Kathleen seemed frozen in shock. “I’ve never said…”
“You have!” her daughter flung at her. “I heard you and Dad! You were embarrassed by Uncle Ryan! Just like you’re embarrassed by me!”
With that, she turned and ran. Jo heard the uneven thud of her feet on the stairs, and then the slam of the front door.
None of the women moved for what seemed an eternity. Ginny had her face pressed into her mother’s side.
Kathleen finally gave an unconvincing laugh. “Teenagers!”
Helen smoothed her daughter’s hair. “I was awful when I was thirteen.”
“Me, too,” Jo admitted. “And when I was fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen…” Actually, she hadn’t quit rebelling until at eighteen she’d realized that her father didn’t even notice her snotty comebacks or sulky moods. She wasn’t upsetting him, she wasn’t even making a blip on his radar screen. That’s when she left home and never went back.
Looking unhappy, Kathleen left the room. A minute later, her voice floated up the stairs. “I left a message on Ryan’s voice mail.”
“Okay,” Jo called back.
Helen and Ginny made repeated trips up and down the stairs, carrying boards from which Jo was careful to remove all the nails. In her quiet way, the six-year-old seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d hold out her arms and wait for Jo to pile on a child-size load, then carefully turn and make her way out of the gutted bathroom. Sometimes she even went ahead of her mother, or reappeared before her.
Kathleen had been right, Jo had discovered: Ginny wasn’t any bother. Living with her was more like having a mouse in the house than a child. Tiny rustles marked her presence.
Once, when Ginny reappeared ahead of her mother and stood waiting patiently while Jo pried at a stubborn board, she felt compelled to make conversation.
“Your mom says you’re in first grade. How do you like it?”
“I like to read.”
“Really? Better than recess?” The hammer slipped and banged her knee. “Ow!”
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“Yes!” Jo moderated her voice. “Not permanently. I just…whacked myself.”
“Oh.” Ginny cocked her head at the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.
“So, what do you do at recess?”
The solemn gaze returned to her. “I stay in if Teacher lets me.”
Jo sank back on her heels. “You stay in?” she asked incredulously. She could remember how much she’d longed to be outside, pumping herself so high on the swing that she momentarily became weightless, or skipping rope with friends to nonsensical songs that still had to be sung perfectly.
Ginny’s face showed no expression. “Kids make fun of me.”
Jo frowned. “Have you told the teacher? Or your mom?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Why not what?” Helen asked from the doorway, her voice dull, as if she had to force herself to ask. She often sounded that way. Jo wanted to shake her sometimes and say, Wake up! But what did she know about grief?
Knowing Helen wouldn’t care enough to be suspicious, Jo improvised quickly. “I asked why she isn’t wearing overalls and leather gloves and a tool belt, since she’s a carpenter now.”
A tiny smile flickered on the pale face, whether at Jo’s attempt at humor or because she’d kept Ginny’s confession confidential, Jo didn’t know.
“Well, maybe we should get her one.” Helen gave a rare smile, too, her hand resting lightly on her daughter’s head. “She’ll grow up an expert on how to do all this stuff.” Her voice became heavier. “I don’t want Ginny ever to feel helpless, about anything.”
“Well, she’ll learn right along with us,” Jo said heartily. “Right, kid?”
Very still under her mother’s hand, Ginny said nothing.
Jo took a deep breath and pried again at the board. It groaned and squealed in protest. She braced her feet and used her full weight to wrench upward. It snapped free and she landed on her behind just as the doorbell rang.
“Jo! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She picked herself up. “You’d better go get that. It might be Kathleen with her hands full.”
She flipped the board over and hammered. The nail popped out, and she started on the next.
Should she tell Helen what Ginny had said about recess and the other kids taunting her? Or was that betraying a confidence?
Why had the little mouse confided in her?
“You look like you’re pounding meat,” an amused male voice commented. “I think it’s already tender.”
Ryan. Of course.
