Playing For Keeps

Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.

“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”

“So does this.”

“But, Jo—”

“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”

“But, honey—”

“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”

Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.

“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”

“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”

“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”

“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”

“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”

“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.

“Nice color,” Jo said.

“You really like it?”

“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”

Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re not off slaying dragons this morning?”

“Because, my dear, your brilliant mother brought a particularly nasty one to its heels yesterday.”

“You’re kidding? Hawthorne versus Northstar? You won?”

“My ego really appreciates your confidence in my abilities.”

“Sorry. But from what I’ve heard, the case was anything but a slam dunk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna caught her mother’s smug grin. “It wasn’t. Which made victory all the sweeter.” The grin widened. “Your father helped me celebrate.”

“With champagne and dinner?”

“That, too.”

Joanna’s already gloomy mood got gloomier. Her mother noticed.

“Okay. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing. Exactly.”

Her mother waited. Joanna sighed. There wasn’t a person alive who could withstand her mother’s let-them-crumble-on-their-own tactic.

“Okay, Bobby came to take the kids to school this morning.”

“No wonder you’re grouchy.”

“I am not grouchy. At least, not just because he came over,” she muttered in response to her mother’s raised brows. “Tori’s pregnant. So they’re getting married. Bobby and Tori.”

“Sounds like a dance team from Lawrence Welk,” her mother said, then added, “What is the child thinking?”

Joanna had to smile. Tori had been temping at her father’s Lexus dealership—as a means of putting herself through college—when Bobby met her. By all accounts, she was bright, focused and mature for her age. How on earth she’d fallen prey to Bobby’s charms was anybody’s guess. But then…

“Ohmigod…Tori’s practically the same age I was.”

Beside her, curls bobbed. “Wondered how long it was going to take for that to click in.” She sensed her mother’s eyes on her face. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. I think. But not because I have any feelings left for Bobby,” she hastily added.

After a moment her mother said, staring out the window, “You remember that blue Ellen Tracy suit I had, the one I gave away about five years ago?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I got rid of it because it no longer fit, for one thing. And I was bored with it, for another.” She turned to Joanna. “But damn if I wasn’t pissed when I saw some woman wearing it a few months later.”

Joanna chuckled. “I get your point. But that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

And without warning, Joanna’s mouth fell open and half of what she’d been thinking that morning flew out. Including, amazingly enough, a lot of the stuff about missing sex.

“Hell,” her mother said, “If it was me, I’d be in the loony bin by now.”

“I could have gone all morning without knowing that.”

“And for somebody so determined to ‘do her own thing’ or whatever they call it these days, you’re the biggest prude I know.”

“That’s not true!”

“Is, too. Honey, Bobby’s moved on. He’s started another family, scary as that thought is. The feelings you’re having are perfectly normal. You need to get out there, go find a man, get—”

“—a life, I know, I know.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Joanna grimaced. “You’re saying I should throw myself back into the dating pool?”

“Ding, ding, ding! And a point to the beautiful woman on my left.”

“Beautiful, my ass.”

“Well, that’s probably pretty nice, too, but I haven’t seen that since you were ten.”

Joanna ignored her. “Right. One slightly worn, slightly droopy, recycled singleton seeks the company—”

Her mother grunted.

“—of a breathing male with a reasonable understanding of personal hygiene, most of his own teeth and at least a moderate grasp on reality.”

“See, that’s your problem. You’re too picky.”

In spite of herself, Joanna laughed as they pulled into the parking lot in front of the gallery. “I suppose the part about having most of his teeth was pushing it.”

“Better they need dentures than Viagra.”

Thinking, Hmm, Joanna parked the car and got out, retrieving the Santas from the back. When she straightened, blowing her hair out of her face, she noticed her mother frowning at her dress.

“What?”

“Somebody needs to go shopping. Bad.”

“Hey. This is New Mexico,” Joanna said. “Denim is always in style.”

Glynnie came as close as she ever did to rolling her eyes.

