What She Wants for Christmas

“You show ’em.” His smile seemed a bit rueful, and she wondered why.

“Do you think a man could do a better job?” She tilted her chin up in challenge. “Come on. Be honest. What if you needed a mechanic to fix that…that hundred-thousand-dollar monster you had out at my place the other day. Would you hire a woman?”

“Skidder. And it cost a hell of a lot more than a hundred thousand.” Joe set down his fork. “Yeah, I’d hire a woman if I thought she was the best mechanic. You can’t outmuscle a machine that size, or a horse or a cow. You need to outthink ’em. I’ve seen Jess with those horses of hers. She’s a small woman. Those Arabs would do damn near anything for her.”

A sigh escaped Teresa, leaving her deflated. “Sorry. I get worked up.”

“It’s your livelihood.”

“I don’t like injustice.”

“Prejudice of any kind isn’t pretty.”

She almost asked what he knew about it. A handsome white male—he had it made, right? But she’d be a fool to leap to that kind of easy assumption. A kid could be the odd one out for any number of reasons. A teacher friend had once told Teresa there was a “leper” in every class, as if the group as a whole could only bond through rejecting someone who didn’t fit. Teresa had memories of some kids she’d gone to school with who didn’t fit. Looking back, she couldn’t even remember why. Maybe they gave off the wrong pheromones or something.

Not that there was anything wrong with Joe Hughes’s pheromones.

Figuring she’d pushed the limit on sensitive subjects, Teresa backed off over coffee. “Since clients won’t let me treat their animals,” she said, “I’ve been doing most of the billing and follow-ups. Do you ever have trouble collecting debts?”

His mouth curled. “I just tell ’em I’ll be back with the skidder and take their roof off in pieces. Check is usually in the mail.”

She laughed. “Okay. So we should get a rabid Doberman and plan to turn it loose on anyone over thirty days late?”

“There you go.” The smiling intimacy in his eyes was enough to make her think about other even more intimate expressions—and about the approaching end to the evening.

Surely he would kiss her. She hadn’t been on a date where the man didn’t at least give her a peck on the lips. Although truth to tell, she hadn’t been on that many dates. After Tom’s death, she had gone into shock. It must have been a year or more before the numbness began to wear off, letting her be mad as hell at him. And miss him.

She was embarrassed to remember her astonishment when a fellow vet asked her out to dinner and to the symphony. She’d almost blurted, “Me? You want me to go with you? Why?” Then a vague memory of such rituals had clicked in, and she’d realized that, yes, he was a man and, yes, she was woman. Both single. Good Lord, he was interested in her!

She’d gone; why not? She knew him, if not well. It seemed an easy reintroduction to the world of dating. She wasn’t all that impressed, either with that date or the scattered few that followed. She never had liked groping for conversation or realizing halfway through dinner that she didn’t want that wet mouth to cover hers.

No such problem tonight. Obviously she’d been celibate too long. That had to be the explanation for why she kept staring at Joe’s hands, big and tanned and callused, and imagining how those calluses would feel against her skin. Tom had been an airline pilot. Smooth well-kept hands. Nothing like this man’s.

And that mouth, tight and controlled. He tilted it into a smile from time to time, even grinned roguishly, but somehow she never had the sense he was really relaxing. Oh, yes, she’d like to see him lose control.

At this point in her speculation, of course, she realized that he was watching her with interest, one eyebrow raised, and that she must have been staring, her expression giving away God knew what. She’d never been accused of being poker-faced.

Damned if she didn’t blush. “Sorry. I, uh…”

“You were thinking,” he said tactfully. Then a grin twitched the corner of his mouth. “Not that I wouldn’t be interested in knowing what you were thinking, but to get back to your question, actually I don’t have too many problems with debt collection. As you know, I get half up front, which is enough to pay the men. A lot of my work is on a larger scale than your job. I log land that’s going to be developed, for example. I suspect it’s the smaller bills people put off paying.”

“I hate dunning people.” Teresa made a face. “But then, that’s what I let myself in for when I insisted on a partnership.”

“In a perfect world—”

“In a perfect world, everybody would have plenty of money to pay their bills. And my daughter would be eagerly making new friends. And the woman you take out on a first date wouldn’t spend it whining.”

