Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  Emma sneered. “It was so typical of you! Your standards are always higher than everyone else’s, right? Like, all my friends’ moms were wrong!”

  For once, Kathleen didn’t back down. “I was trying to protect the daughter I love. Is that wrong?”

  A zillion complicated emotions stampeded across Emma’s face. “I don’t know!” she cried. “You’re just always so…good.” She swung blindly away. “I’ve got to go do homework.”

  Kathleen’s shoulders sagged as she watched her daughter race up the stairs. “The joys of motherhood,” she said, making light of the ugliness she hoped no one else saw.

  Jo went along. “This time, I think she’s escaping not just you, but two women mired in the dark ages.”

  Kathleen sighed. “Do you have time for a cup of tea?”

  “Sure.”

  “To leave the subject of my charming daughter,” Kathleen said as they started toward the kitchen, “Melissa will get over it. Unfortunately, she’s taking after her awful mother.” She stopped, so that Jo bumped into her. “I shouldn’t have said that, should I? Especially given my own track record as a parent.” She sounded stunned. “I’m a hypocrite.”

  “You’re human,” Jo said bracingly. “And I’m sure you’re aware that Emma is a very nice girl. You can’t have done that much wrong.”

  She hoped she wasn’t lying.

  Kathleen’s laugh was bitter as she grabbed the tea kettle and ran water into it. “That’s not what she’d tell you.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Kathleen leaned against the stove. “You notice she never talks about her father?”

  Jo chose her words with care. “I assumed that’s because she isn’t seeing him. Is she?”

  “No. His choice.” Kathleen looked as if she’d bitten into a lemon, so sour it stung. “But I think it’s more than that. I think she blames me, not him.”

  Jo took mugs from the cupboard and unwrapped bags of Market Spice Tea, an orange-spice blend unique to Seattle for which she had developed a passion. “Maybe. Or maybe she feels safe enough with you to criticize you. She knows you won’t reject her if she gets angry. I don’t know him, or, um, the whole story, but it sounds as if she can’t feel that confident about him.”

  Her roommate cocked her head, expression startled. “That had never occurred to me.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “Jo, I’m so glad you saw my ad in the paper.”

  Uncomfortable, Jo said, “I’m not that…”

  Kathleen gave her a brief hug. “Yes, you are! You’ve fit in like…like family.”

  Jo found her own eyes misty. She detested feeling sentimental!

  “I’m flattered.” She made her smile deliberately light. “Back to Melissa. Ryan told me you didn’t like Wendy.”

  The tea kettle whistled and Kathleen poured the water over the tea bags. “‘Awful’ is an exaggeration. She’s just whiny, clingy and so sweet I always wondered whether any of it was sincere.”

  Jo was suddenly ashamed of herself for asking about Ryan’s ex-wife. He’d married her, after all, which must mean he’d loved her. She shouldn’t have encouraged Kathleen, tempting though it had been. She should have let him tell her as much—or as little—as he wanted to.

  “In this case,” she said, taking the sugar bowl along with her own mug to the table, “I suspect Melissa’s reaction is normal. What kid likes a woman Dad is dating?”

  Following her, Kathleen made a face. “I dated once, a few months ago. Emma threw a fit.”

  “There you go. At least Melissa was polite.”

  Stirring a teaspoonful of sugar into her tea, Jo decided the moment was ideal to find out how Kathleen felt about her dating Ryan. She’d never said a word, never raised her eyebrows. But as his sister she had to have opinions, if not feelings, about Jo’s suitability.

  “Kathleen.” Jo stirred her tea unnecessarily. “You’ve never said what you thought about me dating your brother.”

  Kathleen reached for the honey. A long golden strand curled around her spoon. “He’s an adult. I don’t figure it’s my business.”

  “So you don’t mind?” Jo pushed.

  “Don’t be silly! What did I just tell you?” She paused—something about the quality of the silence told Jo it was a pause and not a conclusion. “My only worry,” she said finally, “is that it will be awkward here if you two break up.”

  Jo nodded. She’d thought of that, too. “I hope if that happens, the break will be amicable. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be.”

