Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (13 page)

Then her brother laid a comforting arm over her shoulders and turned her toward the stairs up to his apartment. “You worked miracles, Josie,” he said, using Aunt Julia’s pet name for her.

She smiled, sniffled and said, “I did, didn’t I?”

“I
CALL THE FRONT SEAT
!”
Tyler called, racing ahead of his sister.

“Oh, yeah,
right!
” she snapped. “It’s my turn and you know it.”

Going down the walk behind his children, Ryan grimaced. He was getting sick of this particular battle, waged every time they headed for the pickup. He’d mercifully forgotten their power struggles, a gauzy curtain having settled over his memory.

Ahead, Melissa shouldered her little brother aside. He howled with rage and clung to the door handle.

Wearily, Ryan said, “Enough! Okay, who rode in the front yesterday?”

“You did!” his daughter exclaimed in triumph.

“You did!” Tyler argued. “When we went to see—” He stopped, eyes widening.

“We went to the movie yesterday
afternoon,
” Melissa reminded him with an air
of superiority. “Last
night,
you rode in front when we went to Pagliacci’s. So there.”

Tyler sagged.

Ryan put Melissa’s suitcase in the back, closed the tailgate and canopy door, and came forward to unlock. He laid a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, but the boy didn’t even look up.

All the way to the airport, Tyler slumped in back with his chin resting on his chest, while Melissa, once settled with a wriggle of satisfaction, fell into a brooding silence, her face turned away from Ryan.

Why did Wendy have to move? he thought viciously. Things had been bad enough before, when they’d traded the kids every few days. This felt like a form of death to him, even though he knew rationally that they’d be back in a month for the Christmas holidays. From their unhappy silence, he guessed they felt the same. They’d both been crabby since they got up that morning.

Worse, he kept wondering whether they’d missed their mother at all, or whether they were dreading going home. Tyler, more open than his sister, had said enough that Ryan knew he wasn’t happy in Denver. Melissa hadn’t talked as much. She’d never altogether relaxed with Ryan. When he asked how she
and her mom were getting along, all she would say was a bright, “Fine!” that he wasn’t sure he believed. Neither of them spoke about their mother the way he’d expected, the “mom said this, did this, made me do this” kind of thing.

He kept remembering Wendy’s reluctance to have children at all. She’d wanted to wait, even though when he suggested they start a family they had been married five years. “I’ll be fat!” she’d wail, or make a pretty moue and complain, “You know once we have a baby we’ll never be able to go out again.”

As if he cared. He was a family man. He’d always wanted children, and he didn’t much like to party. Wendy had been good for him in that respect, forcing him to be more sociable than came naturally. But after five years, he’d been
ready.
He looked forward to wondering smiles and building blocks and bikes with training wheels.

Wendy had given in, and even seemed to enjoy the excitement of pregnancy. She’d spent what seemed a small fortune at the time on maternity clothes and on decorating the baby’s bedroom. But she decided not to nurse, which disappointed him, and she wanted to
put Melissa in a morning day care by the time she was six weeks old.

“You could drop her off on your way to work and I could get some sleep,” she’d said, her smile coaxing. “Then I could pick her up and she and I could have a lovely day together, and I’d feel like a human being when you came home from work.”

Actually, Melissa had napped in the afternoon, and Wendy had still been frazzled when he got home, eager for him to change their baby daughter’s diaper or give her a bath or a bottle or tuck her in.

Ryan frowned out the windshield of his pickup as traffic slowed on the freeway north of Southcenter Shopping Center and the exit for the airport.

Of course Wendy had loved Melissa. But her love, he had sometimes thought, was like a child’s for a doll. She’d coo and kiss and get down and play like another toddler, and then abruptly lose interest and announce in a brittle voice that, “I have to get out of here for a while or I’ll go crazy!” She’d snatch up her keys. “I’m just going to the mall.
You
can babysit.”

She’d loved Tyler in turn, but even less patiently. Ryan’s feelings for her had eroded
when she went out with girlfriends and was late picking up the kids at day care, screamed at Tyler because he wouldn’t go down for a nap and pouted when Ryan balked at hiring babysitters every Friday and Saturday night.

