Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  He pulled into his driveway, set the emergency brake and turned off the engine before he looked at her. “How do you know I’m a good father?”

  “Because I’ve seen you with Emma and Ginny,” Jo said with conviction. “They adore you.”

  In a way, it bothered her to see how good he was with the girls. Sometimes she felt inadequate with them in comparison. Worse yet, it reminded her that at heart he was a family man. He’d have fun with her for a while, but he wouldn’t be content with a girlfriend. One of these days, he’d want a wife again, and maybe even another child.

  He shrugged. “They’ve both latched on to me in place of their fathers. Who else is available?”

  “Well, you’re gloomy tonight!” Jo said with exasperation. “Who would be better to have available?”

  “In Emma’s case, it would be Ian.” For a moment, his expression was dangerous. “Doesn’t he know how rejected she feels?”

  “Do you think she wants to see him, after what he did to her?” Jo asked dubiously.

  “Yes!” Ryan raised a brow. “Did you ever give up on your father?”

  Her first reaction was fiery and instinctive. “Of course I did! Eventually,” she added less strongly, before making a face. “I think I have. Okay. Point taken. Every kid really, really wants her parents to love her. Which—” she went on the attack “—makes me wonder why you’d expect your kids to be any different.”

  “My kids?”

  “Yeah. Why do you think they’re going to lose interest in you? You’re their father! They’re going to be desperate to know that you still love them.”

  For an unnervingly long moment he stared at her, but she was far from certain he was really seeing her. “Yeah,” he finally conceded. “Maybe.”

  “It’s just going to be up to you to make sure they don’t forget you,” she said firmly. “Is there any reason you couldn’t fly to…wherever they live for a visit? Think how cool it would be for them to spend a weekend with you at a hotel with a swimming pool. If you plan right, you can take Tyler to a soccer game or Melissa to…whatever she does.”

  Once again she was embarrassed. He had undoubtedly told her where his ex-wife had moved, and what his daughter loved to do. She just hadn’t listened.

  But he didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah,” he said again, his tone odd, wry. “You’re right. I’ve been so busy sulking, I haven’t been very creative about staying in touch. I could have flown out there this fall. We could email, too.”

  “Buy them a digital camera for Christmas, and that way they could send you pictures all the time. Silly ones of when they have friends over or are just goofing off. They’d think it was fun.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “You know, you have the instincts of a mother.”

  She was shaking her head even before he finished. “I don’t think so. Making suggestions is one thing. It doesn’t mean I want to apply my own advice.”

  “No?” He didn’t push the issue, for which she was grateful, but his amused, confident expression made her both wary and irritated. Surely he wasn’t already getting ideas.

  The conversation was dropped once they carried the groceries in and started work on dinner. But she couldn’t forget it. She found herself in the next week watching when he was with Emma or Ginny, seeing even more clearly the gentleness and humor he employed with them, the easy way he teased without ever hurting feelings, the pleasure in his own laugh when they teased back. She had flattered herself that he was hanging around so often because of her, but she began to wonder. The two girls assuaged a loneliness she couldn’t touch.

  Seeing him with the two girls awakened other, unsettling emotions and memories. He made such a painful contrast with her father, she’d find anger welling in her chest, leaving her breathless. Why couldn’t Dad have listened to her like that? Smiled at her with such affection and approval? Ever?

  She’d stop at the public library and have a flashback: herself as an eager young girl, excited about a book she’d found, a discovery she’d made, racing to her father. “Daddy! Daddy!” He’d angrily shush her, even punish her for being too loud by not letting her check out the book. Or she’d remember dinnertimes, their father silent and withdrawn, the kids expected not to bother him. What a cold man! she marveled now. How had he won her mother’s love, convinced her to give up music for him?

  Perhaps it was fitting, in the midst of a week where she was brooding so much about family, that her brother chose to call. It was one of the rare nights when Ryan was busy. Conversation at the table had been sparse, with Helen so tired her eyes looked unfocused and Kathleen nursing a migraine. Ginny picked at her food and said nothing, while Emma, as usual, absented herself. Dinner was barely over when Emma answered the ringing telephone in the living room and came into the kitchen with it a moment later.

