Fix You (39 page)

Jess buried her face in her palms.

Beside her, Chris chuckled. “You don’t like being the slutty sister?”

“I am not,” she shot a glare at him that wavered when she saw the smile he was giving her, “the slutty sister,” she finished with another sigh. “Except I am, aren’t I?”

“Just a little bit. I think it’s cute.”

“Damn,” Jo murmured as her laughing fit calmed and she got to her feet. “We’d better get outta here before I see something else.”

“I dunno,” Tam protested. “I don’t think – ow.” Jo had him by the ear. “Yeah, alright.” He got to his feet. “Just remember,” he passed one last stern look between Jess and Chris, “if you want to act like adults, you better be responsible like adults.” And ruined it with a shark smile. “It’s a bitch, huh?”

“Yes, Tam. Goodnight.”

They were still chuckling after they’d closed the kitchen door behind them, and Jess massaged her temples, hating that their teasing had bothered her so much. Turned out, payback was a
mean
bitch.

“Mama,” Tyler said, and she and Chris both whipped around.

“Sweetie,” she said, rising, “what is it?”

He rubbed a fist in his eye, looking small and pale in his Batman PJs. “It’s loud in here.”

“Your aunt Jo can tell a damn good knock-knock joke,” Chris said, getting to his feet too.

Tyler’s grin was sleepy. “
The one about the banana?”

“Nope. You’ll have to tell me that one.”

Jess glanced at her sink of dirty dishes, then at her son; Chris was already beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ve got him. You do whatever else you
wanna do in here.”

She nodded, but didn’t go right to the sink. Instead, she listened to the rise and fall of Tyler’s little voice as he fell into step beside Chris.

Her house – this great mess of a house that hadn’t looked salvageable – was done, and all in thanks to the man who was steering her baby back to bed. She’d bought this stupid nightmare – and he’d fixed it. And he was still here. And she…might…
might
…be in love with him. And it was too soon and she knew better…

But he’d fixed it. And that counted in a way that brought tears to the backs of her eyes.

**

             
Tyler was asleep before the lamp was off, and Chris took a moment, hand on the switch, watching the spiked shadows cast by his eyelashes fall across his smooth little cheeks. He was a smart kid; he liked cars, and dinosaurs, and comic books, and the fishing pole Chris had brought him that hadn’t snagged so much as a bite down at the lake. He liked to play in mud puddles and he squirmed when his mother tried to fix his hair; he’d just lost his first tooth and fancied the little boy notions of a future as an astronaut or a stock car driver. He had cousins: little black-haired Willa; Evan born two weeks after her; twins Jane and Elizabeth; Walter’s kids who weren’t around too often but who’d been dressed as cowboys tonight.

             
Chris didn’t know what it felt like to have a kid of his own, and maybe he never would. But he knew what it was like to care about Jess, to want to have her, and Tyler was an inescapable part of her. He hadn’t, he realized, ever wished it was any different.

             
“Night,” he said to himself, and clicked off the lamp.

             
Jess was at the sink when he returned to the kitchen, scrubbing a serving bowl, the water slopping.

             
“He’s out already,” he said as he approached her from behind. “That kid’s hearing is scary-good.” He propped a hip against the counter and his eyes went to her downcast profile. “He…” There were tears tracking down her cheeks, glimmering crystal in the shafts of moonlight that seeped through the parted curtains. “What’s wrong?”

             
She shook her head, eyes closing, hands stilling beneath the soapy water. “I don’t know.”

             
He reached up and cradled the back of her head, thumb sweeping forward across her damp cheek. “You’re not upset about what your sister said, are you?”

             
“No.” She lifted her hands, then seemed to remember that they were wet and let them hang, dripping, over the sink.

             
“Then what?”

             
She took a deep breath, tipped her head back, stared through the window, lashes heavy with tears that looked like diamonds clinging to their ends. “I’m overly emotional for some reason.”

             
“Jess –  ”

             
“What happens Monday?”

             
He blinked. “I dunno. Am I supposed to?”

             
She pulled in a deep breath. “The house is done, so your job here is done. Where will you go Monday?”