“You haven’t whined. You’ve talked about your problems. I don’t mind.”

“You haven’t talked about yours,” she said.

His lean dark face went expressionless again. “I guess I don’t have any pressing ones at the moment.”

If he’d just quirked an eyebrow or smiled apologetically or done anything else, she’d have believed him. As it was, she had the feeling she’d just walked up against an electric fence: invisible but powerful.

The waiter presented the bill; Joe paid. Outside, the sun was sinking in the west over Puget Sound and the hazy line of the Olympic Mountains. It must be eight-thirty, but days were still long at this time of year. Teresa didn’t protest when Joe used his hand on the small of her back to steer her toward his pickup. As if she didn’t know where it was.

“Sure you don’t want to go to a movie?” Joe asked.

“I wish I could,” she said, meaning it. “But I’d better not. I have to be at work awfully early tomorrow.”

He nodded, and she wished she could tell if he had asked again only to be polite. The short drive to her house was mostly silent. She wondered what he was thinking, anticipated that moment when he’d turn toward her, hoped her children would be tactful enough not to dash out to meet her when they heard the engine. She should have rented them a video, something engrossing. Next time…

The pickup pulled into her long driveway. She needed to mow again, she noticed, with one tiny corner of her consciousness. The rest of it was occupied with agonizing. What if he didn’t kiss her? Maybe he’d invited her out because he’d felt cornered; she’d been obvious enough, coming right out and asking if he was married. Maybe he didn’t like direct women.

Then they might as well forget the whole thing right now, she admitted.

The pickup slowed, stopped. No dogs; the kids must have let them in the house. He killed the engine. The front door of her house didn’t fly open. He turned toward her.

Teresa took a deep breath and smiled. “Thanks for dinner, Joe. I enjoyed myself.”

“Me, too.” His voice had roughened slightly. With surprising awkwardness, he said, “I don’t suppose we have an awful lot in common, but…maybe we could do it again.”

Was that a brush-off? Good Lord, why was she panicking? This was a first date! If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, it didn’t.

“Sure,” she murmured.

He reached out more tentatively than she might have expected, although his hand was solid and warm on the back of her neck. His thumb traced a circle around the bump of her vertebra, which had the effect of tapping a Morse code directly into her spinal cord. This feels good. More. More.

He bent his head as though giving her time to withdraw. Fat chance. His lips were soft and dry and as warm as that big hand, gently massaging her neck. Their mouths brushed together, once, twice, before his settled more firmly on hers and nudged her lips apart. By that time, she was enthusiastically participating.

If he minded her leaning into him and nibbling at his lower lip, his groan wasn’t a good way of telling her. His other hand gripped her upper arm and tugged her even closer. Somehow his mouth was hot and damp now, and his tongue had touched hers, circled it just like his thumb was circling on her nape. She felt as mindless as a teenager making out with the object of her first crush.

More. More.

Joe was the one to pull back a little and let out a shaky breath. “I think,” he said huskily, “we’d better say good-night.”

“Good-night?”

“Isn’t that the appropriate way to bid someone farewell in the evening?”

Consciousness was returning. She tried to straighten with dignity. “I knew what you meant.”

“Good.” The trace of amusement in his voice didn’t show in the molten blue of his eyes. His hand tightened on her neck, then released her. “How about a movie next week? I’d suggest tomorrow night, except…”

When he hesitated, she finished, “I might have a rebellion on my hands. Next week sounds good.”

He muttered something inarticulate, gave her a quick hard kiss, then got out. She was dazed enough to wait until he came around and opened her door, offering a hand to the little lady so she could hop down from the high seat. He walked her to the door, smiled, his eyes intense, touched her cheek and left her there.

It was the first time since her husband’s death she’d gone out with a man she wished wasn’t leaving.

CHAPTER THREE

NICOLE WAS DISCOURAGED, but she wasn’t about to give up. This was her life she was talking about!

Mom didn’t even listen when she tried to tell her about her day at school.

“The bathrooms are gross,” she said. “And the girls are all ignoring me. It’s like I don’t even exist.”

“Are you sure you’re not ignoring them, too?” her mother asked, handing her a cookie and a glass of milk, as if she were five years old, home from a day at kindergarten.

