The Trouble with Joe

by Emilie Richards

  A DREAM COME TRUE

  Samantha Giovanelli and her husband, Joe, had had a charmed romance. They’d gotten married quickly and moved to an idyllic small town. They’d bought a crumbling shack in the middle of nowhere and turned it into a home. In the yard, Joe had built a tree house for the half-dozen kids he knew they’d have.

  Except that the tree house remained empty. Their home echoed with silence. And Joe started staying at work later and later. So Sam decided it was time to find a new dream. She might never hold her own baby, but she could love a child who needed her desperately—and she knew just the one. But first she had to convince Joe that their dreams of parenthood could come true.

  Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author

  Emilie Richards

  “Richards’s ability to portray compelling characters who grapple with challenging family issues is laudable.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Fox River

  “[Richards’s] characterizations are transcendent, endowed with warmth and compassion.”

  —Booklist on Wedding Ring

  “Magically interpreting the emotional resonance of love and loss, betrayal and redemption

  through luminously drawn characters….”

  —Booklist on Touching Stars

  Praise for bestselling author Janice Kay Johnson

  “Johnson will hook readers with her

  well-developed characters and emotional story.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Someone Like Her

  “I can’t wait to read more of [Johnson’s] books.”

  —Dear Author on Bone Deep

  EMILIE RICHARDS

  Emilie Richards’s many novels feature complex characterizations and in-depth explorations of social issues, a result of her training and experience as a family counselor, which contribute to her fascination with relationships of all kinds. Emilie, a mother of four, lives with her husband in Florida, where she is currently working on her next novel for Harlequin.

  JANICE KAY JOHNSON

  The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way gen’erations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  The Trouble with Joe

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Trouble with Joe by Emilie Richards

  Someone Like Her by Janice Kay Johnson

  Dear Reader,

  It’s always a pleasure to know a book with special meaning to me will find a new audience. The Trouble with Joe was a labor of love, as novels should be since authors live and breathe every story as we write it.

  Adoption is a subject close to my heart. After two wonderful sons my husband and I chose to adopt what we thought would be our last child. Our daughter was six when she came to us from India. Fitting an older child into a family, especially one who doesn’t speak the same language, is a unique test of patience on both sides. There were times when we looked at each other and wondered what we had done. The daughter and the parents.

  Still day by day, month by month, she became ours in every way. When we moved out of the first house we had shared, we found her name written on the walls in places where furniture had long hidden it. Our daughter had made certain we all understood that the house and everything and everyone in it belonged to her, as well as to those of us who had lived there first.

  She was absolutely right.

  Now my six-year-old is an adult and a mommy, too, and she is utterly devoted to her own husband and beautiful daughters. I look at all of them and know how much our family would have missed if one day my husband and I hadn’t said: “You know, this time around, let’s offer a child who’s already out there a home.”

  I hope you enjoy the story of Samantha, Joe and Corey, and the way a small child can steal your heart and never, never give it back.

  Happy reading,

  Emilie

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  The Trouble with Joe

  Emilie Richards

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  NOTHING WAS HOTTER than a summer day in Sadler County, North Carolina. And even if the calendar said it wasn’t quite summer, the mercury on Sadler County thermometers hadn’t been informed.

  In the worst part of the afternoon Joseph Giovanelli stood in the heart of a grove of pines and felt waves of heat shimmer over his body. His white shirt was already wet, and an interior voice reminded him that he would have to change before he returned to school.

  He wasn’t sure where he would find the vitality to go back at all. He had come home for something he had left behind, a list of new students who would be attending the high school in the fall. Due to a colleague’s absence, the task of assigning the students to home rooms had fallen to Joe. That wasn’t unusual. Historically rush jobs fell to the first in command. And as principal of Sadler High, the buck always stopped at Joe’s wide-open door.

  He hadn’t minded the extra work. He had done it last night, finishing after midnight. These days he relished working late. He had always been an active man, happiest when he was busy. Now there was a manic quality to that activity; he was as aware of it as everybody else. But work was the only thing that made Joe feel alive. And if a man didn’t feel alive at least some of the time, he might as well be dead.

  Overhead a crow cawed his displeasure at Joe’s presence in the woods. Joe told himself that the crow was right. He needed to get back; he did not need quiet woods or disquieting contemplation. Despite that, something urged him forward. His feet passed down a well-traveled path, one he had lined with wood chips from the trees he had been forced to take down when landscaping near the house.

  He had made good use of the rest of the wood, too. One hundred yards down the path he stopped in front of a small log cabin whose wide shadow stretched to the calm blue of a one-acre lake.

