Taking a Chance

She’d worked until the last possible day. Today was Saturday; Monday she started classes.

In response to Jo’s suggestion, Helen said, “I start work at 9:00, too. Ginny’s bus picks her up at 8:25. I usually leave right after. I guess the three of us will be the ones fighting for the bathroom.”

Emma’s bus left at what seemed the crack of dawn. Apparently high school started obscenely early and let the kids out before two o’clock. Kathleen, too, left the house by 7:30.

“I’m looking for another job.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t seem to convince anyone that I have the skills when I haven’t held paying jobs. The fact that I’ve darn near run several charities doesn’t seem to impress anyone. Anyway, I’m going to check books out of the library so I can learn to use some other software packages.”

“I can’t do much but write a letter or send e-mail on a computer,” Helen admitted timidly.

Why wasn’t she surprised? Jo thought uncharitably, then was ashamed of herself. She had no idea what Helen Schaefer had been like before her husband died. Perhaps grief had changed her personality.

To make amends, Jo asked, “Where do you work, Helen?”

“At Nordstrom. Do you have Nordstrom stores in California? It’s an upscale department store. I’m in the children’s department.”

“So you work on commission?”

“Partly.” Her smile showed a shy prettiness Jo hadn’t suspected. “I’m actually pretty good at it.”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I do?”

Jo couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. What do you do?”

The smile that touched his eyes seemed to be for her alone. “I’m a contractor. We do remodeling. Mainly residential.” With a sidelong glance at Kathleen, he added, “I would love to work on this place, but my sister won’t let me.”

“I can’t afford you.”

A frown tightened his face, and Jo knew she was forgotten. An old argument was apparently resuming. “I’m not asking to be paid.”

“I know you’re not,” his sister said gently. “But I can manage. I’ll let you pitch in on a Saturday afternoon. I won’t let you send in your team and swallow the expenses.”

“Stubborn,” he grumbled.

Yes, but Jo had to admire her roommate for not accepting charity, even if it was from her brother.

“We’re all going to help,” she chimed in.

“Uh-huh.” He spared her a glance. “My sister can’t drive a nail. What about you?”

Jo knew that frustration at having his desire to help thwarted was behind his scoffing, but she hated it nonetheless.

Her chin rose a fraction and her eyes met his. “As a matter of fact, I can. I can use a table saw and change the oil in my car, too.”

A glint of something in those gray eyes briefly softened her irritation, but then he said in a hard voice, “Can you update the wiring? Tear up the roof and replace the shingles? Fix cracks in the foundation?”

No. She’d never done any of those things and was pretty sure she couldn’t—for one thing, she was scared of heights—but Jo was fired up enough to lie. She had her mouth open when Kathleen saved her.

“Don’t pick on Jo. I’m the one who said no. If the roof leaks this winter, I’ll save my pennies to replace it next summer. The bank okayed the mortgage, which must mean the appraiser didn’t see dangerous wiring. And of course the foundation is cracking! The house is eighty-plus years old. I don’t think it’s going to fall down any time soon.”

Emma’s head swiveled as she watched first her mom and then her uncle. Eyes already too big for her face were wide, and Jo wondered what she was thinking. Did an argument, however mild, frighten her? She seemed to like her uncle Ryan better than she did her mother, so perhaps she was hoping Mom would be bested. Or, heck, in a teenager’s self-centered way, maybe she just resented living in a shabby house when she could have a gorgeous, remodeled showplace to bring her friends home to.

If she had any friends. People didn’t just become anorexic without other problems, did they? Assuming that’s what was wrong with her.

Ryan abruptly shoved back his chair, lines carved deep in his forehead. “Well, since I’m not any use here, I think I’ll get home and let you women decide which room you’re going to paint first.”

Kathleen started to stand, too. “Ryan…”

“It’s okay.” His grin was resigned. “I wish you’d get it through your head that I can afford to take a hit for you and Emma, and I’d feel happier if you’d let me. But I guess stubbornness runs in this family.” He ruffled his niece’s hair. “See? It’s not your fault, kiddo. You inherited it.”

She smiled uncertainly up at him. Ryan kissed Emma’s forehead, gave his sister a passing hug, and let his gaze linger on Jo with a certain deliberation as he said, “Good night, all. Kathleen’s right. I’m always here, butting my nose in. Call me on it if I’m a nuisance.” With a last nod, he left. A moment later, they heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.

