be suspicious, Jo improvised quickly. “I asked why she isn’t wearing overalls and leather gloves and a tool belt, since she’s a carpenter now.”

A tiny smile flickered on the pale face, whether at Jo’s attempt at humor or because she’d kept Ginny’s confession confidential, Jo didn’t know.

“Heck, maybe we should get her one.” Helen gave a rare smile, too, her hand resting lightly on her daughter’s head. “She’ll grow up an expert on how to do all this stuff.” Her voice became heavier. “I don’t want Ginny ever to feel helpless, about anything.”

“Well, she’ll learn right along with us,” Jo said heartily. “Right, kid?”

Very still under her mother’s hand, Ginny said nothing.

Jo took a deep breath and pried again at the board. It groaned and squealed in protest. She braced her feet and used her full weight to wrench upward. It snapped free and she landed on her butt just as the doorbell rang.

“Jo! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She picked herself up. “You’d better go get that. It might be Kathleen with her hands full.”

She flipped the board over and hammered. The nail popped out, and she started on the next.

Should she tell Helen what Ginny had said about recess and the other kids taunting her? Or was that betraying a confidence?

Oh, damn! Why had the little mouse confided in her?

“You look like you’re pounding meat,” an amused male voice commented. “I think it’s already tender.”

Ryan. Of course.

Jo focused on the board, where a deep indentation showed that the hammer had more than pushed the nail out. “I was brooding,” she said, before oh-so-casually glancing up.

Damn, she thought again. He was gorgeous, even if he was a slacker.

A smile deepened creases in his cheeks and crinkled the skin beside his eyes. Today he wore jeans again and a gray T-shirt that bared nicely developed muscles in his upper arms.

He must have a girlfriend.

“About what?”

“Oh…” She thought fast. “Just about school. Nothing earth-shattering.”

“Speaking of which…” Ryan crouched beside her. “You must have a real problem for Kathleen to relent and call me.”

“I insisted.” Jo gestured with the hammer. “Behold the rot.”

He did, and grunted. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I can cut up sheets of plywood and replace the subfloor, but real plumbing is beyond me.”

He smelled good, she was disconcerted to realize. Or maybe she was disconcerted to have noticed. She caught a hint of sweat, aftershave and something else warm and male.

Jo scowled, but he didn’t notice. He was frowning, too, as he studied the exposed pipes.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” she asked.

He grunted again. “What isn’t? I’ve been telling Kathleen the pipes all need replacing. Look at the corrosion.”

Every pipe she could see was rusty and wet. “Can you replace them?”

The frown still furrowing his brows, he looked at her. “I can, but it’s going to be a big job.”

Her hand felt slick where it gripped the hammer. She had to tear her gaze from his thighs, as well-muscled as his arms, the denim tight over them.

Jo took a deep breath. “We don’t have a shower until we get this bathroom done.”

Oh, lord. Did she smell?

If so, he didn’t seem to mind. Forehead still creased, his expression no longer looked like a frown. He was studying her with disconcerting intentness, his eyes smoky, darkening…

A bumping sound gave away the presence of someone else. Ryan jerked and swung around. “Hummingbird!” he said, voice gentle and friendly, his smile so easy, Jo was sure she’d imagined the moment of peculiar tension. “You’re helping?”

“Yes, I am,” the little girl said solemnly, her big eyes taking in the two adults, her thoughts inscrutable.

Ryan rose with an athletic ease that Jo envied. She was beginning to feel as if her knees would creak and crack when she stood.

“Oh, dear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve been sitting here like a slug, not getting anything done. I don’t have another load for you yet.”

Helen stuck her head in. “Has Ryan figured out our problem yet?”

“Ryan figured it out before his sister made an offer on this house,” he said dryly. “She just didn’t want to hear it.”

“You didn’t think she should buy it?” Jo asked in surprise. “It’s a great house.”

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Given real estate prices in Seattle, what she paid was fair, too. She just didn’t want to recognize that the place was a bargain because it needed so much work. She figured she could get by with cosmetic fix-ups. A little paint, maybe eventually a new roof…” He shrugged. “It was built in 1922. The wiring hasn’t been updated since about 1950, and the plumbing needs to be completely replaced.”

He looked and sounded exasperated.

“If she can’t afford it…” Jo said tentatively.

Through gritted teeth, he answered, “She should let me do it.”

It was hard to engage in any kind of meaningful debate when you were squatting at a man’s feet, but Jo didn’t let that stop her. “Don’t you admire her independence?”

“Sure I do.” His mouth twisted. “But I’m not Ian. Her ex,” he added as an aside. “Why can’t her pride handle a little help from her brother?”

Helen’s face showed the same struggle Jo felt—sympathy for both points of view.

“How would you feel if Kathleen was trying to help you out financially?” Jo asked.

“I’d take the damn check, if my kids depended on it,” he said brusquely. Then he gave a faint laugh. “Sorry. It’s not your fault that Kathleen and I butt heads. I’m just glad that you apparently do have some construction skills.”

