Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (18 page)

“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. “Not 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.

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
, 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, fol
lowed. 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 sat
isfaction, 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.

She wished it could last forever. That tomorrow’s dawn wouldn’t bring a return to sulky teenagers and money worries and decisions about an uncertain future.

Why couldn’t every day be as uncomplicated and joyous as this one?

T
HE LAST NOTES
of the sax wailed, a sad refrain somehow infused with hope, fading, fading.

In the hush as the saxophonist lowered his gleaming instrument, Tyler looked up. “They’re not going to quit, are they, Dad? Huh? They’ll keep playing, won’t they?”

Ryan smiled over his head at Jo. “I don’t think they’re ready to quit yet.”

Around them, the crowd, mostly standing, waited patiently for music. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, consisting of seven middle-aged men in dark suits, sat on the stage at the front of the small rustic room in a Creole Mansion on St. Peter Street. A few chairs around the outside let older folks sit, or children like Tyler stand higher to see the stage. No drinks were served here, no food. The crowd came only for the music.

Melissa was more restive, Tyler fascinated. Jo’s feet were beginning to hurt after a long day spent at the aquarium and zoo. But the music was gorgeous, ranging from blues to
upbeat horns weaving melodies that captured the audience. In the back, couples danced. The rest of the crowd clapped to the rhythm. The sets lasted only forty-five minutes, she knew; she could hold out that long until a late dinner.

They ate afterward at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen, already a favorite, where the pizza didn’t taste much like the rubbery fare of the chain restaurants back home, and the wraps were divine. Tyler chattered about the music and how he wanted to start a band as soon as he was allowed.

“I want to play the trumpet like that man tonight,” he declared. “Did you see the way his cheeks puffed out? He blew so hard!”

Ryan told him about Dizzy Gillespie, whose cheeks had swelled and thinned like balloons because of a lifetime of blowing into a trumpet.

“That’s what’ll happen to you,” Melissa said. “
Your
cheeks will get so huge they’ll sag when there isn’t any air in them!”

“I don’t care!” Tyler insisted. He took a huge bite of pizza, which puffed his cheeks like a chipmunk’s, then grinned cherubically at his irritating big sister.

Melissa turned pointedly to Jo. “That white gator at the zoo was so weird. Like a ghost.”

“Are we going to do a swamp tour tomorrow?” Tyler asked eagerly. “So we can see alligators just swimming around? Huh, Dad?”

“You know we are!” Melissa snapped. “Why do you keep asking?”

Jo reached out and gently touched her hand. “Tired?”

The girl hesitated and nodded. “I’m glad it’s not hot, like everyone says it is in the summer.”

“Me, too,” Jo admitted. “One hundred degrees would do me in.”

Stomachs full, they ambled slowly the half-dozen blocks to their hotel on Dumaine Street. The sidewalks were empty, the alleys and doorways shadowy and dark. Overhead light spilled from open French doors onto balconies, and laughter and music burst from the doorways of restaurants as they passed. Having just read this tidbit, Jo told the kids that the streets were paved with the stones used for ballast in ships in the city’s early days.

The hotel was exquisite, an 1850s mansion restored to opulent perfection. The rooms all looked out on an interior cobbled courtyard
with a swimming pool gleaming deep turquoise at one end and at the other a fountain splashing day and night among lush foliage that seemed untouched by winter.

Tonight was warm enough that Jo consented to putting on her bathing suit and taking the kids down for a dip.

“I’m going to be lazy and lie here and watch the news,” Ryan said. “If nobody minds.”

Jo made a face at him. “You are lazy.”

“Hey.” He grinned. “How can you say that? We’ve been walking all day long! And you made me go to the zoo when I really wanted to take in that architectural salvage place.”

“We promised we’d do that another day,” Jo reminded him.

“Yeah, but I wanted to do it today,” he whined, in perfect imitation of his children, who whacked him with pillows in response.

On the way out the door, Jo took a last peek at him, lounging on the bed. With his blond head propped on one hand, gaze intent on the television set, he was so beautiful, she wanted to shoo the kids on and turn back for a very quick kiss.

Sighing, she resisted temptation and followed Ryan’s children.

