Here’s what critics had to say about Karen Templeton’s Loose Screws:

“…bustles with characters and surprises.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An inventive and consistently surprising plot as well as a smart and likable heroine set this romance apart from the pack.”

—Booklist

“…filled with lovable characters and their hilarious quirks…a fun book and a perfect beach read.”

—Romantic Times

“Well written, warm-hearted and funny…an example of Chick Lit at its best…reminiscent of Jennifer Crusie’s work, perhaps crossed with a bit of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum for good measure….”

—Susan Scribner, The Romance Reader

“Get ready to laugh until there are tears! Karen Templeton makes the move from series romance to chick lit with élan.”

—Judith Ripplemeyer, The Word on Romance

Dear Reader,

While I love a good edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller as much as the next person, I’ve long believed the most compelling stories are those found in everyday life—the day-to-day challenges of raising kids and dealing with family relationships; the way life forces us to grow in ways we never expected to; the breath-stealing awe of finding new love. To this end, I tend to write about people the average reader might know, or even be, characters no less exceptional simply because they do eight loads of laundry a week or worry about a learning disabled child or sometimes wonder how they’re going to make it to the next payday. These are people who find joy in the scent of a roasting turkey, the feel of a child in their arms, the satisfaction of knowing that beat-up old minivan in the driveway is theirs. And these are people no less worthy of finding true love simply because they’re “ordinary.”

This book, my first single title for Silhouette, is no exception. Since the story is set in my adopted hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, these people see what I see every day, shop where I shop, deal with many of the same issues I—and most of you—face every day. Yet for five months, as they revealed their fears and hopes and deepest desires to me, their quiet drama kept me on the edge of my seat. I pray they do the same for you.

Playing for Keeps
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-02531-7

PLAYING FOR KEEPS

© 2003 Karen Templeton

Published in Great Britain 2014

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ®are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2018-07-18

To everyone who hangs out in the AOL Books Community Writing Series Romance folder—thanks for seven years (and counting)of cheers and commiseration. (Not to mention answers to any off-the-wall question I can think up!) I love you guys.

And to Trish, Holly, Susan and Alice, for reassuring me the story made sense.

And to Gail—I’m holding you to that promise to edit my next three hundred books!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 1

If Joanna Swann had learned nothing else in her thirty-two years, it was that bad news rarely came à la carte. If one thing went wrong, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop. This phone call, however, had to make at least the thirty-fourth shoe to drop within the past few weeks, which was sorely taxing her good humor.

For a single bright, glistening moment, the temptation to leave her three children to fend for themselves and to take to her bed was nearly overwhelming. However she scraped together her last ounce of reserve and said, “Mr. Shaw—” she tried to place her relatively new neighbor, but all she was getting was a beer belly and a cowboy hat large enough to shelter a family of six “—how is that even possible? Chester doesn’t even come up to Glady’s knees. Let alone her—”

“I saw ’em with my own eyes! Right out here in my own goddamn backyard! Your goddamn dog got up on the top step of my goddamn back porch and got my bitch pregnant! We were just about to have her bred, too, and we were counting on that income! You have any idea how much a Great Dane puppy with papers brings?”

Her neck muscles cramped from cradling the cordless between her jaw and her shoulder as she tossed Bob the Builder fruit snacks into the boys’ lunch boxes. Joanna glared at the fur bag lying with his head on his paws, bushy white eyebrows twitching. Damn dog had been nothing but trouble from the moment her ex-husband had brought him home for the kids’ Christmas present, year before last. Without consulting her first, natch. And if the kids hadn’t been so attached to the mangy beast, he would’ve long since been history. His manners were atrocious, his libido embarrassingly healthy, and there hadn’t been a fence or wall invented he couldn’t dig out of. But Chester was purebred, so Bobby had said it didn’t make sense to get him fixed until they’d put him out to stud a few times, at least. Apparently, Chester had decided to take the initiative on his own.

Heaven help them, this was going be one butt-ugly batch of puppies.

“No, Mr. Shaw,” Joanna said, eyeing the clock and frowning—Bobby was late picking up the kids for school. Again. “I have no idea how much—”

“Six hundred bucks a pop, that’s how much! And Gladys always has at least ten pups! That means I’m out six thousand dollars, lady. So what’re you gonna do about it?”

“Me?” she squeaked, the sleep-deprivation fog lifting just enough for her to realize where this conversation was going. Glowering, she dumped out an inch of murky water from the bowl she’d left on the counter last night to catch the drip from the leaky roof. “You expect me to compensate you for an…an…accident?”

“Damn straight I expect you to compensate me! Wasn’t my dog that got out, it was yours! Your fault—you have to pay up. We can go to petty court if you like, but that’d only add court costs to what you already owe me. So I’ll be sending you a bill soon as Gladys delivers.”

Wham! went the receiver in her ear just as the father of her three children picked that inauspicious moment to drag his sorry hide through her back door.

“Next time you bring me an unneutered dog, Bobby Alvarez, make sure he knows how to use a condom!” And long as the gun was loaded, might as well get off another round. “And where the hell have you been? Kids!” she bellowed in the general direction of their rooms. “Your father’s here!”

“Whoa, babe, back up.” Bobby dug a blue-and-red-striped tie from the pocket of his top-of-the-line JCPenney sportsjacket, threading it through his shirt collar. “What’s this about the dog and condoms?”

Joanna pointed to Chester, whose eyebrows twitched some more.

“That…thing knocked up the neighbor’s Great Dane.”

Bobby stopped knotting his tie to grin at the dog. “Chester! My man!” He bent at the knees, extending one hand. “Give me five!” The dog hesitated, then belly-crawled to Bobby, eyeing Joanna warily as he shook hands with the only person in the room who currently didn’t wish to see him stuffed. Bobby did the praising thing, then sidled over to the coffeemaker. “This fresh?”

Fumbling to hook an earring one-handed into her left lobe, Joanna gulped down the cold remnants of her first cup of coffee, refusing to let the crooked, charming, you-wouldn’t-really-smack-somebody-this-cute-wouldja? look in those hot-fudge eyes get to her.

“Touch that coffee and die. And since you find your dog’s sexual escapades so amusing, then I guess it’s okay to send the bill to you.”

“Bill?”

“Yeah, bill. As in, for the loss of what would have been a purebred litter. For which the mother-to-be’s daddy is suing me. Us. Which is just what I need on top of the roof leaking. Again. And why the hell are you late?”

“How can you be mad at me for so many things in one breath?”

“A time-saving strategy fine-honed after nine years of marriage. Well?”

“Hey, I’m really sorry, babe. But Tori—”

“And don’t even try to blame this on your girlfriend—”

“Fiancée.”

Joanna reeled for a second or two as shoe number thirty-five bounced off her head. “Since when?”

Something almost like apology flickered in his eyes. “Last night. I mean, this probably isn’t the best time to spring this on you—”

“No, no…” Joanna inserted the second earring. “Now, later, whenever. Congratulations. I guess. Although that’s neither here nor there,” she added, scrambling to get back up on her high horse. “The whole point of my asking you to take the kids to school today was so I could get to my appointment on time…dammit, what are they doing?” Joanna tromped across the kitchen’s tiled floor, her curly hair boinging around her face and annoying the life out of her. “Dulcy! Matt! Ryder! Now!”

“Jo,” Bobby said behind her. “It’s been more than three years since we split up. Time at least one of us moved on.”

Joanna whirled around at the precise moment the dog decided to shuffle back across the kitchen floor. Right in front of her. She clutched the edge of the counter, sloshing coffee all over her left boob. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin and started rubbing at the spot, even though some small, tired part of her brain knew coffee and peach cotton did not mix. She glared at Bobby as her breast jiggled from the onslaught. “One word about wanting to help and you’re dead meat,” she said, then added, “As for your moving on…as I recall, you did that before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.”

“You’re still pissed about the dog, aren’t you?”

“The dog, the roof, your being late…take your pick. Oh, and Ryder’s teacher called. She wants us to come in for a conference.”

To give Bobby credit, concern flashed across his features. “I thought he was doing better this year.”

“Yeah, well, so did I. But apparently not. So believe me, your getting married again doesn’t even make the short list. But honestly, Bobby…” Joanna gave up on the rubbing and looked at her ex. “Can Tori even vote yet?”

“She’s twenty-one, for God’s sake. Besides, in some ways she’s older than I am—”

Which, Joanna thought uncharitably, wasn’t all that much of a stretch.

“—and she’s pregnant.”

At this rate Joanna could open a damn shoe store. “Well,” she said after a moment, “at least no one’s holding Chester accountable for that puppy.”

“That’s why I’m late,” Bobby said, ignoring her. “Tori was so sick this morning, she didn’t want me to leave.”

Oh, no. Uh-uh. Not that she didn’t genuinely feel badly for Bobby’s girlfriend, who clearly had no idea what she was getting herself into. But no way was Joanna about to let sympathy sully the righteous indignation she’d spent the past half hour polishing to a high gloss.

“You are totally out of your mind,” she said.

The corners of Bobby’s mouth pulled down. “Why do you say that? You know how much I love kids.”

“Yeah. I also know you barely make enough to support the ones you already have. Not to mention this problem you have with picking them up on time.”

“I told you—”

“I don’t just mean this morning. I mean…oh, never mind,” Joanna said as her daughter and twin sons finally came trooping into the kitchen, huge grins erupting on their faces when they saw their father. All three began chattering at once, even though they talked to their father every single night and spent every weekend with him. Joanna watched the interaction with an aching heart, thinking, as she had many, many times since the divorce, what a shame it was that the man was so pitifully clueless in every other aspect of his life but this.

He really did love his kids. Of that, she’d never had a single doubt. For that, she’d be eternally grateful. But their marriage had been built on the sands of impulse and boredom and infatuation; its collapse had been inevitable from their wedding day. That he seemed about to embark on the journey with someone new…

None of your business, Joanna. Let go.

So she kissed each of her dark-haired babies goodbye, slipping in an extra word of encouragement for Ryder who, thank goodness, wasn’t complaining about his stomach hurting this morning. The kids filed out the back door, Joanna barely noticing the sheet of paper on the counter in time to call Bobby back. He eyed it as if it was a snake coiled for attack. And rightfully so.

“What’s that?”

“Plumber’s bill. I already paid it, so you owe me half.”

His eyes twitched to hers. “I told you I’d fix that leak—”

“That was two weeks ago, Bobby. What was I supposed to do? Go without the second toilet until you ‘got around’ to fixing it?”

“It’s just things are kinda tight right now, y’know?”

“Oh, forget it!” Joanna snatched the bill out of his hand. “I don’t know why I bother trying to get you to do anything—”

“Dammit, Jo—there you go with the drama queen act again.” He stuck out his hand. “Give me the bill. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”

“And what about the roof? And taking care of Chester’s little indiscretion? And Mrs. Kellogg wants me to set up that appointment ASAP—”

“Jeez, Jo—why can’t we deal with one thing at a time?”

“Because life doesn’t hand me one thing at a time!”

He let out a heavy sigh, then gestured toward the bill again. “Give me the damn bill,” he said quietly. “I’ll call you later about the other stuff. I swear.”

She passed it back to him, even though she knew he’d put it somewhere and never look at it again.

“Da-ad!”

“I’m there, sweetheart,” he shouted to his daughter. He turned back to Jo, that damn smile spreading across olive-skinned features a little less sharply defined than they had been in his twenties despite the field of one-inch black spikes jutting from his scalp. Figured he’d manage to get younger-looking as time passed, while Jo was rapidly approaching hagdom. “You know, babe, you really gotta trust me a little more.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. And I don’t mean the calling me ‘babe’ part, although that’s not exactly winning you points, either.”

He shrugged off her comment, the gesture of a man determined to never let the turkeys—or anybody else—get him down. Then his eyes tangled with hers. “You know I wanted to have more kids. With you, I mean.”

This, she didn’t need. “Wasn’t in the cards, Bobby.”

“No. I guess not.” Then off he went, leaving Joanna to wonder if it was too early to start drinking. Oh, right. She didn’t drink. An unfortunate oversight on her part.

After a millisecond’s pang of empathy for Tori, she flew down the hall to her bedroom, stripping off the coffee-stained jersey dress as worries pelted her like sleet. Not that, in theory, Bobby’s news was a worry. Joanna hadn’t had a claim on his affections in years. He was free to marry whomever he liked and to have as many kids as he liked. But she knew Bobby and his Trust me, babe…it’ll work out, you’ll see. If he couldn’t handle his responsibilities to her and the kids when they were all still living under one roof, how the hell did he think he was going to add a new wife and child to the mix?

The man couldn’t take anything seriously if his life depended on it. Which ironically was exactly what had appealed to the twenty-year-old Joanna, exhausted from trying to live up to her parents’ expectations. She, however, had come to grips with reality. Bobby Alvarez’s view of “reality” began and ended with Survivor. Hence the divorce.

Hey. It was better than murder.

Now sporting a denim dress she prayed wouldn’t turn her into Melba toast when the cool early October morning gave way to the blistering hot October afternoon, she rammed a pair of silver combs into the chaos that was her hair and sailed back down the hall, ignoring the cyclonized kitchen as she zipped through into the converted garage that served as her workshop. She now had less than forty-five minutes to load up the van and get across town to the hotsytotsy gallery that had agreed to take a couple of her handmade Santa Clauses.

Not that she was thrilled about leaving them on consignment, something she hadn’t done since the early days when she’d been doing well to sell one or two at a craft show here and there. But the High Desert Gallery carried some of the most prestigious names in the Southwest art world. Placing her work there was a coup of no small proportion, well worth the commission she’d pay the gallery for any special orders that resulted. Her mother thought she was insane, looking to take on even more work when she could barely keep up with the orders she had. Yeah, well, Joanna thought, slinging her saddlebag up onto her left shoulder as she carefully lifted the sturdy shopping bag packed with a pair of Father Christmasses off her worktable, she’d given up sanity about the same time she’d stopped wearing panty hose.

She and the bulging bag forged through the small sea of cats who called her rambling Albuquerque North Valley adobe home. Some minutes later she was tearing across Paseo del Norte in the Blue Bomb when her cell phone rang.

Ever since some yahoo yakking on his cell had nearly creamed her after running a red light, Joanna had been none too keen about talking on the phone while driving. But—damn—a glance at the readout revealed her mother’s number.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Glynnie Swann’s voice chirped in her ear when she answered. “Why don’t you swing by and pick me up on your way to the gallery? There’s the most adorable new toy store right by there—Patty Kohler was telling me about it the other day—and since Barbara’s oldest just had another baby, I thought this would save me a trip.”

Why wasn’t her mother at work? Why couldn’t she go get Aunt Barb’s oldest’s baby a present by herself?

“I’m really running late, Mom—”

“I’ll be right in front, so you won’t even have to get out,” Glynnie said, and hung up.

And what had Joanna done in some previous life to merit her present torment?

The word railroading had been invented expressly for her mother, Joanna thought on a weary sigh as she headed into the chamisa and sagebrush-infested Sandia foothills and toward her parents’ new house, hidden so deep among the twisting, turning roads that Joanna managed to get lost every time she drove up here. The wind coming through her open window was making the curls tickle her face; she jabbed at the automatic button, only to realize that, once again, she’d missed a key turnoff.