She felt an absurd glow of pleasure at the compliment. Some women wanted to be told that they were beautiful. She apparently reveled in being praised for competence.

Perhaps, she thought ruefully, because she wasn’t beautiful. Not like he was, or his sister. Pretty, maybe, if the beholder was generous. But she had not spent her life fighting off suitors.

At the sound of a car engine, she smiled as if he hadn’t both pleased her and stung her feminine vanity all at the same time.

“I do believe Kathleen’s home,” Jo said. “The two of you can go at it to your heart’s content.”

ALTHOUGH HE’D HAVE RATHER stayed and worked beside Jo Dubray, who was far too petite to be wielding a hammer so ably, Ryan went outside, argued briefly with his sister and headed home to get the supplies he needed to work on the bathroom.

He hated doing plumbing. Wood was his passion. He liked building and restoring equally. Rebuilding a curving banister in an old house, recreating the molding that would have framed tall windows in the 1890s, baring and polishing and laying hardwood floors, those he enjoyed.

But for his sister and Emma, he’d do anything. And why not? Now that his kids had moved a couple thousand miles away with their mother and her new husband, his weekends and evenings would be damn empty if it weren’t for Kathleen and Emma. What they hadn’t realized was that he needed them more than they needed him.

By the time he got back Jo had managed to remove the entire subfloor and replace parts of it with thick plywood. She’d left the plumbing and glimpses of the downstairs ceilings exposed. As he dropped his first load, he heard the distant sound of a saw, but didn’t see her.

Heading back downstairs for another load of PVC pipes, he grimaced. Damn it, he’d had better things in mind for this weekend. Indian summer, the end of September, the day glowed with golden warmth that had chased away the night’s chill. He’d intended to start with a run around Green Lake, then pick up the damn apples rotting on his lawn and finally mow it, he hoped for the last time this fall.

Well, hell. Maybe plumbing didn’t sound so bad after all. Especially not with an interesting woman popping into the bathroom to check on him. Maybe bringing him a can of soda, commiserating if he scraped a knuckle, admiring his muscles—he thought he’d caught her doing that already.

He’d wondered about his sister’s taste in roommates after meeting Helen Schaefer and her sad little girl. Pity and kindness had a place, but he figured Kathleen had enough to handle with Emma. Did she have to take on a befuddled, grieving woman and her painfully insecure child, too?

“Wait until you meet Jo,” Kathleen kept saying. “You’ll like her.”

Jo. The name sounded masculine enough that he’d pictured a man/woman, like the high school vice-principal who’d scared the crap out of every kid who’d ever considered pulling a prank, if not worse. Jo, he now realized, must be short for something feminine and French, like Josephine.

Five foot four or so, she wasn’t unusually short, but her bone structure was delicate. Ryan bet he could span her waist with his hands. Yet she crackled with energy and intelligence, making him wonder if she ever completely relaxed. Her big brown eyes, assessing and judging, were the farthest thing from pansy soft. Her hair, a deep, mahogany brown, was thick and straight and shiny, cut in a bob below her jawline. She had a habit he guessed was unconscious of shoving it back with impatience that seemed characteristic.

He didn’t mind that about her. In fact, Ryan preferred smart, strong women. Funny, considering his sister irritated the piss out of him. Nonetheless, when married he’d have rather his wife had slapped him than wept.

So how the hell had he ended up married to a woman who seeped tears more easily than he adjusted the angle of a saw cut?

Old news. Old failure. Mouth set, he dumped a load of pipes and fittings and started back for more. Why thinking about Jo Dubray and the sharp, interested way she looked at him had evolved into self-recrimination about an ended marriage, Ryan didn’t know. Couldn’t he imagine kissing a woman without relating it to his marriage? Damn it, maybe all he wanted was a lover!

He worked all day, taking a brief break for a sandwich. He had to cut a hole in the wall in the downstairs bathroom, which had Kathleen shrugging.

“We have to wallboard anyway.”

“This floor is probably rotting, too,” he said.

She stared at the toilet with the expression of someone who’d just seen a tarantula scuttling out of sight. Or someone who’d imagined herself sitting on a toilet when it plummeted through the rotten floor.

“I guess we could go ahead with this room, too,” she decided, deep reluctance in her voice. “Next weekend. If, um…” The words stuck in her throat. “If you can help.”

He grinned and slapped her on the back. “Didn’t think you could spit it out.”

“Ryan!” she warned.

Laughing, he said, “Yeah. I’ll be here Saturday morning.”

He didn’t see Jo again until he was ready for the new toilet upstairs. She’d already cut out the piece of plywood it would sit on, and he helped cut the hole around the flange. Together, they nailed it down, the rhythmic beat of their hammers somehow companionable.

“Are you planning to lay vinyl yourself?” he asked.

“Tile,” she told him. “It’s downstairs.”

“So I can’t install the toilet.”

“I guess not.”

“You know this job is going to take you days,” he said, frowning.