  “For you,” she told Jo.

  “Hey!” Boyce said without preamble. “How’s it feel to be a kid again?”

  “A kid?” Jo left the others cleaning off the table. She’d cooked, so she was entitled, although she’d intended to offer to do it so that Helen and Kathleen could both go lie down.

  “Back in school?” her brother nudged. “Do you feel middle-aged compared to the other students?”

  “Sometimes, when I’m walking around the campus,” Jo admitted. She curled up on one end of the sofa in the living room. “But not in the library school. Half or more of the students haven’t come directly from their undergraduate years. Most have been working for at least a few years. I have a classmate who is fifty-five.”

  “Cool!” Boyce said cheerfully. “At least there’s one guy for you to date.”

  “Brat,” she said without malice. After a moment’s peaceful pause, she continued, “Aunt Julia tells me you and Jennifer have parted ways.”

  “Yeah.” He was quiet. “I really liked her, even if she was weird. You know?”

  The piercings and tattoos, Jo presumed. “Uh-huh,” she said meaninglessly.

  “Thing is, I liked her too much. I made her nervous.”

  Jo knew something about that. “You were thinking ’til death do us part, and she just wanted to party.”

  “Pretty much,” Boyce admitted.

  “I’m sorry,” Jo said, and meant it.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll get over her.” He sounded, suddenly, very young. Her little brother. “Thing is, I was wondering if you could come down for Thanksgiving.”

  She blinked. They didn’t do these family occasions, having no center, no home. They’d gone to Aunt Julia’s a few times, when she wasn’t escaping winter in the Bahamas, but most often holidays didn’t mean family to either Dubray.

  “Do you have room to put me up?” she asked cautiously.

  “Now that Jennifer isn’t here, sure. Um, did you already have plans?”

  “No-o,” she said. Actually, this might be a good thing. She could meet Ryan’s children, make nice with them, then escape. He’d have a few days with just them, feeling no obligation to include her. “No,” she repeated more firmly, “I was just going to hang around with my roommates. And, to tell the truth, I don’t know what they have planned. They may both be intending to get together with family.”

  Boyce cleared his throat. “Uh, there’s just one thing.”

  At his tone, her eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “I invited Dad.”

  She sat up. “You did what?”

  “You know I see him more often than you do.” There was defensiveness in Boyce tone.

  “Yeah.” She snorted. “Although why you bother…”

  “I don’t resent him as much as you do.”

  “So, is he staying with you, too?” Their father still lived in Pasadena, near L.A., where Boyce and Jo had grown up.

  “Nah,” her brother said. “You know what my place is like.”

  Slobby. A typical bachelor pad. Jennifer hadn’t possessed any housewifely skills or interests, which should have been a clue to Boyce.

  Jo stared darkly at
the wallpaper, yellowed and peeling at the seam. “I’d just have to see him at Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Why did she feel as if she was being set up? “You’re not doing this because you think he and I will magically fall into each other’s arms and beg forgiveness, are you?”

  Her brother hooted, answer enough.

  “Okay,” she conceded. “You’re not stupid. I knew that.”

  “You don’t have to come.” He was silent for a moment. “I just, uh, I guess I was feeling lonely. Sometimes even a tense family get-together seems better than eating turkey by yourself, or as a guest at someone else’s family functions.”

  She’d done both often enough to know what he meant. She thought it might have been different this year, even if Kathleen or Helen turned out to have other relatives who they invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe, in a weird way, the three of them along with Ginny and Emma were starting to feel like family. Still…

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come.”

  “You will?” His voice lightened, as if she’d made his day. “Great!”

  They discussed airline fares and dates. She hung up, dropped the phone on the end table and then wrapped her arms around her knees. She was going to see her father.

  Would she finally be indifferent to him?

