Taking a Chance

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

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

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

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

“We have to wallboard anyway.”

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

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

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

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

“Ryan!” she warned.

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

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

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

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

“So I can’t install the toilet.”

“I guess not.”

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

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

He grimaced. “Yeah. Okay.”

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

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

Maybe he should ask her to dinner and find out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you called her friends?”

“Does she have any anymore?”

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

He settled for, “She’ll be home.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fixtures?” Ryan asked.

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

“Nah, I’d rather finish.”

“Do you mind if I watch?” Jo asked.

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

She grinned at him and settled herself comfortably.

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

“I hope that’s Emma.”

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

He glanced at her. “Collapse?”

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

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

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

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

“Apparently.” He applied a bead of sealant.

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

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

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

“Poor Emma,” Jo said somberly.

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

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

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

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

“She loves you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I assumed that.”

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

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

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

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

“I don’t see why not.”

“You’re a miracle worker!”

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

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

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

“Mom said what?”

Her face turned mulish. “Nothing.”

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

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

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

“Dinner’s ready,” Kathleen announced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. I didn’t know. You never said…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks.”

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

With shock, Jo said, “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. She hadn’t.

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

“No. You’re cool.”

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

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

Jo hurried down the hall.

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

“We worked hard,” his sister said.

We? Jo’s temper sparked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kathleen flinched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jo nodded dumbly.

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

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

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

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

Jo began, “If you’d rather not…”

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