Jo nodded. “But we can take a bath—carefully—if you get the plumbing done.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. Okay.”

Crazy women, thinking they could gut a bathroom on Saturday and be washing and primping in it by Monday morning. Had any of them ever tiled before? Did they understand the necessity of letting the grout dry and then sealing it?

Jo did reappear a time or two during the afternoon, although her visits were strictly practical. He saw no sign she was lusting after his sweaty self. Maybe he’d imagined any spark of interest.

Maybe he should ask her to dinner and find out.

He’d have to think about that some, he decided. He’d dated a few times since his divorce, and hadn’t enjoyed any of the experiences.

When he was ready, they laid more plywood and then nailed up wallboard. Miraculously, by early evening he pronounced the bathroom ready for tiling and fixtures.

Admiring his work, Kathleen asked with unusual meekness, “Could you possibly help carry the tub upstairs before you go?”

He stared incredulously. “What, the three of you were planning to do it if I hadn’t happened to be around?”

She stiffened. “I thought we could bribe the teenage boy next door to help.”

“Is it cast iron? Do you know what the damn thing must weigh?”

She flushed. “We’re stronger than we look.”

“Are you?” He scowled at her. “And where is Emma? I haven’t seen her all day.”

His sister looked behind her and saw that they were alone. With a sigh, she admitted, “We had a fight. No, not a fight. She got mad. I can’t seem to do anything right.”

As irked as he was with her, Ryan wasn’t going to judge her parenting. He took the chance of laying an arm over her shoulders and giving his too-proud sister a quick hug. “You did one thing right. You left Ian.”

A stunning expression of sadness crossed her face. “Was it right?” she asked quietly. “Or am I kidding myself that he was the problem? It would appear that Emma doesn’t think so.”

“You and Emma have things to work out,” he said, feeling awkward. “But you have a chance now.”

“I don’t know where she is,” she said starkly. “It’s seven o’clock, and she’s been gone all day.”

“Have you called her friends?”

“Does she have any anymore?”

He didn’t know. He tried to be here, but knew it wasn’t enough. Emma chattered to him as if to fill Hummingbird’s silence, but what did she really say? Nothing of any substance. She never said, I understand why I’m starving myself to death.

He settled for, “She’ll be home.”

“Yes.” Kathleen gave a tiny, twisted smile. “Mostly she’s…civil. And almost a homebody. But this terrible anger flares sometimes, most of it directed at me.”

“You know,” he reminded her, “don’t forget that she’s a teenager. Sure she has an eating disorder, but that isn’t her. Seems to me fifteen-year-olds are famous for yelling at their parents.”

She half laughed. “That’s true, I’m afraid. And stalking out. It’s what she said….” She stopped abruptly.

Ryan stowed his hammer in his toolbox. “What was that?”

“Oh…nothing.” She shook her head and backed toward the door. “Just implying the usual. That I never think she’s good enough. Pretty funny, isn’t it, when she never thinks anything I do is adequate, either.”

He sensed that she was being evasive, but he never had gotten anywhere either cajoling his sister or battering down her defenses. Born two years after her, he was at a disadvantage. She’d forever be his tough, know-it-all big sister.

“All right, let’s get the tub,” he said instead.

Maneuvering the damn thing, still in its box, up those steep stairs and around the sharp corner at the top was a hell of a finish to the day. The only payoff, as far as Ryan was concerned, was catching glimpses of Jo’s curvy but compact ass, squeezed in tight jeans.

Everyone’s patience was eroding by the time they made it through the bathroom door and eased the tub to the raw plywood floor.

“I’m glad you were here.” Jo rubbed her shoulder. “We’d never have made it.”

“Tubs are heavy. I assumed you were having it delivered and carried up.”

“No, we’re the original do-it-yourselfers,” she said lightly.

His sister had fetched a knife to slice open the cardboard and cut off the wrappings. With more swearing, they heaved the white porcelain tub into place.

“Fixtures?” Ryan asked.

Kathleen produced the faucet, shower head and drain. “You could come back tomorrow,” she said tentatively.

“Nah, I’d rather finish.”

“Do you mind if I watch?” Jo asked.

“Not at all.” He gestured to the floor “Have a seat.”

She grinned at him and settled herself comfortably.

Downstairs, Ryan heard the front door open and close. He cocked his head, but caught no more than the murmur of voices.

“I hope that’s Emma.”

“She scares me,” Jo said unexpectedly. “I keep waiting for her to…”

He glanced at her. “Collapse?”

“Something like that. She’s so…frail.”

“Starving yourself can damage your heart and other internal organs. Her head knows that, but then she tries to eat, and that’s what scares her.”

A job as easy as installing a faucet required no thought. Wrench in hand, he automatically juggled tiny seals and baskets and sleeves.

Jo was watching him, but who knew how much she was taking in. Her forehead was creased. “It scares her more than the idea of dying?”

“Apparently.” He applied a bead of sealant.