The water was deliciously warm, and she
was glad she’d come when she floated on her back, looking dreamily up at the wrought-iron balconies, golden squares of windows and, above, the dark canopy of sky. Today might be chilly by New Orleans standards but compared to Seattle it felt balmy. They’d left dirty snow still lying on the ground and freezing at night on the streets. Here, gardens were still green and tropical.

Tyler dove and splashed energetically. Melissa left him to float beside Jo. Finally they shifted to the hot tub, where Jo could still keep an eye on Tyler.

Steam rose around them, making Melissa’s face indistinct.

“Do you think Dad would mind if I called Mom?” she asked.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t.” Jo tried to make out the girl’s expression. “You must miss her.”

After a long pause, Melissa confessed, “Kind of. I mean, we’ve been so busy. But…I wish she was here. Only not really. Because you are, and she and Dad don’t like each other that much, and I’m mad at her, too, but… Do you know what I mean?”

Jo nodded. “Did you know my mother died when I was seven?”

“No.” Melissa sat up, shaking water off
her hair. She sounded shocked and awed. “Really?”

“She was crossing a street and was hit by a car. So it was sudden. One morning she made my lunch and sent me off to the school bus, and the next morning she wasn’t there anymore. My dad wouldn’t talk about her at all. I started to forget her really fast. Now I realize he got rid of lots of her things, too, because they made him sad. Her piano and guitar and clothes. At that age I felt as if she’d been wiped away, never existed. I wondered sometimes if I’d imagined her, if I’d ever had a mother.”

“How awful.” Melissa scooted closer, the movement sending water lapping against the sides of the hot tub. “You must have been really mad at your father.”

“I was, and at my mother, too. I blamed her. Why did she have to do something so stupid?” Jo let out a shaky breath. “Just a few weeks ago, my father sent me a box of my mom’s things that he’d saved, I guess on a closet shelf. Pictures and letters and jewelry. And a book of stuff she’d written down about me, like when I first walked and talked and what I said.”

“What was your first word?”

“Dada.” She still marveled at that. Had he been so different then, proud of his first child? Had he tossed her in the air, talked baby talk to her? “Then ball,” she said.

“You must have missed her so much.”

“Horribly. Especially when I got to milestones in life. You know. Girl stuff. I
hated
having to ask my father about that stuff.” She remembered his expression, which she had taken for revulsion. She watched Tyler cannonball off the side of the pool.

“Maybe I could ask you things like that,” Melissa said tentatively.

With an astonishing burst of pleasure, Jo smiled at Ryan’s daughter. “Of course you can. But what I was trying to say is that you’re lucky enough to have a mother you can ask, too. I know you must be hurt and mad at her, and I don’t blame you. But…she’s still your mother. Ryan—your dad—thinks she really does love you. So try to stay in touch with her, okay? Maybe your father is, oh, steadier and more reliable, but she has lots to offer you, too. And that,” she concluded, “is enough of that lecture. I’m sorry! I didn’t intend to start one.”

As if she, who’d been afraid of having a family, was any expert!

But Melissa startled her again by reaching over and giving her a quick hug. “I liked your lecture. I’m glad Dad and you are friends. I wish—” She stopped. “Nothing. I’m just glad. That’s all.”

“Glad of what?” Tyler joined them by dropping into the hot tub with a splash way out of proportion to his skinny little body.

“You can’t stay for more than a minute,” Jo warned. “Melissa, you probably shouldn’t be in here this long, either.”

“What are you glad about?” he repeated.

“Nothing!” his sister said crossly, before glancing quickly at Jo. “I mean, I was just saying that I’m glad Dad and Jo are friends. That’s all.”

“Yeah!” he agreed enthusiastically. “This week has been really fun. And we get to miss school, too.”

“We’ll have to make up all the work.” Melissa made a face.

“Maybe not. Since we’re starting there in the middle of the year anyway.”

“That’s true.” She looked hopeful. “Wanna go back in the pool?”

“Yeah!” he exclaimed.

Jo went, too, floating again while they played tag. She felt boneless and…happy.
How extraordinary, she thought, startled by the very awareness. She couldn’t remember many times in her life when she’d been more than contented.

It was Ryan, of course. But she was having a revelation, which didn’t let her stop there. Amazingly, she was
glad
they’d brought the kids. She’d had fun with them. Much of what they had seen had taken on more vivid hues for her because she’d tried to look through their eyes. As an adult, she might have strolled through the plantation house and grounds with academic interest, for example, but for the way Melissa and Tyler wanted to finger candlesticks and wainscotting and doorknobs, and peer closely and speculate aloud on what might have happened in parlors or verandahs or bedrooms. Tyler had been positively ghoulish when they walked through the simple, white-washed slave quarters at Oak Alley, but he’d been right to be so. He’d made the adults remember the horrors that had occurred here.