Even as she realized that, for something that wasn’t supposed to be bothering her, she was sure thinking about Bobby’s news an awful lot. But why? It wasn’t as if she was jealous. And she certainly wasn’t envious.

Her mouth twisted. Okay, so maybe that part wasn’t exactly true, even if she of all people understood all too well the pitfalls of marriage. Such as waking up one morning and looking at the naked man snoring beside you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?

Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.

What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.

She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.

Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…

And…

Well, hell. That was it?

Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.

Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.

“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”

“So does this.”

“But, Jo—”

“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”

“But, honey—”

“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”

Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.

“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”

“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”

“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”

“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”

“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”

“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.

“Nice color,” Jo said.

“You really like it?”

“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”

Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re not off slaying dragons this morning?”

“Because, my dear, your brilliant mother brought a particularly nasty one to its heels yesterday.”

“You’re kidding? Hawthorne versus Northstar? You won?”

“My ego really appreciates your confidence in my abilities.”

“Sorry. But from what I’ve heard, the case was anything but a slam dunk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna caught her mother’s smug grin. “It wasn’t. Which made victory all the sweeter.” The grin widened. “Your father helped me celebrate.”

“With champagne and dinner?”

“That, too.”

Joanna’s already gloomy mood got gloomier. Her mother noticed.

“Okay. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing. Exactly.”

Her mother waited. Joanna sighed. There wasn’t a person alive who could withstand her mother’s let-them-crumble-on-their-own tactic.

“Okay, Bobby came to take the kids to school this morning.”

“No wonder you’re grouchy.”

“I am not grouchy. At least, not just because he came over,” she muttered in response to her mother’s raised brows. “Tori’s pregnant. So they’re getting married. Bobby and Tori.”

“Sounds like a dance team from Lawrence Welk,” her mother said, then added, “What is the child thinking?”

Joanna had to smile. Tori had been temping at her father’s Lexus dealership—as a means of putting herself through college—when Bobby met her. By all accounts, she was bright, focused and mature for her age. How on earth she’d fallen prey to Bobby’s charms was anybody’s guess. But then…

“Ohmigod…Tori’s practically the same age I was.”

Beside her, curls bobbed. “Wondered how long it was going to take for that to click in.” She sensed her mother’s eyes on her face. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. I think. But not because I have any feelings left for Bobby,” she hastily added.

After a moment her mother said, staring out the window, “You remember that blue Ellen Tracy suit I had, the one I gave away about five years ago?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I got rid of it because it no longer fit, for one thing. And I was bored with it, for another.” She turned to Joanna. “But damn if I wasn’t pissed when I saw some woman wearing it a few months later.”

Joanna chuckled. “I get your point. But that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

And without warning, Joanna’s mouth fell open and half of what she’d been thinking that morning flew out. Including, amazingly enough, a lot of the stuff about missing sex.

“Hell,” her mother said, “If it was me, I’d be in the loony bin by now.”

“I could have gone all morning without knowing that.”

“And for somebody so determined to ‘do her own thing’ or whatever they call it these days, you’re the biggest prude I know.”

“That’s not true!”

“Is, too. Honey, Bobby’s moved on. He’s started another family, scary as that thought is. The feelings you’re having are perfectly normal. You need to get out there, go find a man, get—”

“—a life, I know, I know.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Joanna grimaced. “You’re saying I should throw myself back into the dating pool?”

“Ding, ding, ding! And a point to the beautiful woman on my left.”

“Beautiful, my ass.”

“Well, that’s probably pretty nice, too, but I haven’t seen that since you were ten.”

Joanna ignored her. “Right. One slightly worn, slightly droopy, recycled singleton seeks the company—”

Her mother grunted.

“—of a breathing male with a reasonable understanding of personal hygiene, most of his own teeth and at least a moderate grasp on reality.”

“See, that’s your problem. You’re too picky.”

In spite of herself, Joanna laughed as they pulled into the parking lot in front of the gallery. “I suppose the part about having most of his teeth was pushing it.”

“Better they need dentures than Viagra.”

Thinking, Hmm, Joanna parked the car and got out, retrieving the Santas from the back. When she straightened, blowing her hair out of her face, she noticed her mother frowning at her dress.

“What?”

“Somebody needs to go shopping. Bad.”

“Hey. This is New Mexico,” Joanna said. “Denim is always in style.”

Glynnie came as close as she ever did to rolling her eyes.

Dale McConnaughy happened to look out the store window right as the two women got out of the dusty, suburban-blue minivan and just in time to see an explosion of red curls catch fire in the morning sun. The women disappeared inside the art gallery next door, however, before he had a chance to get past the initial Shee-it. Which was just as well, since he had more pressing things to tend to than gawk at a bunch of obviously fake hair. Wonder how much she’d forked over to get that look?

“Excuse me? How much is this? Colton! No! Don’t touch!”

Dale turned to a shell-shocked woman, a newborn strapped to her chest, clutching the handlebar of an SUV-size stroller that had been crammed to the gills with toddlers when she’d arrived a couple minutes ago. Well, only two, actually; one about three and another one maybe a year younger. The older kid, a boy, had immediately screamed to get out, and was now tearing up and down the aisles in a crazed euphoria while his mother shrieked, “Don’t touch!” every thirty seconds or so. Well, hell—let a three-year-old loose in a toy store, what did she think was gonna happen?

“It’s okay, ma’am, it’s not like he can hurt anything—”

Something crashed.

“—too badly,” he finished, as the mother wailed, “Oh, Colton…”

Dale peered over her head, refusing to frown. “It’s just a display of model cars. Uh, son? How about you come over here and play with these puppets? Or the wooden train set—”

“No!”

“—or maybe you’d like to go on outside to the Jump?”

Obviously intrigued, the child ceased his Godzilla impersonation long enough to say, “The Jump?”

His mother, her voice tinged equally with hope and desperation, said, “Oh, he loves to jump.”

“Me, too,” Dale said, ignoring the mother’s quizzical expression as he led the child through the store and on out back where Dale’d set up several wooden swing sets inside the fenced-in area, as well as an enclosed, inflated castle-shaped Moon Jump probably bigger than the kid’s bedroom.

“Cool!” the kid said, and he was off like a shot.

“Is it safe?” his mother said, jiggling the baby who’d just awakened and was making squeaky, fussy sounds. From her stroller, the other toddler let out a single, ear-piercing shriek, just for the hell of it.

“Oh, yeah. And tell you what, ten minutes in that puppy and you won’t here a peep out of him the rest of the morning.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” she said, then asked Dale again for the price of the toy. No sooner had she done so, however, than both babies started to howl in uncomplimentary keys. Judging from the look on Mama’s face, she wasn’t far from that stage herself. Unperturbed—it took a lot more than a couple of bawling kids to shake him up—Dale grabbed a hat out of a box by the counter, a new product he’d been in the process of marking when she’d come in, and plopped it on his head. Then he squatted in front of the older baby.

“Hey, Little Bit,” Dale said softly, reaching up to press the button in the back of his hat. “Get a load of this!”

Tears spiking her lashes, both the baby’s mouth and her big blue eyes popped wide open as she stared at the hat.

Then a soft chortle popped out of her mouth. Then another one, and another, until the store reverberated with the sounds of baby belly laugh. Dale chuckled right back as a pair of pudgy hands shot up toward the hat.

“Mine!”

“I want one, too,” the boy said, staggering back toward them, out of breath and flushed. The littlest one was still squawking her head off, but Dale figured two out of three was pretty good.

Mama apparently thought so, too. She plunked down the educational game she’d been holding and practically twisted herself inside out to get her wallet out of her purse. “I’ll take two of those hats.”

“Don’t you want to know how much they are?”

“Ask me if I care.”

Dale slid behind the counter, grabbed a second hat from the box and took the woman’s charge card just as the two gals he’d seen before barged through the door in a flurry of obvious agitation. At least on the younger one’s part. In fact, that hair of hers seemed to fairly vibrate around her face.

He reminded himself he had customers to tend to, even as he quickly processed how that sack of a dress seemed to swallow up the redhead’s little body. And this could be a long shot, but he was guessing that big shopping bag in her hand had something to do with the severely annoyed look on her face.

“It’s not the end of the world, Jo,” the older woman was saying, the softness of her tone at odds with her I-am-somebody attire. “You said yourself it wasn’t a sure thing.”

“Before I showed them the samples. Not after.” Red glared down at the bag as if she wanted to smack it. Then she glanced around the store, huffed out a sigh and said to the other woman, “Look, you’re the one who needs to shop. Why don’t I just go back out to the car and wait for you?”

No, somebody shouted inside Dale’s head just as the older woman—Red’s mother, maybe?—grabbed her by the arm and pulled her farther into the store. Bless you, the somebody said as Dale went through the here-you-go-have-a-nice-day-now motions associated with sending the mother and her kids on their way. “No,” the blonde was saying. “You need to get something for this baby, too.”

Now that Dale was able to devote his entire attention to the drama unfolding before him, he could see the resemblance between the two women. They were both on the short side, kinda soft and bony at the same time, the way short women sometimes were, with similarly pointed chins and straight noses that curved up, right on the very tips. The older one seemed the type almost obsessed with her appearance in a classy, conservative kind of way, while the younger one—who Dale could now see wasn’t all that young, maybe a few years behind him—looked like one of those women who threw on the first thing that came to hand.

“I’m sure the baby’s nose won’t be out of joint if you pick something out for me,” she was saying. “I haven’t even seen Aunt Barb in—what?—ten years.”

“Twelve, but that’s not the point. Oh, would you look at that adorable stuffed frog—”

“You look at the stuffed frog. I’m outta here.”

But as she turned to leave, her mother once again grabbed for her. Only instead of getting her daughter’s arm, she got one of the bag handles. The paper was no match for two equally determined women pulling in opposite directions, and the bag split in two, dumping out a pair of what looked like very fancy dolls or something on the floor. On a disgusted sigh—and what Dale surmised was a very unladylike cussword under her breath—Red squatted down to retrieve them, her hair billowing out around her shoulders. A silver comb popped loose and skipped across the floor to where he was standing.

Dale scooped up the comb and made his way over—not too fast—to help her, getting just close enough to notice her ringless left hand, to catch a whiff of her sweet, natural scent.

“Here, ma’am…let me get that—”

“It’s okay, I’m fine…” She glanced up, those crazy curls quivering around her face like they were alive, and something about her—he had no idea what—just grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Except her gaze—clear and green, like pale jade—zipped right past his eyes and on up to the top of his head as a startled shriek of laughter fell out of her mouth.

Which was when Dale remembered the stuffed hamster in the hula outfit, perched on top of his head, shaking its booty like there was no tomorrow.

Chapter 2

The laughter had roared up from inside Joanna like floodwaters breaching a dam. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to staunch it, even though her sides were killing her and she was perilously close to wetting her pants. Then she caught her mother’s and this stranger’s flummoxed expressions and collapsed cross-legged onto the floor, her howls now punctuated with the occasional snort.

An instant later she was sobbing.

Oh, Lord, just take me now, Joanna thought, vaguely aware of her mother’s pleas to get hold of herself, for God’s sake, before somebody else came into the store, and of the man’s apparent decision to flee.

And Joanna tried, she really did. But no dice. Between Bobby’s news and the gallery owner changing her mind and the generally crappy state of her life, she must have been more fried than she’d thought if all it took to send her over the edge was a gyrating rodent in a grass skirt.

She started laughing all over again.

Eventually the storm passed, both the sobs and the laughter subsided, and a paper cup filled with water appeared in front of her.

“Here,” crooned a whisky-smooth, Southern-accented baritone beside her. She glanced up into a pair of eyes so blue and cool and clean she got shivers. Except then she remembered the way her face swelled up when she cried and she ducked her head, for once in her life grateful for her curtain of hair. She took the proffered cup and gulped the water in three swallows, thinking all she needed now was to choke.

“You okay now?”

“I…yeah. I th-think so.” Joanna scrambled to her feet, dusting off her backside before digging a tissue out of her handbag, which gave her a convenient excuse for avoiding the man’s gaze as he rose with her. “I’m so sorry—” She blew loudly into the tissue, figuring at this point a little honking was hardly going to hurt her image. “It’s just—”

“No need to explain, ma’am. Sounded to me like you needed to get that out of your system. Here—you dropped this.”

Joanna glanced down to see her comb gleaming in the palm of his hand. A nice hand. Strong-looking. Graceful fingers, for a man.

She was an artist. She was supposed to notice these things.

She was also supposed to remember she had a mother. Somewhere.

“The lady who came in with you’s over in the back of the store, having a look-see,” he said, as if reading her mind.

“That’s no lady,” she said, blowing her nose again. “That’s my mother. Who’s not real comfortable around melt…downs…”

Joanna had turned toward the back of the store and was now struck dumb at the child’s wonderland before her eyes. Somehow wedged in among shelves of toys that reached clear to the ceiling of the tiny shop were any number of hands-on play areas—low tables overflowing with building sets and construction toys and tiny dishes set up for an impromptu tea party; an open closet burgeoning with flashes of shiny fabrics, feathers, jewels, shoes, hats; bins of stuffed animals and puppets, and easels and paints, and rocking horses and miniature drum sets and lions and tigers and bears.

Oh, my.

A chuckle, soft and sexy, winnowed through her entrancement and finally pulled her gaze to his. The hamster chapeau was gone, but now her attention glommed onto a grin blooming across a pleasant—very pleasant—face. Lean. Tanned. Just asymmetrical enough to be interesting but not worrisome, couple of dimples, a strong jaw. Laugh lines. A face that had ripened and sharpened well with age, even if she could have done without the surfer dude hairstyle—a little too blond, a little too long. Still, way down low, she felt a tiny prickle of something that definitely was worrisome. Like not knowing you were hungry until you smelled the French fries.

Still grinning down at her, he slid his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “Actually, for a while there, it sounded like you were having a high old time. And I bet you feel a lot better now, don’t you?”

“Other than the residual mortification?”

He shrugged underneath a bright red T-shirt with a glittering Playing For Keeps emblazoned across the front. “Didn’t bother me any. Why should it you?” While Joanna stood there trying to think of a witty comeback, he retrieved the Santas, then glanced up, his eyes touching hers just long enough to set off a zing. A tiny one, nothing major. Along the lines of what you might get when you test a battery to see if it’s still alive.

Well, hell. Where were the Pheromone Alert! signs?

“You make these?”

“What? Oh. Yes.” Joanna stepped back, mentally shaking off all those pheromones clinging to her like burrs. “Clarence. And Stanley.” At his questioning expression, she added, “Each one is unique. Well, I recycle the clothing patterns, but each face is carved freehand so no two are alike….”

She’d never been attracted to total strangers, no matter how appealing their laugh lines were. So it had to be her apparently fragile emotional state causing this current brain blip. Still, as she watched him take in Clarence’s chubby, dimpled face, his curly white hair and beard, watched him finger the Santa’s velvet robe decorated with dozens of pearl buttons and miniature metallic braid, she had to admit something about the man was making her blood…hum.

How totally bizarre.

The blue eyes met hers, clearly impressed. And clearly—whoa—interested. “You’re good.” Then he grinned in that way men do—or at least did back in the Dark Ages when she’d last dated—that sets off alarms.