“Does it have to do with the divorce?” Jo still sounded unusually hesitant.

He guessed she was used to forging ahead and found it unnatural to tiptoe. But she had the sense to know an issue like this was a minefield, waiting to blow up around her.

“The divorce had to do with Emma’s problems,” he corrected, looking for a wrench that he’d set down. It was just out of his reach, but Jo picked it up and laid it in his hand. Ryan continued, “Ian didn’t think she looked that bad. He didn’t want to be bothered with counseling. All she had to do was eat, he declared. He lost his temper one night and started shoving food down her throat. She was screaming and sobbing and almost choked to death. I guess Kathleen was beating at him, trying to get him off Emma.” He clenched his jaw. “Hell of a scene.”

“Poor Emma,” Jo said somberly.

“Kathleen said counseling or else. He chose ‘or else.’”

Her big brown eyes were pretty. They were a deep, near-black color, like espresso, surrounded by long, thick lashes.

“Thank you for telling me all this,” she said carefully. “I didn’t like to ask.”

“I figured.” He would have felt the same.

“She loves you.”

“She likes me.” He rotated his shoulders as he worked. “There’s nothing emotionally loaded about our relationship. I pretend she doesn’t have any problems. She thinks I’m fun.”

A smile flickered at the corners of Jo’s mouth. “Are you?”

Was he imagining things, or was she flirting with him? “Damn straight.” He grinned at her. “That’s me. A laugh a minute.”

Her smile went solemn again. “Your hummingbird seems to think so.”

“I like kids.” And missed his own with an ache that went bone-deep. Calls were no substitute for hugs and laughs and the chance to toss a football or lounge on the living room floor watching the expressions on his kids’ faces as much as the movies playing. Before he and Wendy had had children, he’d never imagined loving someone so much that he could do nothing for hours but drink in the sight of her face—his face, when Tyler came along after Melissa.

Jo shoved back her hair and said, “I’ve never been around them much.”

“Yeah? Well, here’s your big chance. Although Hummingbird is not standard issue.”

“I assumed that.”

Ryan groaned and got to his feet. “What say we turn on the water and see if it flows?”

“But what about…” She gestured at the pipes protruding from the wall where the vanity and sink would go.

“I’ve installed shutoffs for the toilet and sink.”

“Oh.” Her expression was longing. “You mean, I could take a bath tonight?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You’re a miracle worker!”

He basked in the radiance of her smile. Who wouldn’t enjoy a moment of pretending he was a hero?

Outside the bathroom, he discovered that Emma was indeed home, although closeted in her bedroom. He knocked and invited her to the ceremonial turning-on-of-the-water.

She climbed from the bed with the care of a brittle seventy-year-old. “Cool!” Her tone turned scathing. “And Mom said…” She stopped, bit her lip.

“Mom said what?”

Her face turned mulish. “Nothing.”

Mom had insulted him, he diagnosed, and Emma had realized belatedly that she might hurt him if she echoed Kathleen’s remarks. Appreciating his niece’s sensitivity, he didn’t push.

Water ran into the tub on command, a cascade that began dirty but turned clear quickly. He flipped the lever to test the shower, but ran it for only an instant so as not to get the wallboard wet.

“Ladies,” he pronounced to a full house, with even Ginny looking with apparent awe around her mother’s hip, “you have the power to get clean.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Kathleen announced.

Ryan took a minute to organize the rest of his tools and sweep bits of piping up. He liked a neat work site.

Jo found the bar of soap and they took turns washing their hands in the tub. Presumably by chance, he and she were the last, Emma having headed down the stairs as he was drying his hands.

“You were great today,” she said, her glance unexpectedly shy.

“You were, too.” He barely hesitated. “Kathleen implied that you were single. Is there any chance I could take you out to dinner sometime?”

She looked surprised. “Me?” Then she flushed. “I mean, I didn’t realize…” Finally she took a deep breath. “I thought maybe… But I’m not that…”

“Yeah, you are.” He let her see his appreciation as he admired the effect of pink staining her cheeks. “And I am.”

“Oh.” She gnawed on her lip, without any apparent awareness of how tempting that was. “Then, um… Yes.” She squared her shoulders and gave a little nod. “Yes, I’d like to have dinner with you.”

His triumph was disproportionate to the occasion, but his tone was easy. “Good. How about Monday night?”

“I can’t be out late,” she warned, “but…sure.”

He handed her the towel. “Then, what say we go have dinner now, in the romantic setting of my sister’s kitchen?”

CHAPTER THREE

JO STRETCHED and flipped shut her textbook, then the binder she’d had open beside it on the long, folding table she used to work. Her laptop was unopened, her printer silent. She didn’t need it for her cataloging class.

She had never been interested in cataloging, already knew her Dewey decimal numbers well enough to walk to almost any subject on the shelf in a public library, and had no interest in working in an academic library, which meant she’d forget the Library of Congress classifications as soon as the semester ended and she passed the final. But the course was required, so she was taking it.