Dale McConnaughy happened to look out the store window right as the two women got out of the dusty, suburban-blue minivan and just in time to see an explosion of red curls catch fire in the morning sun. The women disappeared inside the art gallery next door, however, before he had a chance to get past the initial Shee-it. Which was just as well, since he had more pressing things to tend to than gawk at a bunch of obviously fake hair. Wonder how much she’d forked over to get that look?

“Excuse me? How much is this? Colton! No! Don’t touch!”

Dale turned to a shell-shocked woman, a newborn strapped to her chest, clutching the handlebar of an SUV-size stroller that had been crammed to the gills with toddlers when she’d arrived a couple minutes ago. Well, only two, actually; one about three and another one maybe a year younger. The older kid, a boy, had immediately screamed to get out, and was now tearing up and down the aisles in a crazed euphoria while his mother shrieked, “Don’t touch!” every thirty seconds or so. Well, hell—let a three-year-old loose in a toy store, what did she think was gonna happen?

“It’s okay, ma’am, it’s not like he can hurt anything—”

Something crashed.

“—too badly,” he finished, as the mother wailed, “Oh, Colton…”

Dale peered over her head, refusing to frown. “It’s just a display of model cars. Uh, son? How about you come over here and play with these puppets? Or the wooden train set—”

“No!”

“—or maybe you’d like to go on outside to the Jump?”

Obviously intrigued, the child ceased his Godzilla impersonation long enough to say, “The Jump?”

His mother, her voice tinged equally with hope and desperation, said, “Oh, he loves to jump.”

“Me, too,” Dale said, ignoring the mother’s quizzical expression as he led the child through the store and on out back where Dale’d set up several wooden swing sets inside the fenced-in area, as well as an enclosed, inflated castle-shaped Moon Jump probably bigger than the kid’s bedroom.

“Cool!” the kid said, and he was off like a shot.

“Is it safe?” his mother said, jiggling the baby who’d just awakened and was making squeaky, fussy sounds. From her stroller, the other toddler let out a single, ear-piercing shriek, just for the hell of it.

“Oh, yeah. And tell you what, ten minutes in that puppy and you won’t here a peep out of him the rest of the morning.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” she said, then asked Dale again for the price of the toy. No sooner had she done so, however, than both babies started to howl in uncomplimentary keys. Judging from the look on Mama’s face, she wasn’t far from that stage herself. Unperturbed—it took a lot more than a couple of bawling kids to shake him up—Dale grabbed a hat out of a box by the counter, a new product he’d been in the process of marking when she’d come in, and plopped it on his head. Then he squatted in front of the older baby.

“Hey, Little Bit,” Dale said softly, reaching up to press the button in the back of his hat. “Get a load of this!”

Tears spiking her lashes, both the baby’s mouth and her big blue eyes popped wide open as she stared at the hat.

Then a soft chortle popped out of her mouth. Then another one, and another, until the store reverberated with the sounds of baby belly laugh. Dale chuckled right back as a pair of pudgy hands shot up toward the hat.

“Mine!”

“I want one, too,” the boy said, staggering back toward them, out of breath and flushed. The littlest one was still squawking her head off, but Dale figured two out of three was pretty good.

Mama apparently thought so, too. She plunked down the educational game she’d been holding and practically twisted herself inside out to get her wallet out of her purse. “I’ll take two of those hats.”

“Don’t you want to know how much they are?”

“Ask me if I care.”

Dale slid behind the counter, grabbed a second hat from the box and took the woman’s charge card just as the two gals he’d seen before barged through the door in a flurry of obvious agitation. At least on the younger one’s part. In fact, that hair of hers seemed to fairly vibrate around her face.

He reminded himself he had customers to tend to, even as he quickly processed how that sack of a dress seemed to swallow up the redhead’s little body. And this could be a long shot, but he was guessing that big shopping bag in her hand had something to do with the severely annoyed look on her face.

