Читать книгу What She Wants for Christmas - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 8

WHEN JOE HAD ASKED about Nicole, the very mention of her name had been enough to prick Teresa with exasperation, amusement, puzzlement, frustration and even reluctant admiration. She’d no doubt gotten an odd look on her face. There was a good reason for it. In the past week, Nicole had obviously changed her tactics. Teresa wasn’t foolish enough to think she’d given up.

For example, last Wednesday Nicole had gone along sweetly and willingly to register at the high school. When Teresa stared doubtfully up at the building and said, “Gee, it’s kinda ugly, isn’t it?” Nicole didn’t jump right on her mother’s minor criticism and try to make something major out of it.

Instead, she gave a dainty shrug and said, “It probably doesn’t matter, as long as the district has spent their money where it counts.”

What kid ever thought of a school district in terms of a limited budget and priorities? Not Nicole, that was for sure. Wary, Teresa trailed her up the wide stairs and in the double doors.

Sounding sanctimonious, her daughter whispered, “Don’t they have handicapped access?”

“I’m sure they do,” Teresa returned dryly.

The guidance counselor in the office was friendly. She agreed to put Nicole in third year French even though the class was technically full. Nicole’s face fell with exaggerated disappointment as she examined the offerings.

“Oh, I was really looking forward to taking song writing this year.”

“Maybe you should worry about bringing your algebra grade up, instead,” her mother suggested.

The counselor had a twinkle in her eye. “Perhaps you’d like to try drama, Nicole. You look like acting might come naturally.”

“Only if it’s in the form of melodrama,” Teresa muttered.

Her daughter gave her a glare. “Yeah, okay,” she said to the counselor. “Why not? There isn’t anything else.”

“It’s too bad you missed new-student orientation,” the counselor concluded brightly, “but there’s no reason you and your mother can’t wander around the building right now. Here’s a map, so you can find your classrooms—”

“Are the rooms unlocked?” Nicole sounded so earnest Teresa was immediately suspicious.

“Why, yes, I think so. You’ll probably find some of the teachers—getting ready for the onslaught tomorrow.”

“Can we look around?” Nicole asked when they left the office.

“Well, of course.” Teresa nodded at the map and schedule Nicole carried. “What’s your first class?”

“Um…algebra. Room 233.” She peered around doubtfully. “Are we on the second floor here, do you think?”

They were; 233 was just down the hall. Nicole insisted on glancing in. It looked like any other classroom to Teresa, if a little old-fashioned. The ceilings were high, the woodwork dark, and a smell of floor polish was underlaid with that of chalk and the pages of new textbooks, piled on a table by the door.

The chemistry lab looked perfectly adequate to Teresa, as well; Nicole critiqued it as they wandered between high black-topped tables furnished with microscopes and glass beakers and petri dishes. Teresa, filled with nostalgia for her own high-school days, was able to tune her daughter out. She’d had a mad crush on her biology/chemistry teacher, in part because he inspired her with his own passionate interest in the unseen organisms that cause disease or well-being. It had taken her a while to realize she was more excited by cell division than she was by him.

They progressed to the library, where Nicole prowled the shelves, returning to announce, “This collection is ancient! How does anybody do any research here?”

“Fortunately White Horse belongs to an excellent public library system,” Teresa reminded her. “In fact, the local branch isn’t two blocks from here. You can go over there on your way home from school.”

Her daughter frowned at her. “Don’t you think they ought to have a better school library?”

“Yep. I’ll join the PTA and campaign for a bigger book budget.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do me,” Nicole muttered.

“Probably not,” Teresa admitted, “but it might achieve something before Mark gets to high school.”

“I suppose you think his education is more important than mine!”

Teresa gave an inward sigh. “You know that isn’t true. But I see no reason you won’t get a perfectly adequate education here. Let’s face it, at this level it’s the teacher that counts. The teacher, and the effort you are willing to expend.” She added some briskness to her voice. “If you get bored, next year you can start taking some classes at the community college in Everett.”

“I’m supposed to be happy when you pulled me out of a great high school—”

“Rife with drugs and gangs.”

“—and moved me here.” Examining a banner decorating the wall above a bank of metal lockers, Nicole curled her lip. “This one is full of Future Farmers of America.” Every word was a sneer. “What am I supposed to do, learn how to milk a cow?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. I had to,” Teresa said unsympathetically. “Have you seen enough? Shall we go find Mark?”

Rolled eyes. “Yeah, I’ve seen enough.”

