Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  What if her last sob was her death?

  Jo’s gloved hand crept into his. “I don’t know anything,” she repeated. “I’m not saying anyone has neglected Emma. I’m only guessing that Emma is expressing some huge, all-consuming need or fear through starvation. If she could find another way to say it…”

  He made a ragged sound.

  “She’s only sixteen.” Jo wrapped her arms around him and they embraced in the cold. “She hasn’t been anorexic long. She has a good chance of recovering, from what I’ve read.”

  “You’ve been reading about it?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve learned nothing.” Frustration choked him. “I can’t find answers.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  He gripped her tightly, his cheek against the fleece cloche hat she’d tugged on as they went out the door. With his eyes closed, he smelled peppermint.

  After a long minute, he was able to relax and let her go, turning away to open the truck door. They drove to his house in near silence.

  There she divested herself of parka, hat and gloves, kicked off her clogs, then in stockinged feet carried her pack into the living room and sank cross-legged on the wood floor. Unzipping her bag, she took out books and binder and spread them over his coffee table.

  “You look like a kid,” he said.

  She glanced up in surprise.

  “A kid?”

  “Are you really comfortable?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I weren’t.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Want something to drink?”

  Reading already, she flapped a hand but didn’t look up. “Not right now, thanks.”

  He left her for a while, writing up a bid for a job that would be very welcome come mid-January or early February, when construction work suffered an inevitable slowdown given Northwest weather. He didn’t believe in laying off his crew if he could possibly prevent it, even to the point of working for ridiculously low prices. If he could just make expenses on this one, it would be worth doing, to keep them from an idle month.

  Satisfied at last, he printed the bid and a cover letter as well as copies for his own files, then wandered back to the living room, where he found Jo scribbling furiously, gaze darting between her writing and her open book.

  She didn’t seem even to notice his presence, so he went to the kitchen and made coffee. When he set a cup in front of her, she grabbed it gratefully.

  “Read my mind.”

  “I doubt it,” Ryan said with amusement. “What are you working on?”

  “Mm.” She stretched her legs out under the coffee table. “I’m analyzing studies on human behavior that might be relevant to what makes people choose to use the public library or be turned off by it. How do people respond to layout, to the kind of order librarians tend to impose, to the institutional lighting or to the way other patrons behave or dress? What subtle motivators can we use to draw people in? Why do we lose some people? One guy who’s working on his 1962 Chevy borrows a manual from the library. His buddy would never think about the library as a source, even though he must have been dragged there as a school kid. Why?”

  “Learning anything?”

  “Oh, some of it’s predictable. For example, people worry about not fitting in, to be square pegs if the holes look round to them. So a guy wanders into the library, the only other patrons are a couple of nicely dressed women with young kids, the librarian in his shirt and tie looks disdainful, and our guy with grease under his nails quietly fades back out. He felt like an idiot when he was twelve and had to use the library to research the Egyptian pharaohs, and he doesn’t stick around this time long enough to discover how easy the computer is to use, that all he has to do is ask to be led right to that manual or résumé book or Hot Rod magazine. If he’d come at a different time of day, seen some other guys that looked more like him there, his whole experience would have been different.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do about it?”

  Jo flashed him a cheerful grin. “I have no idea.” She slurped coffee and wiped her chin when she spilled. “Well, I know some ways to reach reluctant patrons. With teenagers, we take books to youth centers, even the detention hall. We talk to women’s groups. Men are tougher. I’m not sure I know, except that we need to be very conscious of how we as librarians present ourselves—and what we have to offer—from the get-go. We tend to be readers. Snobs. But we don’t exist just to serve like-minded fellow citizens. I’m hoping to find some studies that pinpoint relevant behavioral triggers.”

  “You don’t sound as if you believe in free will.” He considered her. “Are we really ‘triggered’ that easily?”

  Face animated, she argued, “Yeah, I think context is more important than we want to believe. Say I see somebody injured on the sidewalk ahead. What if it’s dark and I’m alone? Daytime and lots of other people are around, too? When am I likeliest to help?”

  “Ah…daytime,” he decided. “You’d have reason to be nervous at night.”

  “Ding!” she said triumphantly. “Wrong. Turns out, in the daytime I’d look around and think somebody else will do it. I don’t have to. But if I’m the only hope for this guy, I’m more likely to take a chance and offer help. See? Context. The interesting part is, people don’t always react the way we think they will, mostly because what we think is actually determined by what we’d like to believe, if that isn’t too convoluted.”

  Ryan nodded at the book. “This could make you a cynic.”

  “Yeah. It could.” She sipped her coffee meditatively.

  The silence was comfortable, although he used it to figure out how to ask questions she might consider threatening. Finally, he just decided to go for broke.

  Trying to sound casual, he asked, “After you get your master’s degree, do you think you’ll go back to California?”

