Читать книгу Taking a Chance - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. I didn’t know. You never said…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks.”

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

With shock, Jo said, “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. She hadn’t.

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

“No. You’re cool.”

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

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

Jo hurried down the hall.

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

“We worked hard,” his sister said.

We? Jo’s temper sparked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kathleen flinched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jo nodded dumbly.

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

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

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

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

Jo began, “If you’d rather not…”

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

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?