Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  “Nope.” The anguish that hadn’t left him since last night twisted in his chest. “You’re never here soon enough for me,” he muttered, just before he kissed her.

  Her lips held the chill of a night that might bring snow. They warmed quickly under his, and she sighed.

  How was he going to live without her?

  She was the one to ease back, her eyes searching his. “It’s only been one day, and you missed me.”

  “You could say that.” He sounded ragged.

  Jo framed his face with her hands and stood on tiptoe to press a sweet kiss on his mouth, a complete contrast to the moment before.

  “I missed you, too,” she said softly. “Last night, after I looked at my mother’s things, I wanted so much to talk to you.”

  In his own troubles, he’d forgotten the package from her father waiting for her at home. Ryan felt like scum.

  “Talk to me now.” He smiled ruefully when they both heard the voice call him from upstairs. “Well, in a minute.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Get yourself a cup of coffee if you want. I’ll be back.”

  “Okay.” She smiled. “Go. You’re wanted.”

  Upstairs he found the kids in their own beds, Melissa already with her light turned off and her back to the door. Ryan went to her first, bending to kiss her cheek and murmur softly, “I love you, ’Lissa.”

  Her arms shot out for a quick, fierce hug. “I love you, too, Daddy,” she whispered.

  He smiled, hiding the pain he felt for her, and smoothed first the hair back from her face and then her covers over her shoulders. “I’ll see you in the morning. Hey, maybe there’ll be snow.”

  “I want it on Christmas.”

  “This might be the year. You never know.”

  Tyler still sat bolt upright, bedside lamp on. “You’re not going anywhere, are you, Dad?”

  “Nope.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t leave you and Melissa alone. Your sister isn’t old enough to be in charge yet.”

  Tyler muttered, “She already thinks she is.”

  “I heard that!” his sister snapped from the other bed.

  Ryan and his son exchanged wry grins. “Okay,” Ryan said, “scoot down. Time to go to sleep.”

  He arranged Tyler’s covers, made sure his dinosaur was within reach and turned out the light before leaning down to kiss his forehead.

  “I love you.”

  Tyler nodded. “Dad?”

  “Um-hm?”

  “I’m glad we’re staying,” he said with astonishing force. “I want to live here, with you. I hated Denver.”

  Melissa kept quiet this time. Ryan said, “I know you hadn’t made friends. I’m glad you still have some here. And you know what?”

  “What?” his son asked.

  “I know you’ll miss your mom, but I’m glad you’re staying, too.” He kissed Tyler’s forehead, too. “Good night,” he said softly.

  From habit he left their door open about six inches and the bathroom light on so that they weren’t in complete darkness.

  Outside, he stood for a moment listening, but heard nothing. Tyler would have wanted him to dry his tears, but Melissa was old enough to prefer to cry alone, into her pillow. He had to respect that.

  Tiredly Ryan started downstairs. Time for phase two in the rotten day.

  In the kitchen, Jo turned to face him, setting down her coffee cup. “Okay. What was so awful about your day?”

  No reprieve. “More than a day. The past twenty-four hours.”

  Creases formed in her brow. “But I’d barely left you twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Wendy called.” Ryan pulled a stool up to the tiled counter. Fittingly, Jo stayed on the other side of it, waiting. Ryan was blunt. “She doesn’t want the kids back. They’re going to stay with me.”

  Except for a widening of the eyes, Jo didn’t react. Slowly she said, “Aren’t you glad?”

  “Yeah!” he said explosively. “For myself. Maybe for Melissa and Tyler, long term. In the short term, they’re hurting. Your mother died. Imagine if she’d left you on purpose.”

  Jo flinched, and he cursed his big mouth. “I’m sorry….”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You’re right. Poor Melissa! That day at the Pike Place Market, she talked about her mother all the time. This is going to be hardest on her, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.” Ryan rotated his head, trying to ease tension that gripped his neck and shoulders. “Tyler just told me he was glad he was staying, that he hated Denver. He might have just been trying to get in good with me because he’s scared and now he depends on me, but I don’t think so. He’s seemed unhappy ever since they moved.”