  Another sign of how far they’d come was the fact that she didn’t get prickly. “You know, when I came up here, I assumed I would. Now, I’m not so sure. Libraries are better funded in other places, for one thing. The cap on tax increases in California puts such limitations on new programs and buying, it can be really frustrating. Also…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I like it here. I even like living with Kathleen and Helen. I was thinking about it the other day. If things are still going well when I graduate, maybe I could stay on. Find a job locally. Both King County and the city of Seattle have great public libraries.”

  He should be glad, not mad. But he was, and he knew why. He was agonizing over whether she might ever love him enough to marry him, and she was thinking how great her present living situation was. Had she ever, even once, considered a future with him?

  Unclenching his jaw, he tried to sound mild. “I have plenty of room here, too.”

  She went very still for what felt like half an hour but was probably only seconds. Then she drank her coffee in an obvious bid for more time, at last carefully setting down her mug.

  “Is that a…proposal?”

  “It would be if I thought you’d take me up on it. Really, I was just hoping you might start considering the idea.”

  Still not looking at him, Jo said, “You know how I feel about commitment, marriage, children.”

  They sounded like two people discussing the idea of switching brands of laundry detergent: interested enough to talk about it, but with no emotional investment.

  He didn’t change that. “I’ve had the impression you might be changing your mind.”

  She was silent, her head bent, the curve of her neck graceful. Her hair was bundled up in a ponytail, exposing the vulnerable nape. When she finally answered, it was with a cry from the heart. “I don’t know if I can.”

  Ryan shifted on the couch so that he sat right behind her and could reach out and massage her shoulders. Appearances had been deceptive: she was rigid beneath his hands.

  “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Pushing. We’ve only known each other a few months, an
d I’m demanding you ditch your lifelong conviction.”

  Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “I want to.”

  He kneaded taut muscles and felt them becoming pliable. “What can I do to help?”

  She rotated one shoulder, leaning into his hand. “You’re doing it.”

  His grunt held amusement. “Giving you a back rub?”

  Jo leaned back to look at him upside down. A tremulous smile was paired with big brown eyes welling with tears. “Being irresistible.”

  Momentarily, his fingers tightened. He forced himself to relax, saying lightly, “You’re going to blow up my ego like a hot air balloon.”

  “You don’t have a big enough one now. You have no idea how unusual it is to find a man as handsome as you who seems oblivious to the fact. You’re smart, successful and sweet. What more could a woman want?”

  “You tell me,” Ryan said quietly.

  She closed her eyes, and he felt her muscles tense again. “The idea just…scares me. Maybe my parents did want to be married, maybe they loved each other. But look at all the other marriages! It seems like most fail.”

  “Half. The other half of people who marry are happy.”

  Her laugh was almost sad. “You’re a ‘half-full’ guy. I’m a ‘half-empty’ gal. Maybe that makes us incompatible.”

  He smoothed her hair back from her face, loving the spring of it, the strength and sheen and rich color. Loving just to touch her. “I don’t feel incompatible.”

  “Neither do I,” she admitted.

  “Then?”

  “Being boyfriend and girlfriend isn’t the same as being husband and wife. Right now, we’re the spice in each other’s lives, not the oatmeal. What would it be like for our relationship to be predictable?”

  Great, as far as he was concerned. He hated coming home to an empty house, hated wondering when he’d see Jo again, hated thinking of something to say to her and then having to phone instead of talk to her across the kitchen table.

  “We see each other almost every day now,” Ryan reminded her. “Maybe this makes me boring, but I want to be able to count on you! What’s wrong with sharing the morning newspaper and the oatmeal?”

  She pulled away from him, untangled her legs and stood, retreating several steps. Facing him, arms crossed protectively, Jo said tautly, “Nothing! Not the way you say it. But for most people, dullness sets in sooner or later.”

  He leaned back. “Is that really what scares you?”

  “Yes!” Jo paced another few steps away, then swung back. “No! I mean, that’s part of it. One thing I’ve always admired about Aunt Julia is her independence. She doesn’t have to consult anybody. If she wants to spend Christmas on Cook Island, she goes. She can be spontaneous!”

  He was growing to hate Aunt Julia and her globe-trotting, glamorous lifestyle, which he suspected was largely myth. “Is going to a South Pacific island by yourself really that wonderful?”

  Anxiety darkening her eyes, she deftly avoided the question. “Even together! We’d quit being spontaneous! I’d have school, then work, you’d have jobs lined up, the kids would come for vacation… What if we lose all the passion and any chance for adventure?”

  Adventure. Ryan mulled that.

  He loved working on a banister in a turn-of-the-century house, his patience and skill stripping away the dark layers of the years to reveal the golden glow of fine wood. He loved tucking his kids in at night, pacing the sidelines at soccer games, running beside a bicycle and letting go the first time to a gasp of fear and then a crow of delight. He loved the sight of Jo Dubray sitting cross-legged at his coffee table, or munching on a sandwich in his kitchen while sitting on the counter with her heels bumping the cabinet.

  That was enough adventure for him.

  For the first time, he weighed the idea that maybe they were incompatible.

  Then he considered how she held herself completely closed while she waited. He thought about the three months he’d known her and the ways they’d enjoyed each other’s company.