             
He was floored by her thought process. “Well, I have a couple estimates to write, a couple new jobs to look into, and I was thinking I’d take you to that new Mexican place that opened over by the mall.”

             
Her eyes closed again and fresh tears went rolling down her cheeks. “It’s just that, when I call Dylan Monday, and I tell him that I’m bowing out of the fight…”

             
“Jess,” he sighed, and shifted around so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. She fell against his chest without protest, her wet hands finding the front of his shirt. “I’m not going anywhere.”

             
“You better not,” she sniffled. “Not after you got me good and attached.”

27

             
J
o was still chuckling to herself as she pulled the elastic from her hair and shook it out across her shoulders in front of her dressing table mirror. “Are we enjoying this too much?”

             
At the closet, Tam was hanging up his jacket; she could see him through the mirror, in his white t-shirt with his smokes rolled up in one sleeve. “Not possible,” he said, toeing off his sneaks.

             
“Yeah, but –  ” she pulled the too-tight borrowed cheerleading top off over her head and sighed with relief “ – this is different. The way things are with her and Chris…I dunno. I feel kinda guilty.”

             
“When did you get so soft?”

             
“It’s Will’s fault,” she lamented. “She’s turned me into a nice person.” She reached for the hidden zipper of the skirt and was startled to see that Tam was no longer at the closet, but right behind her, hands falling onto her shoulders.

             
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t blame it on Will,” he said as his warm palms settled on her skin.

             
“You have another theory?”

             
He grinned evilly. “Yeah. You’re turning into your mom.”

             
She whirled on him in mock outrage, the pleated skirt rustling against his jeans. “No!”

             
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” He slid his forefinger down the slope of her nose. His grin shifted, became softer. “And you’ve always been a nice person, by the way.”

             
“Don’t get cheesy on me, Wales,” she said, and tried to duck around him.

             
He caught her around the waist and gave her a little squeeze. “Hold up a sec.”

             
She lifted her brows in question…and then noticed just how soft his smile really was; it was one of those quiet, serious, emotional smiles that didn’t make much of an appearance during their rushed morning kisses over Willa’s head. “What?” She settled her palms against his chest.

             
“Remember how your birthday sucked?”

             
It had been a weekday, and after she’d showered the day’s grime away, he’d taken her to dinner. Her gift had been the denim jacket she’d been eyeing. It had been quiet and unfussy: the way she preferred it. “It didn’t suck,” she said, meaning it.

             
“Well.” One of his hands peeled away from her and he reached into his back pocket. The little white box he came back with hadn’t been there earlier – she would have noticed. “How about if I make up for it anyway?”

             
Jo refused to believe he could have possibly done such a thing until she had the box open in her hands and was staring down at what he’d bought her. “Oh, Tam, no,” she said, shaking her head, hair sliding across her shoulders. “You
can’t
. It’s not real, is it?”

             
She wanted so badly to think that the silver band was sterling; that the heart-shaped ruby that so closely resembled his mother’s pendant was plastic; that the ring she held was a convincing fake, because she wasn’t sure she could live with the thought that he’d blown any portion of his new salary on something as petty as jewelry.

             
He kicked her chin up with a knuckle. “It’s real. And I can.”

             
Tears filled her eyes and his smile told her he had no idea why. “You can’t,” she insisted. “Because I don’t care about this.” She tried to thrust the box into his hands, ignoring the wounded look that went flickering through his eyes. “I’m not one of those girls, Tam.” Her voice wavered. “I didn’t marry you for a ring. I won’t put us in the poor house because of one.”

             
She swallowed hard, tears thick in her throat. He
knew
her better than this; at least, he
had
, before. When they’d been stupid kids. Thinking he might not know her anymore sent the tears tumbling over her lashes and she dashed at them with the back of her hand.

             
His big hands gathered hers and folded them over the box. “I can afford it,” he said firmly. “I wouldn’t have bought it if I couldn’t.”

             
“But –  ”

             
“Jo.”

             
She drew in a deep breath, extricating her hands from his so she could wipe her face again.