Outside they found Mark involved in an impromptu soccer game with a bunch of boys who ranged from third or fourth grade on up to middle-school age. He trotted over.

“Can I stay awhile, Mom? For an hour or two?”

“You bet.” She cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Have fun.”

Nicole turned the full battery of entreaty on her from wide brown eyes. “Since we have an hour, can we go shopping, Mom? Please?”

Teresa hated to shop. She didn’t care about clothes, seldom bothered with makeup, couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress. How she’d given birth to a child obsessed with appearances would forever remain a mystery to her.

But this struck her as an intelligent moment to compromise. “Fine. We’ll see what the town has to offer.”

A smug smile curled her daughter’s pale mouth. Because she’d won? Or because she figured she had a chance to show her mother how inadequate White Horse was? Self-absorbed as she was, she probably hadn’t noticed that Teresa visited malls only under duress.

Teresa decided the answer was the latter when she shocked Nicole out of her socks by actually finding an outfit she liked. White Horse only had two clothing stores. One of them had beautiful, high-quality casual clothes for women. Teresa looked around happily. “I’ll never have to hit the mall again. I’ll just come in here and snap something up.”

“But this is old-lady stuff!”

“You mean, it’s not teenage stuff. I am not a teenager, believe it or not.” She headed for a display of cotton sweaters.

“Mo-om.”

She waved Nicole off. “Let me try these things on.”

Twenty minutes later, she paid for a pair of slim-fitting pants, a tunic-length sweater and a chunky silver necklace to wear over it.

A very sulky teenager followed her out onto the sidewalk. “Where am I supposed to shop?”

“The Everett Mall is only forty-five minutes away.”

“Everett!”

“Bellevue Square isn’t much over an hour. Surely some of those friends who used to pick you up every morning will come up here and get you once in a while.”

“Oh, right.” Nicole flung herself into the passenger seat of the car and slumped down, her expression tight. “They’re supposed to drive for almost four hours just to see me.”

Once behind the wheel, Teresa studied her daughter. She looked and sounded so unhappy Teresa reached out and stroked her hair. “Sweetheart—”

Nicole averted her face. “Oh, please. Spare me the lecture about making the best of it.”

Teresa hesitated, then started the car. Maybe, determined that her children be as happy about the move as she’d been, she had been insensitive to Nicole’s misery. On one level, she understood it; on another, she didn’t at all. She hadn’t been as social a creature as her daughter was. At that age, she’d been absorbed in her books and her studies and her ambition for the future. She’d had friends of course, but she didn’t remember missing them all that much when she went off to college. Probably she wouldn’t have missed them any more if her family had moved.

And here she’d been accusing Nicole of being self-absorbed. Maybe, Teresa thought ruefully, she was the selfish one. She’d convinced herself that the kids would be better off in small-town America because this was what she wanted for herself. She still thought this was a better place to raise children—but maybe Nicole was already too formed by her environment to adjust. Maybe, along with the veterinary practice and the farmhouse, Teresa had bought her daughter unhappiness.

The thought was an unsettling one.

IT WAS STILL on her mind on Friday as she dressed for her date with Joe Hughes. Nicole hadn’t been happy to hear that her mother was going out with the logger and that she was condemned to baby-sit her little brother. It didn’t help when Teresa pointed out that Nicole would have been sitting home, anyway.

Realizing her mistake immediately, Teresa tried to amend it. “You haven’t picked up any baby-sitting clientele yet—”

“How can I? I don’t know anybody.”

“Why don’t I put up a notice for you at the clinic?”

Nicole lifted one finger and traced a dispirited circle in the air. “Wow.”

“Joe mentioned brothers and sisters. Maybe they have kids.”

“Mom.” Nicole waited until her mother turned to look at her. “I don’t care if I baby-sit. I don’t need the money. There’s nowhere to shop, remember? Nobody to shop with? Okay?”

Teresa gritted her teeth at the snotty tone, but decided to let it pass. This time.

She ended up wearing the outfit she’d bought in town that day with Nicole. If Joe showed up in a suit and tie, she’d whisk back into the bedroom and exchange the leggings for a calf-length gauzy skirt.

As it turned out, he wore jeans and a plaid sports shirt that echoed the extraordinary blue of his eyes. His eyes took in her appearance with one swift assessing glance and returned, obviously approving, to her face.

“Do you like Mexican food? I thought we’d go to La Hacienda here in town.”

“Love it,” she assured him, standing aside. “Joe, I’d like you to meet my kids. Nicole, Mark, come here.”

