Читать книгу Playing For Keeps - Karen Templeton - Страница 9

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.”

“No,” she said, her brow puckering. “This is a business. My livelihood. I can’t afford not to be practical…why are you laughing now?”

“Would you listen to yourself? I can’t think of many things more impractical than making dolls that sell for three hundred bucks a pop.”

“Which is why I don’t sell too many of them. I mean, I’ll never get rich from these.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because…they feed something inside me.”

“Then trust me…they’ll feed something inside everyone who buys one, too. Something none of that mass produced stuff can ever do. Sure, most folks are perfectly content buying what they’re gonna see in half their neighbor’s living rooms. But you and I know that’s not enough for everybody.” He leaned his hands on the edge of the counter, hooking her gaze in his. “Not for the fools who have the nerve to try to compete with Toys “R” Us and Target and K mart, or the ones who spend hours making a single doll instead of holding down a regular job in some office with a guaranteed paycheck and a dental plan. Or for the ones who pay five, ten, a hundred times more for something than they have to, just for the satisfaction of having something that nobody else does…”

“Joanna! Come here!”

She jumped, tearing her eyes away from the crazy man and toward her mother, who was beckoning her to the back of the store. Joanna wended her way through the narrow aisles to look outside at a display of wooden play forts with attached swing sets, each one bigger and badder than the next and more expensive.

“Wouldn’t the boys love one of those for their birthday?”

“Right. Honestly, Mom—I paid less than that for my first car.”

But her mother, hanging on to the stuffed frog she’d apparently decided on for the new baby, had already turned to Dale, who’d followed Joanna. “My twin grandsons’ eighth birthday is two weeks from today—can you have one of these delivered by then?”

“I can’t let you spend that much on the boys—!”

Glynnie quelled her with a don’t-be-rude look as Dale assured her that was no problem. Then another customer arrived and, with a “Be right back, ladies,” Dale took off. Glynnie smacked Jo lightly in the arm.

“For God’s sake, Joanna. It’s just money. Loosen up.”

“Been down that road already, Mother. I’m perfectly happy being my tight little self again.”

“Happy? Hell, you haven’t been happy in years.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Is not.”

“Is, too.” Glynnie glanced over, presumably to make sure they couldn’t be heard, then lowered her voice anyway. “I saw him making goo-goo eyes at you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Joanna whispered back.

“Don’t tell me what I didn’t see, young lady. I could feel the buzzing from clear on the other side of the store.”

“That’s because you forgot to take your Prozac this morning.”

“Joanna Swann! You know full well I haven’t touched that stuff in years. And anyway, that has nothing to do with the fact that your flirting skills could use a major tune-up. And here’s a perfectly good learning tool, tossed right in your path. So what could it hurt to practice?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s a total stranger? Because for all I know he’s married? Because—” this had just come to her “—I haven’t got the time or energy right now to start from scratch?”

“Honey, if you’re waiting until they bring out the heat ’n’ serve variety, you’re outta luck.”

“Mother. Even discounting his questionable marital status or the fact that I’ve known him for, oh, five minutes, the man is nuts.”

“Why do you say that?”

Joanna showed her the check. Glynnie’s eyes shot to Joanna’s. “And this is for…?”

“Eight Santas.”

“Oh?” Glynnie frowned. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. What kind of crazy person gives a total stranger a check for twenty-four hundred dollars, with no paperwork, nothing, no assurances that I’ll even deliver? The man is not well. Or at least, not fiscally responsible.”

“Okay, maybe you have a point,” Glynnie said, her attention straying to Dale, helping the man who’d come in to pick out a computer learning game. “But come on, admit it…when was the last time you saw somebody that cute?”

“This morning,” Joanna said. Glynnie looked at her. “Your grandchildren’s father? Dark hair, dark eyes, charming smile? Totally clueless—”

“Okay, ladies, I’m back,” Dale said, making them both jump. “Now, which one of these would you like? I’ve got ’em all in stock.”

“That one,” Glynnie said before Jo could protest again, naturally pointing to the largest one in the batch. She whipped out her AmEx and smacked it down on the counter, dumping the hapless frog beside it. “And you said you can deliver it in time for their birthday?”

“Sure thing. If you’ll just fill this out—” he handed her a clipboard with a form of some kind on it “—we can get it all set up for you.” While her mother did as he asked, he turned his attention to Joanna. “So. You’ve got kids?”

Was it her, or did she detect just the slightest edge to that question? “Three,” she said. “The boys and an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

Before Joanna could answer, Glynnie said, “Oh, it’s not so bad.” She handed him back the clipboard. “They’re with their father every weekend. Are you married, Mr. McConnaughy?”

Dale dropped the clipboard, which clattered to the counter, while Joanna fumbled for her brain before it landed on the floor and rolled away. When he looked up, Joanna pointed to her mother behind her back, then mimed hanging herself.

Then he did this slow, lazy grinning thing, and Joanna felt her blood heat up a degree or two. “Why?” he said to her mother. “You fixin’ to ask me out?”