Kathleen laughed, the sound wry. “That’s my brother.”

And wouldn’t he make life here more interesting, Jo thought, more conscious in his absence than she’d been in his presence of the way he’d seemed to charge the room with energy. Oh, hell, be honest, she told herself: with the way she had responded to him.

What’s more—miracle of miracles—she had a feeling he’d been attracted to her, too.

Maybe she wouldn’t regret moving in here after all.

She cleared her throat. “I have a proposal. What do you say we show that brother of yours what we’re made of? Let’s tackle a job next weekend. Maybe the upstairs bathroom? Isn’t that one of the projects you had in mind, Kathleen?”

“But…plumbing…” Helen protested, in her soft, uncertain voice.

“We’re smart women.” Jo looked from one to the other. “I’ll find a how-to book. How hard can it be?”

Kathleen’s smile was the most genuine Jo had seen from her. “Those sound like famous last words. But you’re right. We can learn. I’m game. Helen, what do you say?”

“It might be fun,” Helen agreed tentatively.

“Emma?” Jo asked, when her mother didn’t.

The teenager shrugged with a hint of sullenness. “I don’t know how to do anything.”

“You can learn,” Jo said.

Her mother gave a decisive nod. “Then let’s go shopping tomorrow night. We can pick out a new vanity and sink and what-have-you together. Home Depot, here we come!”

CHAPTER TWO

“UH-OH,” JO WAS the first to say.

She knelt with one strip of the ancient, cracked linoleum in her gloved hands. Beside her, Kathleen gaped in horror at the rotting floorboards beneath where the toilet had been pulled up.

“What’s ‘uh-oh’?” Helen asked from the hall behind them. Ginny peered around her.

Hovering outside the bathroom door, Emma asked eagerly, “Did you do something bad?”

“Great. Wonderful,” Kathleen muttered.

“It’s okay.” Jo was already envisioning the work to be done. Way more than she’d signed up for, considering this wasn’t her house, but she wasn’t the quitting type. Besides, she wanted to take a shower again someday. With false confidence, she said, “We’ll tear the boards up and lay down plywood.”

“What if the beams underneath are rotting?”

Brutality was sometimes necessary. “We call your brother.”

Kathleen’s jaw hardened. “Then let’s pray,” she said, and began yanking up the linoleum again.

Jo couldn’t quite figure out why Kathleen was so determined not to accept Ryan’s help. Pride—sure. She’d been a dependent wife, now she wanted to show the world she could manage very nicely on her own, thank you. But her determination also struck Jo as a sort of competition—I can do it better than you can. A childish game. When you got right down to it, wasn’t it a little silly that three women who knew nothing about construction were refusing to let a willing contractor help gut the bathroom, just so they could prove…what? That they could do it, too? Could do it better?

Yeah, right, Jo thought with humorous derision. Do it? Maybe. Make a dozen mistakes? That, too.

“Well,” she decided, while Helen was carrying the tattered roll of linoleum out, “we’ll definitely need the circular saw. But let’s pry a few boards up and see how bad it is.”

The first board splintered—well, disintegrated was probably closer to the truth. Squished into pieces. But under it, the thick, rough-hewn beam looked solid. Jo pulled out nails and moved on to the next board. Somehow, as the only one with any know-how whatsoever, she was ending up doing most of the work. But she’d always enjoyed doing simple projects like building a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in her last condo. She’d been proud of the results. This was more than she’d bargained for when she had shrugged and said, “Sure, I don’t mind helping,” during that interview/visit this summer. But, heck, it wasn’t as if she had any friends with whom to spend a sunny Saturday, and she liked a challenge.

“It looks okay,” she announced, after the second board shattered with a soggy sound. “These boards weren’t rotted quite through.”

Kathleen sank back on her heels and sighed. “Thank God for small favors. Okay. Tell me what to buy, and I’ll go back to the lumberyard while you and Helen pull up the floor.”

Jo measured the dimensions of the bathroom floor. “Ask somebody what kind of plywood you should buy. Tell them we’re tiling on top of it. Oh, and what kind of nails. Get a circular saw…”

“But we already bought a saw,” Helen protested.

“That was a jigsaw. We can’t cut big pieces of plywood with it, not and make straight lines.”

“Oh.”