“Is that a come-on?”

Which she wouldn’t have said it if hadn’t been for that Dark Ages business.

However his expression didn’t change one iota. Well, except for the merest hitch of one eyebrow. “You want it to be?”

“No.” She was almost positive she meant it, too.

“Then it isn’t. And even if it was, that’s got nothing to do with the fact that I think you’re one helluva talented lady.”

Okay, so that won the guy a point. Or two. “Thanks.”

Still holding Clarence, he seemed to hesitate a moment, then offered his hand. “Name’s Dale McConnaughy. The store’s mine.”

His handshake was the kind to make her really question that no of a second ago. Almost. “Joanna Swann.”

“You were trying to sell these next door?” Dale went on, now appraising Stanley, a Santa in denim overalls and a red-and-green-plaid workshirt. Striped stockings ended in open-backed bedroom slippers on his feet; through a minuscule pair of wire-rimmed glasses, he frowned down at a tiny teddy bear in his hands.

“More or less. They’d said they’d take two on consignment.” Joanna stuffed her hands into the pockets on the front of her dress. “Then this morning the owner said she didn’t have room.”

“I’ll take them.”

“What?”

“I’ll take them,” he repeated. “I mean, I’ll buy them from you.”

She frowned. “Look, just because I broke down—”

“I don’t want them because I feel sorry for you, okay? I want ’em because you do freakin’ unbelievable work and because I’ve got customers who’d go nuts for something like this. So what’s your price?”

Well, hmm. Certainly a change from Ms. Hoity-Toity-we-don’t-really-have-much-call-for-crafts next door. However…

“Oh, that’s really nice of you, but, see, I don’t really have a wholesale price. Because I put so much work into them? I mean, the gallery would’ve taken a percentage, but—”

“How. Much.”

She felt her skin warm. “Three hundred. Each. Including stands.”

The little boy sparkle reasserted itself in his eyes. “Thank you. And you say no two are alike? Can you get me more?”

Joanna waited out the short surge of dizziness, then said, “Uh…yeah. Although I’m pretty booked up between now and Christmas with special orders—”

“You think you could do six more by Thanksgiving? I’ll prepay,” he said when she hesitated.

Was this guy totally off his nut or what? If this was how he ran his business, he’d be bankrupt within the year. “Yes, I could probably fit in another half dozen by Thanksgiving. But—”

“Good.” He vanished into the back for a moment, returning with a large business-size checkbook, which he slapped open on the counter. “That was three hundred each, you said?”

“Um…Mr. McConnaughy?” Without moving his head, his eyes angled to hers. “These aren’t toys, you know,” she said.

“Yeah. I know. So?”

“So…this is a toy store?”

On a chuckle, he straightened, his arms folded across his chest. For some reason Joanna’s gaze was drawn to the top of his left hand, to the patch of oddly smooth skin set in the midst of the sprinkling of light brown hair.

“You may be talented as all get-out, Ms. Swann, but your salesmanship sucks.” Her attention zipped back to his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into someone more determined to shoot herself in the foot before.”

“It’s not that. It’s just—”

“—that these aren’t meant for children, so why the hell am I buyin’ them for a toy store?”

“Well, yes. There are a lot of small pieces on these a child could choke on. These are meant to be displayed, not played with.”

The right side of his mouth hitched up. “I kinda figured that out.”

“You…oh.”

“Uh-huh. But then, how would you know more’n half my customers are adults comin’ in to buy things for themselves?” He finished writing the check, ripped it out and handed it over to her, with instructions to get him an invoice whenever it was convenient. Then he capped his pen, tossing it back onto the cash register. “A person doesn’t have to be a kid to still get a kick out of playing. And collecting’s something anybody can do. Cars, dolls, model trains…” He picked up Clarence. “Santas.” He grinned down at the doll, then back at her. “Looking at this guy just makes you feel good inside, doesn’t it? Like I want to laugh right out loud.” He looked at her, something like wistfulness softening his features, making her insides jump. “Sometimes grown-ups need a little poke to make ’em remember what it was like to be a kid, when it was okay to believe in magic. And that’s something most folks can’t put a price on.”

Joanna stared at the check, shaking her head. “Even if they can get them for a fraction of the price at Costco or Sam’s.”

“There you go again. Tryin’ to talk me out of this.”

“But by the time you take your markup…I’m sorry. It’s about this practical streak I have.”

“Which you put aside to make these, I take it.”

“No,” she said, her brow puckering. “This is a business. My livelihood. I can’t afford not to be practical…why are you laughing now?”

“Would you listen to yourself? I can’t think of many things more impractical than making dolls that sell for three hundred bucks a pop.”

“Which is why I don’t sell too many of them. I mean, I’ll never get rich from these.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because…they feed something inside me.”

“Then trust me…they’ll feed something inside everyone who buys one, too. Something none of that mass produced stuff can ever do. Sure, most folks are perfectly content buying what they’re gonna see in half their neighbor’s living rooms. But you and I know that’s not enough for everybody.” He leaned his hands on the edge of the counter, hooking her gaze in his. “Not for the fools who have the nerve to try to compete with Toys “R” Us and Target and K mart, or the ones who spend hours making a single doll instead of holding down a regular job in some office with a guaranteed paycheck and a dental plan. Or for the ones who pay five, ten, a hundred times more for something than they have to, just for the satisfaction of having something that nobody else does…”

“Joanna! Come here!”

She jumped, tearing her eyes away from the crazy man and toward her mother, who was beckoning her to the back of the store. Joanna wended her way through the narrow aisles to look outside at a display of wooden play forts with attached swing sets, each one bigger and badder than the next and more expensive.

“Wouldn’t the boys love one of those for their birthday?”

“Right. Honestly, Mom—I paid less than that for my first car.”

But her mother, hanging on to the stuffed frog she’d apparently decided on for the new baby, had already turned to Dale, who’d followed Joanna. “My twin grandsons’ eighth birthday is two weeks from today—can you have one of these delivered by then?”

“I can’t let you spend that much on the boys—!”

Glynnie quelled her with a don’t-be-rude look as Dale assured her that was no problem. Then another customer arrived and, with a “Be right back, ladies,” Dale took off. Glynnie smacked Jo lightly in the arm.

“For God’s sake, Joanna. It’s just money. Loosen up.”

“Been down that road already, Mother. I’m perfectly happy being my tight little self again.”

“Happy? Hell, you haven’t been happy in years.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Is not.”

“Is, too.” Glynnie glanced over, presumably to make sure they couldn’t be heard, then lowered her voice anyway. “I saw him making goo-goo eyes at you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Joanna whispered back.

“Don’t tell me what I didn’t see, young lady. I could feel the buzzing from clear on the other side of the store.”

“That’s because you forgot to take your Prozac this morning.”

“Joanna Swann! You know full well I haven’t touched that stuff in years. And anyway, that has nothing to do with the fact that your flirting skills could use a major tune-up. And here’s a perfectly good learning tool, tossed right in your path. So what could it hurt to practice?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s a total stranger? Because for all I know he’s married? Because—” this had just come to her “—I haven’t got the time or energy right now to start from scratch?”

“Honey, if you’re waiting until they bring out the heat ’n’ serve variety, you’re outta luck.”

“Mother. Even discounting his questionable marital status or the fact that I’ve known him for, oh, five minutes, the man is nuts.”

“Why do you say that?”

Joanna showed her the check. Glynnie’s eyes shot to Joanna’s. “And this is for…?”

“Eight Santas.”

“Oh?” Glynnie frowned. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. What kind of crazy person gives a total stranger a check for twenty-four hundred dollars, with no paperwork, nothing, no assurances that I’ll even deliver? The man is not well. Or at least, not fiscally responsible.”

“Okay, maybe you have a point,” Glynnie said, her attention straying to Dale, helping the man who’d come in to pick out a computer learning game. “But come on, admit it…when was the last time you saw somebody that cute?”

“This morning,” Joanna said. Glynnie looked at her. “Your grandchildren’s father? Dark hair, dark eyes, charming smile? Totally clueless—”

“Okay, ladies, I’m back,” Dale said, making them both jump. “Now, which one of these would you like? I’ve got ’em all in stock.”

“That one,” Glynnie said before Jo could protest again, naturally pointing to the largest one in the batch. She whipped out her AmEx and smacked it down on the counter, dumping the hapless frog beside it. “And you said you can deliver it in time for their birthday?”

“Sure thing. If you’ll just fill this out—” he handed her a clipboard with a form of some kind on it “—we can get it all set up for you.” While her mother did as he asked, he turned his attention to Joanna. “So. You’ve got kids?”

Was it her, or did she detect just the slightest edge to that question? “Three,” she said. “The boys and an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

Before Joanna could answer, Glynnie said, “Oh, it’s not so bad.” She handed him back the clipboard. “They’re with their father every weekend. Are you married, Mr. McConnaughy?”

Dale dropped the clipboard, which clattered to the counter, while Joanna fumbled for her brain before it landed on the floor and rolled away. When he looked up, Joanna pointed to her mother behind her back, then mimed hanging herself.

Then he did this slow, lazy grinning thing, and Joanna felt her blood heat up a degree or two. “Why?” he said to her mother. “You fixin’ to ask me out?”

Nice save, she thought as her mother—or the alien that looked like her mother—merely smiled. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for myself. I’m happily married, thank you.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Ms. Swann. But you know…” Dale leaned forward, bracing his hands against the edge of the counter. Those nice, slender, sinewy hands. “Maybe you should be careful who you ask that question. Some folks might take it the wrong way. Especially from a woman as attractive as yourself.”

Glynnie laughed. “Boy, you really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”

“Just speaking the truth, Ms. Swann,” he said, ringing up the sale. “Just speakin’ the truth. As a matter of fact, when you two first came in—”

“Please don’t tell me you thought we were sisters.”

Again with the loopy grin. And a noncommittal shrug. “A man can’t help what he sees.” He bagged up the frog, then handed it to her, along with the charge slip and a copy of the order. “Somebody’ll give you a call before we come out, okay?” he said, and then a mini swarm of customers came in, affording Joanna the perfect opportunity to grab her mother’s arm and drag her out of there.

“What were you doing?”

“Just having some fun,” Glynnie said, wresting her arm out of Joanna’s grasp. “Remember fun?”

Joanna stomped around to the driver’s side of the van, unlocked the doors and climbed in. “Yeah,” she said, slamming shut her door as her mother got in. “I remember fun.” To her annoyance, her eyes burned. “I think.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—you don’t think I really meant anything by that, did you?” her mother said. “I was just testing him. And you’re right. That smile, that attitude…He is like Bobby. And God knows you don’t need to go through that again.”

Joanna twisted the key in the ignition, backing the van out of the parking space the instant the engine growled to life. “God knows,” she echoed, probably shaving five years off her mother’s life by darting across four lanes of traffic to make a left turn.

Two weeks later the roof still leaked, Bobby still hadn’t reimbursed Joanna for his half of the plumbing bill and Gladys, Henry Shaw’s Great Dane, was still pregnant. On a brighter note, however—well, brighter for Joanna and the female canine population of Corrales—immediate and permanent sanctions had been imposed on Chester’s wild oats. The dog seemed to be resigned to his fate, even if, judging from his actions, he was still a little fuzzy on the ramifications of his visit to the vet. But then, as long as Joanna knew he was shooting blanks, she really didn’t care all that much what the dog knew.

So all in all—she steered the van into the pickup lane in front of the elementary school—things were about the same.

The bell rang. Joanna didn’t bother looking for the boys in the blur of shrieking children disgorged from the sprawling series of buildings. A minute later, however, she picked out their shrill little voices like a mama sheep recognizing her lambs’ bleats from all the others in the herd.

“I called shotgun!” Matt, the oldest twin by ten minutes and the image of his father with his dark eyes and straight hair, bellowed beside the van. The twins were fraternal, not identical, as different in temperament and personality as they were physically. Although they were extremely well matched when it came to fighting over something they both wanted.

“Nuh-uh, I did!” Ryder bellowed right back as somebody yanked open the passenger side door and a whirlwind of elbows and knees and backpacks flew into the front seat. “Mo-om! Tell him to get in the back!”

It never ceased to amaze her how they could have the same argument, day after day, over something neither one had ever won. “Both of you get in back and your seat belts on,” she said mildly. “We’re gumming up the works here.”

“Aw, Mom…it’s just to the house.”

“Now.”

With a lot of grumbling and shoving and one backpack smacking Joanna in the face, they crawled through the space between the front seats and plopped into the back. “Didja bring any snacks?” Matt asked. “I’m about to starve to death.”

“I imagine you’ll survive until we get home,” Jo said, pulling out into the single-file stream of minivans and SUVs and pickups leaving the parking lot. “Either of you got any homework?”

“Nope,” Matt said. “Did it all in school. An’ I got all my spelling words right on my pre-test, too, so I don’t have to take the test tomorrow!”

Joanna’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror to catch Ryder’s sinking expression. Damn. For the millionth time, she tried to gauge how to respond to Matt’s good news without further damaging her other son’s increasingly fragile self-esteem. “Wow, Matt-o. You must’ve studied really hard.”

“Nuh-uh. I just knew ’em without even looking.”

Thank you, Matt. “How about you, Ry?” she said gently, wishing she could ruffle his cinnamon curls, which even as short as she kept them were every bit as obtuse as her own. “You have much work today?”

“I don’t remember.” His green eyes, a little darker than hers, flashed in the mirror’s reflection. “I think I finished all my math in school, maybe.”

“You did? That’s wonderful!”

His mouth stretched into a thin smile and Joanna’s heart cracked. The child had been tested every which way to Sunday, but there seemed to be no real reason why the very material that came so easily to Matt should be such a struggle for his brother. Joanna knew, even if she didn’t find two or three unfinished papers in his backpack, there was still a good hour to hour and a half of spelling and reading and math fact practice, just so Ryder wouldn’t fall more behind than he already was. It was hard on her, it was even harder on a child who’d already spent six and a half hours at school, but what was hardest of all was seeing the perplexed expression in Ryder’s eyes at his brother’s seemingly effortless success.

From birth, they’d been total opposites. Matt had come out protesting his confinement at the top of his lungs. Ryder had opened his eyes right away, calmly taking it all in, flinching only at his brother’s raucous cries from across the room. Matt had been the first to roll over, the first to crawl and walk and talk, always barreling through life at full throttle. Ryder, however, had to be coaxed to go down the same slide his brother had just rocketed down ten times in a row. And then only if Bobby or Joanna went down with him. He was the one who’d patiently spend ages building the three-foot-tall tower of blocks, his brother the one who’d knock them down.

Academically, however, they’d seemed to be on a par with each other until last year. While Matt continued to gobble up new skills like the hungry little caterpillar, Ryder had begun to struggle. Although quiet and attentive in class, he was now almost a full grade level behind. What got Joanna, though, was that she would have expected the reverse to be true, that the one who’d spent the first five years of his life in perpetual motion, except when he was asleep, would have been the one more prone to learning difficulties, not the quiet, contemplative one.

The quiet, contemplative one whose self-confidence was beginning to leak at an alarming rate, no matter what Joanna did to caulk it.