             
He cupped her cheek in one hand, thumb easing against the damp corner of her eye. “Jo,” he repeated. “If I’d wanted tears, I’d have brought you a puppy.” He twitched a smile, but it was a scrap of one; he had to be offended by her reaction, but she couldn’t seem to help it: she’d never thought her Tam would turn into a guy who thought he had to buy her love with rocks.

             
“I told you I didn’t need one,” she insisted.

             
“You also asked me,” he said, “if I was bored with you.”

             
“Damn.”

             
“And I know,” he continued, “that it was just because of what was going on with Jess. But I thought…I dunno. I thought maybe you really were worried. At least a little.” His eyes were the purest, gentlest blue. “I know you and I don’t need a diamond, but other people look at stuff like that. And when you’re around other people, I always want you to know exactly how I feel about you.”

             
“But I do know.”

             
“You know I love you. I’ve loved you since you were jailbait, baby.” He leaned in close, rested his forehead against hers in that old familiar way she’d always loved. “I can love you for being Will’s mama, and for saving me” – the tears were coming again, filling her eyes – “and for being tough enough to wear this because you know exactly what it means to be married for all the reasons that count.” He smiled. “And because that’s how gorgeous you are. I am
never
going to be bored with you. You are my whole world, Joanna, so I can give you a damn ring if I want to.”

             
She clenched her fists tight in the front of his shirt, felt his heart thumping against her knuckles. Her chest ached with his sweetness; she berated herself for her own conclusion-leaping. Tam Wales had never done things by the book. “Do you want to?” she whispered, her nose almost touching his.

             
“You know I do.”

             
She flung her arms around his neck and squeezed tight.

             
He laughed in her ear. “You don’t even recognize it, do you?”

             
Jo pulled back and looked up into his face. “It’s a duplicate of your mom’s. It matches the necklace.”

             
Smiling, he shook his head. “It
is
my mom’s. Yeah it’s real, and yeah I can afford it, but you didn’t think I could just up and buy a ruby that big, did you?”

             
Her face flushed and she didn’t know if she felt stupid, or sad; aside from his Malibu, the necklace was all that he had left of his mother’s, and the ruby had been a family heirloom for something like a hundred years. “But, Tam –  ”

             
“That chain was so thin you were always afraid to wear it,” he said. His smile was starting to give way to an expression that was more desperate than anything else. “I wanted you to have a real honest to God engagement ring, one you would wear, so I got Delta to hook me up with a jeweler who would reset mom’s stone and diamonds into this. I just…” His suave self-satisfied calm was fraying; he raked a hand back through his slicked hair. “I wanted you to feel like my wife, and not just my friend or sister or…whatever you’ve been feeling like, okay?”

             
Jo plucked it from the box and slid it on her ring finger; it settled in right next to her plain wedding band and looked no less than dazzling. Then she laid her hand along his cheek, sighing in a happy way, feeling very loved and very much like his wife. “Okay,” she assured.

**

              Monday morning, Tam drew up in front of Mike’s open office door and found one of his – now
their
– coworkers leaning in the jamb: Johnson who’d also been a groomsman at Mike’s wedding. The guy was still prone to flop sweats and nervous smiles; he still tried too hard and still somehow never made anything work.

             
“Wales,” he greeted as Tam joined them. “Good weekend?”

             
“Yeah.” Tam propped himself against the outer wall and waited. “You?”

             
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been dating this girl – Lucy – and we went to meet her parents…”

             
Tam listened, nodding in the appropriate places, as he was treated to a full recap of the guy’s past forty-eight hours. When Johnson finally excused himself, his forehead shiny with sweat, Tam lifted his brows at Mike. “You know, I still have no idea what his first name is.”

             
Mike grinned. “John.”

             
“No it’s not. John Johnson?”

             
“Yup.”

             
“His parents musta hated him.” He checked the hall around him and then stepped inside the office, heeling the door half-shut. “So.”

             
Mike looked every inch the businessman behind his desk, in suit and tie. “So.”

             
“Remember what you asked me awhile back? Has your situation…improved?”

             
“Did you see Delta’s getup at Halloween?” Mike asked with a grin. His waggling eyebrows suggested there had been more Cleopatra action at home. “Yeah.
Waaaay
improved.” He made a face. “You?”

             
Tam grinned. “Ditto.”