Everybody's Hero

His eyes narrowed. “It’s the sex thing, isn’t it?”

She whirled around. “What?”

“You don’t know what to do about this attraction between us, so you’re picking a fight with me.”

“I’m not picking a fight with you. And this has nothing to do with…that. I just asked you a simple question. How many hours a week do you work?”

“And how is this any of your business—?”

“Sixty? Seventy?”

Joe’s jaw tightened. “Somewhere in there, yeah.”

She turned, brows arched. “And you don’t think you’re a workaholic?”

“No, I think I’m somebody who can’t stand the thought of letting people down who depend on me.”

“And what the hell do you think you did when you didn’t pick Seth up on time tonight?”

Though spoken barely above a whisper, her words exploded around him like buckshot. And Joe wasn’t real partial to picking buckshot out of his butt. Man, if this was what she was like when she wasn’t picking a fight, he’d sure hate to be around her when she was.

“I didn’t have a choice, Taylor. You know that.”

“There’s always a choice! And right now, that kid needs you! Not what your paycheck can buy him!”

And what he didn’t need was this woman in his face about this, a fact the chili was only too vigorously corroborating. Direct was one thing; deranged was something else entirely. Except Joe was as ornery as she was. He’d never in his life walked away from a challenge, and he wasn’t about to start now. Even if he didn’t have a clue in hell what this one was even about. His manhood, maybe. His honor, definitely. But there was more going on here than a simple disagreement about lifestyle choice.

“Maybe I do have a choice. In theory. Doesn’t always pan out that way in practice, though.”

“You’re saying it’s not about the money?”

“Hell, yes, it’s about the money. You think I’d put Seth through this if it wasn’t about the money?”

That seemed to take the wind out of her sails for a moment. But only for a moment.

“Then what?”

Joe silently uttered a word he didn’t think Taylor would appreciate. What the hell had he gotten himself into? Baby-sitting and chili, that’s all this was supposed to be about, not a hot-and-heavy game of sexual dodgeball followed by his having to defend himself about stuff that had nothing to do with her. The last thing he wanted was to talk about his personal life, but God only knew what conclusions she’d come to on her own if he didn’t. Why he should care one way or the other what she thought about him, he had no idea. That he did was no small source of worry, but it was a worry he’d have to deal with later. Because right now, his choice was to bare his own soul, at least to a certain extent, or pry hers open. That, however, was an even less palatable option than door number one, since the tiny glimpse he’d already gotten into that soul had nearly undone him. A longer, deeper look could be disastrous. And Joe had all the disasters he could handle right now, thank you very much.

“Seth’s not my only responsibility,” he said with as little expression as he could manage. “Because, when my father walked out of my life and my mother’s, fifteen years ago, he also left behind a three-week-old baby girl with Down syndrome. My sister Kristen.”

Chapter 5

Instantly, Taylor’s high horse not only threw her, but took off for parts unknown. “Oh, Joe—”

He put up a hand to stop her. “Kristen’s only moderately retarded, but my mother realized she couldn’t go back to work and still give my sister the kind of attention she needed, so she had to take an unpaid leave of absence from her teaching job. My going to work was the only way we’d’ve made it.”

Taylor frowned. “But you couldn’t have been more than, what, eighteen?”

“Seventeen. My last year of high school.”

“Don’t tell me you quit?”

The horror in her voice coaxed a smile from his lips. “Mom would’ve had five fits if I’d tried. But I had to work. We got some help from the state for Kristen’s care, but it wasn’t enough. So, since construction paid a helluva lot better than fast food, I worked as a framer during the day and finished up high school at night. Oh, for God’s sake…don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t want your sympathy, Taylor. I did what I had to do, that’s all.”

Lord, how many times had she heard those words, or variations on that theme? “And you still are, I take it?”

“Yeah. I am. Kristen’s had the best care and training available, Mom made sure of that, but she’s never going to be able to live completely on her own or earn a living wage. And she’s got a heart condition that needs constant monitoring. Even though Mom was able to go back to teaching once Kristen started school, you know what teachers’ salaries are like. And anyway, she’s not going to be able to work forever. A good chunk of my earnings goes into a trust fund for Kristen. For later.”

When their gazes locked this time, it wasn’t about sex. Taylor carted his empty bowl to the sink, wondering how admiration and aggravation could be so closely linked. But the question was, what was she aggravated about? Joe’s dadblasted insistence on shouldering so much responsibility, or her own dadblasted weakness for men with such broad shoulders?

“What are you thinking?” he asked as she smacked up the faucet to wash the bowl.

“Why does it matter what I think?” she said over the running water.

“I don’t know. It just does. So humor me.”

The water groaned off, then she twisted around, her arms linked over her middle. “I think…” She blew out a sigh. “I think I owe you an apology, for one thing. For giving you grief when I didn’t have all the facts.” She hesitated, then said, “But when I taught in Houston, I’d see kids who’d have every gadget on the market, the best clothes, every privilege imaginable, but there’d be something in their eyes, this…enormous, gaping void, that just ripped me to pieces. Nine times out of ten, I’d eventually find out their parents weren’t in the picture as much as the kids needed them to be. It kills me to see a kid being neglected. Especially when the parent has no idea that’s what he’s doing.”

“Like…your father?” he said softly.

She smiled. “I guess I’m a little hypersensitive about the issue.”

Was it her imagination, or did his eyes narrow? “S’ okay,” he said. “I understand.”

“I imagine you do,” she said, and their gazes brushed up against each other, just for a moment. Just long enough, apparently, for him to decide it was high time he got out of there.

“Well,” he said, rising, “we’ve all got to get up pretty early, so we’d better get going.”

She walked him through the living room her older sister Erika had pronounced spartan the one time she’d come to visit and out onto the porch, the screen door slamming behind them. Seth lay on his stomach in the grass underneath the mulberry tree, talking to Oakley, who frankly didn’t appear all that captivated with the conversation.

“Time to go,” Joe shouted across the yard.

The kid scrambled to his feet. “C’n I use the bathroom first?”

“We’ll be back at the Double Arrow in two minutes, can’t you hold it?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Go on, then.” After the kid trooped back inside, Joe turned to Taylor. “Well. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.”

“Any time. No, I mean that,” she said when he snorted. Oakley had dragged himself up onto the porch and flopped down at her feet with a groan. One echoed silently inside her as her heart shoved her right smack in the line of fire, all the while her head was yelling, Have you lost your mind? But apparently there were certain aspects of a person’s makeup that could not be altered, no matter how desperately you might want to. No matter how fervently Taylor might have wanted to be a practical person, in the end her heart always made her decisions for her. “I’m happy to take Seth after day camp, if you need an emergency baby-sitter.”