Both boys were out of the car and into the kitchen before Joanna could close her door and drag her weary butt into the house. Dulcy, her middle-schooler, had already been home for a half hour. What passed for music blared from her room. Cats swarmed Joanna’s ankles, begging her to make it stop.

“Turn it down, Dulce!” Joanna hollered automatically, hanging her car keys on the hook by the back door. The music dimmed from brain-numbing to merely irritating; a second later, the child stomped down the hall in her customary sexless hooded sweatshirt and jeans, brown eyes flashing behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Okay, which one of you dorks was in my room?”

“Not me!” came out of two crumb-speckled mouths.

“Right.” Dulcy held up The Evidence: a box of colored pencils. “This was brand new and full when I put it in my desk yesterday, and now half the pencils are either gone or broken. And I know one of you did it—”

The phone rang.

“—and now I have to use them for a social studies project and I don’t have them and this like so pisses me off—”

“Dulcy! Hello?” Joanna said into the phone, glaring at her daughter. She couldn’t hear whoever it was for the eruption of “I don’t know where your dumb old pencils are!” behind her.

“Well, one of you does and I’m not leaving this kitchen until I get ’em back!”

“Sorry, hold on,” Jo said into the phone, then slammed it against her sternum. “Kids! Take it elsewhere!”

“But, Mom, what am I going to dooooo? This is due tomorrow!”

“I. Am. On. The. Phone. I will take care of it later. Everybody out.”

The boys trooped into the family room to watch TV; Dulcy thumped back down to her room, wailing about how much her life sucked. Joanna—who at the moment could relate more to her daughter’s lament far more than she’d ever let on—sighed and held the phone back up to her ear.

“I’m sorry. Who is this again?”

“Dale McConnaughy, ma’am. From Playing for Keeps? Just calling to confirm that we’re delivering that play set to your house tomorrow afternoon?”

The boys began arguing about something in the other room, Dulcy cranked up her music again and the dog began to hack up something in the middle of the kitchen floor. And suddenly, because clearly she was closer to losing it than she thought, all she wanted to do was to wrap herself up in that Bourbony Southern accent and never come out again. Because, see, this was the one thing that had changed during the past two weeks.

Whether Joanna liked it or not.

Long-buried images came roaring to the surface of her desexitized brain, of hot bodies and cool sheets and endless orgasms. Preferably hers. Not that she’d ever had endless orgasms, but a girl can dream.

“Ms. Swann? Is everything all right?”

“What? Oh, yes…Sorry. I was…distracted,” she said, her gaze wandering over to the cupboard where she kept the baking stuff. For the past week, in those scant milliseconds when she wasn’t worrying about a kid or a roof or her work or her ex, and sometimes even when she was, thoughts of Dale McConnaughy had stormed her brain like a bargain hunter at K mart the morning after Thanksgiving. She didn’t understand it, she sure as hell didn’t like it, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing she could do about it. Other than taking the edge off the pain with chocolate. Which was why she was now yanking open her cupboard door, letting out a small sigh of gratitude that she hadn’t been hallucinating the package of chocolate chips. She’d make cookies. Warm, gooey cookies packed chock full of hundreds of little orgasms for the taste buds.

One learned to adapt.

“So…we’re on for tomorrow?”

Joanna ripped open the bag and tilted it to her upended mouth. Cookies, hell. Who had time for foreplay?

“Yes,” she managed to get out around a mouthful of squished chocolate. Maybe not quite as satisfying as when combined with butter and brown sugar and…nuts, but sometimes, you just can’t wait for the, um, full package. “Their…party is at five, so as long as it’s…up by then, that should be fine.”

She stuffed more chips into her mouth.

“No problem.” A pause. “Uh, ma’am? You sure you’re okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“What? Me? No, I’m fine,” she said, and he said okay as though he wasn’t really sure and then they hung up—just as something crashed in the other room.

Joanna knocked back another handful of chips, thought about Dale’s long, slender hands and orgasms for another twenty seconds or so, then went to clean up the dog’s little present.

Chapter 3

Although Dale knew there were some pretty highfalutin homes in Corrales, a small, horsey community flanking the western edge of the Rio Grande on the fringes of Albuquerque proper, he still hadn’t been sure what to expect from the address he’d been given. The mother clearly had money, but he got the feeling Joanna was one of those types determined to make it on her own if it killed her. So when Jose steered the store truck down the dirt road leading to the house, and the spreads kept getting bigger and bigger, he began to wonder just what the heck was going on here.

Especially when the house itself came into view. Like a large, odd-shaped bug hugging the landscape, the traditional earth-toned adobe, with its flat roof and portal stretching across most of the front, looked to be one of those that had been added on to as the mood struck over the years. The property took up a good three or four acres, he guessed, with an open horse shelter and paddock off to one side. Mature, drooping cottonwoods, their leaves mostly yellow this time of year, and gnarled, dusty green olive trees sheltered the house; a dozen or so terra-cotta pots in various sizes, spilling over with assorted late-season flowers, had been plunked in no particular order along the meandering stone walk between the driveway and the front door. And there were cats everywhere, three or four of which were now lazily making their way toward the truck like they had nothing better to do.

Except for the muffled barking of a dog inside the house, it was dead quiet. Peaceful. And had he been somebody else, Dale might have thought the place looked real inviting.

In a life filled to the gills with crazy doings, this had to be one of the craziest. When Charley had called in sick this morning, Dale could’ve gotten someone else to fill in. No reason for him to go getting it in his head that a little exercise and fresh air on this beautiful fall day was just what he needed. Except he knew damn well fresh air and exercise had nothing to do with it.

Like he said. Crazy.

Wasn’t like the signals he’d sent out to Joanna Swann the other day had been exactly reciprocated. Even if they had been, she didn’t seem the type, he didn’t think, inclined to mess around just for the fun of it. Which was all Dale was inclined to do. And she had kids, to boot. Messing around and kids did not mix. Oh, he got a real kick out of talking to ’em and watching them play, the way their imaginations took flight from the simplest things. Yeah, kids were great. Long as they were somebody else’s.

So, all in all, it was a damn fool thing, that he was here. Except it’d been a dog’s age since some gal had riled up his curiosity exactly the way Joanna Swann did. Why, he couldn’t quite figure out, although it was refreshing, her not knowing who he was. Or maybe it was because she didn’t seem that all-fired concerned about how she looked, which set her apart right there from most of the women he’d known over the past little while. He just liked what he saw, was all. And whether it made sense or not, he wanted to get to know her better, at least before making a conscious decision about whether or not she was a lost cause.

He almost flinched when Joanna stuck her head out the front door and hollered that they should drive around to the back, which they did, parking on the dirt driveway that separated the stable/paddock from a parklike area that passed for a backyard. More cats—or maybe it was the same ones, Dale couldn’t tell—swarmed them when they got out of the truck, joined by a fuzzy, medium-size brown-and-white mutt who acted like they’d just come home from the wars.

Dale waded through the furry bodies toward Joanna, now standing on her back patio. She was wearing worn jeans and a white, floppy sweatshirt, but even though it was kinda chilly out, she was barefoot. He wondered if the flagstone was cold on her feet. Which got him to wondering about other things he shouldn’t.

The cats, having already lost interest, drifted off. The dog, on the other hand, was amusing himself by trying to shove a slobbered-up old tennis ball into Dale’s hand. Joanna said, “Leave the man alone, Chester,” but more like she figured that’s what she should say than if she actually expected the dog to obey. Which he didn’t.

Dale wrestled the ball out of the dog’s mouth and lobbed it clear to the back of the yard. It felt good, throwing again. Even if he couldn’t do it over and over the way he used to.

“I didn’t expect you to bring out the set yourself,” Joanna said. Dale turned, somewhat disappointed to note that her expression wasn’t nearly as hospitable as the dog’s had been.

“Somebody got sick. I’m filling in.”

“Oh.” She swiped at a couple of loose curls that were fluttering around her face, the rest of her hair being stuck up on top of her head with a pencil rammed through it, of all things. “You can just leave the store like that?”

She sounded kind of annoyed, for some reason. “It’s my store. I can pretty much do whatever I want. But since you seem so concerned—” he turned and motioned to Jose to go ahead and start unloading the truck, then turned back to Joanna “—I’ve got a couple part-timers minding the place…”

His not-quite-full-out-flirting grin faltered slightly when a man a few years younger than Dale, shorter but more sturdily built—like a pit bull, Dale thought—came out of the house to stand behind Joanna. Despite sharp features that should have made him intimidating, the grin that split the man’s features as he approached Dale, his hand outstretched, told a whole ’nother story.

“Bobby Alvarez,” he said, his words tinged with that slight Spanish accent Dale had come to realize often clung even to Hispanics whose families had been in the area for generations. The grin widened. “Otherwise known as ‘the ex.’”

Since this fact did not seem to particularly perturb Bobby, Dale figured he needn’t let it bother him any, either. So he returned the grin, and the handshake. “Dale Mc-Connaughy,” he said, bracing himself for the reaction. Not that there always was one these days. But it happened often enough, especially with a mug that had adorned a million Wheaties boxes not all that long ago.

“Dale McConnaughy? Damn, I thought you looked familiar! Hey, babe—” he turned to Joanna “—you know who this is?”

“Yes, Bobby. Dale McConnaughy. We’ve already met.”

“No, I mean, do you know who this is? Atlanta Braves? Pitched a shutout in the last game of the World Series against the Yankees a few years ago?” He let out a whoop of laughter, then took Dale’s hand again and pumped it for all it was worth. “Man, I cannot tell you what an honor this is!” Then he frowned. “But what the hell are you doing setting up kids’ swing sets?”

“I own a toy store now, since I retired. Bum arm.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bobby said. “I remember readin’ something about that.” He looked like he had more to say on the subject, but changed his mind when he saw Jose lug the first round of materials through the gate. “Hey—you guys need some help?”

Dale felt a prickle of annoyance. An ex-husband did not fit in with his plans. Except then Joanna said, “No, they do not. You told me you had a one-thirty appointment, remember?”

“It’s that late already?” Bobby said, checking his watch. “Damn.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why, but I can never keep track of time. Used to drive her nuts,” he ended on a chuckle, fishing his keys out of his back pocket. “Okay, I guess I’d better go.” He leaned over and bussed her on the cheek, then said, “You’ll call me when it’s time to bring the kids over, right?”

After Bobby left, Joanna stood frowning at the space where her husband had been until Dale said, “So…where you want us to put this?”

Her head whipped around, her eyes a little glassy-looking. “What? Oh. Over here.”

Still barefoot, she tromped toward the back of the yard, pointing to a spot underneath one of the tallest cottonwoods. “I don’t know if the roots might be a problem, though…”

“You got an ax?” Jose said. “We can take some of them out, it won’t hurt the tree.”

Joanna told him there was one in the shed; with a nod, Jose loped off, the dog trotting along to keep him company. Dale was about to ask her which end of the set she wanted closest to the tree when she suddenly said, “Honestly. I’m surprised he didn’t pee around the perimeter of the property.”

“Who? Jose?”

She looked at him, eyes wide. Then laughed softly. “No. Bobby.”

“Oh.” Dale shrugged. “Maybe he still has feelings for you?”

“We’ve been divorced for more than three years. I somehow doubt it.”

Her curls were bouncing in the breeze and her mouth did this cute, kinda three-cornered thing when she smiled, and because he was as territorial as the next male animal he thought about moving closer, staking his own claim. Maybe leaning one palm on the tree trunk, right over her head.

Oh, yeah, this was definitely a game to him. One of his favorites. One he hadn’t felt much like playing in a long time. And wasn’t all that sure he should be playing now.

Because, unless he was sorely mistaken, Joanna Swann played by a whole different set of rules than he was used to. If he wanted to set this one up to win—should he decide that’s what he wanted to do—he’d best remember that. So he didn’t move closer. In fact, he crouched by the pile of four-by-fours, going through the motions of checking them off on his parts list, even though he’d checked them three times before loading them into the truck. “Don’t see as time has much to do with anything.”

“Time?” She hooked her thumbs in her pockets in a way that managed to be sexy as all get-out and childlike at the same time. On closer inspection, she wasn’t near as skinny as he’d first thought, although far as he could tell underneath the sweatshirt, she didn’t have much in the way of breasts. But this was one instance where size did not matter. “Nothing,” she said. “But I sure hope you’re wrong. For his pregnant fiancée’s sake, if nothing else.”

“Oh. That puts kind of a different spin on things, huh?”

“That would be my take on it.”

“Still and all, maybe he figured he made a mistake, walking away from you.”

After a moment she said, “He didn’t walk away. I did.”

Dale looked up. That hadn’t been regret in her voice, not that he could tell. But there was something that niggled at him, anyway. “Because?”

“Because I saw no point in sticking something out that wasn’t working anymore.”

“I see.” A pause. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you got any idea why you’re telling me this?”

Her gaze met his, cool as a freshly cut lawn on a summer’s day. “None at all.” Then she tilted her head. “So you were a ball player?”

To hide his smile, Dale got up and crossed to where she wanted the set, nudging the roots with the toe of his shoe. Nice tactic she had there: if the conversation wasn’t going the way she liked, she just moved on to something else.

“Yep,” he said. “My entire adult life, up until a nasty case of pitcher’s arm ended my career a couple years back.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It happens. I…take it you’re not a fan?”

“Of sports? No. Paying a bunch of grown men millions of dollars to chase, kick, bat or otherwise torture a ball never made a whole lot of sense to me.”

“Don’t hold back now, tell me what you really think.”

She laughed. “Okay, so I’m not going to wet myself because you were a sports star.”

“So why’d you say you were sorry?”

Her smile faded into a faint blush. “Because…I can imagine how hard it must have been for you to give up something you loved. Assuming you did.”

It was the weirdest thing. With most women, he had no trouble keeping track of whether he was making points or not. Not with this one. Damn, it was unnerving, the way she managed to be aloof and sympathetic at the same time.

“Yeah. I loved it.” Although not for the reasons she probably thought. The real motives behind his playing, for his determination to win at that game, too, weren’t any of her business. Or anyone else’s.

Jose and the dog finally returned with the ax. After telling them to come get her in the studio if they had any questions, Joanna called the dog and carefully picked her way back to the house in her bare feet. Dale noticed there were two little dusty butt-cheek impressions on the bottom of the long white sweatshirt, a detail that fueled his imagination. Behind him, Jose chuckled.

“Shut up,” Dale muttered. Jose just laughed harder.

Could Joanna help it that her worktable sat at the perfect angle to see across the yard? Or that the play set really only worked in that spot? And was it her fault that stuffing Santa bodies didn’t exactly require her entire concentration? She would have been looking out the window anyway, right? And it certainly wasn’t her fault that Dale McConnaughy had taken off his shirt.

Or that he liked to wear his jeans slung low on his hips.

She was an artist, after all. Her perusal of Dale Mc-Connaughy’s naked torso was no different than all those life drawing classes she took. Muscles and sinews and shoulders.

Oh, my.

On the floor beside her, stretched out in a patch of dusty sunlight, Chester twitched, dreaming. One of the cats, who was just passing, smacked Chester’s nose on general principles; the dog jerked awake, looked accusingly at Joanna, then crashed his head back on the floor with a beleaguered sigh. Joanna chuckled, then looked out the window again and gave a beleaguered sigh of her own.

