Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (4 page)

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

“Dinner’s ready,” Kathleen announced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. I didn’t know. You never said…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks.”

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

With shock, Jo said, “What?”

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

“Look.” The teenager splayed her hands on her abdomen, covering the bony jut of her pelvis. “My stomach pooches.” She turned from side to side, making faces. “I’m eating too much. I know I am! I shouldn’t have had that Jell-O last night…” Was she
serious?
“But you’re so thin! Too thin. Anyway, wasn’t the Jell-O sugarless?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. She hadn’t.

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

“No. You’re cool.”

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

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

Jo hurried down the hall.

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

“We worked hard,” his sister said.

We?
Jo’s temper sparked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jo nodded dumbly.

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

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

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

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

Jo began, “If you’d rather not…”

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

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

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

Jo nodded.

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You and your sister.”

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

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

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

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

“Was she always like that?”

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

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