Kathleen was busy writing notes. “We’ll probably need the tools when we work on other projects anyway. We should have bought one in the first place.”

“The thing is,” Jo paused, the hammer suspended in her hand, “we really need to get a plumber.”

Kathleen looked dismayed. “A plumber? Why?”

Jo put it in simple language. “Something was leaking. I don’t know what.”

“But you know we’ll never get anyone out here on Saturday or Sunday. And that’ll leave us without a bathtub or shower, never mind a toilet upstairs, until next weekend at least, when we have time to tile.”

“Uncle Ryan could fix it,” Emma said. “If you’d let him.”

“He’ll promise to come and then not show up until tomorrow evening.” Kathleen sounded waspish.

Jo raised a brow, but didn’t comment on this assessment of Ryan Grant. Instead she pointed out, “Tomorrow evening would be better than Monday, when one of us would have to be home to let a plumber in.”

“That’s not true, anyway!” Emma’s face flushed red. “He always comes when he says he will!”

“You haven’t known him as long as I have,” her mother said crisply. “If he were more ambitious, he wouldn’t still be working with his own hands. He’d be running the business instead of driving nails.”

“He likes working on houses!” the teenager cried.

“If he wanted to be successful…”

Apparently he didn’t, at least to his sister’s standards. Maybe he didn’t like wearing a white shirt and tie and spending his day sending faxes and talking on a cell phone.

On the other hand, Jo amended, maybe he was one of those irresponsible jerks who’d rather go fishing on a nice day than show up to do the work he’d promised to. Just this summer, when she put her condo up for sale and needed to lay a new vinyl floor in the kitchen, the first two days she’d stayed home from work to let workmen in, they had neither come nor called.

Her interest in Kathleen’s brother waned. Not much for lazing around herself, she liked workaholics, not playboys.

Still…

“You’d better call him,” she advised.

Kathleen made a face. “Oh, all right.” As she backed into the hall, she explained, “Emma, it’s not that I don’t like Ryan…”

“You don’t!” the teenager cried. The venom in her voice startled Jo into swiveling in time to see bitterness transform the fifteen-year-old’s expression as she finished, “Maybe he has dirt under his fingernails sometimes, or he smells sweaty, or he doesn’t know what to wear to one of your parties, but he’s nice!”

Kathleen seemed frozen in shock. “I’ve never said…”

“You have!” her daughter flung at her. “I heard you and Dad! You were embarrassed by Uncle Ryan! Just like you’re embarrassed by me!”

With that, she turned and ran. Jo heard the uneven thud of her feet on the stairs, and then the slam of the front door.

None of the women moved for what seemed an eternity. Ginny had her face pressed into her mother’s side.

Kathleen finally gave an unconvincing laugh. “Teenagers!”

Helen smoothed her daughter’s hair. “I was awful when I was thirteen.”

“Me, too,” Jo admitted. “And when I was fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen…” Actually, she hadn’t quit rebelling until at eighteen she’d realized that her father didn’t even notice her snotty comebacks or sulky moods. She wasn’t upsetting him, she wasn’t even making a blip on his radar screen. That’s when she left home and never went back.

Looking unhappy, Kathleen left the room. A minute later, her voice floated up the stairs. “I left a message on Ryan’s voice mail.”

“Okay,” Jo called back.

Helen and Ginny made repeated trips up and down the stairs, carrying boards from which Jo was careful to remove all the nails. In her quiet way, the six-year-old seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d hold out her arms and wait for Jo to pile on a child-size load, then carefully turn and make her way out of the gutted bathroom. Sometimes she even went ahead of her mother, or reappeared before her.

Kathleen had been right, Jo had discovered: Ginny wasn’t any bother. Living with her was more like having a mouse in the house than a child. Tiny rustles marked her presence.

Once, when Ginny reappeared ahead of her mother and stood waiting patiently while Jo pried at a stubborn board, she felt compelled to make conversation.

“Your mom says you’re in first grade. How do you like it?”

“I like to read.”

“Really? Better than recess?” The hammer slipped and banged her knee. “Ow!”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yes!” Jo moderated her voice. “Not permanently. I just…whacked myself.”

“Oh.” Ginny cocked her head at the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.

“So, what do you do at recess?”

The solemn gaze returned to her. “I stay in if Teacher lets me.”