Maybe Dale McConnaughy represented everything Joanna didn’t want or need, but he was one fine specimen of human male. And Joanna was one fine specimen of pathetically horny female. That she should feel a twitch in her hoo-hah every time she looked at the guy was hardly a surprise.

What was a surprise was that, for all Dale Mc-Connaughy’s come-to-papa charm—yeah, yeah, she wasn’t totally out of the loop—she’d bet her butt that charm was a cover for something that went far deeper. Oh, she had no doubt he was out for only one thing, but unlike most guys who saw sexual conquests as some sort of Holy Grail, she had the distinct feeling Dale McConnaughy used them because his real Holy Grail was out of his reach.

Which was certainly a presumptuous conclusion for her to have reached after—what?—two five-minute conversations. But she remembered vividly, from her stint as a part-time art teacher before the twins were born, seeing that particular expression in this or that student’s eyes. The look that said, “I’m fine, don’t dig, don’t ask, don’t make me think about things I don’t want to think about.” A look that asserted itself at unguarded moments, when buried or ignored pain dimmed even the brightest smile. After a dozen times of asking the kids’ teachers what was up, and getting answers she didn’t want to hear, she no longer questioned if she was seeing what she thought she was. She knew.

But reaching out, however subtly, to a nine-year-old was far different than reaching out to a grown man who would, in all probability, completely misinterpret her motives. Which, considering the way her nerve endings were shouting, “Hallelujah, I am reborn, sister!” would be a completely understandable misinterpretation on his part.

So she wouldn’t reach out.

At all.

Ever.

“Hey, honey!”

Joanna jumped a foot, then turned to see her best friend, Karleen Almquist, click-clacking her way across the room in a pair of high-heeled ankle boots and designer jeans that could practically fit Dulcy. Karleen was not, and had never been, into the natural look. Karleen, bless her, not only believed comparing her to a Barbie doll was a compliment, but a reputation worthy of keeping intact at all costs…as long as she could pass those costs on to the Spouse of the Week.

They’d been best friends forever, although nobody, including Joanna and Karleen, could quite figure out why. Habit, most likely. And an ability to accept each other for who they were. But they’d been there for each other from the do-you-think-he-likes-me? middle school squealies to the breakups of their respective marriages, although Karleen’s track record in that department was running three to one over Joanna’s. The only good thing to come out of the last marriage—according to Karleen—was that, this time, she got the house. A house less than a half mile from Joanna’s. So Karleen, who had turned an avocation into a career as a personal shopper for dozens of time-crunched professional women in town, popped over nearly every day, even if only for a quick cup of coffee. A nice diversion, frankly, since Joanna’s work kept her more housebound than the kids ever had.

“Ooooh, I like this one,” Karleen now said, running a finger down the front of a Santa in an ivory velvet robe on which Joanna had hand painted an ivy design, stitching on tiny red beads here and there for the berries. Then she looked out the window and gasped.

“Holy crap,” she breathed, as artfully plucked sandy brows disappeared underneath artfully scraggly bangs that had been dark brown and lethally stiff in high school. “Is that real?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Joanna said, deadpan. “He only has his shirt off.”

“More’s the pity.” Then she smacked Joanna in the arm. “You’ve got all that right out your window and you didn’t even call me? What kind of friend are you?”

“Hey. My eye candy. Go find your own. And don’t drool on the velvet.”

“So who is he?”

“Guy who owns the toy store where we got the play set.”

“Does this toy store owner have a name?”

“Dale McConnaughy.”

“The baseball player?” Karleen squeaked.

“Apparently so. And apparently this means a lot more to you than it does to me.”

“You bet your ass it means something. He made All-Stars five years running, voted MVP the last year he played, pitched at least twenty no-hitters during his career—”

“Since when do you know so much about baseball?”

“Since Jasper.”

Husband Number Two.

“And if I never see another game again,” Karleen said, “it will be too soon. But I do remember not feeling too put out if the Braves were playing and Dale McConnaughy was pitching. The camera used to zoom in for closeups of his face, and those eyes…” She sighed, her own eyes glazing over. “And you know how baseball players grab their crotches?”

“I really don’t want to go there, Kar.”

“Sure you do. I mean…” She leaned on the table, her silicone-enhanced breasts immobile beneath her chenille sweater, and lowered her voice. “Took more than a single tug to rearrange himself, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, Lord,” Joanna said.

“What?”

“You sound hornier than I am.”

Karleen pouted. “It’s been three months!”

“There are worse things.”

“Name one.”

“Starving to death.”

“Honey, I haven’t eaten a full meal since 1983. Food, I can live without.” She spared another glance outside, then brightened. “Hey—sure looks to me like those boys are thirsty, don’t you think?”

“No, they’re fine. They brought their own water.”

“I cannot believe you’re that dense.”

Joanna threaded a needle, biting off the thread with her teeth. “I’m not—what the hell are you doing?” she yelped as Karleen snatched the needle out of her hand, then dragged Joanna off the stool and out of the studio. Chester roused himself and followed, just in case all this activity had something to do with food.

“Either jump-starting your pathetic love life,” Karleen said, once in the kitchen, “or saving mine from an ignominious death.” She yanked open Joanna’s refrigerator door.

“I do not need my love life jump-started—”

“Good. You’ve got tea,” Karleen said, hauling a plastic pitcher off the top shelf. “And don’t be ridiculous, of course you do.”

“Not today, I don’t. I’ve got a party to give later, remember?”

The tea poured into a pair of plastic tumblers, Karleen gave her a bemused look. “You’ve never heard of multitasking? So what d’you have they could munch on? Cookies or cake or something?” She threw open another cabinet and grimaced at the array of Little Debbie boxes. “What kind of domestic goddess are you, anyway?”

“The kind that doesn’t have time to bake. Kar, I really don’t think—”

“That’s right, sweetie,” she said, arranging a selection of the goodies on a plate. “You just sit back and let little old Karleen do the thinking for once, ’kay?”

“The last time I let you do the thinking for both of us, I ended up grounded for a month.”

“Which is the number one perk of being a grown-up, honey. Nobody’s gonna ground you this time.” The cups balanced on the plate with the treats, she elbowed open the patio door leading out back, then turned and did the famous Karleen Almquist I-dare-you smile and said in the famous Karleen Almquist wispy little what-me?-get-you-in-trouble? voice, “You coming? Or you conceding this one to me?”

Joanna told herself she was only following so she’d be sure to get her plate and tumblers back.

“Hey, boss. Looks like we got company.”

At Jose’s heads up, Dale squinted over the yellow plastic slide he was bolting into place to see a pleasantly bosomy blonde in high-heeled boots mincing across the lawn toward them, having a devil of a time hanging on to that plate in her hands. Joanna followed, looking none too pleased about whatever was going on. When the women were still several feet away, one of the cats—Dale had long since given up trying to figure out how many there were—decided now would be a good time to launch himself against the blonde’s ankles.

“For God’s sake, Jo,” the blonde said, wobbling for a second, the plate in a death grip, “call it off!”

Jo let out a single sharp “Git!” and the thing booked it. For about two seconds. But long enough for Blondie to scoot the rest of the way across the yard, grinning that careful way women did who were deathly afraid of wrinkles.

“Thought you boys might like some tea and a snack,” she said, then seemed to realize there really wasn’t any place to set down the plate. Jose took it from her; her hand shot out toward Dale as if sprung from prison. “Karleen Almquist,” she cooed. “Joanna’s best friend.”

“I told her you’d brought your own water,” Joanna, who clearly did not worry about laugh lines and such, put in. And Dale made a snap decision to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.

“Ah, but nothin’ beats a tall glass of ice-cold tea,” he said, taking one of the tumblers and turning his smile on Karleen, who was doing her damnedest not to look awestruck. He knew it wasn’t fair, or right, to judge a person by appearances, but how many women like her had he run into over the course of the past several years? Pretty women who deep down didn’t trust that they really were, who never really believed their God-given attributes were sufficient unto themselves, who measured success by whether or not men found them attractive.

Women who seemed to forget that the flower never had to chase the bee.

Deliberately, Dale let his gaze sidle over to Joanna for a moment—who, as far as flowers went, was probably more like a Venus’s-flytrap—before returning it to her friend. “Thank you, Karleen,” he said, taking great pains not to cross the thin line between being polite and flirting, trusting that Karleen would know the difference. And that Joanna, who was discussing the play set with Jose, wouldn’t.

Of course, since she didn’t seem the least bit interested in what was going on, it would appear he was wasting his efforts. A realization that annoyed him far more than it should have. So he inched a hair closer to flirting with Karleen, resurrecting one or two old lines he used to be able to count on to make a gal laugh, all the while keeping one eye on Joanna. And Karleen did indeed giggle when she was supposed to, although not in quite as airheaded a manner as he might have expected, and her smile really was very nice and her eyes really were very pretty and her perfume wasn’t the kind that could knock a man over. So, all in all, he should have been enjoying himself.

Except the longer Dale stood there, drinking his tea and eating the little cakes and chatting up this pretty woman he didn’t want to be chatting up while the flat-chested, haywire-haired woman he did want to chat up seemed hell-bent on ignoring him, the more annoyed he got. By the time Joanna turned to him and asked how much longer he thought they’d be, he was startled to find himself next door to mad.

Not that he had any right to be. After all, he was just playin’ around.

“What do you think, Jose?” he said. “Another half hour, maybe?”

The older man nodded his agreement. “Good,” Joanna said. “I’ll call Bobby, let him know when to bring back the kids.” Then she took their empty tea glasses, stacking them inside each other, said, “Let’s not keep the guys from their work,” to Karleen, and started back toward the house, giving the blonde no choice but to call, “Nice to meet you!” over her shoulder as she went.

Leaving Dale feeling like he’d just been issued a challenge.

One he had absolutely no business accepting.

Chapter 4

“You are hopeless!” Karleen said the minute they were back inside. “Would another couple of minutes have killed you?”

Joanna shoved the patio door shut and marched her little overwrought self across the kitchen. “I never said I was playing along. Beside, I’ve got a party to set up,” she said, yanking out bags of Bob the Builder plates and cups she’d stashed in the cupboard where she kept the extraneous kitchen crap she’d accumulated over the years. “I’ve got no time to waste standing around watching the man slobber all over you. Especially as I’ve seen that act before.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“What? That I’ve never seen men drool over you? Not that it bothers me, I’m certainly used to it after all these years—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Karleen grabbed a package of plates from her and attacked the plastic wrapping like a lion gutting a wildebeest. “Whose benefit did you think that was for? It wasn’t my attention he was trying to get, you idiot!”

For the tiniest sliver of a second, something totally insane and irrational—hope, maybe?—shoved aside the annoyance that was even more insane and irrational. “You know, you really need to start eating more. I hear the brain’s the first thing to go.”

Karleen grinned. “Somebody’s pi-issed.”

“I’d have to care to be pissed. Since I don’t—” she ripped open one of the other packages of plates and slammed them onto the counter “—I’m not. And wipe that smirk off your face.”

“Jo, Jo, Jo…don’t you know that flirting with one woman in order to make the other one jealous is the oldest trick in the book? How many of these suckers you want opened?”

“All of them. Okay…just for the sake of argument, let’s say that’s what he was doing—”

“Aha!”

“That was hardly worth an aha. Especially as I was about to point out this oh-so-mature behavior would attract me why?”

“Because he’s hot, he’s giving out all the right signals—”

“To you,” Joanna pointed out, unwrapping napkins.

“—and you’re deprived. And I told you, the flirting with me business was just a ruse. Since you had your back to him the entire time, you couldn’t see that he kept looking over to see if you were reacting.”

Joanna jerked up her head, which earned her one of Karleen’s smug smiles. Okay, so she felt about twelve, but she felt…kinda tingly, too. Alive. Like maybe there was something to look forward to.

Damn.

“Sounds like a perfect fit to me,” Karleen said, which effectively blew the tingly feeling all to hell.

“And in case you’ve forgotten—are there boxes of candles in one of those bags?—I was married to a man whose idea of a formal social event is a keg party. Why on earth would I be even remotely interested in somebody who would use one woman to get another one? Let alone someone who spent a good chunk of his life spitting, throwing a ball and adjusting his package? Activities, by the way, I don’t find particularly endearing in males over the age of three.”

“Never mind how incredible he looks without his shirt.”

“Yeah, well, if memory serves, Bobby looks pretty damn good without his shirt, too.” Joanna pulled the first of the two cakes Bobby’d dropped off earlier—one chocolate, one vanilla—from the bottom of the fridge and set it on the bar. “Trust me. After a while, it’s not enough. Even you know that.”

Marginally deflated, Karleen climbed up onto one of the stools flanking the bar and slit open a package of candles with one lethal hot-to-trot red nail. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. You care how these go on the cakes?”

“Not a bit. And I know I’m right. On this, at least. Next time—if there is a next time—I’d really like a man, you know? Not an overgrown boy.”

“Aha.”

“What now?”

Karleen waved a peppermint-striped candle at her. “You know what your problem is? You see every guy you date as potential husband material.”

Joanna gave her a look.

“Okay, so I’m being theoretical. But I’m just saying, should the earth shift on its axis and you ever do date again, you’ve gotta go through at least one gap guy before you can even begin to think in terms of wedding bells.”

“A gap guy.”

“Sure. You know. Someone to bridge the gap between husbands.”

“I take it we’re talking about sex here?”

“Honey, I’m always talking about sex. Not that it’s a bad thing if they can hold up their side of the conversation, as well as other things, for more than five minutes at a time. But it’s not crucial.”

Joanna laughed. “You’re nuts.”

“No, I’m perfectly serious. Think of it like…a sherbet to cleanse your palate between courses.”

“You mean, something fruity?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Be serious.”

“Hey. You’re the one comparing men to sherbet.”

“Something light,” Karleen said, delicately inserting a candle into the frosting. “Insubstantial. A little tart, maybe, but nothing that’ll ruin your appetite for the real thing. Listen, honey, I may not be any good at marriage, but I am an expert at surviving the wasteland between them. Hell, in three years? I’d’ve gone through three or four by now. Raspberry, lemon, pineapple…”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“I take plenty of vitamins. Why do you think God invented pool boys?”

Joanna sighed. Notwithstanding that tingling business a few minutes ago, so Dale was good-looking. And, okay, he seemed like a nice guy. And maybe it had been a dog’s age since one of those had crossed her path. Still…

“I don’t know, Kar…” She moved on to making hamburger patties for the grill, kneeing aside the hopeful dog as she idly mused that, after three years, she still hadn’t gotten used to not having to take off her wedding ring so it wouldn’t get mucked up. “Someone to just…tide me over?”

“Is that a sparkle I see in your eyes?”

“Only reflecting the insane glint in yours.”

“Look…” Karleen’s lips moved, counting each candle before she turned her attention to the second cake. “Who told you to watch your back around Heather Sanchez our sophomore year, huh? And who made you let Eric Stone know you were available to go to homecoming? And what a night that turned out to be, right?”

“Never mind that I nearly died from embarrassment when my mother found the condoms in my purse.”