  There were ducks swimming near the shore, and at Joe’s approach a goose, like a white-feathered watchdog, honked a warning. But the warning was drowned out by voices in Joe’s head, the voices he had come to hear.

  Joe, you know you’re crazy, don’t you? Nobody, but nobody, builds a playhouse for children they don’t even have yet. Not before they finish the house they’ve got to live in every day. There’s no floor in our dining room and not a cabinet in the kitchen. I’m tired of cooking from cardboard boxes. Let me repeat... Joe, put me down! No, I will not be a party to this. Not here. I don’t care if the playhouse has walls, Joe. There aren’t any doors. Yes, I know it’s getting dark. Yes. Oh, Joe, you idiot! You wonderful idiot!<
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  He stared at the cabin and saw the ghosts of two people with their lives stretching in front of them, good lives, happy lives. He saw his wife, Samantha, as clearly as if she were really standing there, as clearly as he had this morning when he watched her drive off to her job at Foxcove Elementary School. Blonde, reserved Sam, with the china-doll complexion and the lake-blue eyes. Eyes that hid so well the passion only Joe had known.

  Sweat poured down his back and beaded his forehead. There were other ghosts here, too. Ghosts of children who would never run along this path or play in this cabin. Ghosts of grandchildren who would never know the beauty of this lake, the peace of piney North Carolina forests.

  He couldn’t hear their voices or their laughter. He had never heard them and never would.

  In the stillness the crow cawed again, as if he had followed this strange upright animal to ask what he planned to do next.

  “I plan to go back to work,” Joe whispered. “What in the hell else is there to do?”

  He turned his back on the cabin, on the lake and on a lifetime of dreams.

  When the crow cawed again, there was no one there to hear it.

  Chapter One

  ROSES FADED. ROSES wilted. But to Samantha Giovanelli’s knowledge, roses never turned into something else entirely. Not unless they had a little help.

  Or a little helper.

  Sam had walked by her desk three times that afternoon and never noticed that flawless white rosebuds had turned into wilting yellow dandelions. Now she could ignore it no longer. Long stems had been exchanged for those just long enough to fit into a child’s grubby fist. And the delicate white porcelain vase that had been delivered with the roses had a sizable chip in the rim.

  Sam supposed she was lucky the vase wasn’t leaking water all over the papers piled on the desk, papers collected after a year of teaching twenty-six first graders how to read, ’rite and resist clobbering each other. In three years as an educator she had learned to appreciate the smallest things—and people. Now as she rummaged through her wastebasket she told herself that the dandelions were a symbol of what the year had meant to one little girl. They were a sign that Sam had succeeded in an impossible task: civilizing Corey Haskins.

  Not that the task was finished.

  At the bottom of the wastebasket, piled high with papers, used-up workbooks, melted crayons and lumps of clay were six formerly perfect rosebuds. The stems were crushed and the petals bruised. Sam lifted them carefully—although care at this stage was a sign of terminal optimism—and trimmed the stems to two inches with blunt-end scissors from her desk drawer. Then she filled the sink on the other side of the room and immersed the flowers in the cool water.

  If she couldn’t have a bouquet, at least she could have a corsage.

  “Sortin’ your trash now, Sammy? If we were all as organized as you, this school would run like a four-legged dog in a three-legged race.”

  Sam turned off the water and weighted the ends of the stems with a rock so the roses wouldn’t float to the top. She flashed a smile at Polly, the first-grade teacher from a room down the hall who was standing in the doorway. “A four-legged dog in a three-legged race?”

  “Think about it,” Polly drawled. She wandered into the room at the same speed as her words. As always, Polly seemed in need of a jump start. “You did know your trash was higgledy-piggledy all over the floor?”

  “I know.” Sam dried her hands and headed for the wastebasket again. She began to stuff the trash inside.

  “And you do know that this is the last day of classes, and you’re supposed to be doin’ flip-flops up and down the corridor?”

  “Anybody who could do flip-flops in this heat deserves a gold medal.”

  “Mind tellin’ me what you’re doin’?”

  “Did you see the man from Allen’s Florist in the hall earlier?”

  “Yep, I did.”

  “Well, Joe sent me roses. Six gorgeous white roses.”

  “Joe can put his sneakers under my bed just any old time he chooses.”

  Sam laughed. Polly was ambling toward fifty, and along the way had picked up an extra pound for every single year. Her hair was bottle red and her clothes most suitable for a church rummage sale. But Harlan, her husband of thirty good years, still thought she was the most wonderful woman in Sadler County, and so did their eight children. Sam didn’t have a thing to worry about.

