Taking a Chance

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

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

Jo nodded.

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You and your sister.”

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

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

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

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

“Was she always like that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eaten here?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Would I have to wade across your room?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assuming they got to sex in the first place.

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

In which case, alas, it wasn’t to be.

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

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

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

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

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

“How long is the program?”

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

“Are you glad? Sorry?” he asked.

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

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

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

“Boyfriend?”

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

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

“Can she do that?”

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

Us? Jarred, she realized their pizza was ready.

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

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

“Aren’t you a baseball fan?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You think he has one?”

“Yeah. He was kind of beefy. A jock, you know. Sure,” she nodded, “he’d have gone to seed. How about your high school girlfriend?”

A certain wryness entered his voice. “Want to know the truth?”

Jo cocked her head to one side. “Yeah.”

“I married her. She still looks good.”

“You married right out of high school?”

Ryan dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Big mistake, but, yeah. I did.”

“Did Kathleen like your wife?”

“Hated her. The feeling was mutual,” he added. “Kathleen said Wendy was self-centered and shallow.” His mouth twisted. “She was right. Isn’t it a bitch, when your big sister is always right?”

“Is she?” Jo asked quietly.

He made a sound low in his throat. “I used to think she was. Hell, I think she thought her life was pretty damn close to a state of perfection.” There was that word again. “But you know the saying.”

“Pride goeth before the fall?”

“That’s it. Her pride is taking a real battering.”

Jo asked about their parents, and learned that their mother was dead of cancer and their father was still on-again, off-again employed, living in a run-down little place in West Seattle. “Likes to go to the bars. He was plenty mad when Emerald Downs closed.” Seeing her confusion, Ryan added, “The horse racing track.”

“Ah.”

“Dad’s your classic blue-collar, uneducated guy. He’s happy with what he is. Which,” Ryan’s grin was wicked, “irritates Kathleen no end. She’s spent a lifetime trying to improve him.”

“She hasn’t started trying to improve me yet,” Jo said thoughtfully.

“Oh, I’m making her sound worse than she is.” The skin beside his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “But here’s a piece of advice. Don’t leave dirty dishes on the counter.”

Jo didn’t admit that she already had one morning, when she hit the snooze button and overslept. They’d been washed, dried and put away when she got home. At dinner, she’d thanked whoever picked up after her. Kathleen had smiled and said, “We all have those mornings occasionally.”

Damn it, she wouldn’t feel guilty! She was working off any sins of commission or omission. Jo hadn’t expected the remodeling job to be as all-consuming as it had turned out to be.

“Did you really think the tile looked okay?” she asked.

“Better than okay. Hey!” He pushed away the half-full pitcher of beer. “Want to work for me sometimes?”

“Are you serious?” Both flattered and startled, she felt an annoying frisson of excitement. He liked her. Well, he liked the way she used bullnose tiles.

How easily she was pleased.

“Yeah.” He seemed surprised. “Yeah, I am. We have a guy we call for tiling, but he’s been unreliable. I’ve considered looking for someone else.”

“I’m a complete amateur!”

“Job you did in there didn’t look amateur.”

Darned if her cheeks weren’t turning pink. “Thank you. It wasn’t just me, though.”

“Wasn’t it?” Ryan asked shrewdly.

“Helen did most of the cutting.”

“Could you learn?”

“Well, sure.” Jo frowned. “Are you saying your sister is lazy?”

“Lazy?” She’d earned raised brows. “No. Just…used to the peons doing the work. It’s actually why I’ve been skeptical about her determination to be independent. Make sure she does her share.”

Jo nodded. “I will. Um…how often do you need someone to tile?”

After he gave her an idea what kind of hours and pay she could expect, she promised to think about whether she’d want to work for him, and they left it at that.

On the way out, they briefly discussed seeing a movie, but decided they had to get up too early in the morning. “Maybe Friday night?” Ryan asked.

“Sure.” Jo enjoyed the feeling of his hand on her lower back as he opened the outside door.

On the short drive home, Ryan asked out of the blue, “Here’s my profound question for the night. What do you want out of life?”

An audible hint of defensiveness crept into her voice. “A satisfying job, a nice home and good friends.”

In the darkness between street lights, she felt as much as saw his head turn. “Marriage? Kids?”

She wouldn’t lie. “Neither are for me.”

He was quiet for a moment, until he had to brake at a stop sign. “Why?”

“How many happy marriages have you ever seen?” she asked bluntly. “You and your sister are zero for two. My parents should never have married. My friends are in and out of relationships and marriages. If by some wild chance you are happy, then you face grief like Helen’s feeling now. What’s the upside?”

Pulling to the curb in front of his sister’s brick house, he set the hand brake. “Getting lucky. Having it all.”

“Can’t you do that without getting married?”

“No desire for children?”

Jo shook her head firmly. “I’m not maternal.”

“Until you have them…”

“You don’t know? Uh-uh. Haven’t you noticed how many people suck at being parents? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and I sure don’t want to be a failure at something I never intended to do in the first place.”

“You’re a hard woman.”

Did he mean it?

“No. Just…cynical.”

His voice became a notch huskier. “But you haven’t sworn off men altogether?”

“No.” Her own became thready. “I like companionship and, um, physical intimacy. Just so the man understands that’s all I want.”

His hand wrapped her nape. “Aren’t I the one who should be saying that?”

Sounding breathless as he gently kneaded her neck, Jo said, “That is traditional, I believe.”

“I don’t mind breaking tradition.” He bent toward her. “If you don’t.”

“It seems to come naturally to me,” she whispered, just before he kissed her.