“And who told your mother they were hers so you wouldn’t get in trouble?” Joanna speared her with another look. “Okay, so maybe she didn’t believe me. But what I’m saying is, have I ever steered you wrong? I mean, yeah, we’ll have to think of some reason for you to see him again, but that shouldn’t be too hard. You have kids. He has a toy store.” She shrugged. “Not even you can deny how neatly everything’s falling into place.”

Joanna slapped a meat patty onto the growing pile on the plate beside her. The dog whimpered and leaned heavily against the lower cabinet. “Watch me.”

“For crying out loud, honey—the Olsen twins could be grandmothers by the time someone comes along who meets all your criteria. But hey, if you wanna sit around and watch your hymen grow back, what business is it of mine?”

“If that’s supposed to cheer me up, you’re failing miserably.”

“All I’m saying is,” Karleen went on, “if you deliberately pick someone you know is wrong for you, you won’t be tempted to think of him as husband material. No pressure, no expectations…what could be better than that? So, here…” She reached across the counter for her purse, pulling out what looked like a compact. “You better take this.”

Joanna glanced over. “I don’t use powder…oh,” she said when she caught sight of the glittering foil packets inside the now open compact. “Jeez. You still carry them with you?”

“I still shave my legs every morning, too. A girl can never be too prepared. And the compact’s nice ’cause you can sneak a peek at your makeup while the guy’s…you know.” She clicked shut the compact again, wiggling it in her hand. “Where should I put this?”

“Back in your purse.”

“You haven’t forgotten how to use them, have you?”

“Considering who taught me? Not bloody likely. It was years before I could look at a jumbo frank without blushing. But I can’t—”

“It’s not safe to expect the man to remember, you know.”

“Yes, I do. But I’d rather take care of things on an as-needed basis, okay?”

“Okay,” Karleen said at last, finally snapping open her purse and dropping the compact back inside.

“Karleen?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do, but did I ever tell you how much I hate sherbet?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you just haven’t tasted the right flavor yet.”

Joanna sighed.

A mile or so south, in the no-frills, three-bedroom apartment he’d been living in since his divorce, Bobby Alvarez leaned in the doorway to the master bedroom, trying to convince his stomach to unknot. Tori sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clamped on the mattress edge through the lacy white comforter she’d picked out, a tiny crease wedged between her brows. He’d seen that crease before. It always meant trouble.

“Hey,” he said lightly. “Jo just called, said it’s time to bring the kids back for the party. You about ready?”

Tori lifted her eyes, solemn and dark blue, outlined with some smudgy stuff that made them look even more solemn. She was almost as tall as him, but thin enough to look swallowed up in the baggy velour top she wore over a pair of jeans, an effect enhanced by her long, dark hair, which she wore loose and parted in the middle, like a teenager. “Do I have to go?”

This was no surprise. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Don’t you feel good?”

“I’m okay. It’s just…” The corners of her mouth twitched. “All those people, your family…”

Stifling what would have been a weighty sigh, Bobby closed the few feet between them, the mattress sagging when he sat beside her. “Aw, honey,” he said, looping an arm around her shoulders and tugging her to him, her flowery-smelling hair slippery under his cheek. “They’re gonna be your family, too, you know.”

“The kids, yeah.” She twisted the brand-new engagement ring—even getting it at Sam’s Club, it had pretty much wiped out his Visa—around and around her finger. “Not your ex. Or her parents.”

God, this sucked. The whole reason he’d fallen for Tori to begin with was because their relationship required little mental effort on his part. Not like him and Jo, who were like those two cats that still lived out in back of Joanna’s house and couldn’t cross paths without spitting at each other. And he was thrilled about the baby, even if he wasn’t about to admit to Jo or anybody else that he’d nearly had a coronary when Tori’d told him she’d found a tear in her diaphragm. How they were going to manage, what with a good chunk of what he was making already going to Jo and the kids, he had no idea. So he figured he had plenty of worries without having to deal with pregnancy hormones, too.

But ready or not, he had to, didn’t he?

“Hey. We talked this all through, remember?” And since talking things through wasn’t exactly Bobby’s strong suit, the prospect of tilling the same ground ad nauseum wasn’t exactly giving him a big thrill now. “About how everybody being together is gonna be inevitable from time to time? That it’ll be easier for the kids to accept you if you’re included in family get-togethers?”

“I know. But this is just so…weird. Not what I imagined, y’know?”

Praying for the smarts to get through the minefield without blowing off his balls, he said, “You knew I had kids from the get-go, Tor. It wasn’t like I sprung ’em on you.”

“I know. But…”

He saw her hands slip over her tummy and something primitive and possessive shot through him. In a way, it was kind of sexy, knowing he’d put the baby there. But it also signaled the onset of what amounted to nine straight months of PMS. Hell, if you wanted teenage boys to abstain from having sex too early, just lock ’em up with a pregnant woman for twenty-four hours. Guaranteed to kill any chance of an erection for a good five, maybe ten years.

“It’s just I watch you and Jo together,” she was saying, “and all I can think is, I can’t compete with that. With what the two of you still have.”

He panicked for a second, afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep up. “What are you talking about? All Jo and I do is fight.”

“Not always.”

“Okay, only like ninety percent of the time. And when we’re not, we’re either recovering from a fight or gearing up for one.”

“Because you still care about each other.”

“No, because we’re from two different planets.”

“But you have this…this history together.”

“Well, yeah. We were married for nine years. We have three kids we’re raisin’ together. I can’t change that, can I?”

She blew out a quick sigh through her nose. “No, I suppose not.”

“But now it’s time for you and me to make our own history, right?”

“And I’ll always be second.”

By his estimation, he had maybe ten seconds to defuse this bomb. “That’s not how I see it, honey. Yeah, maybe you’re…second, chronologically, but…okay—you know how a movie might be number one at the box office? But then, the next week another movie comes along and that movie is number one?”

She stiffened.

“Dammit, Tor…I’m lousy at this—”

“Oh, never mind,” Tori said on another sigh. “I know what you’re trying to say. It’s just I keep thinking, if your marriage to Jo didn’t work out, what’s to say ours will? And it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot of experience to fall back on. My mother’s been married and divorced twice. I haven’t seen my real father in years. So I’m not exactly feeling real secure. Especially as…”

“What?”

Tori gave him a look that scared the crap out of him, because she looked far too much like Jo did, there at the end. Still did, come to think of it.

“Look,” she said, “I know I had nothing to do with you two breaking up, but still. I feel bad. That I’m in the middle. That you’re in the middle. That I have you, and I’m so happy, and she has…nothing.” Then she pulled her feet up onto the edge of the bed, toying with one of her toe rings, her mouth all funny.

“What?”

“I can’t say it, it’s too tacky.”

“Tori, I’m not a mind reader. Whatever you’re thinking, just say it.”

After a moment she said, “It’s not that I resent the money you give to Joanna for the house and stuff, and certainly not whatever you pay for child support, but somehow…well, I wish she didn’t need to depend on you quite so much. And that really sounds selfish and stupid and horrible, but I don’t want to start out our lives together wondering if every time we buy something for us, we’re spending money that should go to your first family instead—”

“Dad?”

At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Tori pulled away. Dammit, they’d been dating for more than a year, living together for three months. The kids spent every weekend with them. In other words, their relationship was hardly a secret—and would be even less of a secret once he told the kids about the baby—but Tori refused to show any affection toward him when they were around.

Dulcy stuck her head in the door, her dark, thick curls struggling to escape her ponytail. As usual, she wore some loose top, her long legs encased in a pair of bleached-out jeans. She was nearly as tall as Jo now. Way she was growing, she might even end up passing Bobby. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

But he sure knew it scared the hell out of him to think there were boys just like he’d been out there, lying in wait….

“Dad? Hello? The boys are totally driving me nuts.” She frowned slightly at Tori but didn’t acknowledge her presence. “Can we please get going?”

“Sure. Just a sec, okay?”

With a huff, Dulcy stomped away.

“She hates me,” Tori said.

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Right. She looks at me like I was something she found in back of the refrigerator.”

“Honey, she looks at everyone like that. If this is a girl—” he laid his hand on Tori’s belly and immediately felt stirrings that would do him absolutely no good right now “—she’ll look at you that way, too.”

Tori covered his hand with hers, which wasn’t helping the stirrings any. “How come you know so much about teenage girls?”

“I’ve got three sisters, remember? First time a girl looked at me like I wasn’t something she found in the back of the refrigerator, I couldn’t talk for three days.”

A small laugh bubbled out of Tori’s mouth. Then she said, “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It’s not my place—”

“No, it’s okay, baby, I want you to feel you can tell me anything.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. Frankly, half the time women told him what they were thinking, he only got more confused. Like now. He was pretty sure he was supposed to do something about whatever was bothering Tori. He just had no clue what that might be.

“I love you,” Tori said, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder.

“Aw, I love you, too, sweetheart,” he said, figuring he’d just hang on to that, for now. Then he kissed her, long and deep, deciding maybe all this communication garbage wasn’t so bad after all, once you got used to it.

But during the fifteen-minute drive to Jo’s house, the boys about to bust from excitement in the back seat of the Taurus—which made him realize he was going to have to go the minivan route, once the baby came, damn—he kept mulling over what Tori said, about Joanna’s being alone, about how it would be nice if there was somebody else to help out financially, since she was never going to get rich off those Santas she made, that was for sure.

The fact was, he worried about Joanna. A lot more than he’d ever admit to Tori, who’d for sure take it the wrong way. But he didn’t like the idea of Joanna being all by herself in that big house, when he had the kids. And he didn’t like the idea of her being lonely, either. Oh, she could act as independent as she wanted, but Bobby knew her. Joanna was a woman with a lot of love to give. Hell, why else would she have stuck out the marriage as long as she had? So, yeah. Joanna’s falling in love again, getting married again, would be a very good thing for everybody. Somebody good at fixing things would be a bonus. Or well off enough to pay for somebody else to do it. Somebody to take the heat off of Bobby. One of those win-win situations, you know?

But who? He’d tried to get Jo to go out with some of his friends, but she’d never gotten past a first date with any of ’em. If only he knew somebody he could nudge in her direction, y’know? Like when he used to sell cars, before Joanna’s father hooked him up with the advertising manager at the TV station. Somebody would come into the showroom and Bobby’d simply steer ’em toward the car he figured they’d like. Then, if they showed interest, he’d close the deal.

He really, really liked closing deals.

They pulled up in front of Jo’s house, the house he no longer lived in but was still expected to help keep up, Bobby frowning when he saw Karleen’s shiny white Expedition hogging half the driveway, parked behind the Playing for Keeps pickup. Huh. Guess they weren’t finished yet.

Huh.

The kids and Tori got out of the car—Tori had to pee every five minutes these days, seemed like—but Bobby sat there, thinking. Shoving the puzzle pieces around to see if he could get them to fit. Thinking about how, when he’d come out onto the patio earlier, he thought he’d picked up on some pretty heavy-duty, who-the-hell-are-you? vibes from Dale. As if Bobby’d interrupted something.

As if maybe the dude was interested in Joanna.

Now if maybe Joanna was interested back…

Aw, come on…it couldn’t be this easy.

Could it?

A grin stretched across his face.

Dale seemed nice enough, Bobby guessed he was okay to look at, and he probably had money. Hell, star players raked in serious bucks.

Of course, Joanna would probably have a fit if she knew what Bobby was thinking.

Which just meant Bobby’d better be good and sure she never found out.

Chapter 5

Great, Joanna thought. The kids were here, but the play set wasn’t finished. Once again, a man had made a promise he hadn’t kept. Except then Joanna walked out onto the back patio as the boys let out gleeful shrieks at their first glimpse of the set, and she thought, So what? What was important here? That her kids were happy, or that everything went according to her schedule?

And happy they were, bouncing around like a pair of fleas and bombarding Dale with a million questions. Neither twin had ever been the slightest bit shy about talking to strangers, which had been a constant source of worry to her when they were younger. That this particular stranger posed no threat to her sons was of little comfort, since she was the one in danger—from the way his expression lit up when the boys flew across the yard, his laughter as he hoisted them up into the fort.

Her stomach flip-flopped at the still-warm memory of her and Karleen’s conversation.

Talk about the power of suggestion. Left to her own devices, Joanna would never consider actually doing anything about her attraction to Dale. What would have been the point? But then Karleen’d had to go and mess with her head and make her think she needed something she didn’t, like the time she’d talked Joanna into buying a pair of boots she’d ended up wearing exactly once.

What a perfectly good waste of lust that had been.

Just as this would be.

“You’re staring,” Karleen said behind her, making her jump.

“Am not.”

“Are, too.”

“Go to hell.”

That got what, from anyone else, would have been a cackle. From Karleen, who still had smoker’s voice even though she’d given it up five years ago, the sound was more like what an engine did when it didn’t want to turn over. “Looks like he’s good with kids.”

“I should hope so. Considering he owns a toy store.”

“Yeah, well, remember Mr. Salazar? Our Driver’s Ed teacher? The one who hated to drive?”

“Karleen, you can’t make opposing points in the same observation.”

“Speaking of points,” Karleen said, nodding toward the boys who were storming back toward Joanna at full tilt. Grinning, they wrapped all four arms around Joanna’s hips. Matt muttered a quick, “Thanks,” then took off again, leaving Ryder still clamped to her.

“This is the best birthday ever! Thanks, Mom!”

If it had been up to her, she would have told the kids outright the set came from her mother, but Glynnie had insisted they think it came from Bobby and her. Why it was okay for the kids to think their parents were spoiling them, but not their grandparents, was something Joanna had never understood. Especially considering the million and one Christmas gifts that appeared under the tree every year clearly labeled “From Geegee and Gramps.”

She smoothed back Ryder’s wild hair, then looked up to catch Dale watching them and thought, Oh, God, no. Not the lost-soul look. A flush blossomed across her skin, from all sorts of things. Surprise and consternation and, yes, dammit, arousal.

“You’re welcome, sugar pie,” she said, unhooking both her eyeballs and hormones from Dale and hugging close the small body that belonged to her. A slightly let-down feeling that this would probably be the last “little kids” birthday trickled through. By next year, who knew what the boys would be into?

Ryder took off, leaving his warmth imprinted on her skin, underneath the cotton sweater she’d put on. Her arms folded, her gaze followed his path back to the play set.

And Dale. Who was still watching her.

Karleen sniggered beside her.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“The way you two are playing pass-the-eyeball, for one thing. And if you dare tell me you’re not enjoying having a hunk like that gawk at you, I’m calling the undertaker, ’cause you must be dead.”

A good three or four seconds later Joanna said, “I’m not dead.”

Karleen let out a sigh of what sounded like relief, only to then mutter, as Bobby came around from the front of the house, “That’s my cue to make myself scarce before I say something I’ll regret.”

With that, Karleen hustled back inside. Bobby waved to Joanna, but kept on toward the swing set and the kids—Joanna assumed Dulcy and Tori must be inside the house—where he and Dale exchanged handshakes and head nods and a short conversation she couldn’t hear. Then Bobby turned to the boys and their mouths and eyes popped wide open as she heard excited babbling intermixed with, “You’ll have to ask your mother,” and she thought, Uh-oh.