She didn’t mind that it was time to change for her date with Ryan. Casual, he’d said, maybe pizza, but she had been grouting tile earlier, so she was dressed appropriately in a frayed sweatshirt and jeans.

Jo had worked a good ten hours Sunday, surprised that her best helper had turned out to be Helen. Helen was the one who’d told her what she knew about Ryan’s divorce.

At ten last night Jo’d said, “Gosh, you look tired. I’d like to finish around the tub, but if you want to go to bed…”

Weariness showing in dark circles under her eyes, Helen looked up and said simply, “Why? I can’t sleep anyway.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. You never said…”

Helen concentrated on splitting a tile in half and handed one piece to Jo. “The doctor thinks I should take sleeping pills, but they make me groggy. Besides, I don’t want to get addicted.”

No wonder she seemed dazed half the time! Jo realized in shock. Lack of sleep would do that to you.

Tentatively, she asked, “Do you miss your husband—Ben—the most at bedtime?”

Head bent, Helen shrugged. “No, it isn’t that. We hadn’t slept together in a long time. He had cancer, you know. It was…slow.” She gave a sound that might have been a laugh, as if the one small word was so utterly inadequate she could almost find humor in it. “It’s just that, when I go to bed, my mind starts to race. Don’t you find that?”

Jo nodded. “If I’m worried about something, or trying to make a decision, I can’t sleep either.”

“I think about Ben, or how scarred Ginny is by all this, or how I’ll manage financially—” She broke off with a small, choked sound.

Jo sneaked a look at her averted face. She never quite knew what to say in situations like this. Other women seemed to have a knack she didn’t. Her inclination was to fix problems, to offer practical advice, to charge ahead. In some ways, she had become aware, she had more in common with men than other women.

“Sometimes,” Helen continued drearily, “I’m not thinking at all. I just lie there, so tired. I think I’ve forgotten how to sleep.”

“But you must sleep!” Jo exclaimed. “Some, at least.”

“Oh, eventually. A few hours a night.” She scored a tile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on about it. It’s just that I’d rather have something useful to do anyway.”

Jo was actually a little irked at Kathleen, who after all did own the house and would be the only one of them to truly profit from their remodeling. She’d worked, of course, but off and on, with a distracted air. She and Emma had had another fight Sunday morning, one that had left Kathleen looking…older. She had to be thirty-five or thirty-six, but was such a beautiful woman Jo had never noticed lines on her face before. Sunday they had been there.

Even so, she didn’t have to be so eager to let Jo be in charge.

“I’m so glad you know what you’re doing!” she’d exclaimed several times, always right before vanishing for an hour or more.

It was especially irritating given that Jo didn’t know what she was doing, not in the sense of actually having done it before. She’d picked out a do-it-yourself book at Home Depot and was following the directions. Any competent person could have done the same. Helen had quietly taken over cutting tiles to fit, and she’d never done it before, either.

Kathleen, Jo was beginning to think, was a little bit of a princess.

Now Jo changed to a pair of chinos and a scarlet tank top with a matching three-quarter-sleeve sweater over it. She brushed her hair—what else could she do to it?—and added a pair of gold hoop earrings and a thin gold chain with tiny garnet beads. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she decided the result was…fine. She was the same old Jo, just cleaned up. What you saw was what you got. Her makeup was basic, eyeliner, a touch of mascara, lipstick.

Besides she refused to get very excited about this date, after learning that Ryan had two kids. She didn’t know any more about them except that they lived with his ex-wife. She hadn’t wanted to sound too curious, so Jo hadn’t asked about them. But if the kids were at his place half the time and he was constantly juggling dates because he had them, she wasn’t interested.

At a knock on her door, she said, “Come in.”

Emma opened it and slipped in. Closing the door behind her, she inspected Jo critically. “You look really nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Your stomach is so-o flat.” She came to stand beside Jo and look into the mirror, too. “Oh, yuck. I’m so fat.”

With shock, Jo said, “What?”

Their side-by-side images horrified her. The contrast was painful even though she had always been wiry. Emma was pale, her cheeks sunken, her hair dull, her limbs like sticks, while Jo felt almost obscenely healthy in comparison, with high color, shiny thick hair and noticeable muscles and curves despite her narrow hips.

“Look.” The teenager splayed her hands on her abdomen, covering the bony jut of her pelvis. “My stomach pooches.” She turned from side to side, making faces. “I’m eating too much. I know I am! I shouldn’t have had that Jell-O last night…”

Was she serious? “But you’re so thin! Too thin. Anyway, wasn’t the Jell-O sugarless?”

“But it was sweet.” Emma sat on the edge of the bed. “I shouldn’t eat dessert,” she said with finality.

Feeling as if she were arguing with the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, Jo tried anyway. “Emma, you’re so skinny, I’m afraid you’ll break! Why do you think you’re fat?”

“Oh, I guess I’m not really.” She shrugged. “Not now. But I was. You should have seen me two years ago. I was, like, pudge city. So now I’m just really careful, so I don’t gain any weight.”