“It’s not the end of the world, Jo,” the older woman was saying, the softness of her tone at odds with her I-am-somebody attire. “You said yourself it wasn’t a sure thing.”

“Before I showed them the samples. Not after.” Red glared down at the bag as if she wanted to smack it. Then she glanced around the store, huffed out a sigh and said to the other woman, “Look, you’re the one who needs to shop. Why don’t I just go back out to the car and wait for you?”

No, somebody shouted inside Dale’s head just as the older woman—Red’s mother, maybe?—grabbed her by the arm and pulled her farther into the store. Bless you, the somebody said as Dale went through the here-you-go-have-a-nice-day-now motions associated with sending the mother and her kids on their way. “No,” the blonde was saying. “You need to get something for this baby, too.”

Now that Dale was able to devote his entire attention to the drama unfolding before him, he could see the resemblance between the two women. They were both on the short side, kinda soft and bony at the same time, the way short women sometimes were, with similarly pointed chins and straight noses that curved up, right on the very tips. The older one seemed the type almost obsessed with her appearance in a classy, conservative kind of way, while the younger one—who Dale could now see wasn’t all that young, maybe a few years behind him—looked like one of those women who threw on the first thing that came to hand.

“I’m sure the baby’s nose won’t be out of joint if you pick something out for me,” she was saying. “I haven’t even seen Aunt Barb in—what?—ten years.”

“Twelve, but that’s not the point. Oh, would you look at that adorable stuffed frog—”

“You look at the stuffed frog. I’m outta here.”

But as she turned to leave, her mother once again grabbed for her. Only instead of getting her daughter’s arm, she got one of the bag handles. The paper was no match for two equally determined women pulling in opposite directions, and the bag split in two, dumping out a pair of what looked like very fancy dolls or something on the floor. On a disgusted sigh—and what Dale surmised was a very unladylike cussword under her breath—Red squatted down to retrieve them, her hair billowing out around her shoulders. A silver comb popped loose and skipped across the floor to where he was standing.

Dale scooped up the comb and made his way over—not too fast—to help her, getting just close enough to notice her ringless left hand, to catch a whiff of her sweet, natural scent.

“Here, ma’am…let me get that—”

“It’s okay, I’m fine…” She glanced up, those crazy curls quivering around her face like they were alive, and something about her—he had no idea what—just grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Except her gaze—clear and green, like pale jade—zipped right past his eyes and on up to the top of his head as a startled shriek of laughter fell out of her mouth.

Which was when Dale remembered the stuffed hamster in the hula outfit, perched on top of his head, shaking its booty like there was no tomorrow.

Chapter 2

The laughter had roared up from inside Joanna like floodwaters breaching a dam. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to staunch it, even though her sides were killing her and she was perilously close to wetting her pants. Then she caught her mother’s and this stranger’s flummoxed expressions and collapsed cross-legged onto the floor, her howls now punctuated with the occasional snort.

An instant later she was sobbing.

Oh, Lord, just take me now, Joanna thought, vaguely aware of her mother’s pleas to get hold of herself, for God’s sake, before somebody else came into the store, and of the man’s apparent decision to flee.

And Joanna tried, she really did. But no dice. Between Bobby’s news and the gallery owner changing her mind and the generally crappy state of her life, she must have been more fried than she’d thought if all it took to send her over the edge was a gyrating rodent in a grass skirt.

She started laughing all over again.

Eventually the storm passed, both the sobs and the laughter subsided, and a paper cup filled with water appeared in front of her.

“Here,” crooned a whisky-smooth, Southern-accented baritone beside her. She glanced up into a pair of eyes so blue and cool and clean she got shivers. Except then she remembered the way her face swelled up when she cried and she ducked her head, for once in her life grateful for her curtain of hair. She took the proffered cup and gulped the water in three swallows, thinking all she needed now was to choke.

“You okay now?”