Dale glanced her way for a moment, then back to Bobby, who only laughed and shook his head. Then she saw Dale mouth the words, “You sure?” which is when Joanna decided it was in her best interest to go find out what was going on and how this affected her immediate future.

“Mom!” Matt yelled when she got a few feet away, “did you know this is Dale Muhconney an’ he used to play baseball for the Braves an’ he was real famous and Dad said if it was okay with you, could he come to our party, pleeeeease, Mom?”

Joanna’s eyes snapped to Dale’s face, hoping for a, “Sorry, guys, but I’ve already got other plans.” Or something. When no such words came forth, Joanna took the rapidly retreating bull by the horns and said, “Guys, you know not all grown-ups get off on parties with a million crazed little kids—”

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Dale said, and she felt defeat settle in for the night as the kids jumped up and down and yelled, “Yaaay!”

“But only if it’s okay,” Dale said, his gaze fixed on her in a way that no man’s gaze had been fixed on her in many moons, and Bobby said, “Of course it’s okay, she always makes too much food for these things anyway,” and suddenly the air was filled with the acrid scent of conspiracy.

She didn’t know what, and she sure as hell didn’t know why, but whatever was going on here, she somehow got the feeling Dale’s motives for accepting this invitation went beyond a penchant for cake and ice cream. Because of that many-moons-gaze thing and all.

The man wants to get into your pants, birdbrain.

She sucked in a breath, braced for the wave of outrage. She should feel…insulted. Denigrated. Incensed.

What she felt was…wet.

Karleen would be beside herself.

“Of course it’s okay if you come. To the party,” she hastily added.

“But…what about Jose?”

Five heads turned to the little man as if just remembering his presence.

“No, is okay,” he said, waving, his grin revealing the hole where his front tooth should have been. “My wife, she expects me home soon.”

So that was that.

A few minutes later, after all the bolts and fastenings had been checked and Dale had gone, promising to return in forty-five minutes or so, Joanna turned to her ex-husband and uttered a single, loaded word.

“Why?”

Bobby shrugged. “Once I told the boys who he was, they naturally asked him to stay for the party. You know how you’ve always told the kids to feel free to invite their friends to come over. I guess Matt and Ry figured this fell into that category. It’s no big deal, right?”

But it was a big deal. For reasons she could hardly go into with her ex-husband. Because she wanted to jump Dale McConnaughy’s bones and she didn’t like wanting to jump Dale McConnaughy’s bones and the whole situation was making her very crabby.

“No, it’s no big deal,” she said, turning to go back inside the house just as she heard her parents coming in through the front door, Karleen complimenting Glynnie on an outfit Karleen had probably sold her. “So where’s Tori?”

“Bathroom, probably. Listen…” Bobby glanced behind him, then lowered his voice. “I know this is really crappy of me to ask, but do you think you could, like, be extra nice to her tonight?”

“And here I’d been so looking forward to making her miserable. Honestly, Bobby—when have I not been nice to Tori?”

“I know, I know…it’s just she’s kinda feeling a little sensitive right now, and she thinks…well, she’s not real sure how she fits in, you know?”

“And somehow, it’s my responsibility to make sure she does?”

“Dammit, Jo. Couldn’t you just say ‘sure, Bobby’ for once and not make everything such an issue?”

“But torturing you is the only fun I have these days.”

“Jeez.”

“Bobby. I like Tori. In fact, I probably like her better than I do you. And I’d never intentionally do anything to upset her or make her feel like she doesn’t belong. And yes, I’ll go out of my way this evening to be ‘extra’ nice to her. But if by ‘fitting in,’ you mean she’d rather I wasn’t in the picture at all…sorry, bub, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. We were married. We have kids. We’re still part of each other’s lives. Them’s the facts. So if she’s feeling insecure about your relationship—”

“Hey, sweetheart,” Bobby said as Tori entered the kitchen, looking a little wan, very pretty and painfully young. Like Johnson-era Cher, but without the edge. “You want something to drink?”

“Some juice or water or something, maybe?”

Joanna waited a moment—it wasn’t as if Bobby didn’t know where things were—then gave up and went to the fridge herself. From outside, one of the kids screamed, “Daaaad!” and he left. Terrific.

“So,” Joanna said. “We’ve got apple, orange or cranberry-grape.”

“Orange, I guess. I read that folic acid is good for the baby?”

“Yeah. It is,” Joanna said, chalking up the prick to her heart as something not worth considering. After all, she thought as she poured the young woman a large glass of juice, even if she felt a smidgen of envy because Tori was pregnant, that was Bobby’s child she was carrying.

Jo handed Tori the juice. “So…congratulations. On the baby.”

Tori regarded her warily over the rim of her glass, then nodded. “Thanks.”

“How are you feeling?”

That got another should-I-trust-her? glance. “Fine, I guess.” She sat at the dining table, twisting the glass around and around with the fingers of her right hand. “I just had no idea I’d be so tired all the time. It’s like if I sit still for more than five minutes, I pass out. Work’s been a real bear. And I can hardly get any studying done.”

Jo leaned back against the counter next to the stove. “It’ll pass. The tiredness. Until the last month, which makes up for the previous eight.”

The grimace tightened. “Gee, thanks.”

Joanna smiled. “It’ll be worth it, though. Trust me—”

“You’re being nice to me because Bobby told you to, aren’t you?”

Of the many, many things Joanna could have said, the truth won out. “No. Even though he did. But I’m only telling you so you know he cares about you enough to make an idiot of himself.”

The corners of Tori’s mouth turned up before she took another sip of juice. “He can be sorta clueless sometimes, I guess.”

Oh, honey, I could tell you stories….

“You know we’re getting married, right?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, biting her tongue to keep from mentioning that Bobby had a habit of marrying the girls he got pregnant.

“Does that…does that bother you?”

“That he’s going to marry you? No. Am I concerned about his taking on more responsibility? I won’t lie and say I’m not.”

“You mean, that this baby might divert his attention from his other kids.”

Joanna shrugged, then said, since she couldn’t stand Tori’s suddenly stricken expression, “I swear, I do not have a problem with Bobby’s starting a new family. Not in theory, anyway. But it’s not going to be easy, his trying to juggle all of this—”

“He’s not stupid, you know.”

Ah, but Tori’s defense was admirable. Naive, but admirable. “Never said he was. And I honestly think, most of the time, he wants to do his best. I’m just not sure he’s ever figured out how.” She hesitated, then gently added, “All I’m saying is, be prepared to take on the bulk of the load for keeping things going. Because Bobby is one of those men who just can’t.”

“Then you really don’t love him anymore?”

Merciful heavens. Joanna didn’t know they made them this insecure.

“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “We had this big dog once, when I was a kid. In many ways, Dozer was a great dog, friendly and lovable and cuddly, but we finally had to get rid of him because no matter what we did, we couldn’t housebreak him, or stop him from jumping up on people. But he went to a good home, and even though I’ll always think of him fondly, no way did I want to live with him again.”

Tori frowned.

“But hey,” Joanna said, “we heard the people we gave him to worked wonders.”

The young woman seemed to consider this for a bit, then extended her left hand. “Did you see my engagement ring? I just got it last night.”

Her stomach jolting, Joanna leaned forward to dutifully admire the solitaire. It wasn’t a huge ring, maybe a half carat. But even a half carat—set in platinum, no less—wasn’t cheap, a knowledge gleaned from years of drooling over display cases. And in its facets, her new roof shimmered like a mirage.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

Smiling, even.

Joanna had been slamming things around in the kitchen for a good five minutes when her mother and Karleen came in, just in time to see her kick shut the oven door.

“She’s wearing her Kill Bobby face,” Karleen said to Glynnie, who nodded and said, “Things not going well, dear?”

It suddenly hit Joanna how much she’d really like, just once, to unburden herself to her mother. But she didn’t dare. So with a “Later” glance at Karleen, she said, “Nothing that won’t pass. Bad time of the month, is all.”

“Sweetie, I hate to tell you this,” Glynnie said, sliding up onto a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar, “but you’ve been having a bad time of the month for three years.”

“I have not!”

Karleen raised one hand. “Uh, yeah. You have.”

Joanna lifted her eyes heavenward. “Just one person on my side, God. Is that too much to ask?”

“But we are on your side!” Karleen said, then looked at Glynnie. “Aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” Glynnie said as Joanna tromped across the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator door, hauling out tubs of potato salad and coleslaw. “But then, maybe if you’d stop pretending things are always okay when they obviously aren’t…”

“Everything’s fine, Mom.”

“Tell that to the innocent appliance you just kicked. Here I am, giving you an opening to tell me what the problem is, but you clam up…”

“Oh, goody,” Karleen said, climbing up onto the bar stool next to Glynnie’s and snatching a carrot stick off the veggie tray in front of her, stopping just short of cramming it into her mouth when she realized both women were staring at her. “This brings back so many memories, when Mama and I used to fight. It just hasn’t been the same since she died. And besides,” she added when Joanna gave her the don’t-you-have-someplace-else-to-be? look, “if you tell Glynnie now, you won’t have to tell me later.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Uh-huh,” Karleen said. “And that little bauble twinkling on Tori’s left hand has nothing to do with your foul mood, I don’t suppose.”

Understanding dawned in Glynnie’s eyes. “Bobby gave Toni—”

“Tori,” Karleen said.

“—an engagement ring?” Joanna glared at Karleen as her mother added, “Well, I suppose that’s to be expected, if they’re engaged. Or am I missing something here?”

“My guess is,” Karleen said, carefully selecting a celery stick, “that our Joanna’s prickly mood has something to do with Bobby’s not having given Jo—”

“Karleen, that’s okay—”

“—his half of the roof repair money. What’d I say?” she finished as Joanna shut her eyes.

Glynnie looked at Joanna. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help with the house?”

“Karleen?” Joanna said.

“Yeah?”

“You just reached the last stop on Memory Lane.”

Karleen’s eyes bounced between Jo and her mother, then her mouth fell open in a little O. “Gotcha.” She grabbed a piece of broccoli for the road and click-clacked out of the kitchen. Joanna turned back to her mother. “Because I don’t need help, with the house or anything else.”

“But you just said—”

“Mom? This is between Bobby and me. We’ll work it out.”

Her carefully penciled brows drawn together, Glynnie reached over and selected her own celery stick, swiping it through the bowl of onion dip in the center of the dish. “What about the money you just got from that sale you made the other day?” she said, crunching.

Thinking about that sale led to thinking about Dale—again—which led to Joanna’s wondering when everything had gotten so damned complicated. Okay, more complicated. In her next life, she was coming back as a sponge.

“It’s already earmarked,” Joanna said.

“You want me to do my lawyer thing?”

“I want you to stay out of it.”

“And watch the house crumble down around your head?”

“See, this is why I don’t tell you stuff. Because you hear I’m having a problem and you immediately want to jump in and fix things for me.”

“That’s what parents do, Jo. Which I would think you would understand, now that you’re a mother yourself.”

“My oldest is eleven, Mom. Not thirty-two.”

“Since when is there a statute of limitations helping your kids?”

Joanna sighed. “That’s not the point. Not completely, anyway. I appreciate your offer, I really do. But if I accept it, Bobby’s off the hook.”

“And maybe it’s time you let him.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. Maybe it’s time to just chalk it all up to…experience and move on. Why beat your head against the wall?”

Momentarily forgetting who she was talking to, Joanna opened her mouth to defend herself, pointless though the gesture may have been since her mother kept going.

“And why do you think I don’t know what’s been going on? You may not say much, but I didn’t get where I am today without knowing how to read between the lines. We’ve got the money, why not let us help?”

“Because I don’t need—”

“Oh, Joanna—would you get over yourself? You’re driving a ten-year-old car, you haven’t bought any new clothes in a dog’s age and now your roof is about to cave in. I mean, those Santas you make are wonderful, honey, they really are, but you clearly can’t support yourself and the kids on what you make off of them. I just don’t get why you’re being so stubborn about this.”

Joanna’s stomach knotted. No, Glynnie didn’t get it, didn’t have an inkling how much baggage came attached to those offers of help. She could understand her mother’s disappointment in some of her choices over the past twelve years. But what she couldn’t deal with was the pity, that poor dear Joanna would probably never amount to much, that she was her parents’ cross to bear, they’d probably always have to support her so they might as well be cheerful about it.

“Mom,” she finally said, reaching across the counter and taking her mother’s hand in hers. “I like my old car. I’m perfectly happy with my wardrobe—”

Okay, so that part was a lie, but it wasn’t as if she had anyplace to wear fancy clothes, anyway, right?

“—and as soon as Bobby comes through, the new roof is a done deal. And I’m doing fine, financially. Well enough for me, anyway. Not everyone has to be wealthy to be happy, you know. So thanks for the offer, but no—”

Outside, male voices—one baritone, one tenor—rose in a fevered and not exactly pleasant duet. Dulcy pushed back the patio door and stood there, slumped against the opening, reeking of preadolescent disgust. “They’re at it again,” she said on a pained sigh.

After twelve years, one thing hadn’t changed: Bobby and her father still couldn’t agree on how hot the grill should be.

“I’ll be right out,” Jo said, thinking if Dale Mc-Connaughy had a lick of sense, he’d stay as far away from this family as possible.

In the past forty-five minutes Dale had changed his mind no less than ten times about coming. But somehow, here he was, standing under the portal in a more or less new pair of jeans and the first clean long-sleeved shirt he’d come across, a whole new bunch of cats giving him the once-over as he contemplated the ubiquitous chile ristra hanging by the front door and inhaled the luscious tang of seared beef wafting from the back, and then Bobby Alvarez opened the door and it was too late to turn back. From behind the house, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred kids were yelling their heads off.

“Hey, man—glad you could make it.” With the kind of grin that immediately made Dale suspicious, the other man stood aside to let Dale in. A couple of the cats darted inside, but the rest seemed content to stay out. “Party’s out back,” he said, leading Dale past the softly lit living room filled with mismatched overstuffed furniture, the scuffed wooden floor partially hidden under worn Oriental rugs. Looking forlorn, the dog lay on the sofa with his chin propped on the arm, thumping his tail in a halfhearted greeting when Dale passed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Dale asked.

“The dog? He’s ticked because he can’t go outside. Last time we had a cookout, he helped himself to most of the main course.” When they reached the eat-in kitchen, a spacious, cluttered space divided from the family room by a tiled breakfast bar, Alvarez said, “Something to drink? Tea? Soda? A beer?”

“A Coke if you’ve got it.”

Curiosity flickered briefly across the man’s features, but all he said was, “Sure thing.”

Dale stood at the end of the bar, taking in the cobalt-blue and yellow Mexican tiles along the backsplash, the hanging baskets filled with potatoes and onions, the side-by-side refrigerator all but buried in bright drawings of toothy dinosaurs and construction vehicles, of photocopied directions and lists and notices overlapping each other in no apparent order, all precariously clinging to the dark brown surface by means of an array of magnets ranging from cats to boots to miniature frames with photos inside, to ads for Pizza Hut and various household repair services. The disarray of people who were busy, Dale thought, not lazy.

Of people with lives.

Everything fluttered when Bobby opened the refrigerator, but miraculously stayed in place. Joanna’s ex handed Dale a Coke, then uncapped a Coors bottle, taking a swig from it before noticing the bag in Dale’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh, right. Some stuff I had lying around. For the boys.” He dug the Captain Underpants books, whoopee cushion, and baseball glove out of the bag. “I brought another glove, too, in case they might want to play later.”