He shook hands solemnly with both, didn’t remark on Nicole’s teenage sulkiness and agreed with Mark that soccer was a popular sport in White Horse.

“One of my nieces plays select soccer,” Joe said. “She’s darn good. They go to tournaments all over the state.”

“That’d be cool.” Mark’s eyes were wide.

Briskly Teresa ended the preliminaries. “See you, guys. I don’t know what time I’ll be home.”

In the pickup, Joe said, “I feel a little guilty leaving them behind. I could feed them, too—”

“No!” she exclaimed, then saw his surprise and amusement. She made a face. “Nicole’s driving me nuts,” she admitted. “I need a break.” There was more, of course. The moment she’d answered the door, she’d remembered why she’d wanted so badly to go out with this man. The fantasies she’d indulged in this past week had not included her children.

“You ought to talk to Jess. Her oldest is, uh—” he obviously had to calculate “—twelve going on thirteen. She’s been a pain in the butt lately.”

“Maybe I will. Tell me, how many nieces and nephews do you have?”

“Uh…” More calculations. “Seven. Lee has four, Jess two and Rebecca one. Although she’s expecting another.”

“And you all live here in town?”

He offered her that heart-stopping grin. “Pretty overwhelming, huh?”

Had she sounded rude? She would have liked to see her own sisters and their families more often, but…

“My younger sister was so nosy,” she said. “Still is.”

“My mother is the nosy one.” His big shoulders moved. “I ignore her.”

Teresa could imagine that. His rock-solid steadiness was part of what attracted her, but it wouldn’t make him a flexible man. So to speak.

“You don’t have any kids?” She hoped her question sounded casual.

“Never been married.” The statement so carefully held no inflection it should have stopped her from commenting. It didn’t.

“You’re kidding.”

Joe shot her a glance. “Why’s that so surprising?”

“Because you’re, ah…” Fumbling for words, she settled for the truth. “You’re a hunk. I can’t believe some woman didn’t snap you up.”

“Like a tasty fly?” he asked wryly.

Teresa couldn’t resist it. She chanted, “There was a young woman who swallowed a fly…”

“And now she’ll die?” he concluded.

Of happiness, maybe, Teresa thought, but had the sense not to say.

“I guess the whole analogy is a little—” she grinned “—distasteful.”

He groaned. “Oh, God, a woman who likes puns.”

“Didn’t someone say it’s the highest form of humor?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the lowest?”

“You should have heard us in vet school,” Teresa said cheerfully. “We were bad.”

“Question is, are you hungry?”

She blinked and looked around. Heavens, they were parked in front of the restaurant. How long had they been here while she blathered?

“Starved,” she admitted. “A day of standing around always makes me think about food.”

He started to circle the truck, presumably to get the door for her; she didn’t wait. If he wanted a lady, he could look elsewhere. But all he said was, “Things no better at work?”

“Heck no.” Teresa sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Over enchiladas, they did. She chattered on about her years of school; he merely shook his head when she asked if he’d gone to college.

“How’d you get started in logging?”

“Summer jobs,” he said easily. “By the time I got out of high school, I was already a cutter—I was the one who climbed the trees to top ’em, or take some limbs out. Pay was too good for me to bother looking around for any other line of work. My boss encouraged me to learn to cruise—that’s estimating what a stand of timber is worth, so you can make a realistic bid on it. I always had a head for math.” He shrugged. “Got some money put away, went into business for myself. Now I keep six other men working.”

“You’re a family of entrepreneurs.”

“Who wants to work for someone else?” His gaze was shrewd. “Isn’t that why you bought into a practice?”

She paused in the midst of cutting her enchilada. “I suppose so. Well, partly. It’s not the money-making side of being a vet that interests me. I wanted more responsibility. In Bellevue I worked at this big clinic with half a dozen vets. It was like I just put in my time—I didn’t make the overall decisions, which sometimes bothered me. For example, I thought our charges were too high. Especially for preventative medicine. I wanted us to keep neutering and vaccination costs to the very minimum. The partners smiled and told me I wasn’t looking at the big picture.”

“You’re an idealist.” The faintest of smiles lurked in his eyes.

Teresa wrinkled her nose. “I suppose so. But partly I was being selfish, too. I was bored. In vet school I especially enjoyed the large-animal work, and we didn’t do any of that where I worked. I was hoping for a mix.”

“Which you found.”

“In theory.”

“They’ll come around,” he said quietly.

“Damn straight they will.” She frowned at him. “I’m going to get every one of those farmers to admit I’m the best vet they’ve ever had!”

“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.