Jo focused on the board, where a deep indentation showed that the hammer had more than pushed the nail out. “I was brooding,” she said, before oh-so-casually glancing up.
He was gorgeous, even if he was a slacker.
A smile deepened creases in his cheeks and crinkled the skin beside his eyes. To day he wore jeans again and a gray T-shirt that bared nicely developed muscles in his upper arms. He must have a girlfriend.
“About what?”
“Oh…” She thought fast. “Just about school. Nothing earth-shattering.”
“Speaking of which…” Ryan crouched beside her. “You must have a real problem for Kathleen to relent and call me.”
“I insisted.” Jo gestured with the hammer. “Behold the rot.”
He did, and grunted. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I can cut up sheets of plywood and replace the subfloor, but real plumbing is beyond me.”
He smelled good, she was disconcerted to realize. Or maybe she was disconcerted to have noticed. She caught a hint of sweat, aftershave and something else warm and male.
Jo scowled, but he didn’t notice. He was frowning, too, as he studied the exposed pipes.
“Can you tell what’s wrong?” she asked.
He grunted again. “What isn’t? I’ve been telling Kathleen the pipes all need replacing. Look at the corrosion.”
Every pipe she could see was rusty and wet. “Can you replace them?”
The frown still furrowing his brows, he looked at her. “I can, but it’s going to be a big job.”
Her hand felt slick where it gripped the hammer. She had to tear her gaze from him.
Jo took a deep breath. “We don’t have a shower until we get this bathroom done.”
Oh, no. Did she smell?
If so, he didn’t seem to mind. Forehead still creased, his expression no longer looked like a frown. He was studying her with disconcerting intentness, his eyes smoky, darkening…
A bumping sound gave away the presence of someone else. Ryan jerked and swung around. “Hummingbird!” he said, voice gentle and friendly, his smile so easy, Jo was sure she’d imagined the moment of peculiar tension. “You’re helping?”
“Yes, I am,” the little girl said solemnly, her big eyes taking in the two adults, her thoughts inscrutable.
Ryan rose with an athletic ease that Jo envied. She was beginning to feel as if her knees would creak and crack when she stood.
“Oh, dear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve been sitting here like a slug, not getting anything done. I don’t have another load for you yet.”
Helen stuck her head in. “Has Ryan figured out our problem yet?”
“Ryan figured it out before his sister made an offer on this house,” he said dryly. “She just didn’t want to hear it.”
“You didn’t think she should buy it?” Jo asked in surprise. “It’s a great house.”
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Given real estate prices in Seattle, what she paid was fair, too. She just didn’t want to recognize that the place was a bargain because it needed so much work. She figured she could get by with cosmetic fix-ups. A little paint, maybe eventually a new roof…” He shrugged. “It was built in 1922. The wiring hasn’t been updated since about 1950, and the plumbing needs to be completely replaced.”
He looked and sounded e
xasperated.
“If she can’t afford it…” Jo said tentatively.
Through gritted teeth, he answered, “She should let me do it.”
It was hard to engage in any kind of meaningful debate when you were squatting at a man’s feet, but Jo didn’t let that stop her. “Don’t you admire her independence?”
“Sure I do.” His mouth twisted. “But I’m not Ian. Her ex,” he added as an aside. “Why can’t her pride handle a little help from her brother?”
Helen’s face showed the same struggle Jo felt—sympathy for both points of view. “How would you feel if Kathleen was trying to help you out financially?” Jo asked.
“I’d take the check, if my kids depended on it,” he said brusquely. Then he gave a faint laugh. “Sorry. It’s not your fault that Kathleen and I butt heads. I’m just glad that you apparently do have some construction skills.”
She felt an absurd glow of pleasure at the compliment. Some women wanted to be told that they were beautiful. She apparently reveled in being praised for competence.
Perhaps, she thought ruefully, because she wasn’t beautiful. Not like he was, or his sister. Pretty, maybe, if the beholder was generous. But she had not spent her life fighting off suitors.