  “I hope so, too.” Kathleen’s eyes met hers at last, and the steel in her character showed. “Fair warning. If I have to choose between you, Ryan is the winner, no matter how friendly we’ve become. He’s my brother.” Read: You will be out of the house. Jo hesitated, then nodded again. “I understand.”

  The conversation moved on, as if both knew they’d said what was important. Kathleen didn’t offer more gossip about Wendy or the divorce, and Jo didn’t ask. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to know.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jo found herself being picked up to go she knew not where with her boyfriend and his two children she’d been pretending didn’t exist in any way meaningful to her.

  The day was cold and wet, apparently typical for autumn in Seattle. The snow level was probably no more than a thousand feet above, if that. Ski areas in the Cascade passes had opened this week and chains were required to cross the mountains to eastern Washington. She wore a turtleneck and a heavy sweater over jeans, and stuffed Thinsulate gloves in the pocket of her yellow rain slicker.

  “Hi, everybody.” She hopped into the truck, shook off raindrops and smiled impartially over her shoulder. “Too bad the weather isn’t better. I’ve convinced your dad to take up in-line skating. We could have gone around Green Lake.”

  The paved path ran the three miles around the pretty lake in north Seattle. Joggers, bikers, women pushing strollers and dog-walkers crowded it whatever the time of day. Ryan ran the circle several days a week already. He’d seemed to enjoy the skating.

  “Dad?” his son said in apparent amazement. “In-line skating?”

  “Does Dad do anything you want him to?” his sister asked Jo, tone snotty.

  Jo was oh, so tempted to say cheerfully, Pretty much. Her better nature prevailed.

  “Are you kidding? You know him better than that.”

  “What?” He shot her an intimate, sidelong grin that was sure to irk his daughter. “Are you implying I’m stubborn?”

  Jo batted her eyes. “Never!”

  They laughed. From the backseat came nothing but silence.

  “So.” Jo shifted to look back at the kids. “Where are we going?”

  “The Pike Place Market,” Tyler said. “And maybe the aquarium.”

  “You know, I’ve never been to the Pike Place Market,” Jo admitted. “People keep saying I should.”

  “It’s just, like, shops,” Tyler said, sounding disgruntled. He looked even smaller today, hunched inside an oversize hooded sweatshirt. “The aquarium is better.”

  “I like aquariums,” Jo told him. “The one in San Francisco is great. That’s where I’m from.”

  Melissa sniffed and stared out the window. “We live in Denver.”

  “We just moved to Denver,” Tyler corrected her. “I hate it there.” For a moment he seemed desperately unhappy. “I miss my friends.”

  Looking at his son in the rearview mirror, Ryan asked, “Aren’t you getting together with Chad tomorrow? He was riding his bike the other day when I was going out. He was really excited about you coming home.”

  “Yeah!” Tyler straightened in his seat, his voice gaining vibrancy. “We emailed. It’ll be really cool to see him.”

  Jo noticed that Melissa didn’t claim to have made all super-cool new friends. Perhaps she, too, was unhappy in Denver, so far from her father. Maybe that was why she didn’t like Jo. She might still be imagining that somehow the new stepfather would vanish and Mom and Dad would get together again, making her wor
ld right.

  Her mother’s death had cheated Jo of such fantasies, but she understood them. She had longed so passionately for a way to go back, to before. Before her mother was gone, before she’d had nobody but her distant, irritated father.

  They parked in a garage on the waterfront, below the Pike Place Market, which clung to the bluff above. A Seattle institution, the ramshackle structure had started as a modest farmer’s market. The top level, open to Seattle streets, still was a farmer’s market, Jo discovered. Ryan had suggested they start there and work their way down again, instead of the other way around, so they took a glass-enclosed elevator to Pike Street.

  Despite the season, fresh fruit and vegetables filled open stalls, alternating with fish markets and bins of Dungeness clams and huge crabs laid in ice. Farther along, artisans sold their wares, spread out on felt-covered tables. Sterling silver earrings, dream-catchers and stained glass slowed Jo’s pace.

  “Do we have time to Christmas shop a little?” she asked, when Ryan dropped back to her side.

  “Why not?” he said. “Melissa’s coveting those hats. I might buy her one.”

  Jo was agonizing over the dream-catchers when Ryan and his kids joined her, Melissa wearing a new lavender felt cloche. “I want to get one for Emma for Christmas,” Jo said. “Melissa, you know Emma. Which of these do you think?”