  The most adventure they’d ever had together was that French film. Or in-line skating around Green Lake—that had been scary the first time he’d trusted himself to put wheels on the bottoms of his shoes.

  At his guess, the biggest adventure of Jo’s life was quitting her job and moving to Seattle to go to graduate school. She’d never mentioned scuba-diving in the Caribbean or climbing in the Andes.

  Adventure was another of those things Aunt Julia extolled and Jo bought into, a hazy dream like dining at the White House with a charismatic senator or walking down the red carpet in a designer dress on the arm of an Academy Award-nominated actor. They were somebody else’s dreams, not hers.

  He had the feeling she was waking up from them, like a star gymnast who realized she’d starved herself, suffered shattered vertebrae, given up school and friends and boyfriends all for her parents and not herself.

  Or maybe he was kidding himself.

  “Adventure,” he said thoughtfully, “comes in a lot of forms. What do you have in mind?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You want me to list every adventurous thing I might spontaneously—” she became a little shrill on the one word “—choose to do over the next fifty years?”

  “No,” he said patiently. “What I’m suggesting is that marriage is an adventure. So is having kids. Going to graduate school. Starting a new job. Or do you have more in mind the kind of thrills you might get from sky-diving or spelunking.” He frowned. “Is that how you say it?”

  “You’re making fun of me,” she snapped.

  “No, I’m not. I’m asking you how you want to live your life? Sky-diving? Touching other people’s lives without fully entering them? Or do you want to take some real risks?”

  Pure panic glittered in her eyes now. “You’re misunderstanding every word I said!”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m afraid of losing spontaneity. Of not having fun anymore, because we get ground down by daily life.”

  He finally stood and went to her. When he reached out and ran his hands up and down her arms, she didn’t step away, but she didn’t lean into him, either.

  “Daily life grinds whether you’re married or not. Seems to me you can resist it best by being happy, by having someone to talk to.”

  Jo didn’t say anything or look above his chest.

  “Why can’t we have fun together?”

  She sneaked a glance upward. “Haven’t you noticed how we already do less exciting things? I study here, you bring dinner to my house.”

  “I like having you here.”

  Her gaze dropped again. “I like being here. But…”

  He understood all that the “but” implied. Commitment meant the loss of self. Parenting was joyless. The only happy person she’d had to model herself on was the carefree Aunt Julia. Jo was terrified that she’d become like her father if she took on the obligations of family.

  “Forget I asked you to move in,” Ryan said recklessly. “How about if instead we plan a trip together? Let me prove we can have fun, throw off the shackles of daily life.”

  She looked wary but interested. “A trip?”

  “Someplace neither of us have ever been. Someplace romantic.”

  “But…you have the kids over Christmas break,” Jo said doubtfully. “And I can’t miss school.”

  He didn’t point out that she was not demonstrating the soul of an adventurer.

  “Okay, we probably can’t go to Paris.” He thought. “When do you go back to school after Christmas break?”

  “January seventh or eighth.” She frowned. “I’m not sure. Something like that.”

  “All right. Melissa and Tyler fly home on the morning of the thirtieth. They start school on the second. So that gives us a week. New York City. We could take in Broadway shows, maybe ring in the new year in Times Square.”

  She made a “maybe” face.

  Then it came to him. “No. You know where I’ve always wanted to visit? New Orl
eans. I want to see alligators outside the zoo. I want to walk through plantation houses and slave quarters—did I ever tell you I’m a Civil War buff? Imagine the French Quarter, with lacy wrought-iron balconies and narrow cobblestone streets and the haunting cry of a saxophone.”

  Instead of rubbing her arms, he caressed her. “Then there’s Bourbon Street, where the party never ends.” He made his voice a low rumble. “What do you say, pretty lady?”

  Her smile tried to stay in hiding, but it crinkled the corners of her mouth and softened her eyes. “Do you mean it?” she murmured, as her face tilted up to his.

  “Yeah, I mean it.” He kissed her. Against her mouth, he whispered, “Are we on?”

  This smile, he felt all the way to his toes.

  “Mmm. I’ll take you up on your challenge, handsome. You show me adventure, I’ll concede we can have it together.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE BOX from Jo’s father arrived via UPS the same day Ryan’s children were to fly in from Denver. Somebody in the house had set the parcel, perhaps twelve inches square and wrapped in brown paper, on the hall table. On her way out in response to Ryan’s honk, Jo was glancing toward the Christmas tree in the living room that they had all decorated together when she saw it.

  “Oh!” She stopped dead, staring at the package. Conflicting emotions flooded her, tingling in the fingers she squeezed into fists, keeping her paralyzed even when Ryan leaned on the horn again.

  She wanted to take the box upstairs and open it right now, find out what her father had sent, what memories this gift might restore.

  But, in a weird way, she was also afraid to open it. Maybe he’d sent things that would have no meaning to her, because she didn’t remember her mother using them: a half-finished piece of needlework, or a cookbook. Or what if photos didn’t trigger any memories at all? What if she would never know, never remember, her mother any better than she did now?