nodded.
“I don’t think we can expect dinner here,” he said wryly.
Jo gave another, less self-conscious laugh. “Actually, it’s Helen’s night. Lucky for her and Ginny.”
His deep chuckle felt pleasantly like a brush of a calloused finger on the skin of her nape. Jo loved his voice.
“Let’s make our getaway,” he said, grasping her elbow and steering her toward the stairs. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
“No.”
Masterful men usually irritated her. This one gave a wry smile and she crumpled. Ah, well. She hadn’t been charmed in too long.
She had to scramble to get up in the cab of his long-bed pickup truck. She’d noticed that weekend how spotlessly clean and shiny it was. The interior was as immaculate. Either he’d just bought it, or he loved his truck.
He’d be appalled if he saw the interior of her Honda, with fast-food wrappers spilling out of the garbage sack, books piled on the seats and dust on the dashboard. To her, a car was a convenience, no more, no less. You made sure it had oil changes so it would keep running, not because lavishing care on a heap of metal had any emotional return.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, starting the powerful engine.
She looked around pointedly. “That you’re a very tidy man.”
He shrugged. “I like everything in its place.”
Jo liked to be able to find things when she wanted them. Not the same.
“You and your sister.”
“She’s gotten better.” He sounded apologetic.
“I put away groceries. She rearranges them behind me. Alphabetically.” That had freaked Jo out. Who had time to care whether tomato soup sat to the right or left of cream of mushroom?
“She’s always been…compulsive.” The crease between his brows deepened again. “She and Ian had this showplace. Housecleaning staff. Kathleen made gourmet meals, entertained brilliantly, ran half a dozen charities with one hand tied behind her back. When she does something, it’s perfectly.”
His echo of Emma’s cry had to be deliberate.
“Was she always like that?”
He handled the huge pickup effortlessly on the narrow city streets, lined on each side with parked cars. Porch lights were coming on, although kids still rode skateboards on the sidewalks.
“Yes and no. Kathleen was a hard act to follow.” He glanced at Jo. “She’s two years older. Always straight A’s. The teachers beamed at mention of her, probably groaned once they knew me. She was…ambitious. Dad’s a welder at the shipyards, laid-off half the time, Mom was a waitress. Kathleen wanted better.”
Jo had begun to feel uncomfortable again. Did he think she was criticizing his sister, that he had to explain her?
“I like Kathleen,” she said, not sure if it was true, but feeling obligated.
They were heading south on Roosevelt, a busy one-way street, almost to the University district, which she had yet to explore at any length.
Ryan didn’t seem to read anything into her slightly prickly comment. “I like her, too. Most of the time. I admire her. Sometimes she bugs the hell out of me.”
He turned right a couple of blocks and into a parking lot across the street from a restaurant called Pagliacci’s. A big multiplex movie theater was next door.
“Eaten here?” he asked.
Jo shook her head. “I’ve grabbed lunch a couple of times at places farther down University. Thai or Mongolian.”
“Pagliacci’s has good pizza. For pasta, my favorite is Stella’s over by the Metro or Trattoria Mitchelli’s, down near Pioneer Square. Owned by the same people, I hear.”
“I love pizza,” she confessed. “I haven’t tried to find a good place yet in Seattle.”
As they waited on the sidewalk for a cluster of college students to exit, Ryan asked, “Why Seattle?”
“The UW has a great graduate program in librarianship. It’s supposed to be one of the best. That’s what I wanted.”
He gave her a teasing grin. “You sound like Kathleen.”
“I’m ambitious, too,” Jo admitted. “Just not…”
When she hesitated, he finished for her, “Compulsive?”
“Neat.” Jo laughed up at him as he held open the door for her. “Does that scare you?”
“Would I have to wade across your room?”
She let him steer her to the counter, his hand at her waist.
“Maybe,” she confessed, before slanting a sidelong look at him. “Assuming you had any reason to be walking across my bedroom.”
“You never know,” he murmured, head bent, his breath warm on her ear. “What do you want?”
You. Lord, how close she came to saying that out loud! She was especially embarrassed when she realized he’d effortlessly shifted gears from flirtation and was asking what kind of pizza she wanted to order.
“I like plain cheese, veggie or everything. You decide.”
“Veggie is good.” He bought a pitcher of beer and they found a table up a step toward the back, where the space was quieter, more intimate.
Talking to him was easy, listening easier yet. With that voice, he should have been a DJ. Jo had heard of couples having telephone sex during long separations, and never thought the idea had any appeal. With Ryan Grant, it might.
Assuming they got to sex in the first place.
She thought the chances were good they would. Unless it turned out he was hunting for wife number two to bear him two-point-five children.
In which case, alas, it wasn’t to be.
He talked about his business, the personalities among his crews, the irritations of dealing with homeowners who changed their minds every five minutes and couldn’t seem to remember to pay bills.
“But, hey,” he said finally, with a grin, “they let me play with their houses, so who am I to complain?”
Jo could just imagine how Kathleen would react to that attitude. “A man who has bills of his own to pay?” she suggested.
“There is that.” He was silent for a moment, hand cradling a mug of beer. “Why are you aiming to be a librarian?”
“Because I already am one.” She let out a huff of breath. “But without the graduate degree, I wasn’t paid like one, and couldn’t keep advancing.”