  Jo let out a huff that was almost a laugh. Who was she kidding? The minute he walked in the door, she’d revert to a hurt, confused, angry teenager again. And people said time travel wasn’t possible.

  The upside was, she wouldn’t have to fake having terrific fun with Ryan’s children.

  She could put that off until Christmas, unless she was so lucky as to receive an invitation she couldn’t turn down for that holiday, too. Maybe Aunt Julia would long for company on a trek to the Yucatan or for a lazy two weeks in Kauai. Or maybe Jo would lie to Ryan and go to Kauai all by herself.

  He was disappointed but philosophical when she told him the next day that she’d be flying to San Francisco for Thanksgiving.

  “We’ll miss you, but, hey, the kids’ll be back for two weeks at Christmas. You can get to know them then.”

  Her life’s ambition. Hadn’t he listened to her? she wondered on a spurt of anger. Did he not believe any woman could want to be childless?

  She was immediately ashamed of herself. More likely, he loved Melissa and Tyler so much, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could feel any different. Well, she thought, brightening, they’d probably hate her cordially. What self-respecting kids liked the woman Dad was dating and might even marry, thus making her the wicked stepmother?

  No, this relationship would be mutual, if not exactly what Ryan had in mind. She and the kids would be polite and find excuses to avoid being in each other’s company. Then they’d be gone. He hadn’t said anything about spring break, had he? And what were the odds she’d still be seeing him next summer?

  No, she wouldn’t worry, not about his children. They lived with their mother. As long as Jo was part of his life, they would be no more than visitors. An occasional inconvenience, from her point of view.

  And her father… It might be interesting to see him. To find out whether she’d told Ryan the truth when she claimed to no longer care. Think how liberating it would be to discover she didn’t!

  Maybe she should use this unexpected family gathering to ask some of those questions she’d always been too cowardly to put to him. She was a big girl now. If he snubbed her, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. If he was willing to talk about her mother and she didn’t like what he had to say, well, sometimes any answers were better than none. It wasn’t as if she’d ever kidded herself that her mother, at least, had loved her.

  Hoped, maybe. Dreamed. But never really believed.

  Jo found now that she was hungry to know more about her mother and the choices she’d made. Ryan was right—Aunt Julia had a bias. What if Jo were to find out now that her mother had never, for a single instant, regretted the sacrifices she’d made to have children?

  Would it change her life?

  Jo shook her head impatiently and scrambled up from the couch. Ridiculous. She was twenty-nine years old, her character complete.

  So why, now of all times, did she feel such a childish longing to know her mother better? Why did she regret having so few memories to which to cling?

  Why was she suddenly reexamining her image of Aunt Julia, noticing now that her aunt was not just glamorous, but also lonely?

  On her way to the kitchen to relieve Kathleen and Helen of their dish-washing duty, Jo refused to answer her own questions. Wasn’t that her prerogative?

  She was suffering from curiosity, that was all. A need to understand her roots.

  She was certainly not imagining herself in love.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RYAN AND HIS CHILDREN CAME noisily into the house the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Ryan calling, “Hey! Where is everyone?” and Tyler and Melissa apparently arguing about what meal they’d eaten on the plane. Kathleen and Emma rushed to meet them, Jo following but hanging back. Only Helen and Ginny were missing, Helen having taken Ginny shopping for new shoes, since her toes were crammed into her existing ones.

  “Aunt Kathleen!” The slight boy who looked younger than his eight years had a great smile. With wavy brown hair, brown eyes and a thin face, he must take after his mother. After enduring his aunt’s embrace, he studied his cousin with a child’s frankness. “Gol, you’re even skinnier than I am.”

  “Skinny?” Emma made a horrid face looking down at herself. “What are you talking about? I’m fat!”

  “Fat?” Ryan’s son stared incredulously. “Dad! Emma’s not…”

  Ryan laid a gentle hand on his son’s shoulder, silencing him.

  Melissa, meantime, was accepting her aunt’s embrace, saying hi shyly to Emma, and eyeing Jo with cool curiosity.