“I’m not walking around grinning like some idiot, saying, ‘Hi, I’m new!’ if that’s what you mean,” Nicole said disagreeably. She bit into the cookie, which was still warm.

“How about the boys?”

She shrugged. “Oh, some of them are coming on to me. Like I’d be interested in any of them. But I guess you wouldn’t understand that, would you?”

Mom’s eyes narrowed and she held up one hand. “Okay, that’s it. Time for a little chat.”

“Little chats” were lectures. Nicole wasn’t going to argue during this one. She shouldn’t have said that; Mom didn’t date very often, even though she was still pretty, and it wasn’t like she was marrying the guy. The dig had just slipped out.

Mom put her hands on her hips. “A. I will not put up with any more snotty remarks. I know you’re unhappy, but you don’t have to make everyone else unhappy, too. B. I will have no sympathy for your unhappiness until you start making some effort to adjust to the move. You’d decided you were going to hate this place before you even saw it. Why not give it a chance?”

Tears came in a rush and Nicole wailed, “Because I was happy before! What was so wrong with that?”

“Absolutely nothing,” her mother said gently. “But you can be happy again. Happiness is inside you, not a place.”

Nicole took a deep breath, sniffed and wiped at her tears. “Jeez, Mom, you ought to write greeting cards.”

Her mother gave her a mock frown. “Okay, it sounds sappy, but it’s true, believe it or not.”

“Are you happy?”

One of the nice things about her mother was that she really thought about questions like that before she gave an answer. It would have been easy to snap, “Of course I’m happy!” whether she was or not. But she frowned a little and finally said, “Yes, I think I am.” She actually sounded surprised. “This move is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Our house in Bellevue fit your dad better than it did me. I like small towns, I like Eric, I like this house.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess I like a challenge. And I’ve certainly bought into one, haven’t I?”

The screen door banged and both Nicole and her mother looked up. Mark kicked the kitchen door shut, dropped his backpack on a chair and headed straight for the fridge.

Mom’s face brightened. “How was your day?”

Nicole knew what he was going to say even before he said it.

“Cool! Can I have this chocolate milk?”

“Sure. Still liking your teacher?”

“Yeah, she’s okay.” He’d found the cookies. “She’s into astronomy. I like stuff like that.”

“Make some friends?” Mom asked casually, as if it was that easy.

He shrugged and shoved a whole cookie into his mouth. Around it, he mumbled, “I hung around with a couple of guys all day. Can I watch TV?”

“Yes, you may watch TV. For half an hour.”

“Gol, I don’t have any homework or anything.” He grabbed three more cookies and his chocolate milk and headed for the living room.

Nicole blew her nose. Her own brother hadn’t even noticed she’d been crying. “How come it’s so easy for him?” she asked.

Her mother kissed the top of her head. It felt good. Comforting. “Maybe because his personality is different. He’s always been cheerful and outgoing, uncomplicated. Maybe because he’s a boy, and boys accept newcomers more readily. Maybe just his age. It’s harder to leave your friends when you’re a teenager.”

“Then…why wouldn’t you let me stay in Bellevue? I could have finished school there.”

Brown eyes serious, her mother faced her. “For lots of reasons. I might have considered it if you’d been a senior, but you have three more years of high school. I don’t think Jayne’s parents were really prepared to finish raising you, and I didn’t want to let them. I’m already in shock at how fast you and Mark are growing up. You’ll be gone before I know it. But I’m not ready yet, and neither are you. You’re still a kid, and you’re mine.”

She hardly ever sounded that firm. Secretly Nicole didn’t mind. She’d wanted to stay in Bellevue, but the idea of becoming part of her friend’s family had been a little scary. She hadn’t wanted to lose her mother or even Mark, brat though he was. She just didn’t want to move.

Now she nodded. But she wasn’t going to pretend she was Mark, either. “I still hate it here.”

“I know.” Her mother gave her an odd twisted smile. “But I hope, after a while, that you won’t. Think about getting a horse. That might be some consolation.”

Nicole had always wanted a horse more than almost anything else in the world. But she wasn’t about to let her mother buy her cooperation. She shrugged sulkily. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Well, then,” Mom sounded as tart as a green apple, “don’t act like one.”

Nicole stomped off to her bedroom.

