Читать книгу Everybody's Hero - Karen Templeton - Страница 11

Instantly, Taylor’s high horse not only threw her, but took off for parts unknown. “Oh, Joe—”

He put up a hand to stop her. “Kristen’s only moderately retarded, but my mother realized she couldn’t go back to work and still give my sister the kind of attention she needed, so she had to take an unpaid leave of absence from her teaching job. My going to work was the only way we’d’ve made it.”

Taylor frowned. “But you couldn’t have been more than, what, eighteen?”

“Seventeen. My last year of high school.”

“Don’t tell me you quit?”

The horror in her voice coaxed a smile from his lips. “Mom would’ve had five fits if I’d tried. But I had to work. We got some help from the state for Kristen’s care, but it wasn’t enough. So, since construction paid a helluva lot better than fast food, I worked as a framer during the day and finished up high school at night. Oh, for God’s sake…don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t want your sympathy, Taylor. I did what I had to do, that’s all.”

Lord, how many times had she heard those words, or variations on that theme? “And you still are, I take it?”

“Yeah. I am. Kristen’s had the best care and training available, Mom made sure of that, but she’s never going to be able to live completely on her own or earn a living wage. And she’s got a heart condition that needs constant monitoring. Even though Mom was able to go back to teaching once Kristen started school, you know what teachers’ salaries are like. And anyway, she’s not going to be able to work forever. A good chunk of my earnings goes into a trust fund for Kristen. For later.”

When their gazes locked this time, it wasn’t about sex. Taylor carted his empty bowl to the sink, wondering how admiration and aggravation could be so closely linked. But the question was, what was she aggravated about? Joe’s dadblasted insistence on shouldering so much responsibility, or her own dadblasted weakness for men with such broad shoulders?

“What are you thinking?” he asked as she smacked up the faucet to wash the bowl.

“Why does it matter what I think?” she said over the running water.

“I don’t know. It just does. So humor me.”

The water groaned off, then she twisted around, her arms linked over her middle. “I think…” She blew out a sigh. “I think I owe you an apology, for one thing. For giving you grief when I didn’t have all the facts.” She hesitated, then said, “But when I taught in Houston, I’d see kids who’d have every gadget on the market, the best clothes, every privilege imaginable, but there’d be something in their eyes, this…enormous, gaping void, that just ripped me to pieces. Nine times out of ten, I’d eventually find out their parents weren’t in the picture as much as the kids needed them to be. It kills me to see a kid being neglected. Especially when the parent has no idea that’s what he’s doing.”

“Like…your father?” he said softly.

She smiled. “I guess I’m a little hypersensitive about the issue.”

Was it her imagination, or did his eyes narrow? “S’ okay,” he said. “I understand.”

“I imagine you do,” she said, and their gazes brushed up against each other, just for a moment. Just long enough, apparently, for him to decide it was high time he got out of there.

“Well,” he said, rising, “we’ve all got to get up pretty early, so we’d better get going.”

She walked him through the living room her older sister Erika had pronounced spartan the one time she’d come to visit and out onto the porch, the screen door slamming behind them. Seth lay on his stomach in the grass underneath the mulberry tree, talking to Oakley, who frankly didn’t appear all that captivated with the conversation.

“Time to go,” Joe shouted across the yard.

The kid scrambled to his feet. “C’n I use the bathroom first?”

“We’ll be back at the Double Arrow in two minutes, can’t you hold it?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Go on, then.” After the kid trooped back inside, Joe turned to Taylor. “Well. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.”

“Any time. No, I mean that,” she said when he snorted. Oakley had dragged himself up onto the porch and flopped down at her feet with a groan. One echoed silently inside her as her heart shoved her right smack in the line of fire, all the while her head was yelling, Have you lost your mind? But apparently there were certain aspects of a person’s makeup that could not be altered, no matter how desperately you might want to. No matter how fervently Taylor might have wanted to be a practical person, in the end her heart always made her decisions for her. “I’m happy to take Seth after day camp, if you need an emergency baby-sitter.”