Jo sank back on her heels. “You stay in?” she asked incredulously. She could remember how much she’d longed to be outside, pumping herself so high on the swing that she momentarily became weightless, or skipping rope with friends to nonsensical songs that still had to be sung perfectly.

Ginny’s face showed no expression. “Kids make fun of me.”

Jo frowned. “Have you told the teacher? Or your mom?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Why not what?” Helen asked from the doorway, her voice dull, as if she had to force herself to ask. She often sounded that way. Jo wanted to shake her sometimes and say, Wake up! But what did she know about grief?

Knowing Helen wouldn’t care enough to be suspicious, Jo improvised quickly. “I asked why she isn’t wearing overalls and leather gloves and a tool belt, since she’s a carpenter now.”

A tiny smile flickered on the pale face, whether at Jo’s attempt at humor or because she’d kept Ginny’s confession confidential, Jo didn’t know.

“Heck, maybe we should get her one.” Helen gave a rare smile, too, her hand resting lightly on her daughter’s head. “She’ll grow up an expert on how to do all this stuff.” Her voice became heavier. “I don’t want Ginny ever to feel helpless, about anything.”

“Well, she’ll learn right along with us,” Jo said heartily. “Right, kid?”

Very still under her mother’s hand, Ginny said nothing.

Jo took a deep breath and pried again at the board. It groaned and squealed in protest. She braced her feet and used her full weight to wrench upward. It snapped free and she landed on her butt just as the doorbell rang.

“Jo! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She picked herself up. “You’d better go get that. It might be Kathleen with her hands full.”

She flipped the board over and hammered. The nail popped out, and she started on the next.

Should she tell Helen what Ginny had said about recess and the other kids taunting her? Or was that betraying a confidence?

Oh, damn! Why had the little mouse confided in her?

“You look like you’re pounding meat,” an amused male voice commented. “I think it’s already tender.”

Ryan. Of course.

Jo focused on the board, where a deep indentation showed that the hammer had more than pushed the nail out. “I was brooding,” she said, before oh-so-casually glancing up.

Damn, she thought again. He was gorgeous, even if he was a slacker.

A smile deepened creases in his cheeks and crinkled the skin beside his eyes. Today he wore jeans again and a gray T-shirt that bared nicely developed muscles in his upper arms.

He must have a girlfriend.

“About what?”

“Oh…” She thought fast. “Just about school. Nothing earth-shattering.”

“Speaking of which…” Ryan crouched beside her. “You must have a real problem for Kathleen to relent and call me.”

“I insisted.” Jo gestured with the hammer. “Behold the rot.”

He did, and grunted. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I can cut up sheets of plywood and replace the subfloor, but real plumbing is beyond me.”

He smelled good, she was disconcerted to realize. Or maybe she was disconcerted to have noticed. She caught a hint of sweat, aftershave and something else warm and male.

Jo scowled, but he didn’t notice. He was frowning, too, as he studied the exposed pipes.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” she asked.

He grunted again. “What isn’t? I’ve been telling Kathleen the pipes all need replacing. Look at the corrosion.”

Every pipe she could see was rusty and wet. “Can you replace them?”

The frown still furrowing his brows, he looked at her. “I can, but it’s going to be a big job.”

Her hand felt slick where it gripped the hammer. She had to tear her gaze from his thighs, as well-muscled as his arms, the denim tight over them.

Jo took a deep breath. “We don’t have a shower until we get this bathroom done.”

Oh, lord. Did she smell?

If so, he didn’t seem to mind. Forehead still creased, his expression no longer looked like a frown. He was studying her with disconcerting intentness, his eyes smoky, darkening…

A bumping sound gave away the presence of someone else. Ryan jerked and swung around. “Hummingbird!” he said, voice gentle and friendly, his smile so easy, Jo was sure she’d imagined the moment of peculiar tension. “You’re helping?”

“Yes, I am,” the little girl said solemnly, her big eyes taking in the two adults, her thoughts inscrutable.

Ryan rose with an athletic ease that Jo envied. She was beginning to feel as if her knees would creak and crack when she stood.

“Oh, dear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve been sitting here like a slug, not getting anything done. I don’t have another load for you yet.”

Helen stuck her head in. “Has Ryan figured out our problem yet?”

“Ryan figured it out before his sister made an offer on this house,” he said dryly. “She just didn’t want to hear it.”