She’d been right, he concluded finally. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. Maybe she should have waited. Maybe she should never have had children. But when the divorce came, she wouldn’t admit she was overwhelmed by them.

“I’m their mother!” she announced fiercely. “Of course they’ll live with me. You work, you’re never home.” A more than slight exaggeration, but he let it slide. After all, she was staying in the house and he had rented an apartment not half a mile from his family. He could keep an eye on them. Run over if either of the kids called. They spent every weekend with him, so Wendy didn’t have to worry about affording babysitters. He took Melissa to T-ball games and Tyler to soccer, biked around Green Lake with them, knew their friends.

He hadn’t considered one thing. Wendy wasn’t going out alone. She was dating. And with stunning speed, she announced she was remarrying.

Only months after her marriage came the bombshell, she, her new husband and the kids were moving.

Melissa’s small voice jarred Ryan out of his reverie. “Are you okay, Dad?”

They were slowing again, this time to join the backup to grab a ticket for the airport parking.

“Yeah.” He found a grin for her, if a sad one. “I’m just missing you guys already, even if you’re not gone yet.”

Her mouth pinched. “I wish we could stay longer.”

“Yeah. Me, too. But you’ll be back in less than a month. Twenty-eight days.”

Her anxious gaze met his. “You don’t think Mom will change her mind?”

Hiding his anger, Ryan smiled reassuringly. “Nope. She can’t. We have a parenting plan that’s court-approved. This Christmas is my turn.”

“Oh.” She visibly relaxed. “Okay.” Silent while he began the spiral upward in the parking garage, the eleven-year-old said suddenly, “Sometimes I wish…” before stopping just as abruptly.

He shot her a glance. “You wish?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

From the back seat, Tyler said loudly, “
I
wish we could live here.”

“But then we wouldn’t see Mom.”

“But now we don’t see Dad hardly ever.”

Melissa had no rejoinder.

Ryan said heartily, “A month. You’ll be back in a month. And then for the whole summer.”

Neither said anything.

He hated putting them on the airplane. They were too young to be flying halfway across the country, shuttling between parents for the convenience of the two adults, with no reference to what they preferred or needed.

He watched the plane take off, diminishing into a late November sky. Then he hiked back to his truck, paid the outrageous parking fee and wished he knew what flight Jo was coming in on.

D
ING DONG.

Sunday night, eight o’clock, and somebody was ringing his doorbell?

Ryan put down his book and left his easy chair to go to the door.

Jo. Jo stood on his doorstep, bundled in a parka, looking small and uncertain. “I should have called, but…”

Exultation swelled in his chest, hurting like he guessed a heart attack might. Without a word, Ryan snatched her off the doorstep and into his arms.

It was a good minute before she emerged from his kiss, her cheeks pink. “Do I take it you missed me?” she asked, voice breathless.

“Yeah.” Belatedly, he reached past her and closed the front door, shutting out the cold air. “You could say that.”

“I missed you, too,” Jo said simply. “When I got in, I went home, and I almost called, but then…I just thought I’d come.”

“I’ve been waiting by the phone.” Which, he realized, was exactly what he’d been doing. He couldn’t remember a thing about the two chapters he’d read in the past hour; he’d been reading with only half his attention while he waited.

“Really?” Her dark eyes were shy.

“Really.” He cupped her face in his hands, threading his fingers through her thick, silky hair. He loved her hair, the texture and the rich glow when light shone on it. His voice thickened. “You’re beautiful.”

“No,” she protested. “You know I’m not.”

He nipped her lower lip. “Don’t argue,” he
murmured against her mouth. “I’m the expert. You’re beautiful.”

Her laugh was joyous, her mouth soft when he kissed her again. Lifting his head at last, Ryan sucked in a shaky breath.

“I want to hear about your weekend. Here.” He reached for the zipper of her parka. “Let me take your coat.”

He laid an arm across her shoulders and steered her companionably toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“I’d love some.”

He put it on to brew and leaned back against the counter, savoring the sight of her in a red turtleneck sweater and jeans. “Did you enjoy seeing your brother?”

Jo sat at the long kitchen table, one foot tucked under her. “Actually, I did.” She had an oddly pensive expression. “My father came to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Ryan raised his brows. “You didn’t know your brother had invited him?”