If she weighed ninety pounds, Jo would have been astonished. “Boys don’t usually like skinny that much.”

“The other girls are so jealous!” the teenager said with pleasure, as if she hadn’t heard Jo or didn’t care what boys thought. “They’re, like, pigs. They can’t make themselves not eat pizza and ice cream and junk like that. They want to think everybody eats it, but then I don’t, so they know they’re lying to themselves.”

“Jealousy isn’t the best basis for friendship,” Jo said carefully.

Emma looked at her as if she were crazy. “I’m not going to be fat just to make them feel better.”

“You don’t have to be fat. Just don’t…” Jo had the sense not to say, Rub their noses in it.

Emma wasn’t listening anyway. “Uncle Ryan is here. Did I tell you?”

No. She hadn’t.

Jo grabbed her small purse and stuffed her wallet, a brush and lip balm in it. “You don’t mind that I’m going out with him?”

“No. You’re cool.”

Jo smiled over her shoulder as she reached for the knob. “Thank you. I’m touched.”

“Mom’s showing him the bathroom. She’s bragging, like she did all the work,” Emma added spitefully.

Jo hurried down the hall.

Ryan’s voice floated from the bathroom. “This tile looks great. I can’t believe how much you’ve gotten done.”

“We worked hard,” his sister said.

We? Jo’s temper sparked.

But Kathleen, seeing her, smiled graciously. “Jo is our expert. And Helen has become a whiz at cutting tile. She’s hardly broken any.”

The bathroom did look good, if Jo said so herself. Ryan did, too, but she tried to concentrate on the room, not his big, broad-shouldered presence or the slow smile he gave her.

They’d gone with a basic, glossy, four-inch-square tile in a warm rust. The grout was a shade lighter. The floor was still raw plywood; Jo was concentrating on getting the bathtub surround and the countertop done so the sink could be reinstalled. Wallpaper would be last, an old-fashioned flower print in rust and rose and pale green.

“I just did the grout this afternoon,” she said. “I guess I have to wait a couple of days to seal it.”

Ryan nodded absently. “I can put the sink in tomorrow evening if you’d like.”

“We’d like!” Kathleen exclaimed. “Now, if only we had a toilet upstairs…”

Feeling as if she’d just been criticized, Jo reddened. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have done that part of the floor…”

Kathleen laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t be silly. You’re a miracle worker. I’m just whining. I got up in the middle of the night last night and fell down the last three stairs. Ms. Graceful.”

Behind Jo, Emma laughed, the tone jeering and unkind.

Kathleen flinched.

“That’s not very nice,” Ryan said. “Laughing at your mother having hurt herself.”

“She was a cheerleader. And homecoming queen. You don’t think it’s funny that she fell down the stairs?”

“No. Any more than I’d think it was funny if you had.”

“But I do things like that all the time,” Emma said resentfully. “She never does.”

Rather than angry, Jo saw with interest, Kathleen looked stricken.

“I don’t cut myself with a table saw, either.” Ryan kept his voice calm. “Would it be funny if I did?”

His niece stared at him. Her voice rose. “That’s different! You know it is!”

He didn’t let her off the hook. “Why?”

Color staining her cheeks, Emma cried, “Because…because you don’t think you’re perfect!” With that, she whirled and ran down the hall. Her bedroom door slammed.

The adults stood in silence for a painfully long moment. Jo wanted to be anywhere else.

Ryan and Kathleen looked at each other. He had a troubled line between his brows, while her face looked pinched.

“She’s been impossible lately.” Hysteria threaded Kathleen’s voice.

“Like I said before, she’s a teenager.”

Trying to be unobtrusive, Jo edged back into the hall.

“You know it’s more than that.” Tears glittered in the other woman’s blue eyes.

Her brother squeezed her shoulder. “The therapist told you there weren’t any easy answers.”

“Yes, but I thought…” She pressed her lips together. “I hoped…”

“I know,” he said, in a low, quiet rumble.

Kathleen turned almost blindly to Jo. “I’m sorry we keep throwing these scenes. You must wonder about us.”

They were both looking at her now. She couldn’t go hide in her bedroom. “No,” she lied. “I…”

“She has an eating disorder.” Tears wet Kathleen’s cheeks. “I suppose you noticed.”

Jo nodded dumbly.

“I thought my husband was the problem.” For a moment her face contorted before she regained control. “It would seem I was wrong.”

“Emma’s the one with the problem,” Ryan reminded her, in that same deep, soothing way.

“Is she?” Kathleen wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her eyes had a blind look again. “Excuse me.” She brushed past Jo and a moment later her bedroom door shut with another note of finality.

This silence was uncomfortable, too. Both spoke at the same time.

Jo began, “If you’d rather not…”

“Makes you glad you live here, doesn’t it?” Ryan said at the same time.

They both laughed, in the embarrassed way of people who don’t really know each other.