“You didn’t think she should buy it?” Jo asked in surprise. “It’s a great house.”

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Given real estate prices in Seattle, what she paid was fair, too. She just didn’t want to recognize that the place was a bargain because it needed so much work. She figured she could get by with cosmetic fix-ups. A little paint, maybe eventually a new roof…” He shrugged. “It was built in 1922. The wiring hasn’t been updated since about 1950, and the plumbing needs to be completely replaced.”

He looked and sounded exasperated.

“If she can’t afford it…” Jo said tentatively.

Through gritted teeth, he answered, “She should let me do it.”

It was hard to engage in any kind of meaningful debate when you were squatting at a man’s feet, but Jo didn’t let that stop her. “Don’t you admire her independence?”

“Sure I do.” His mouth twisted. “But I’m not Ian. Her ex,” he added as an aside. “Why can’t her pride handle a little help from her brother?”

Helen’s face showed the same struggle Jo felt—sympathy for both points of view.

“How would you feel if Kathleen was trying to help you out financially?” Jo asked.

“I’d take the damn check, if my kids depended on it,” he said brusquely. Then he gave a faint laugh. “Sorry. It’s not your fault that Kathleen and I butt heads. I’m just glad that you apparently do have some construction skills.”

She felt an absurd glow of pleasure at the compliment. Some women wanted to be told that they were beautiful. She apparently reveled in being praised for competence.

Perhaps, she thought ruefully, because she wasn’t beautiful. Not like he was, or his sister. Pretty, maybe, if the beholder was generous. But she had not spent her life fighting off suitors.

At the sound of a car engine, she smiled as if he hadn’t both pleased her and stung her feminine vanity all at the same time.

“I do believe Kathleen’s home,” Jo said. “The two of you can go at it to your heart’s content.”

ALTHOUGH HE’D HAVE RATHER stayed and worked beside Jo Dubray, who was far too petite to be wielding a hammer so ably, Ryan went outside, argued briefly with his sister and headed home to get the supplies he needed to work on the bathroom.

He hated doing plumbing. Wood was his passion. He liked building and restoring equally. Rebuilding a curving banister in an old house, recreating the molding that would have framed tall windows in the 1890s, baring and polishing and laying hardwood floors, those he enjoyed.

But for his sister and Emma, he’d do anything. And why not? Now that his kids had moved a couple thousand miles away with their mother and her new husband, his weekends and evenings would be damn empty if it weren’t for Kathleen and Emma. What they hadn’t realized was that he needed them more than they needed him.

By the time he got back Jo had managed to remove the entire subfloor and replace parts of it with thick plywood. She’d left the plumbing and glimpses of the downstairs ceilings exposed. As he dropped his first load, he heard the distant sound of a saw, but didn’t see her.

Heading back downstairs for another load of PVC pipes, he grimaced. Damn it, he’d had better things in mind for this weekend. Indian summer, the end of September, the day glowed with golden warmth that had chased away the night’s chill. He’d intended to start with a run around Green Lake, then pick up the damn apples rotting on his lawn and finally mow it, he hoped for the last time this fall.

Well, hell. Maybe plumbing didn’t sound so bad after all. Especially not with an interesting woman popping into the bathroom to check on him. Maybe bringing him a can of soda, commiserating if he scraped a knuckle, admiring his muscles—he thought he’d caught her doing that already.

He’d wondered about his sister’s taste in roommates after meeting Helen Schaefer and her sad little girl. Pity and kindness had a place, but he figured Kathleen had enough to handle with Emma. Did she have to take on a befuddled, grieving woman and her painfully insecure child, too?

“Wait until you meet Jo,” Kathleen kept saying. “You’ll like her.”

Jo. The name sounded masculine enough that he’d pictured a man/woman, like the high school vice-principal who’d scared the crap out of every kid who’d ever considered pulling a prank, if not worse. Jo, he now realized, must be short for something feminine and French, like Josephine.

Five foot four or so, she wasn’t unusually short, but her bone structure was delicate. Ryan bet he could span her waist with his hands. Yet she crackled with energy and intelligence, making him wonder if she ever completely relaxed. Her big brown eyes, assessing and judging, were the farthest thing from pansy soft. Her hair, a deep, mahogany brown, was thick and straight and shiny, cut in a bob below her jawline. She had a habit he guessed was unconscious of shoving it back with impatience that seemed characteristic.