  Ryan gave Jo a private smile over the family hubbub. Jo returned it with a composure she didn’t feel. What she wanted to do was flee.

  She was actually scared to meet his children.

  The realization embarrassed her. So what if they didn’t like her? So what if they did?

  They were an occasional inconvenience, she reminded herself, as if it were a mantra. That was all. For Ryan’s sake, it would be nice if she could get along with them well enough to enjoy an outing with them now and again. If she could do preschool story times in her library with enough élan to delight three-year-olds, she could manage this modest goal.

  Maybe. As Ryan drew his children forward and Kathleen and Emma parted to allow them to face Jo, Melissa’s eyes narrowed into a stare that suggested she wasn’t going to be charmed.

  “Jo, my children,” Ryan said simply, his voice resonant with pride. “Melissa, Tyler, my friend Jo.”

  “That’s a boy’s name,” Melissa said in a deliberately rude voice.

  Ryan looked at his daughter and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Jo silenced him with a shake of the head.

  Smiling ruefully, she said, “I know. I wanted it that way. I always hated being girly. I sure wasn’t going through life as Josephine, I can tell you that.”

  “You were, like, a tomboy?” Tyler asked. His expression was open and curious. Either he wasn’t old enough to understand the implications of his father’s friendship with a single woman, or he didn’t mind. Not the way his sister clearly did.

  “Yep. I still am,” Jo admitted. “I hardly own any dresses.”

  “I like dresses.” The pretty eleven-year-old had taken after her father in coloring. Her blond hair, partially gathered at the crown with a pink scrunchy, fell to the middle of her back. Her jeans were boot-cut like a teenager’s, and her shirt, with glittery script that declared she was a princess, was the kind of baby T fifteen-year-olds wore. She even, Jo decided after close inspection, wore some sparkly eye shadow.

  Jo had an aversion to the idea of children dressing to appear sexy. This Britney Spears look mildly shocked her. But Mom must have ok
ayed it. They’d come straight from the airport, hadn’t they?

  “I’ll bet you look great in dresses,” she said neutrally. “Me, I twist my ankle every time I put on high heels.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes as if to say, Of course you do. Actually, she was doing the teenager thing better than Emma, for all of Emma’s problems.

  “Listen,” Ryan said, “we have to get going. I wanted to stop and say hi, but ’Lissa and Tyler want to unpack. You’re not leaving until Wednesday, right? Can we do something tomorrow? All of us?”

  Jo had been expecting this. From the expression on his daughter’s face, the suggestion was not welcome there.

  “Why don’t you spend the day with the kids?” she suggested gently. “We—Helen and Kathleen and I—were hoping you’d all come here for dinner tomorrow night.”

  Ryan’s brows drew together. “Of course we can, but we’d like it if you’d hang out with us. Wouldn’t we, kids?”

  Tyler shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Um…I guess,” Melissa mumbled.

  “Come on,” Ryan coaxed. “It’s your only free day to spend with us.”

  Feeling trapped, Jo managed a laugh. “You’ve convinced me!”

  “Good.” Either not recognizing the resentment emanating from his daughter or choosing to make a statement, Ryan kissed Jo lightly before saying, “Okay, let’s hit the road, kids.”

  After they were gone, Jo looked at Kathleen. “I don’t think your niece likes me.”

  Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think she does, either. And did you see her clothes? She’s only eleven!”

  “They were cute,” Emma put in.

  Jo wasn’t alone in having forgotten she was there, as they both turned in concert. “For someone your age, maybe,” Kathleen said.

  Emma shrugged. “Kids like to look like teenagers. What’s the deal?”

  “It’s a big deal,” Kathleen said strongly. “Do you remember when I wouldn’t let you buy a bathing suit with the legs cut up to your waist?”

  “Yeah,” Emma fired back, “and I looked so un-cool!”

  Kathleen often tiptoed around her daughter. Not today. “You also looked like the girl you were.”