Alvarez looked dumbstruck as he picked up the glove. “Damn—you even signed it? The boys’ll be beside themselves. And this…” With a huge grin he snatched the deflated whoopee cushion off the bar and blew it up, then squeezed it, letting out a bark of laughter when it blatted. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages!”

“Give it to me, lemme show you something.” Bobby handed back the cushion; Dale blew it up, then pressed it this one certain way so the fpfpfpfp ended on a long squeal….

A girl about twelve or so came into the kitchen, let out a disgusted, “Dad, jeez!” then breezed out again, a bag of chips in her hand.

When they finished laughing their butts off, Bobby said, “That was my daughter, Dulcy. She gets her sense of humor from her mother.” He chuckled a couple more times, then said, “I honestly didn’t think you’d come back.”

Yeah, well, Dale still wasn’t sure about that, although he supposed he could duck out pretty much anytime he wanted to. And do what? Go back to his empty condo and watch ESPN? Go bar hopping?

God knew, he’d done his fair share of carousing, if for no other reason than to keep from being alone. From thinking about things there was no sense in thinking about. But lately…

His tastes had changed, was all. Still, why had he shown up here tonight?

Maybe he didn’t want to answer that one, he thought as Bobby led him out back, introducing him to Joanna’s parents—her father, a tall, lanky man with a shock of silver hair and major eyebrows, looked vaguely familiar for some reason—and Bobby’s fiancée, a pretty gal with long brown hair and enormous blue eyes who looked like she felt even more out of place than Dale did.

Then he caught sight of Joanna over on the far side of the patio, nearly blotted out by a swarm of little kids as she fussed with things on a long table covered in a fluttering checkered tablecloth, and he heard her laugh at something one of the kids said, and he remembered damn well why he’d accepted the invitation, even as it became crystal clear why he should have turned it down. Especially when she looked up, just for a second, and a flush washed over her cheeks when their eyes met.

Huh.

He also thought about going over and saying hi or something, but everybody’s eyes were on him so he settled for lifting his Coke in a greeting and she nodded and mumbled something about being glad he could make it, then disappeared around the side of the house.

The boys discovered him right about then, dragging him away from the under-ten herd to see the rabbits they kept in a hutch at the far end of the yard, next to the empty stable. Two or three cats started to follow them, but their hearts really weren’t in it. From beside the gas grill off to the side of the patio, Bobby yelled something to them about not being pests, but Dale waved away their father’s concern. Besides, it was a relief having an excuse to get away from the adults, who he got the feeling were all looking to him for something.

“The bigger one’s mine,” the one with the dark, straight hair—Matt—said, and then went on about how they were both girls so they couldn’t have babies together and what-all they fed them and how their father had bought the rabbits for them at the fair and that Mom had been kinda mad and how she’d told their father that if they didn’t take care of the rabbits, she was packing them right up and taking them to his house. And all the while, the other boy, Ryder, had just stood there quietly, stroking his bunny, a black-and-white lop-eared, not saying anything. Now, unlike a lot of adults, Dale generally got off on rambunctious kids. But the quiet ones always stole a piece of his heart.

So he squatted by the cage and said to Ryder, “What’s her name?”

“Emily,” Matt said with a snort.

Dale looked over at Matt and said quietly, “Any reason why your brother can’t answer his own questions?” The kid looked taken aback, but then he shook his head and Dale said, “That’s what I thought,” and turned again to Ryder.

“Emily’s a real pretty name. What made you pick it?”

“She was my best friend in first grade.” Eyes exactly like his mother’s, just as intelligent but without the sass, met Dale’s. “But she moved away.”

Matt tapped Dale on the shoulder. “Hey, Mr….Mc…”

“Let’s just go with Dale.”

“Mr. Dale…I’ve read more Caldecott books than anybody in my class.”

Now, Dale didn’t have a clue what the heck a Caldecott book was, but he did know that one kid’s boasting about his accomplishments around another kid, especially a sibling, was usually sufficient to provoke a rise to the challenge. But Ryder just stood there, petting his bunny, like he hadn’t heard. But not like he didn’t care. Like he was trying to pretend he didn’t.

Luckily, though, before he had to figure out how to handle things, Joanna called for the kids, telling them they were about to eat soon, to come get cleaned up. The kids took off. Dale straightened, watching Joanna watch her sons as they ran toward her, the intensity of her gaze binding them to her as surely as if they’d been attached by a string. She touched each of them in turn when they reached her, her attention lingering a second or two longer on Ryder, who must’ve started talking about him, if the curious look on her face when she looked in Dale’s direction was any indication.

Like dead leaves disturbed by a sudden breeze, old, dried-up feelings rustled inside him, leaving him feeling unsettled.

The boys went on in; Joanna stayed outside, waiting.

“You’ve made a big hit,” she said, her arms now crossed. The pencil had been banished from her hair; instead, all those curls fought against a skinny gold headband that looked to be rapidly losing the battle. She’d put on some lipstick, too, a natural color that glistened softly on her mouth.

“They’re good kids,” Dale said. Except, when she nodded, he saw worry etched in the lines around her mouth, between her brows. “But then,” he said, “that’s probably because they’ve got a good mama.”

Her mouth twitched. “And how would you know that?”

“Just a hunch. From what I saw just now. The way they went running off, soon as you called them. Like they wanted to go to you, not like they were afraid of what you might do to ’em if they didn’t.”

Joanna laughed. “Damn. There goes my reputation.”

But there was a heaviness to her voice that disturbed something inside him, enough to make him do something stupid and to ask if everything was okay with Ryder.

She flinched slightly, and he could tell she was about to say, “Of course,” or some such, except a tear slipped out. Her arms tightened, like she wanted to wipe it away but to do so would only acknowledge its presence. “It’s…none of your concern,” she said softly, not in a way meant to make him feel he was butting in, but because she simply didn’t wish him to worry himself. And Dale didn’t wish to embarrass her by pressing the issue, especially since he wasn’t all that sure himself of the motives behind his inquiry.

“You have kids of your own?” she asked, catching him off guard. Although it shouldn’t have. Women like Joanna just naturally wondered about things like this.

“Hell, no.”

Her head tilted slightly. “You sound like you’d rather eat slugs.”

“No,” he said with a smile he really didn’t feel. “I just don’t think I’d be much good at it. Not for the long haul,” he added when she frowned at him.

“And you’re basing this on…?”

“Gut instinct? The fact that, for all the kids I’ve seen and been around, I’ve never felt like I was missing out by not having any of my own?”

“But I was watching you with the boys—”

He held up one hand to cut her off at the pass. “Likin’ kids and wantin’ to deal with ’em on a full-time basis are two different things. I mean, look at you, all tied up about your boy. I have enough trouble worrying about how to take care of myself, let alone trying to figure out how to make anybody else happy.”

She looked at him oddly. “You don’t strike me as the selfish type.”

“That’s because you don’t know me,” he said, then thought, Oh, yeah, that’s a great way to get the woman into your bed. Then he said, “And you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who would judge somebody else by her own standards. Not everybody’s cut out to be a parent…”

Shards of memories he thought he’d swept out years ago pricked at him, deep inside. He realized she was giving him one of those damned compassionate looks that gave him the willies.

“You’re absolutely right,” she said quietly. “Raising kids is hard, and messy, and usually thankless, and it’s easy enough to lose sight of the joy of parenthood when you did want your kids. But just for the record? I’ll gladly deal with being ‘tied up’ about my babies, as you put it, for the chance to see the world through their eyes on a daily basis. In fact, I’d have another one in a minute if I—” Her mouth clamped shut, then stretched into a tired smile. “Well. You might as well go mingle. Food’ll be ready in a sec.” Then she disappeared inside the house, hugging her burdens to herself like she was afraid of the mess they’d make if she dropped them.

When Dale looked up, he realized that Bobby Alvarez had been watching them. Not that Dale cared, not really, but antagonizing husbands, ex or otherwise, was not something he cared to do on a regular basis. So you could’ve knocked him over with a feather when Alvarez suddenly grinned at him, nodding in a way that Dale could have sworn was meant to be encouraging.

Chapter 6

“This means a lot to the kids, you coming to their party like this,” Roger Swann, Joanna’s father, said to him a minute or so later. Dale had duly reintegrated himself into the group, slipping easily into the good-old-boy charm he always used to mask a background that not even years of making obscene amounts of money could disguise.

So over the screams and laughter of more than a dozen little boys racing back and forth in the yard, he smiled at Roger, who looked laid-back enough in a long-sleeved denim shirt and blue jeans probably a size or two bigger around the waist than the man had worn ten years ago. That is, until you took a real good look at the silver-and-turquoise concha on the man’s bolo tie, as well as the no-doubt, custom-made cowboy boots peeking out from underneath the jeans’ hems.

“Thanks. It’s my pleasure.” Dale took another sip of his soda, then said, “You know, it’s just bugging the life out of me, but you look familiar. We haven’t met before or something, have we?”

Roger grinned. “You must’ve seen my last set of commercials.” At Dale’s frown, he said, “Mesa Lincoln-Mercury? Reassures folks, seeing the man behind the dealership. Or so I’m told.” He laughed. “Besides, I’m just a big old ham at heart. Even if it does embarrass the life out of Joanna’s mother.”

Whatever Dale was about to say vaporized when Joanna came back outside, that blond friend of hers in tow, the two of them toting plates and utensils and things.

“That Karleen’s sure a looker, isn’t she?” Roger said.

“What? Oh. Yeah. I guess.”

One bushy gray eyebrow arched speculatively before Roger dropped heavily into a nearby molded plastic chair, waving Dulcy over.

“Hey, baby…come on over here and sit beside your old granddaddy.” After a cautious glance at Dale, she did, whiskey-colored eyes huge behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, her dark brown hair as wild and curly as her mama’s. She was pretty, Dale supposed, in the way of girl children straddling adolescence, her top front teeth still a little too big for a mouth still the natural pink of a child’s. Her smile in answer to Dale’s flickered shyly, but her gaze was wide and clear and questioning.

“So what made you decide to go into retailing after your retirement?”

“A whim,” Dale said mildly, settling into another chair. “Just something I always thought I’d like to try someday.”

“You happy with it?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Heard you had all sorts of offers to coach.”

“I did.”

“But…?”

“Just wasn’t something I could wrap my head around, is all.”

Roger’s intense scrutiny didn’t make Dale near as uncomfortable as the unexpected sympathy he saw there. Just when he thought for sure his skull would pop from the tension, Roger waved his empty glass toward Dale’s soda can. “You ready for another one of those?”

“No, no. I’m good.”

Roger handed his glass to Dulcy. “Would you mind seeing if there’s any more Sprite, honey?”

With a nod, the girl got up and started for the drinks table, only to have her grandfather call her back before she’d gotten very far. Glancing around before slipping a billfold from his back pocket, he removed a bill, quickly folding it up in his hand before slipping it into his granddaughter’s. “Now don’t you dare tell your mother I gave you that or she’ll have my hide.”

“I won’t, Gramps.” Grinning, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks.” Then she scurried away, her curls bouncing.

“I take it her mother would disapprove?” Dale said with a grin of his own.

“To put it mildly. Joanna’s got a real bug up her butt about Glynnie and me spoilin’ them. But what’s the point of havin’ grandkids otherwise?” He squinted at Dale, then said, “You’re not from here originally, are you?”

“No, sir. Texas.”

“So’s half of Albuquerque,” Joanna’s father said on a chuckle. “What made you decide to settle here?”

Dale leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “I spent a couple of years traveling after I retired. Landed here a few months back, decided to stay. Great weather, nice people, lots of sky…just hadn’t found any place I liked better.”

“No family left back in Texas, then, I take it?”

“No,” Dale said, willing his mind to stay blank on the subject. “Not for a long time.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Joanna’s calling everyone to eat. As he and Roger got up and headed toward the food, Dale watched Joanna gently fussing over the kids, making sure they all took at least more than one thing, telling them she didn’t care if this was a birthday party, there’d be no cake and ice cream if they didn’t eat either some of the salad or some veggies from the dip tray. And no, she told Matt, a single carrot stick did not cut it. The kids all groaned, but they dutifully piled raw vegetables on their plates. Of course, no telling where those vegetables would end up, since Dale sincerely doubted whether many of them would actually find their way into little stomachs. But Joanna looked so damned tickled with herself, Dale could hardly stand it.

And he sure liked seeing her pretty face relieved of some of that worry, even if it was just for a few minutes.

Again he reminded himself that, up until now, nothing cut his libido off at the knees faster than discovering a woman’s other name was Mom. So what the hell was going wrong this time?

He’d known she was a mother before he’d delivered the swing set…and he’d still flirted with her. He’d known she was a mother before her ex-husband and the kids had begged him to come to the party…and he’d still come. And now, even after seeing she was the kind of woman who’d put her kids ahead of everything, and everyone, else, he still couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Or his thoughts from wandering down paths clearly marked Dead End.

“So, Dale…” Roger said, blowing Dale’s thoughts to smithereens as they reached the table. “That your old Maxima out in the drive?”

The kids all tended to, Joanna apparently figured it was safe to leave the adults to their own devices, scooting back inside for whatever reason. Tamping down a quiver of disappointment, Dale forced himself back to the topic at hand, loading up his hamburger bun with three patties, a slice of cheese and plenty of lettuce and tomato. He passed on the onions, though. “It is.”

“Plannin’ on trading her in anytime soon? You know, for something a little flashier, maybe?”

“Hadn’t thought about it, to tell you the truth. Figured as long as she gets me where I need to go, no sense giving up on her just yet.”

“Huh,” Roger said, about to pile a second hamburger on his bun until he caught his wife glaring at him from the other side of the table. With a sigh, he put it back. “Well, you ever decide you’re in the market for a new vehicle, you just let me know. I’ll fix you up with a good deal, and that’s a promise.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

“Speaking of the market…are you in it?”

“The stock market, you mean?” He moved on to the potato salad, wondering how he’d managed to get left alone with Joanna’s parents. Where the hell was everybody else? “Some.”

“I don’t know about you,” Roger said, “but our portfolio’s taken quite a few hits this past little while.”

“Yeah,” Dale said. “It’s been rocky, all right.”

Then Glynnie picked up the thread of the conversation. “But with that salary you must’ve been getting, I’m sure you’re sitting pretty, aren’t you? And I hear pro players get very nice pensions.”

What the Sam Hill was all this about? Still, wasn’t like his earnings weren’t a matter of public record. What he did with his money, however, was not.

“That’s true, ma’am. But like your husband said, times’ve been rough this past little while.”

Salad tongs poised over her plate, Joanna’s mother said, “You mean to tell me there’s nothing left?”

A deaf man could’ve heard the shock in her voice. Not to mention the disappointment. And suddenly Dale understood.

Warning, warning—gold digger dead ahead.

“Ma’am?” he said quietly, and with a smile—putting folks in their places generally went down easier, he found, when you were pleasant about it. “I’m not one for discussing my finances with people I know, let alone perfect strangers. So pardon me if I find your questions a bit personal for my taste—”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.