At the sound of a car engine, she smiled as if he hadn’t both pleased her and stung her feminine vanity all at the same time.
“I do believe Kathleen’s home,” Jo said. “The two of you can go at it to your heart’s content.”
ALTHOUGH HE’D HAVE RATHER stayed and worked beside Jo Dubray, who was far too petite to be wielding a hammer so ably, Ryan went outside, argued briefly with his sister and headed home to get the supplies he needed to work on the bathroom.
He hated doing plumbing. Wood was his passion. He liked building and restoring equally. Rebuilding a curving banister in an old house, recreating the molding that would have framed tall windows in the 1890s, baring and polishing and laying hardwood floors, those he enjoyed.
But for his sister and Emma, he’d do anything. And why not? Now that his kids had moved a couple thousand miles away with their mother and her new husband, his weekends and evenings would be empty if it weren’t for Kathleen and Emma. What they hadn’t realized was that he needed them more than they needed him.
By the time he got back Jo had managed to remove the entire subfloor and replace parts of it with thick plywood. She’d left the plumbing and glimpses of the downstairs ceilings exposed. As he dropped his first load, he heard the distant sound of a saw, but didn’t see her.
Heading back downstairs for another load of PVC pipes, he grimaced. He’d had better things in mind for this weekend. Indian summer, the end of September, the day glowed with golden warmth that had chased away the night’s chill. He’d intended to start with a run around Green Lake, then pick up the apples rotting on his lawn and finally mow it, he hoped for the last time this fall.
Well, maybe plumbing didn’t sound so bad after all. Especially not with an interesting woman popping into the bathroom to check on him. Maybe bringing him a can of soda, commiserating if he scraped a knuckle, admiring his muscles—he thought he’d caught her doing that already.
He’d wondered about his sister’s taste in roommates after meeting Helen Schaefer and her sad little girl. Pity and kindness had a place, but he figured Kathleen had enough to handle with Emma. Did she have to take on a befuddled, grieving woman and her painfully insecure child, too?
“Wait until you meet Jo,” Kathleen kept saying. “You’ll like her.”
Jo. The name sounded masculine enough that he’d pictured a man/woman, like the high school vice-principal who’d scared every kid who’d ever considered pulling a prank, if not worse. Jo, he now realized, must be short for something feminine and French, like Josephine.
Five foot four or so, she wasn’t unusually short, but her bone structure was delicate. Yet she crackled with energy and intelligence, making him wonder if she ever completely relaxed. Her big brown eyes, assessing and judging, were the furthest thing from pansy soft. Her hair, a deep, mahogany brown, was thick and straight and shiny, cut in a bob below her jawline. She had a habit he guessed was unconscious of shoving it back with impatience that seemed characteristic.
He didn’t mind that about her. In fact, Ryan preferred smart, strong women. Funny, considering how his sister irritated him. Nonetheless, when married he’d have rather his wife had yelled at him than wept.
So how had he ended up married to a woman who seeped tears more easily than he adjusted the angle of a saw cut?
Old news. Old failure. Mouth set, he dumped a load of pipes and fittings and started back for more. Why thinking about Jo Dubray and the sharp, interested way she looked at him had evolved into selfrecrimination about an ended marriage, Ryan didn’t know. Couldn’t he imagine kissing a woman without relating it to his marriage?
He worked all day, taking a brief break for a sandwich. He had to cut a hole in the wall in the downstairs bathroom, which had Kathleen shrugging.
“We have to wallboard anyway.”
“This floor is probably rotting, too,” he said.
She stared at the toilet with the expression of someone who’d just seen a tarantula scuttling out of sight. Or someone who’d imagined herself sitting on a toilet when it plummeted through the rotten floor.
“I guess we could go ahead with this room, too,” she decided, deep reluctance in her voice. “Next weekend. If, um…” The words stuck in her throat. “If you can help.”
He grinned and slapped her on the back. “Didn’t think you could spit it out.”