Oh, so softly, his lips brushed hers, nipped, coaxed and teased. She sighed and even moaned as she nibbled at his lower lip, felt the brush of his shaven cheek, the erotic sensation of his tongue touching hers. He took his sweet time and let her take hers. She was boneless by the time he lifted his head.

“You are a very sexy woman, Jo Dubray,” he murmured, nuzzled her ear.

“Me?”

“Oh, yeah.” He seemed to be enjoying the texture of her hair as he ran his fingers through it. “Definitely you.”

“You’re, um, not so bad yourself.”

She loved the rumble in his chest when he laughed. “Am I something like a good book?”

Jo tried to sound dignified. “Isn’t that better than a home run?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head doubtfully, the grooves in his cheeks betraying his amusement. “I think we need to work on how to give compliments.”

It never had been her strong suit. Her mother, she didn’t remember that well. Her father had never said anything more than, “Looks good,” or “That’s fine.” Never once had he beamed with pride in a small accomplishment of hers, or lavished her with praise. How did you learn to say, You’re wonderful, if you’d never heard it?

“Okay, how’s this?” Jo kissed Ryan’s neck. “You’re hot.”

“I already knew that.” Now he was openly grinning. “Emma tells me I am. She likes it when I drive her places, because the other girls say I’m hot.”

“Well, they’re right. And I do believe someone is peeking out the front window.”

“So they are.” He sounded regretful. “So much for making out with you.”

“Another time?” Did she have to make it a question when she’d intended to be oh, so cool?

“Count on it.” He kissed her again, hard, hinting at passion that was less playful.

A moment later, she let herself into the house and watched his pickup pull away.

Companionship and physical intimacy. Could she enjoy such tepid pleasures with Ryan, and not make the fatal mistake of falling in love?

CHAPTER FOUR

ONE WEEK AND a couple of dates with Ryan later, Jo was contemplating the less than absorbing problem of whether a given title should be classified in the Dewey Decimal 500s, as a scientific work, or in the 200s, as a metaphysical piece of crackpot science, when the knock came on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she said, turning in her chair, pleased with the interruption and hoping it would be lengthy.

Emma came in, Ginny behind her.

“We’re going for a walk,” the teenager said. “We thought you might like to come.”

Jo hesitated. A stroll down city sidewalks with a first-grader and a high school girl was not her idea of a thrill a minute. On the other hand, it was a beautiful fall day, and besides… Her gaze slipped back to her open textbook.

“Sure! Thanks for asking.” She rose, a little embarrassed at her alacrity. “Just let me grab a sweater.”

Neither girl’s mother was home from work yet. Jo knew the two often went for walks in the afternoon, sometimes to Cowen Park, or to the grocery store to buy a Popsicle for Ginny, or just to wander, she supposed.

Today they set out the eight blocks to Whole Foods, a treasure Kathleen and Helen had pointed her to shortly after her arrival. The huge grocery store on Roosevelt specialized in organic and earth-friendly foods and toiletries. Cosmetics weren’t tested on animals, and the produce department had the most incredible mountains of glorious fruits and vegetables she’d ever seen. The bars where shoppers could construct their own wraps and salads were to drool for.

Head tilted back to look up at the leafy canopy, touched with the pale yellow of autumn, Jo decided aloud, “Maybe I’ll buy a scone. Have you tried them?”

She immediately felt guilty. If Emma had ever eaten anything like that, she didn’t now. But it was really hard never to talk about food. Maybe if people did, she’d be tempted, Jo thought, trying to justify raising a subject that was seldom mentioned around their house.

Ginny walked just ahead beside Emma, holding her hand. Her brown hair was French-braided, probably courtesy of Emma. She looked over her shoulder. “What’s a scone?”

“Um…sort of a sweet biscuit. Really dense.” A blank look told Jo she needed to elaborate. “Not fluffy and light like bread, but heavy like…”

“Mom’s bread when it doesn’t rise right,” Emma finished.

“Oh.” Ginny nodded, satisfied.

“And you can get them with blueberries or cranberries or bits of orange. They’re scrumptious.”

“Scrumptious,” Ginny repeated, in her solemn way.

Jo bent to pick up a whirlybird seed pod, fallen from a maple. Tossed in the air, it spun gently to the sidewalk.

“Oh!” Ginny said again, with more animation. Letting go of Emma, she picked one up, too, and threw it. She almost smiled, watching its spinning progression.

They stood there for five minutes, playing. Jo felt a little silly when she saw laughing faces in a passing car, but, after all, she’d started this. And Ginny looked absorbed and happy, in her quiet, withdrawn way.

In the next few blocks, Jo and the two girls talked about hairdos, books and why an Indian woman who lived in the neighborhood had a dark spot on her forehead. Jo had to admit Ginny and Emma were easy to talk to—easier than she’d expected, but maybe that was because they weren’t normal children, either of them. Death shadowed both, in different ways, subduing them. Making them more thoughtful, Jo would have liked to think, but the truth was, Emma seemed to think and talk about little except food and how fat she was. Except, Jo amended, when Emma was with Ginny—then she seemed more child than teenager.

In the fourth block, Ginny stopped. “Oh!”

Her favorite word, Jo thought dryly, before she saw the sign, too, easily read even by a first grader. In block print painted on cardboard, it read, Free Kittens.

“Can we look at them?” Ginny whispered.

Sensing dangerous territory, Jo hesitated. “Uh…”

“Sure,” Emma said, hurrying forward with the smaller girl towed behind. “We can ask, anyway.”

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

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

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

“Hi!” she said.

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

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