  Jo nodded. “I noticed. I think after Thanksgiving he didn’t want to go back.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan released a long breath. “Here’s the problem. You and I are supposed to leave for New Orleans in eight days.”

  Supposed to.

  He saw in her eyes that she understood.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Ryan tried to smile, felt his mouth twist. “I know Kathleen would take Melissa and Tyler, and normally that would be fine, great, but…”

  Jo gave him a fierce stare. “But you can’t leave them.”

  Confused, he said, “No. They’re reeling from the news that Mom doesn’t want them. I’m assuring them they’re mine for good, that I won’t let them be yanked around anymore. I don’t see how I can say, ‘Yeah, I know you’re sad, and we can talk about it when I get home,’ and go off on a trip. No matter how much I want to go.”

  “Of course you can’t!” Jo exclaimed. “Ryan, did you think I wouldn’t understand?”

  No. What he’d thought was that she would understand all too well.

  His life had just changed. He was no longer a free-and-easy bachelor. Now he was a single father, and his kids would always have to come first.

  He didn’t say anything. At least, not soon enough.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You did. You thought I’d be mad.”

  “No.” His voice sounded strange, not his own. “What I think is that I’m blowing it with you. I’m proving your point. Obligations do get in the way of romance and adventure. Mine are. I can’t help it, Jo. I love you, but I have to put them first right now.”

  She came around the counter at last. “Of course you do,” she said with astonishing gentleness, and, as he swiveled on the stool to face her, wrapped her arms around him.

  Ryan buried his face in her hair and held her, too. She smelled wonderful, like Christmas, as if she’d been hanging fir boughs and candy canes. She murmured his name, her voice comforting.

  “It’s okay,” she said against his neck. “It’s okay.”

  When they finally disentangled, he knew he must look awful.

  “I’ll, uh, cancel our reservations.”

  Jo nodded and backed away, her expression suddenly…shuttered.

  Now what? he wondered. Would she start making excuses when he called? And what was he supposed to do? Hire a babysitter every Friday and Saturday night, as Wendy had wanted to do when they were still married?

  “We can go another time,” he said, knowing they wouldn’t.

  She nodded again and smiled meaninglessly.

  She was slipping away, sawdust through his fingers, Ryan thought with panic. He’d known she would.

  “Your mother.” He grabbed for any lifeline. “You were going to tell me about what your father sent.”

  “Oh.” Jo shook her head. “Just old photos and letters and some jewelry. It was…nice. I’ll tell you about it another time.”

  She’d chosen the same words, the same fiction: another time. A hazy future that somehow would never happen.

  Ryan wanted to fall to his knees and beg, “Don’t leave me.” He wanted to pound his fist into a wall.

  He did none of those things. He sat on the stool and said, “You don’t have to go.”

  “You look tired.”

  He shook his head. “N
ot sleepy.”

  “Um…Ryan?”

  Made warier by her tentative tone, he said, “Yeah?”

  “You’ll have to take a loss when you cancel the tickets, won’t you?”

  Taken by surprise, he said, “You mean, will I lose money? Uh… Yeah. I guess. It doesn’t matter.” Right now, a few hundred bucks seemed like the most trivial thing he had to lose.

  “Well, I was thinking.” She knotted her fingers in front of her.

  “About?”

  “This is maybe a terrible idea.”

  Patience deflated, he asked, “What is a terrible idea?”

  Jo flushed. “I was just thinking…what if we went anyway? Only, we took the kids. It wouldn’t be the same, but we might have fun, and, well, it might be a distraction for them. You know?”

  Ryan stared at her. “Take Melissa and Tyler.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to vacation with me and them,” she said hastily. “Make them think…you know. That’s okay, Ryan. I understand. You could just use the reservations to take them on a trip.”

  Stunned, he shook his head. “You wouldn’t mind taking a trip with my kids?”

  “I’d rather we had the romantic week we planned,” she said frankly. “But, under the circumstances, going anyway might be better than canceling.