LEAVING NICOLE sulking in her bedroom and Mark in front of the TV, Teresa went to town. The farmhouse needed remodeling, starting with the basics, and she might as well take advantage of the rest of her day off. She hadn’t forgotten Joe’s sister worked at Browder’s Flooring, but Teresa told herself curiosity wasn’t why she’d chosen to start there.

A woman named Carol offered to help her, then let her browse in peace among the carpet and vinyl samples. Almost immediately she realized she’d better choose kitchen and bathroom countertops before the flooring.

The back of the store was a veritable treasure trove, if you liked redoing houses. Shelf after slanted shelf held tiles in a mouth-watering selection of colors and textures. Blinds in colors equally rich covered mock windows on the wall and were topped by calico and satin and wood valances.

Teresa headed straight for a lacy pleated blind that would be perfect for her old house.

At her murmured “ooh” of pleasure, an amused voice from behind her said, “A woman of taste, I can tell. I put that one in my own living room.” When Teresa turned, the woman held out one hand. “Hi, I’m Rebecca Ballard.”

Joe’s sister-with-a-big-mouth. In her mid to late thirties, she had little in common with him physically except the blue eyes. Her curly brown hair brushed her shoulders, her smile was as warm as a cup of hot chocolate, and she was just a little plump—and undeniably pregnant. Teresa liked her on sight.

“Teresa Burkett,” she introduced herself.

“The new vet.”

“Yes,” she said a little warily.

“Jess told me about you. Jess Kerrigan. She’s my sister. She said you were dating Joe.” Rebecca clapped her hand over her mouth. “And I was to pretend I don’t know,” she said sheepishly.

Teresa grinned. “He did mention the family grapevine.”

“More like a patch of blackberries. You know how fast they spread.”

Teresa’s laugh felt good. “Yes, we had dinner. Your brother seems nice. He took out some trees for me and gave me a good deal.”

“Oh, he’s nice.” Rebecca shook her head. “A little hard to get to know, but don’t let that stop you.”

She wanted badly to ask why he was so guarded, but refrained. This was, after all, a complete stranger. Her struggle must have showed, though.

His sister tilted her head to one side. “I’d love to tell you his life history, but I have a suspicion he’d be annoyed at me.” She thought about it for a moment. “Well, probably not annoyed. Mad as hell. I’d better let him tell you in his own good time.”

“You’re probably right,” Teresa said. “What I’m really here for is help picking out some tile. And window covers. And, heck, I even need a new kitchen sink. You don’t happen to sell those, do you?”

“Nope, but I keep some catalogs on hand, so you can match colors if you’re not planning to go with plain white or stainless steel. The hardware store sells Kohler and a couple of other brands. Shall I dig the catalogs out?”

Teresa spent a happy couple of hours poring over the tiles, carrying them to the vinyl, discussing how best to get the hardwood floors refinished.

“My daughter’s room first,” she said. “Nicole’s miserably unhappy about the move. She keeps bemoaning her old bedroom’s built-in vanity and window seat. Maybe I can shut her up by making her new one equally charming.”

“How old is she?” Rebecca asked.

“Fifteen.”

“You have my sympathy. My son, Alan, was barely sixteen when I met my current husband. Alan didn’t think he liked him, and you wouldn’t believe the stunts he pulled.”

“Oh, I’d believe them,” Teresa said grimly.

Rebecca tilted her head to one side again. “I don’t suppose your daughter is petite, dark-haired and takes French III?”

“That’s her.”

“Ah. Alan’s mentioned her.” Rebecca heaved a wallpaper book onto the counter. “He thinks she’s, uh, pretty.”

“I don’t suppose that’s the word he used.”

Joe’s sister gave her a wry look. “I don’t want to sully your ears with current teenage-boy terminology.”

“Probably no worse than ‘chick’ or ‘babe’ or ‘fox.’” Teresa contemplated briefly. “’Babe’ and ‘baby’ were always my personal pet peeves. They’re so…so…”

“Belittling?” Rebecca asked. “Sort of like going through life as ‘Becky’?”

“Exactly!” Teresa raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t start that way, did you?”

“No. Sam, my husband, asked once if I liked to be called Becky. I told him only if he wanted to be Sammy. That nipped it in the bud.”

“I can see why,” Teresa agreed, amused.