“I…yeah. I th-think so.” Joanna scrambled to her feet, dusting off her backside before digging a tissue out of her handbag, which gave her a convenient excuse for avoiding the man’s gaze as he rose with her. “I’m so sorry—” She blew loudly into the tissue, figuring at this point a little honking was hardly going to hurt her image. “It’s just—”

“No need to explain, ma’am. Sounded to me like you needed to get that out of your system. Here—you dropped this.”

Joanna glanced down to see her comb gleaming in the palm of his hand. A nice hand. Strong-looking. Graceful fingers, for a man.

She was an artist. She was supposed to notice these things.

She was also supposed to remember she had a mother. Somewhere.

“The lady who came in with you’s over in the back of the store, having a look-see,” he said, as if reading her mind.

“That’s no lady,” she said, blowing her nose again. “That’s my mother. Who’s not real comfortable around melt…downs…”

Joanna had turned toward the back of the store and was now struck dumb at the child’s wonderland before her eyes. Somehow wedged in among shelves of toys that reached clear to the ceiling of the tiny shop were any number of hands-on play areas—low tables overflowing with building sets and construction toys and tiny dishes set up for an impromptu tea party; an open closet burgeoning with flashes of shiny fabrics, feathers, jewels, shoes, hats; bins of stuffed animals and puppets, and easels and paints, and rocking horses and miniature drum sets and lions and tigers and bears.

Oh, my.

A chuckle, soft and sexy, winnowed through her entrancement and finally pulled her gaze to his. The hamster chapeau was gone, but now her attention glommed onto a grin blooming across a pleasant—very pleasant—face. Lean. Tanned. Just asymmetrical enough to be interesting but not worrisome, couple of dimples, a strong jaw. Laugh lines. A face that had ripened and sharpened well with age, even if she could have done without the surfer dude hairstyle—a little too blond, a little too long. Still, way down low, she felt a tiny prickle of something that definitely was worrisome. Like not knowing you were hungry until you smelled the French fries.

Still grinning down at her, he slid his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “Actually, for a while there, it sounded like you were having a high old time. And I bet you feel a lot better now, don’t you?”

“Other than the residual mortification?”

He shrugged underneath a bright red T-shirt with a glittering Playing For Keeps emblazoned across the front. “Didn’t bother me any. Why should it you?” While Joanna stood there trying to think of a witty comeback, he retrieved the Santas, then glanced up, his eyes touching hers just long enough to set off a zing. A tiny one, nothing major. Along the lines of what you might get when you test a battery to see if it’s still alive.

Well, hell. Where were the Pheromone Alert! signs?

“You make these?”

“What? Oh. Yes.” Joanna stepped back, mentally shaking off all those pheromones clinging to her like burrs. “Clarence. And Stanley.” At his questioning expression, she added, “Each one is unique. Well, I recycle the clothing patterns, but each face is carved freehand so no two are alike….”

She’d never been attracted to total strangers, no matter how appealing their laugh lines were. So it had to be her apparently fragile emotional state causing this current brain blip. Still, as she watched him take in Clarence’s chubby, dimpled face, his curly white hair and beard, watched him finger the Santa’s velvet robe decorated with dozens of pearl buttons and miniature metallic braid, she had to admit something about the man was making her blood…hum.

How totally bizarre.

The blue eyes met hers, clearly impressed. And clearly—whoa—interested. “You’re good.” Then he grinned in that way men do—or at least did back in the Dark Ages when she’d last dated—that sets off alarms.

“Is that a come-on?”

Which she wouldn’t have said it if hadn’t been for that Dark Ages business.

However his expression didn’t change one iota. Well, except for the merest hitch of one eyebrow. “You want it to be?”

“No.” She was almost positive she meant it, too.

“Then it isn’t. And even if it was, that’s got nothing to do with the fact that I think you’re one helluva talented lady.”

Okay, so that won the guy a point. Or two. “Thanks.”

