Taking a Chance

“Sure I do.” His mouth twisted. “But I’m not Ian. Her ex,” he added as an aside. “Why can’t her pride handle a little help from her brother?”

Helen’s face showed the same struggle Jo felt—sympathy for both points of view.

“How would you feel if Kathleen was trying to help you out financially?” Jo asked.

“I’d take the damn check, if my kids depended on it,” he said brusquely. Then he gave a faint laugh. “Sorry. It’s not your fault that Kathleen and I butt heads. I’m just glad that you apparently do have some construction skills.”

She felt an absurd glow of pleasure at the compliment. Some women wanted to be told that they were beautiful. She apparently reveled in being praised for competence.

Perhaps, she thought ruefully, because she wasn’t beautiful. Not like he was, or his sister. Pretty, maybe, if the beholder was generous. But she had not spent her life fighting off suitors.

At the sound of a car engine, she smiled as if he hadn’t both pleased her and stung her feminine vanity all at the same time.

“I do believe Kathleen’s home,” Jo said. “The two of you can go at it to your heart’s content.”

ALTHOUGH HE’D HAVE RATHER stayed and worked beside Jo Dubray, who was far too petite to be wielding a hammer so ably, Ryan went outside, argued briefly with his sister and headed home to get the supplies he needed to work on the bathroom.

He hated doing plumbing. Wood was his passion. He liked building and restoring equally. Rebuilding a curving banister in an old house, recreating the molding that would have framed tall windows in the 1890s, baring and polishing and laying hardwood floors, those he enjoyed.

But for his sister and Emma, he’d do anything. And why not? Now that his kids had moved a couple thousand miles away with their mother and her new husband, his weekends and evenings would be damn empty if it weren’t for Kathleen and Emma. What they hadn’t realized was that he needed them more than they needed him.

By the time he got back Jo had managed to remove the entire subfloor and replace parts of it with thick plywood. She’d left the plumbing and glimpses of the downstairs ceilings exposed. As he dropped his first load, he heard the distant sound of a saw, but didn’t see her.

Heading back downstairs for another load of PVC pipes, he grimaced. Damn it, he’d had better things in mind for this weekend. Indian summer, the end of September, the day glowed with golden warmth that had chased away the night’s chill. He’d intended to start with a run around Green Lake, then pick up the damn apples rotting on his lawn and finally mow it, he hoped for the last time this fall.

Well, hell. Maybe plumbing didn’t sound so bad after all. Especially not with an interesting woman popping into the bathroom to check on him. Maybe bringing him a can of soda, commiserating if he scraped a knuckle, admiring his muscles—he thought he’d caught her doing that already.

He’d wondered about his sister’s taste in roommates after meeting Helen Schaefer and her sad little girl. Pity and kindness had a place, but he figured Kathleen had enough to handle with Emma. Did she have to take on a befuddled, grieving woman and her painfully insecure child, too?

“Wait until you meet Jo,” Kathleen kept saying. “You’ll like her.”

Jo. The name sounded masculine enough that he’d pictured a man/woman, like the high school vice-principal who’d scared the crap out of every kid who’d ever considered pulling a prank, if not worse. Jo, he now realized, must be short for something feminine and French, like Josephine.

Five foot four or so, she wasn’t unusually short, but her bone structure was delicate. Ryan bet he could span her waist with his hands. Yet she crackled with energy and intelligence, making him wonder if she ever completely relaxed. Her big brown eyes, assessing and judging, were the farthest thing from pansy soft. Her hair, a deep, mahogany brown, was thick and straight and shiny, cut in a bob below her jawline. She had a habit he guessed was unconscious of shoving it back with impatience that seemed characteristic.

He didn’t mind that about her. In fact, Ryan preferred smart, strong women. Funny, considering his sister irritated the piss out of him. Nonetheless, when married he’d have rather his wife had slapped him than wept.

So how the hell had he ended up married to a woman who seeped tears more easily than he adjusted the angle of a saw cut?

Old news. Old failure. Mouth set, he dumped a load of pipes and fittings and started back for more. Why thinking about Jo Dubray and the sharp, interested way she looked at him had evolved into self-recrimination about an ended marriage, Ryan didn’t know. Couldn’t he imagine kissing a woman without relating it to his marriage? Damn it, maybe all he wanted was a lover!

He worked all day, taking a brief break for a sandwich. He had to cut a hole in the wall in the downstairs bathroom, which had Kathleen shrugging.

“We have to wallboard anyway.”

“This floor is probably rotting, too,” he said.

She stared at the toilet with the expression of someone who’d just seen a tarantula scuttling out of sight. Or someone who’d imagined herself sitting on a toilet when it plummeted through the rotten floor.

“I guess we could go ahead with this room, too,” she decided, deep reluctance in her voice. “Next weekend. If, um…” The words stuck in her throat. “If you can help.”

He grinned and slapped her on the back. “Didn’t think you could spit it out.”

“Ryan!” she warned.

Laughing, he said, “Yeah. I’ll be here Saturday morning.”

He didn’t see Jo again until he was ready for the new toilet upstairs. She’d already cut out the piece of plywood it would sit on, and he helped cut the hole around the flange. Together, they nailed it down, the rhythmic beat of their hammers somehow companionable.

“Are you planning to lay vinyl yourself?” he asked.

“Tile,” she told him. “It’s downstairs.”

“So I can’t install the toilet.”

“I guess not.”

“You know this job is going to take you days,” he said, frowning.

Jo nodded. “But we can take a bath—carefully—if you get the plumbing done.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. Okay.”

Crazy women, thinking they could gut a bathroom on Saturday and be washing and primping in it by Monday morning. Had any of them ever tiled before? Did they understand the necessity of letting the grout dry and then sealing it?

Jo did reappear a time or two during the afternoon, although her visits were strictly practical. He saw no sign she was lusting after his sweaty self. Maybe he’d imagined any spark of interest.

Maybe he should ask her to dinner and find out.

He’d have to think about that some, he decided. He’d dated a few times since his divorce, and hadn’t enjoyed any of the experiences.

When he was ready, they laid more plywood and then nailed up wallboard. Miraculously, by early evening he pronounced the bathroom ready for tiling and fixtures.

Admiring his work, Kathleen asked with unusual meekness, “Could you possibly help carry the tub upstairs before you go?”

He stared incredulously. “What, the three of you were planning to do it if I hadn’t happened to be around?”

She stiffened. “I thought we could bribe the teenage boy next door to help.”

“Is it cast iron? Do you know what the damn thing must weigh?”

She flushed. “We’re stronger than we look.”

“Are you?” He scowled at her. “And where is Emma? I haven’t seen her all day.”

His sister looked behind her and saw that they were alone. With a sigh, she admitted, “We had a fight. No, not a fight. She got mad. I can’t seem to do anything right.”

As irked as he was with her, Ryan wasn’t going to judge her parenting. He took the chance of laying an arm over her shoulders and giving his too-proud sister a quick hug. “You did one thing right. You left Ian.”