“Yeah, I’d still like to go out.” He raised his brows. “If that’s what you were going to say?”

Jo nodded.

“I don’t think we can expect dinner here,” he said wryly.

Jo gave another, less self-conscious laugh. “Actually, it’s Helen’s night. Lucky for her and Ginny.”

His deep chuckle felt pleasantly like a brush of a calloused finger on the skin of her nape. Jo loved his voice.

“Let’s make our getaway,” he said, grasping her elbow and steering her toward the stairs. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“No.”

Masterful men usually irritated her. This one gave a wry smile and she crumpled. Ah, well. She hadn’t been charmed in too long.

She had to scramble to get up in the cab of his long-bed pickup truck. She’d noticed that weekend how spotlessly clean and shiny it was. The interior was as immaculate. Either he’d just bought it, or he loved his truck.

He’d be appalled if he saw the interior of her Honda, with fast-food wrappers spilling out of the garbage sack, books piled on the seats and dust on the dashboard. To her, a car was a convenience, no more, no less. You made sure it had oil changes so it would keep running, not because lavishing care on a heap of metal had any emotional return.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, starting the powerful engine.

She looked around pointedly. “That you’re a very tidy man.”

He shrugged. “I like everything in its place.”

Jo liked to be able to find things when she wanted them. Not the same.

“You and your sister.”

“She’s gotten better.” He sounded apologetic.

“I put away groceries. She rearranges them behind me. Alphabetically.” That had freaked Jo out. Who had time to care whether tomato soup sat to the right or left of cream of mushroom?

“She’s always been…compulsive.” The crease between his brows deepened again. “She and Ian had this showplace. Housecleaning staff. Kathleen made gourmet meals, entertained brilliantly, ran half a dozen charities with one hand tied behind her back. When she does something, it’s perfectly.”

His echo of Emma’s cry had to be deliberate.

“Was she always like that?”

He handled the huge pickup effortlessly on the narrow city streets, lined on each side with parked cars. Porch lights were coming on, although kids still rode skateboards on the sidewalks.

“Yes and no. Kathleen was a hard act to follow.” He glanced at Jo. “She’s two years older. Always straight A’s. The teachers beamed at mention of her, probably groaned once they knew me. She was…ambitious. Dad’s a welder at the shipyards, laid-off half the time, Mom was a waitress. Kathleen wanted better.”

Jo had begun to feel uncomfortable again. Did he think she was criticizing his sister, that he had to explain her?

“I like Kathleen,” she said, not sure if it was true, but feeling obligated.

They were heading south on Roosevelt, a busy one-way street, almost to the University district, which she had yet to explore at any length.

Ryan didn’t seem to read anything into her slightly prickly comment. “I like her, too. Most of the time. I admire her. Sometimes she bugs the hell out of me.”

He turned right a couple of blocks and into a parking lot across the street from a restaurant called Pagliacci’s. A big multiplex movie theater was next door.

“Eaten here?” he asked.

Jo shook her head. “I’ve grabbed lunch a couple of times at places farther down University. Thai or Mongolian.”

“Pagliacci’s has good pizza. For pasta, my favorite is Stella’s over by the Metro or Trattoria Mitchelli’s, down near Pioneer Square. Owned by the same people, I hear.”

“I love pizza,” she confessed. “I haven’t tried to find a good place yet in Seattle.”

As they waited on the sidewalk for a cluster of college students to exit, Ryan asked, “Why Seattle?”

“The UW has a great graduate program in librarianship. It’s supposed to be one of the best. That’s what I wanted.”

He gave her a teasing grin. “You sound like Kathleen.”

“I’m ambitious, too,” Jo admitted. “Just not…”

When she hesitated, he finished for her, “Compulsive?”

“Neat.” Jo laughed up at him as he held open the door for her. “Does that scare you?”

“Would I have to wade across your room?”

She let him steer her to the counter, his hand at her waist.

“Maybe,” she confessed, before slanting a sidelong look at him. “Assuming you had any reason to be walking across my bedroom.”

“You never know,” he murmured, head bent, his breath warm on her ear. “What do you want?”

You. Lord, how close she came to saying that out loud! She was especially embarrassed when she realized he’d effortlessly shifted gears from flirtation and was asking what kind of pizza she wanted to order.

“I like plain cheese, veggie or everything. You decide.”

“Veggie is good.” He bought a pitcher of beer and they found a table up a step toward the back, where the space was quieter, more intimate.

Talking to him was easy, listening easier yet. With that voice, he should have been a DJ. Jo had heard of couples having telephone sex during long separations, and never thought the idea had any appeal. With Ryan Grant, it might.

Assuming they got to sex in the first place.

She thought the chances were good they would. Unless it turned out he was hunting for wife number two to bear him two-point-five children.

In which case, alas, it wasn’t to be.

He talked about his business, the personalities among his crews, the irritations of dealing with homeowners who changed their minds every five minutes and couldn’t seem to remember to pay bills.