  “So why do you have the world’s poorest excuse for dandelions in this vase if Joe sent you roses?” Polly ran her finger over the chipped rim and shook her head. “Next question’s why you have this vase at all?”

  Samantha finished the trash and began to straighten her desk. “It was minus the chip when the roses came in it. Apparently one of my students decided that dandelions would look better and switched them sometime after class. Probably when I was up at the office. Then she threw the roses in the trash and covered them up well. I just found them.”

  “She.” Polly hadn’t missed the pronoun that eliminated fully half of Sam’s classroom. “Corey?”

  “Probably,” Sam admitted.

  “I’da stuck that little gal in the closet if she was put in my class this year.”

  “Sure you would have.” More often than not when Sam walked by Polly’s classroom door, some child was settled in Polly’s ample lap or arms receiving either a dose of TLC or the gentlest of reprimands. She was Miss Pollywolly Doodle to all the first graders, and she would no more raise her voice or hand to a child than she would take up running or go on a diet.

  “Why do you suppose she did it?” Polly asked.

  “I guess Corey wanted me to remember her.”

  “Like anybody here could ever forget her.”

  Sam couldn’t argue. Corey was unforgettable. She lifted the framed class photo from her desk and her eyes went right to Corey in the back row. Corey was shorter than most of the other children, but the photographer had taken one look at her and relegated her to the back, where her clothes would be covered by the heads of other children.

  The maneuver had been only partially successful. There had been no way to hide Corey’s chopped-up blond hair and scratched-up face. Sam had tenderly washed that little face herself, but Corey had been mauled by an alley cat—she had probably tormented the poor thing—and under the usual dirt had been railroad-track scars that showed clearly in the picture.

  “What will she do this summer?” Sam asked.

  Polly took the photograph from Sam’s hands and set it firmly back on the desk. “Now, you listen here, Sammy. First off, that little girl is now a second grader. By the grace of God, maybe, but still a second grader. She’s somebody else’s problem now, because she sure can’t be yours anymore. There’s nothing you can do. She’s got a mama, and the county says her mama is fit to raise her.”

  “Does a fit mother send a child to school in filthy bedroom slippers?”

  “You know we can’t take a kid away from her mama just because she’s poor.”

  Poverty wasn’t the issue, and Sam and Polly both knew it. There had been other poor children in Sam’s classroom; Sadler County, North Carolina was full of poor people. But most of the time their kids were clean. Those kids came to school with something in their stomachs, even if it wasn’t Sam’s idea of good nutrition. And the parents showed up for teacher conferences, or took the time to fill out forms so that their children could receive free lunches.

  Corey’s mother could learn a lesson from any of them.

  There were people all over the world who longed desperately for a child; Sam knew that all too well. And then there were people like Verna Haskins who had a child and cursed the day that child had been born.

  “I know I can’t be her teacher forever,” Sam said. “But it’s hard to let go.”

  “Better learn.”


  “Do you know how many phone calls I got this year about Corey?” Sam forced a smile. “Thirty-two. I kept track. All from angry parents wanting to know what I was going to do about her. You’d think I’d be doing those flip-flops you were talking about.”

  “While you’re at it, don’t forget the time old Ray Flynn tried to have her put in a special needs school and you threatened to quit your job over it.”

  “If Joe wasn’t the high school principal, Dr. Ray would have forced me out.”

  “Yep. Joe can make things tough on folks who go after what’s his, that’s for sure.”

  “Is that right?”

  The deep voice from the doorway caused both women to turn. Sam felt the impact of her husband’s presence just as she always did. It started somewhere deep inside, curled and crept through her until she was smiling.

  And hoping that he would do the same.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I just came to see how you managed on your last day.”

  “I’m headin’ out.” Polly started toward the door. She patted Joe on the cheek as she passed. He took her hand and gave it a courtly kiss before she vanished down the hall.

  Sam didn’t move. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have had to. Joe would have strolled over, lifted her off her feet and whirled her around the room. But the Joe lounging in the doorway was a different man. So many things had changed in the past six months.

  “I got the roses,” she said. “They were beautiful. I was so surprised.”

  “Were beautiful?”

  “Well, there was a tiny accident. I’ll be wearing them on my dress at the party tomorrow.”

  He pushed away from the doorjamb and came over to the desk. She rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. His arms closed around her and she rested against him.

  “How was your day?” he asked.