  Obviously torn between being flattered and wanting to snub Jo, Melissa hesitated. Either flattery or her genuine liking for her cousin won.

  “That one.” She pointed. “Emma likes blue and green.”

  The leather plaited circlet was decorated with feathers and beads. Jo loved the idea of protecting Emma’s dreams.

  “It’s a perfect present,” Ryan said in a low voice, just for her, as she paid.

  They wandered on, eventually to the warren of shops on lower levels. The adults bought espresso and sipped as they browsed South American imports and antiques, a shop that specialized in incense and another that sold unusual musical instruments. Both the kids tried out flutes and drums, even Melissa was laughing and having fun. Her dad declined to pay for her to have her palm read, but her mood revived in a shop full of gifts with a dog theme. All carrying packages by then, they had lunch in a vegetarian restaurant where Tyler and Melissa ordered warily but then ate with hungry satisfaction.

  Watching Ryan listen intently to something Tyler was saying, Jo felt a peculiar squeezing sensation in her chest. Nobody so handsome should be so nice, she thought. It wasn’t fair.

  The next moment, he laughed with open enjoyment, the creases in his cheeks deepening and the skin by his eyes crinkling. His gray eyes were suddenly warm.

  The waitress paused, studying him with appreciation until she caught Jo’s eye and flushed, moving on. But how could Jo blame her? The wretched man was beautiful! Today his hair was tousled, his shoulders broad in a bulky sweater, his hips and thighs lean in worn jeans. Fathers shopping with school-age kids weren’t supposed to turn women’s heads, never mind shake the determination of a career woman who intended never to be caught in the marriage trap.

  And where had that come from? she wondered in dismay.

  When Ryan paid the bill, Jo suggested they move on to the aquarium. “Fair’s fair.” Tyler smiled.

  Melissa sneered. “Fish are boring.”

  He bumped her with his shoulder. “Shopping is boring.”

  His sister whirled. “Don’t hit me! And it isn’t! You had fun!”

  “I did not hit you!”

  “You did! Dad!”

  “Neither of you are hurt. Quit bickering.” He frowned at them. “And she’s right. You did have fun, Tyler. And you—” he transferred his gaze to his daughter “—will enjoy the aquarium. Trust me.”

  He made the mistake then of wrapping an arm around Jo. “Let’s get going.”

  Eyes narrowed furiously, Melissa flushed and stomped ahead. Tyler gave his dad a dubious expression and followed.

  “When I miss them,” Ryan confided, the words a low rumble in Jo’s ear, “I forget about the quarreling.”

  Much as she adored the warm weight of his arm, Jo casually moved out from under it. “How could you? You have a sister.”

  “So I do.” Furrows formed in his brow, but he said nothing about her withdrawal. “Did you fight with your brother?”

  “Are you kidding? Like cats and dogs.” Jo gave a shudder. “After seeing Pirate’s eye, I hate that saying.”

  “Hey, guys!” he called. The kids had emerged ahead of them into the rainy outdoors and run ahead to the elevator. “I forgot to tell you about the kitten.”

  They clustered close until the elevator came, listening to the tale. “She rescued him?” Melissa asked once, tone suggesting Jo couldn’t possibly be so noble.

  “Yep. All I did is drive,” her dad assured her.

  “Like a bat out of—” Jo swallowed the rest. “I held on to the armrest and prayed,” she told the kids. “He was screeching around corners and roaring up to stoplights. It’s a wonder we didn’t end up with a police escort, like a guy driving his wife to the hospital when she’s in labor.”

  Melissa laughed. Tyler instead had an avid expression. “Was his eye really gross?”

  “Pretty gross,” Jo admitted. She could still picture it all too easily.

  Tyler lifted his face to his dad. “Can we see him when we take Jo home?”

  “You bet. But his eye looks just about normal now. You missed the gross part.”

  “Gol.” Tyler left the elevator. “I wish I’d been there.”

  Hanging back, Melissa looked at Jo. “Is he your cat, then?”