The fact that she actually liked Ryan’s kids should have shocked her. It didn’t, because, even as dense as she’d been, Jo had noticed that she liked Emma and Ginny. She was even, apparently, good with children. She knew that, because Ginny and Emma
liked her. It appeared that Melissa and Tyler did, too.

She’d never minded doing preschool story hours at the library, or book talks at the elementary school to try to lure kids into summer reading. Part of the job, Jo had always told herself briskly, ignoring the pleasure she took in choosing books and finding new rhymes for the preschoolers or gory stories for the fourth-graders. She’d even known she was good at working with children. Which did not, she had told herself, mean that she wanted her own.

After all, how could she be a capable, never mind loving, parent, when her own father hadn’t shown her the way? It just wasn’t in her genes.

And she’d bought in, hook, line and sinker, to Aunt Julia’s version of her parents’ marriage. Mom had sacrificed a brilliant career for love, only to find herself changing dirty diapers. No woman could
have
career and family both. If she thought she could, she was deluding herself.

Rocking on a wave raised by splashing children, Jo thought wonderingly,
But Mom did love me. She did want me. And maybe Dad did, too.

Did his failings automatically mean they would be Jo’s, too?

Why had she never asked herself such a simple question? Her mother might have been, must have been, a wonderful parent. Ryan had once asked her how she’d come out so normal if she’d been raised so badly. Maybe, she thought now, because of her mother. By seven years old, a great deal of her basic character and sense of self had been formed. She had forgotten too much, but that didn’t mean the knowledge wasn’t still there, deep inside her, a secret part of her nature.

Out of nowhere, a hand grabbed her ankle and yanked downward. Rearing out of the water, Jo wrestled a slippy, wet boy into submission.

“I’m tougher than you are,” she warned him, laughing. She tossed him away with a great heave. He curled into a ball and succeeded in washing a torrent of pool water over her.

“What a brat!” Melissa called, before diving on a subterranean mission to get her brother.

No, Jo thought, not a brat; just a sweet, smart boy, with insecurities normal to his
circumstances, and the spirit to triumph over them.

And Melissa: she could be snotty, sure. Who could blame her? But she reminded Jo a little of herself at that age. She was so full of questions and doubts and hopes, it hurt to empathize sometimes.

Feeling light-headed, Jo drifted to the pool steps and watched them play.
I can love them,
she thought in profound amazement and relief. All these years, she’d believed herself to be emotionally stunted. Her father’s fault, she had bitterly told herself.

The truth was, she had just been an emotional coward. Love opened her to loss. She had been too young and vulnerable to learn a lesson so painful. It hadn’t yet been balanced by other lessons, ones about intimacy and laughter and hugs and someone to whom she could tell anything. Hurt himself, her father hadn’t kept teaching her. Really, when she thought about it, she
was
astonishingly normal, considering.

Jo’s chest ached, it was so filled with deep affection—no,
love
—for Ginny, Emma, Helen, even Kathleen… Melissa and Tyler, of course. And most of all, for Ryan. Afraid to love, she hadn’t known she did. She could
hardly believe she had been so blind. What had she done when her heart swelled with sympathy for Emma’s inner anguish or Ginny’s sadness? Taken an antacid and called it heartburn?

She wanted to march upstairs and throw herself into Ryan’s arms. With amusement that curved her mouth, Jo thought,
Well, I wanted to do that anyway.

Was he still thinking about marriage? Or were things different now that he had custody of his children?

Was she really brave enough to make all those promises that had once terrified her?

She was smiling again, idiotically. Oh, yes. She’d do it in a heartbeat. If he asked.

Which would not be tonight, unless he planned to go on his knees in front of the kids.

Melissa and Tyler had tired and were now drifting quietly. Jo stood, water sluicing down her body, and said, “Guys, I’m ready for pajamas and a chapter of my book. Let’s go up.”

They didn’t argue too much. Towels wrapped around them, rubber sandals slapping the carpeted floor, the three found Ryan yawning as he turned off the TV.