Nice save, she thought as her mother—or the alien that looked like her mother—merely smiled. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for myself. I’m happily married, thank you.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Ms. Swann. But you know…” Dale leaned forward, bracing his hands against the edge of the counter. Those nice, slender, sinewy hands. “Maybe you should be careful who you ask that question. Some folks might take it the wrong way. Especially from a woman as attractive as yourself.”

Glynnie laughed. “Boy, you really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”

“Just speaking the truth, Ms. Swann,” he said, ringing up the sale. “Just speakin’ the truth. As a matter of fact, when you two first came in—”

“Please don’t tell me you thought we were sisters.”

Again with the loopy grin. And a noncommittal shrug. “A man can’t help what he sees.” He bagged up the frog, then handed it to her, along with the charge slip and a copy of the order. “Somebody’ll give you a call before we come out, okay?” he said, and then a mini swarm of customers came in, affording Joanna the perfect opportunity to grab her mother’s arm and drag her out of there.

“What were you doing?”

“Just having some fun,” Glynnie said, wresting her arm out of Joanna’s grasp. “Remember fun?”

Joanna stomped around to the driver’s side of the van, unlocked the doors and climbed in. “Yeah,” she said, slamming shut her door as her mother got in. “I remember fun.” To her annoyance, her eyes burned. “I think.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—you don’t think I really meant anything by that, did you?” her mother said. “I was just testing him. And you’re right. That smile, that attitude…He is like Bobby. And God knows you don’t need to go through that again.”

Joanna twisted the key in the ignition, backing the van out of the parking space the instant the engine growled to life. “God knows,” she echoed, probably shaving five years off her mother’s life by darting across four lanes of traffic to make a left turn.

Two weeks later the roof still leaked, Bobby still hadn’t reimbursed Joanna for his half of the plumbing bill and Gladys, Henry Shaw’s Great Dane, was still pregnant. On a brighter note, however—well, brighter for Joanna and the female canine population of Corrales—immediate and permanent sanctions had been imposed on Chester’s wild oats. The dog seemed to be resigned to his fate, even if, judging from his actions, he was still a little fuzzy on the ramifications of his visit to the vet. But then, as long as Joanna knew he was shooting blanks, she really didn’t care all that much what the dog knew.

So all in all—she steered the van into the pickup lane in front of the elementary school—things were about the same.

The bell rang. Joanna didn’t bother looking for the boys in the blur of shrieking children disgorged from the sprawling series of buildings. A minute later, however, she picked out their shrill little voices like a mama sheep recognizing her lambs’ bleats from all the others in the herd.

“I called shotgun!” Matt, the oldest twin by ten minutes and the image of his father with his dark eyes and straight hair, bellowed beside the van. The twins were fraternal, not identical, as different in temperament and personality as they were physically. Although they were extremely well matched when it came to fighting over something they both wanted.

“Nuh-uh, I did!” Ryder bellowed right back as somebody yanked open the passenger side door and a whirlwind of elbows and knees and backpacks flew into the front seat. “Mo-om! Tell him to get in the back!”

It never ceased to amaze her how they could have the same argument, day after day, over something neither one had ever won. “Both of you get in back and your seat belts on,” she said mildly. “We’re gumming up the works here.”

“Aw, Mom…it’s just to the house.”

“Now.”

With a lot of grumbling and shoving and one backpack smacking Joanna in the face, they crawled through the space between the front seats and plopped into the back. “Didja bring any snacks?” Matt asked. “I’m about to starve to death.”

“I imagine you’ll survive until we get home,” Jo said, pulling out into the single-file stream of minivans and SUVs and pickups leaving the parking lot. “Either of you got any homework?”

“Nope,” Matt said. “Did it all in school. An’ I got all my spelling words right on my pre-test, too, so I don’t have to take the test tomorrow!”

Joanna’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror to catch Ryder’s sinking expression. Damn. For the millionth time, she tried to gauge how to respond to Matt’s good news without further damaging her other son’s increasingly fragile self-esteem. “Wow, Matt-o. You must’ve studied really hard.”

“Nuh-uh. I just knew ’em without even looking.”

Thank you, Matt. “How about you, Ry?” she said gently, wishing she could ruffle his cinnamon curls, which even as short as she kept them were every bit as obtuse as her own. “You have much work today?”

“I don’t remember.” His green eyes, a little darker than hers, flashed in the mirror’s reflection. “I think I finished all my math in school, maybe.”

“You did? That’s wonderful!”

His mouth stretched into a thin smile and Joanna’s heart cracked. The child had been tested every which way to Sunday, but there seemed to be no real reason why the very material that came so easily to Matt should be such a struggle for his brother. Joanna knew, even if she didn’t find two or three unfinished papers in his backpack, there was still a good hour to hour and a half of spelling and reading and math fact practice, just so Ryder wouldn’t fall more behind than he already was. It was hard on her, it was even harder on a child who’d already spent six and a half hours at school, but what was hardest of all was seeing the perplexed expression in Ryder’s eyes at his brother’s seemingly effortless success.