“I knew. I’m not sure why I went, but…it actually turned out to be…nice. Oh.” She made an impatient gesture. “That isn’t right. But better than I would have expected. I said things I should have said years ago, and he
opened up a little. As much as he’s capable of, I suspect.”

Watching her face and the flicker of expressions crossing it, Ryan made no move to reach for mugs. “What did you say?”

“I told him I was angry that he’d never talked about my mother. That I blamed him for how little I remember about her. How little I even
know.
”

“You have your aunt.”

Wryly, Jo said, “I’m realizing how much of what Aunt Julia tells me is filtered through her biases. Much as I hate to admit it…you were right.” She hesitated. “For example, she always said Mom gave up a singing career to marry Dad and have children. That she could have been a star.”

“And?” he nudged, when she fell silent.

“Dad says she had nodes on her vocal cords. That the doctor wanted her to quit singing.”

“Couldn’t they do surgery?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not then. Haven’t I read that Julie Andrews can’t sing anymore after some kind of surgery like that?” She shook her head. “Maybe Mom just didn’t care enough about making it. Maybe she
wanted
to be a wife and mother, and Aunt Julia just didn’t believe she possibly could.”

He knew this was important, knew it all figured in why Jo herself was so determined never to marry. Quietly, he asked, “Why is she so antimarriage?”

Jo shook her head. “I have no idea. No, that isn’t quite true. I guess their parents—my grandparents—had a horrible marriage. My grandmother was a teacher until she got married, but she was expected to give it up afterward. I think maybe she was bored as a housewife, and she infected Aunt Julia. Or maybe Aunt Julia fell in love with someone who assumed she’d give up going to law school for him. She’s never said.” Jo paused, then smiled reminiscently. “She always told stories about these men she had dated. There was a senator and a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist and judges and even a movie star.” She named him. “Her life always sounded so glamorous. So much better than if she was married to one guy settling into stodginess.” Jo looked at him in appeal, as if asking for agreement.

He nodded to show his understanding even though he didn’t like knowing that
he
was “the stodgy guy” competing with Jo’s vision
of a lifestyle that would have her appearing in
People
magazine’s “Star Tracks” on the arm of some celebrity or another.

“I always wanted to be like Aunt Julia,” Jo concluded softly.

Wanted.
Past tense. Trying to quell the hope that insisted on rising like flood waters, Ryan turned and opened the cupboard.

“And now?” he asked casually.

“Now?”

“Do you still want to be like her?”

She didn’t answer. He stole a look over his shoulder to see her staring into space with the intense, frowning concentration of someone searching a website for one magical nugget of information.

At last she let out a giant sigh. “The last time I saw her—when she stopped overnight last month—I suddenly realized that she’s lonely. She won’t admit it. She may not even know she is!” Another gusty sigh followed the first. “But I could tell. All the charming, successful men her age have wives now. And children. Her judge…” Jo looked up. “She’s been seeing him forever. I actually thought they might end up getting married. But instead he married someone else, and now he’s
pushing a baby carriage. Aunt Julia curls her lip, but I wonder…” Her voice trailed off.

“You wonder?” He’d been doing a lot of prodding tonight, but he wanted her to admit to a change of heart. He wanted her to say,
I’ve realized that I love you. That I want to marry you and have your babies and be a librarian in Seattle.

Because he was in love with her.

Apparently, he was a stodgy guy to his core.

“I wonder if she hasn’t realized that she’s going to end up lonely.” Jo sounded sad herself. “I wonder if she wasn’t jealous when she saw him with his pregnant wife, even though I expect he asked her to marry him and she turned him down.”

Ryan thought it was possible she was reading her own feelings into her aunt’s life, but he sure wasn’t going to say so. Maybe he even hoped that’s what Jo was doing, because it would suggest that she was starting to realize that
she
would end up lonely if she never married.

Specifically,
him.

“Why don’t you ask her?” he suggested.

“I tried. Well, in a roundabout, gentle way. She sneered at the idea.”

“Ah.” He set a mug of coffee in front of her.

Jo reached for it. “But she would, of course.”

“Yeah, I suppose she would.”