“But, hey,” he said finally, with a grin, “they let me play with their houses, so who am I to complain?”

Jo could just imagine how Kathleen would react to that attitude. “A man who has bills of his own to pay?” she suggested.

“There is that.” He was silent for a moment, hand cradling a mug of beer. “Why are you aiming to be a librarian?”

“Because I already am one.” She let out a huff of breath. “But without the graduate degree, I wasn’t paid like one, and couldn’t keep advancing.” She told him about starting as a page shelving books, about working nights as a clerk while getting her college degree, about stepping in as acting branch librarian. “Library budgets are always tight. Somehow they just let me stay. I did the job, they saved money. After a while, I resented that. And openings would come up that might have interested me—in outreach, or reference at headquarters, or the step above me, the librarian who oversaw branches—and I, of course, wasn’t eligible. I decided I could stew, or do something about it.”

“How long is the program?”

He listened in turn and encouraged her to talk about her classes, her need for a part-time job, and her decision to rent a room at his sister’s rather than look for an apartment on her own.

“Are you glad? Sorry?” he asked.

“Undecided,” Jo admitted. “They’re both nice women, but I hadn’t bargained for the kids, and I’m used to more privacy than I have now.”

His attention never wavered. “You didn’t have a roommate? Or a significant other?”

She shook her head. “I owned my own condo. I’m afraid the equity is financing my tuition.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Nobody serious.” She didn’t tell him “serious” wasn’t in her game plan. “You?”

Ryan shook his head in turn. “I’ve been divorced less than two years. Most of my spare time until a few months ago was spent with my kids.” A ripple of emotion passed through his eyes. “My ex remarried and this summer they moved to Denver.”

“Can she do that?”

“Regrettably, yeah.” He abruptly stood. “That’s us.”

Us? Jarred, she realized their pizza was ready.

Once they started dishing up and eating, Jo didn’t ask any more about his kids. Obviously, he missed them. But because they lived half a country away, she wouldn’t have to have anything to do with them. Thank God—she couldn’t see herself pretending to have great fun taking someone else’s children to the zoo or the water slides. Maybe this relationship had more promise than she’d feared.

As though tacitly agreeing to avoid subjects too personal, Ryan started in on local politics and the resultant taxes on a small business like his, grumbling about having to help pay for SafeCo Field for the Mariners. “Blowing up the damn King Dome.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it? Perfectly good stadium.”

“Aren’t you a baseball fan?”

“Yeah, sure I am.” He grinned. “I even like SafeCo Field. It’s cool that they can roll back the roof on a sunny day. But they just keep piling on the taxes, and I can’t afford it. I sure as hell don’t make any more money when the Mariners are successful.”

Corralling a long strand of cheese, she said, “No, I suppose not.”

“Hey.” He set down his beer mug. “Want to go to a Mariners game someday?”

Jo couldn’t help laughing. “I’d love to. Although, the Mariners… I don’t know. Maybe they’re an acquired taste. Now, me, I’m an Oakland A’s fan.”

He pretended shock, and they bandied mild insults along with a few stats.

Enjoying herself, Jo was also aware of feeling more self-conscious than she normally would on a casual date like this. It was Ryan, of course, who was responsible for her nervousness. Darn it, he was the sexiest man she’d seen in a long time—okay, forever. Excitement ran under her skin like an electric current, just a tingle that occasionally made her shiver. But she was disquieted by her powerful reaction to him.

Women did dumb things when they fell too hard for a man.

The pizza they hadn’t eaten grew cold on the table while they continued to talk. He was a reader, too, she discovered, and had even written poetry when he was in high school.

“Romantic, tragic crap,” he said with a laugh. His tone became smug. “Girls loved it, though.”

“I’ll bet they did,” Jo said with feeling. “My boyfriend in high school sometimes got really romantic and told me that making it with me was as good as hitting a homer. A real high, he said.”

Ryan threw his head back and gave a hearty laugh. “Did you punch him?”

“Yeah, actually, I think I did.” Jo chuckled, too. “I still remember the look of complete bewilderment on his face. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t clasping my hand to my heart to bestill its pitty-pats.”

Eyes still laughing, Ryan said, “Yeah, well, he’s probably long-married and his wife is damn lucky if once in a while he tells her she’s put on weight but she still has a good ass.”

Jo made a face. “If there’s any justice, she grabs his beer belly and tells him it doesn’t ripple like it used to, but she doesn’t mind love handles.”

“You think he has one?”

“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.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea….” Jo called after them, lengthening her steps to catch up.

But they had already turned up the narrow driveway, where they’d spotted a boy shooting baskets into a hoop that hung drunkenly above the garage door.

Bang! The garage door rattled when he missed, and Ginny jerked and tried to stop. Determined Emma hauled her onward.

“Hi!” she said.

The lanky boy, who had to be close to her age, turned at the sound of her voice. Dribbling the ball, he said, “Hi.” His gaze went to Jo, behind the girls. Warily, he asked, “Um…you looking for somebody?”

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