Still holding Clarence, he seemed to hesitate a moment, then offered his hand. “Name’s Dale McConnaughy. The store’s mine.”

His handshake was the kind to make her really question that no of a second ago. Almost. “Joanna Swann.”

“You were trying to sell these next door?” Dale went on, now appraising Stanley, a Santa in denim overalls and a red-and-green-plaid workshirt. Striped stockings ended in open-backed bedroom slippers on his feet; through a minuscule pair of wire-rimmed glasses, he frowned down at a tiny teddy bear in his hands.

“More or less. They’d said they’d take two on consignment.” Joanna stuffed her hands into the pockets on the front of her dress. “Then this morning the owner said she didn’t have room.”

“I’ll take them.”

“What?”

“I’ll take them,” he repeated. “I mean, I’ll buy them from you.”

She frowned. “Look, just because I broke down—”

“I don’t want them because I feel sorry for you, okay? I want ’em because you do freakin’ unbelievable work and because I’ve got customers who’d go nuts for something like this. So what’s your price?”

Well, hmm. Certainly a change from Ms. Hoity-Toity-we-don’t-really-have-much-call-for-crafts next door. However…

“Oh, that’s really nice of you, but, see, I don’t really have a wholesale price. Because I put so much work into them? I mean, the gallery would’ve taken a percentage, but—”

“How. Much.”

She felt her skin warm. “Three hundred. Each. Including stands.”

The little boy sparkle reasserted itself in his eyes. “Thank you. And you say no two are alike? Can you get me more?”

Joanna waited out the short surge of dizziness, then said, “Uh…yeah. Although I’m pretty booked up between now and Christmas with special orders—”

“You think you could do six more by Thanksgiving? I’ll prepay,” he said when she hesitated.

Was this guy totally off his nut or what? If this was how he ran his business, he’d be bankrupt within the year. “Yes, I could probably fit in another half dozen by Thanksgiving. But—”

“Good.” He vanished into the back for a moment, returning with a large business-size checkbook, which he slapped open on the counter. “That was three hundred each, you said?”

“Um…Mr. McConnaughy?” Without moving his head, his eyes angled to hers. “These aren’t toys, you know,” she said.

“Yeah. I know. So?”

“So…this is a toy store?”

On a chuckle, he straightened, his arms folded across his chest. For some reason Joanna’s gaze was drawn to the top of his left hand, to the patch of oddly smooth skin set in the midst of the sprinkling of light brown hair.

“You may be talented as all get-out, Ms. Swann, but your salesmanship sucks.” Her attention zipped back to his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into someone more determined to shoot herself in the foot before.”

“It’s not that. It’s just—”

“—that these aren’t meant for children, so why the hell am I buyin’ them for a toy store?”

“Well, yes. There are a lot of small pieces on these a child could choke on. These are meant to be displayed, not played with.”

The right side of his mouth hitched up. “I kinda figured that out.”

“You…oh.”

“Uh-huh. But then, how would you know more’n half my customers are adults comin’ in to buy things for themselves?” He finished writing the check, ripped it out and handed it over to her, with instructions to get him an invoice whenever it was convenient. Then he capped his pen, tossing it back onto the cash register. “A person doesn’t have to be a kid to still get a kick out of playing. And collecting’s something anybody can do. Cars, dolls, model trains…” He picked up Clarence. “Santas.” He grinned down at the doll, then back at her. “Looking at this guy just makes you feel good inside, doesn’t it? Like I want to laugh right out loud.” He looked at her, something like wistfulness softening his features, making her insides jump. “Sometimes grown-ups need a little poke to make ’em remember what it was like to be a kid, when it was okay to believe in magic. And that’s something most folks can’t put a price on.”

Joanna stared at the check, shaking her head. “Even if they can get them for a fraction of the price at Costco or Sam’s.”

“There you go again. Tryin’ to talk me out of this.”

“But by the time you take your markup…I’m sorry. It’s about this practical streak I have.”

“Which you put aside to make these, I take it.”