She borrowed samples of tiles, wallpaper and vinyl, then made an appointment for Rebecca to come to the house and take measurements. She’d let Nicole pick out her own wallpaper and window coverings—within reason.

Lugging the wallpaper books, she came in the back door to hear the phone ringing. Both the kids were upstairs. She dropped the books on the table and grabbed the receiver on the fifth ring.

“Hello?”

“Teresa, this is Joe. Joe Hughes.”

“You’re the only Joe I know,” she said. “Hey, a poem.”

He groaned. “Just don’t add another line, okay?”

“All right. I can’t think of anything that rhymes, anyway. Except toe. And no. Neither of which are fraught with possibilities. Unless you want to get kinky.”

Silence. Then, “I won’t answer that one.”

“Very wise.” She leaned against the counter. “So, uh, what can I do for you?”

His voice was low and amused. “Do you want to get kinky?”

She chuckled. “I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?”

“Yup.” She could hear his smile, which sent a flood of warmth through her. “Actually,” he went on, “what I called for was to ask if you’d like to have dinner again.”

“I’d love to,” she said promptly. “If we can make it Saturday night, I could even stay out later than nine o’clock. I don’t work Sunday. It’s Eric’s turn to be on call.”

“Saturday sounds good,” Joe agreed. “How about a movie, too?”

“As long as it’s not too gory.”

“You’re a vet. You’re used to blood and guts.”

“Not human blood.”

“You’d faint if I cut myself?”

“Probably,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a reason I didn’t become an M.D.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you?”

He only laughed. She loved his laugh, a husky rumble that sounded just a little rusty, as if he didn’t laugh often enough. Well, he lived alone, so he probably didn’t. To keep their sense of humor intact, adults required children. Or maybe it worked the other way around: you required a sense of humor to stand your children.

THE WEEK SEEMED LONG without seeing Joe. It was funny, considering she hardly knew him. She watched for him in the grocery store and at stoplights. Logging trucks, a common sight in a town with two lumber mills, reminded her of him. She did see his sister, Jess, once to wave to, and Rebecca came out and took measurements. Teresa craned her neck every time she drove past the auto-body-repair place on Third. She felt like a teenage girl with her first crush. It felt like a first crush; falling in love with Tom had happened an eternity ago. The first flush of romantic feelings were unfamiliar but absurdly sweet.

The saving grace was that she was busy at work. Not doing farm calls; of necessity, Eric handled all of them. Which meant that the clients who arrived with a sick cat or an injured dog had to accept her or go to the other animal hospital in town, where, Eric had told her, the vets seemed to rotate more often than a horse threw shoes. Teresa was accepted. She brought an epileptic spaniel out of a prolonged seizure with phenobarbital, stitched up a Lab that had argued with a car, catheterized a cat with a blocked urethra and removed a fish hook from a dog’s lip. He’d apparently tried to snap up the fly when the owner was practicing casting.

As she calmly handled one emergency after another, it seemed to her that the staff was warming to her. They’d been pleasant but distant thus far: she was their employer, but that didn’t mean they had to like or respect her. She began to hope that they’d decided to do both.

On Friday morning, she had to put down a puppy with parvo. She comforted the owner, thanked the technician who was disposing of the body, then walked into the office and started to cry.

“Dr. Burkett?” someone said uncertainly.

She snatched a tissue and looked up.

Marilyn, the younger of the two technicians on duty, stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry. There’s a phone call—”

“That’s okay.” Teresa gave a wavery smile. “I just hate doing that. I should be colder, shouldn’t I?”

“No.” Marilyn’s smile trembled, too. Her own eyes, now that Teresa looked, were red.

Teresa took the call and saw another client a few minutes later. The routine marched on. But something had changed; for the first time, Marilyn and Libby, the other veterinary technician working that day, invited her to join them for lunch. It felt like a victory.

When Saturday night finally rolled around, Nicole whined only halfheartedly about having to baby-sit her little brother, who made only the obligatory objection to the words “little” and “baby-sit.” Joe knocked on the door promptly at seven, Teresa called goodbye to her kids and whisked out onto the porch.

Joe’s smile was the deliciously slow lazy one that muddled her insides. “Cabin fever?” he asked.

“Kid fever.” She smiled back. “Actually, they’re being good. Amazingly good. I figure if I make a quick escape, it might stay that way.”