  “Melissa and I could share my room and Tyler would be with you. Maybe one night we could get a babysitter and go out? Or send them on a tour while we go to a nightclub? I’ve been reading about New Orleans, and I’ll bet they’d love the voodoo tour of the cemetery at night.”

  Dazed, Ryan said, “I think that’s safe to say.”

  “Um…” Jo backed a few more steps toward the door. “Let me know. I’d better go now. I’m sorry, Ryan.” Her voice was soft, infused with compassion. “But glad, too, because I know how much you love them. You’ll be a wonderful parent.”

  “Thank you,” he said numbly. “You’re leaving?”

  “Shouldn’t I?” Her eyes were huge and dark.

  “No.” Somehow he got to his feet and stumbled toward her. “Don’t go, Jo. Please don’t go.”

  She met him halfway and let herself be folded into his arms. He leaned on her as much as held her.

  “Oh, Ryan.” She rained tiny kisses on his cheek and neck.

  “I was so afraid,” he whispered hoarsely. “Jo, if you mean it, I’d love to go to New Orleans with you and the kids. It’ll mean a lot to them. I love you, Jo.”

  “I think,” her voice wavered, “that I love you, too.”

  They stood there a long time, held in each others’ arms.

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE, miraculously, snow started to fall. Tiny flakes at first, just a few scattered so far apart Jo thought she was imagining them as she knelt on the window seat and searched the dark sky. But the flakes thickened and swirled until she was sure.

  “It’s snowing!” she called in delight.

  “It’s snowing?” voices asked from all over the house. “It’s really snowing?”

  Soon Ginny knelt at her side, and Kathleen looked out the other window. Upstairs Emma crowed with excitement. Even Pirate crouched beside Ginny, staring out with apparent fascination, reaching out once as if to touch those odd white bits floating downward only to be frustrated by the glass.

  They all went to bed at midnight, the adults—Jo, at least—as excited as the kids. Jo had never seen a white Christmas and had played in snow only a few times as a child, when her parents drove up to the Sierras. Emma had a sled, down in the basement. Would there be enough snow to use it on a grassy slope over at Cowen Park, or on a hilly street blocked at the bottom?

  Screams of joy woke her at dawn. Her bedroom door burst open. “Look! Look out your window!” Emma cried.

  Six inches or more had fallen during the night. Jo pressed her nose to the cold glass and gazed in awe at a cityscape transformed. The sidewalks and streets were white, untouched yet by tire tracks, and snow lay along the dark gnarled branches of the old trees and in heavy blankets on rooftops. The ugly junipers in front had become huge white sculptures, and even the cars were veiled by smooth white. The snow still fell, silent and slow.

  “Ohh,” she breathed.

  Emma turned and grinned at her with pure, childish jubilation. “This is so cool!”

  “Is there enough snow so that we can sled today?”

  “If there isn’t, there will be. By the time we open presents and have breakfast.”

  Presents. It was Christmas morning.

  “Let’s wake everybody,” Jo said impulsively. Then she laughed. “Assuming your screaming didn’t already wake them.”

  The rest of the household was emerging from bedrooms. Ginny was as thrilled as Emma, while the women yawned and shrugged into bathrobes. Infected by the girls’ excitement, Jo felt like a kid, not one of the adults. She didn’t even know why. It wasn’t as if Santa had brought her anything.

  She did have presents under the tree, though. Everyone did. The mound had grown through the past week and spilled across the living room floor. Now Santa’s gifts for Ginny and Emma, magically delivered during the night, were heaped atop the rest.

  Ginny stopped halfway across the living room, her mouth open in a circle of wonder. “A Barbie house,” she whispered. “Mommy, Santa brought me a Barbie house.”

  Jo happened to know what that big pink plastic dollhouse had set back her mom, who could ill afford it. But she saw on Helen’s face that every penny, every scrimp to make up for the cost, had been worth it.

  “Let’s plug in the lights,” someone said, and soon the tall Noble fir sparkled with multicolored lights, and the outdoor ones strung on the eaves glowed in muted jewel tones in the falling snow.

  “Are we waiting for Ryan and the kids?” Helen asked.