  “No,” she said, “I think he’s going to be Ginny’s. Have you met Ginny yet?” The kids shook their head. “Well, she’s only six, but she’s really quiet. Her dad died not that long ago, which is maybe why. But for Pirate, she smiles and even laughs, and she’s endlessly patient when he wants to play or if he just wants to cuddle. So he’s been sleeping with her, and he goes to her first.”

  “Oh.” The walk light turned green, but Melissa went forward only when her father nudged her. “Don’t you mind?”

  Jo shook her head. “I didn’t especially want a cat. I think Ginny needs him, and he needs her.”

  “Oh,” the eleven-year-old said again, thoughtfully.

  Despite the wet wind blowing off the Puget Sound, they paused at a railing to watch a huge green-and-white ferry leave the dock with a blast of its horn and embark on a crossing of the Sound. Across the street, a trolley clanged by. The scent of seafood drifted from restaurants, and Christmas shoppers prowled the warehouse piers turned into malls of boutique.

  The aquarium itself was out on a pier. They paid and entered, plunging into a maze of dim rooms lit by the jewel-like colors of aquariums filled with fish so colorful and weirdly shaped, they didn’t look real.

  Studying a perch-shaped fish striped in black and lemon-yellow, Jo mused, “Imagine snorkeling or diving with schools of these fish around you. Maybe bumping you or nibbling at your fingers.”

  “Have you ever done it?” Tyler asked eagerly.

  Jo shook her head. “My aunt has. She told me about it. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  She felt Ryan watching her, but didn’t turn her head. She didn’t want him to think she was suggesting an expensive vacation together. Anyway, someplace like Hawaii or the Bahamas sounded like a honeymoon.

  Both kids rushed to the outdoor, covered pool that held the otters. Even Melissa’s face lit with delight when a sleek brown body shot by, twisting so that big brown eyes could study her briefly before the otter dove underwater.

  “Did you see his face?” she asked.

  Like a child herself, Jo hung over the railing. “He’s darling! Look at those whiskers!”

  Ryan watched the other three in amusement as they stayed captivated by the two otters. Occasionally, they’d scramble out onto a rocky landing before sliding back into the cold water. Waddlers on land, when swimming they moved with lithe ease
, sleek glistening brown bullets shooting through the water. But it was their faces, intelligent, funny, charming, that enraptured the humans.

  Ryan pried them away at last, reminding them that Kathleen was making a nice dinner.

  “I am hungry,” Tyler said with an air of discovery.

  “Me, too,” his sister admitted.

  “Me, three,” Ryan murmured to Jo.

  She laughed up at him. “You’re always hungry.”

  His eyes glinted. “I just like taking you out to dinner.”

  Jo stuck an elbow in his ribs. “You’re flirting with me, right in front of your kids!”

  He nodded ahead. “They’re not listening.”

  “Melissa has eyes in the back of her head. She does not like it when you put your arm around me. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Manlike, he looked surprised. “No. She doesn’t? Why not?”

  Jo made a sound of disgust and strode ahead, catching up with his kids in the gift shop.

  The walk back to the pickup was mostly quiet, as if all had realized at the same time that they were tired. It felt wonderful once Ryan got the heat cranked up, sending warm air pouring over their legs. Jo hadn’t realized how cold and damp she was.

  “Gosh, are you guys wet, too?” she exclaimed. “You don’t have anything to change into.”

  Ryan shrugged. “We’ll be okay. Right, gang?”

  Tyler bravely agreed. Melissa mumbled assent.

  Jo ignored Ryan. “I have some fuzzy socks you can borrow. And maybe Emma’s jeans would fit you, Melissa, if you rolled up the hems.”

  “How come she’s so skinny?” Tyler asked. “You said you’d tell us, Dad.”

  For the remainder of the drive, Ryan talked about eating disorders and how hard it was for Emma to eat something she imagined might make her fat. “She’s seeing a counselor, and she’s getting weighed weekly to make sure she doesn’t get any skinnier.”

  “What if she does?” Tyler asked in a hushed voice. “Will she die? Like Duster? Remember, Dad? He quit eating.”

  “He quit eating because he was really, really old and his kidneys were failing. Emma is different. People can die from anorexia nervosa,” Ryan said evenly, “but we won’t let that happen to Emma. If her weight falls at all, she’ll be checked into the hospital. She knows that.”