From birth, they’d been total opposites. Matt had come out protesting his confinement at the top of his lungs. Ryder had opened his eyes right away, calmly taking it all in, flinching only at his brother’s raucous cries from across the room. Matt had been the first to roll over, the first to crawl and walk and talk, always barreling through life at full throttle. Ryder, however, had to be coaxed to go down the same slide his brother had just rocketed down ten times in a row. And then only if Bobby or Joanna went down with him. He was the one who’d patiently spend ages building the three-foot-tall tower of blocks, his brother the one who’d knock them down.

Academically, however, they’d seemed to be on a par with each other until last year. While Matt continued to gobble up new skills like the hungry little caterpillar, Ryder had begun to struggle. Although quiet and attentive in class, he was now almost a full grade level behind. What got Joanna, though, was that she would have expected the reverse to be true, that the one who’d spent the first five years of his life in perpetual motion, except when he was asleep, would have been the one more prone to learning difficulties, not the quiet, contemplative one.

The quiet, contemplative one whose self-confidence was beginning to leak at an alarming rate, no matter what Joanna did to caulk it.

Both boys were out of the car and into the kitchen before Joanna could close her door and drag her weary butt into the house. Dulcy, her middle-schooler, had already been home for a half hour. What passed for music blared from her room. Cats swarmed Joanna’s ankles, begging her to make it stop.

“Turn it down, Dulce!” Joanna hollered automatically, hanging her car keys on the hook by the back door. The music dimmed from brain-numbing to merely irritating; a second later, the child stomped down the hall in her customary sexless hooded sweatshirt and jeans, brown eyes flashing behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Okay, which one of you dorks was in my room?”

“Not me!” came out of two crumb-speckled mouths.

“Right.” Dulcy held up The Evidence: a box of colored pencils. “This was brand new and full when I put it in my desk yesterday, and now half the pencils are either gone or broken. And I know one of you did it—”

The phone rang.

“—and now I have to use them for a social studies project and I don’t have them and this like so pisses me off—”

“Dulcy! Hello?” Joanna said into the phone, glaring at her daughter. She couldn’t hear whoever it was for the eruption of “I don’t know where your dumb old pencils are!” behind her.

“Well, one of you does and I’m not leaving this kitchen until I get ’em back!”

“Sorry, hold on,” Jo said into the phone, then slammed it against her sternum. “Kids! Take it elsewhere!”

“But, Mom, what am I going to dooooo? This is due tomorrow!”

“I. Am. On. The. Phone. I will take care of it later. Everybody out.”

The boys trooped into the family room to watch TV; Dulcy thumped back down to her room, wailing about how much her life sucked. Joanna—who at the moment could relate more to her daughter’s lament far more than she’d ever let on—sighed and held the phone back up to her ear.

“I’m sorry. Who is this again?”

“Dale McConnaughy, ma’am. From Playing for Keeps? Just calling to confirm that we’re delivering that play set to your house tomorrow afternoon?”

The boys began arguing about something in the other room, Dulcy cranked up her music again and the dog began to hack up something in the middle of the kitchen floor. And suddenly, because clearly she was closer to losing it than she thought, all she wanted to do was to wrap herself up in that Bourbony Southern accent and never come out again. Because, see, this was the one thing that had changed during the past two weeks.

Whether Joanna liked it or not.

Long-buried images came roaring to the surface of her desexitized brain, of hot bodies and cool sheets and endless orgasms. Preferably hers. Not that she’d ever had endless orgasms, but a girl can dream.

“Ms. Swann? Is everything all right?”

“What? Oh, yes…Sorry. I was…distracted,” she said, her gaze wandering over to the cupboard where she kept the baking stuff. For the past week, in those scant milliseconds when she wasn’t worrying about a kid or a roof or her work or her ex, and sometimes even when she was, thoughts of Dale McConnaughy had stormed her brain like a bargain hunter at K mart the morning after Thanksgiving. She didn’t understand it, she sure as hell didn’t like it, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing she could do about it. Other than taking the edge off the pain with chocolate. Which was why she was now yanking open her cupboard door, letting out a small sigh of gratitude that she hadn’t been hallucinating the package of chocolate chips. She’d make cookies. Warm, gooey cookies packed chock full of hundreds of little orgasms for the taste buds.

One learned to adapt.

“So…we’re on for tomorrow?”

Joanna ripped open the bag and tilted it to her upended mouth. Cookies, hell. Who had time for foreplay?

“Yes,” she managed to get out around a mouthful of squished chocolate. Maybe not quite as satisfying as when combined with butter and brown sugar and…nuts, but sometimes, you just can’t wait for the, um, full package. “Their…party is at five, so as long as it’s…up by then, that should be fine.”

She stuffed more chips into her mouth.

“No problem.” A pause. “Uh, ma’am? You sure you’re okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“What? Me? No, I’m fine,” she said, and he said okay as though he wasn’t really sure and then they hung up—just as something crashed in the other room.

Joanna knocked back another handful of chips, thought about Dale’s long, slender hands and orgasms for another twenty seconds or so, then went to clean up the dog’s little present.