  Kathleen shook her head. “They’re going to open most of their presents at home, then come over after breakfast. We’ll open the ones from them then.”

  Most under the tree were for the girls, of course. They ripped, tossed aside paper and bows and squealed with delight. Jo loved her precious bars of soap and intriguing little bottle of lemon-verbena shampoo homemade by Kathleen. Her brother had sent her an old leather-bound edition of Pride and Prejudice, one of her favorite books. She kept stroking the cover even as she opened other presents: a sweater, nubby and soft, from Helen, a mug that said, Librarians Are Novel Lovers, from Emma, who cackled at the cleverness, and a cute bookmark from Ginny.

  For Ginny, Jo had bought a pile of her favorite children’s books, and was pleased when they distracted her enough that she forgot the Barbie house.

  Emma reached for her package from Jo, who shook her head. “Nope. You have to wait until your cousins get here. Melissa and I picked that out together.”

  “When will they get here?” Emma demanded.

  “Maybe they’re still sound asleep,” Helen suggested.

  “They can’t be!” Emma exclaimed. “It’s Christmas!”

  No, they couldn’t be. They arrived not half an hour later, stamping their feet and bringing in the front door a wave of cold air and a flurry of snow. Everybody babbled as they removed layers of parkas and boots and mittens. Jo got a cold kiss on the cheek and a warm grin before Ryan helped to carry their gifts into the living room.

  More ripping, more cries of pleasure, followed. Ryan seemed to love the print Jo had bought him of a Shaker staircase, stark, simple and astonishingly beautiful. He gave her a necklace, two shades of gold that met at her throat in a V set with a topaz. Emma cried when she opened her dream-catcher and hugged first Jo, then Melissa.

  At last everyone dispersed to get dressed for sledding.

  Ryan had brought two, an old-fashioned wooden sled on metal runners and a giant plastic saucer. Bundled against the cold, they set off down the street pulling the sleds. By this time, everyone in the neighborhood had turned on outside lights, and Christmas trees shone through front windows like joyous beacons.

  They found a neighborhood hill where others were already
sledding. Jo went down tucked between Ryan’s knees, swooshing on the tracks packed by other sleds. The cold air stung her eyes and falling snow blurred to each side as she laughed and clung to the sides and felt Ryan’s arms enclosing her. At the bottom they glided to a stop, the voices above sounding tiny and far away.

  “That was lovely,” Jo said in complete satisfaction, leaning back for a moment against his solid body.

  “Yeah.” His voice was a rumble in her ear. “I think this is the perfect Christmas.”

  “Um-hm.”

  “Watch out!” someone screamed behind them, and they tumbled off the sled just as it was knocked aside by Ryan’s kids, spinning on the plastic saucer and giggling helplessly.

  When it came to a stop, the kids were facing Ryan and Jo.

  “Isn’t this fun?” Tyler exclaimed, his face alight.

  Picking herself up and brushing off the snow, Jo said, meaning it, “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun.”

  “You want to go down together?” Tyler asked. “I could steer.”

  “You don’t want him to,” his sister warned.

  But Jo laughed. “I would love to go down with you. Come on.” She held out a gloved hand. “Let’s beat them up the hill.”

  Pulling the saucer, giggling, they fled under a bombardment of snowballs. On the way up, they watched as Helen and Ginny tore down, the little girl looking delighted and terrified at the same time, her mother fiendish as she wielded the ropes guiding the sled. At the top, they let Emma take the saucer next, while Kathleen assured everyone she would wait her turn.

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  “You mean, you’re chicken,” Jo accused.

  “Chicken, chicken, chicken!” Emma yelled all the way down the hill, until she crashed into the snow-buried curb and rolled into a drift.

  “Is being chicken so bad?” Kathleen asked plaintively, before her brother arrived, handed her the rope to the sled and said evilly, “We’ll watch.”

  Her last look at him was slit-eyed. He nonetheless cheerfully gave her a big push to get her started.

  Laughing with the others as Kathleen soared down the hill, her scream trailing behind like the whistle of a train diminishing into the distance, Jo thought, This is the perfect Christmas.