“Ryan!” she warned.
Laughing, he said, “Yeah. I’ll be here Saturday morning.”
He didn’t see Jo again until he was ready for the new toilet upstairs. She’d already cut out the piece of plywood it would sit on, and he helped cut the hole around the flange. Together, they nailed it down, the rhythmic beat of their hammers somehow companionable.
“Are you planning to lay vinyl yourself?” he asked.
“Tile,” she told him. “It’s downstairs.”
“So I can’t install the toilet.”
“I guess not.”
“You know this job is going to take you days,” he said, frowning.
Jo nodded. “But we can take a bath—carefully—if you get the plumbing done.”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Okay.”
Crazy women, thinking they could gut a bathroom on Saturday and be washing and primping in it by Monday morning. Had any of them ever tiled before? Did they understand the necessity of letting the grout dry and then sealing it?
Jo did reappear a time or two during the afternoon, although her visits were strictly practical. Maybe he’d imagined any spark of interest.
Maybe he should ask her to dinner and find out.
He’d have to think about that some, he decided. He’d dated a few times since his divorce, and hadn’t enjoyed any of the experiences.
When he was ready, they laid more plywood and then nailed up wallboard. Miraculously, by early evening he pronounced the bathroom ready for tiling and fixtures.
Admiring his work, Kathleen asked with unusual meekness, “Could you possibly help carry the tub upstairs before you go?”
He stared incredulously. “What, the three of you were planning to do it if I hadn’t happened to be around?”
She stiffened. “I thought we could bribe the teenage boy next door to help.”
“Is it cast iron? Do you know what the thing must weigh?”
She flushed. “We’re stronger than we look.”
“Are you?” He scowled at her. “And where is Emma? I haven’t seen her all day.”
His sister looked behind her and saw that they were alone. With a sigh, she admitted, “We had a fight. No, not a fight. She got mad. I can’t seem to do anything right.”
As irked as he was with her, Ryan wasn’t going to judge her parenting. He took the chance of laying an arm over her shoulders and giving his too-proud siste
r a quick hug. “You did one thing right. You left Ian.”
A stunning expression of sadness crossed her face. “Was it right?” she asked quietly. “Or am I kidding myself that he was the problem? It would appear that Emma doesn’t think so.”
“You and Emma have things to work out,” he said, feeling awkward. “But you have a chance now.”
“I don’t know where she is,” she said starkly. “It’s seven o’clock, and she’s been gone all day.”
“Have you called her friends?”
“Does she have any anymore?”
He didn’t know. He tried to be here, but knew it wasn’t enough. Emma chattered to him as if to fill Hummingbird’s silence, but what did she really say? Nothing of any substance. She never said, I understand why I’m starving myself to death.
He settled for, “She’ll be home.”
“Yes.” Kathleen gave a tiny, twisted smile. “Mostly she’s…civil. And almost a home-body. But this terrible anger flares sometimes, most of it directed at me.”
“You know,” he reminded her, “don’t forget that she’s a teenager. Sure she has an eating disorder, but that isn’t her. Seems to me fifteen-year-olds are famous for yelling at their parents.”
She half laughed. “That’s true, I’m afraid. And stalking out. It’s what she said….” She stopped abruptly.
Ryan stowed his hammer in his toolbox. “What was that?”
“Oh…nothing.” She shook her head and backed toward the door. “Just implying the usual. That I never think she’s good enough. Pretty funny, isn’t it, when she never thinks anything I do is adequate, either.”
He sensed that she was being evasive, but he never had gotten anywhere either cajoling his sister or battering down her defenses. Born two years after her, he was at a disadvantage. She’d forever be his tough, know-it-all big sister.
“All right, let’s get the tub,” he said instead.
Maneuvering the thing, still in its box, up those steep stairs and around the sharp corner at the top was a lousy finish to the day. The only payoff, as far as Ryan was concerned, was catching glimpses of Jo.
Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) Page 3