in a flyspeck of a town, I bought an eighty-year-old house that I swear was made by the first little pig, and last month I picked up a sequined evening dress at a garage sale just because it was pretty.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Hello? Where would I wear a sequined dress around here? To one of Didi’s potlucks?”
Joe angled his head. “Don’t tell me you never leave Haven. Not even for a night out now and again?”
She flushed. “Well…no. I mean, sure, I suppose I could. It’s just been a while since I have. God. That really sounds pathetic, doesn’t it?”
They stared at each other so long and so hard a blind person—in China—could have seen the sexual sparks leaping between them.
Joe sighed. Then chuckled, a low, warm, rough sound that did a real number on her nerve endings.
“Um…we’ve got a problem, don’t we?” she said.
“Only if we act on it.”
“Are we thinking about acting on it?”
“Don’t know about you, but I am. A helluva lot more than I’ve got any right to.” He leaned back in the chair, one wrist propped on the table. “I don’t suppose…”
“No,” she said, waving her hands in front of her. “I was just…curious. If I was imagining things.”
“You’re not. But I’m not looking for…entanglements.”
That was relief she felt, right? Sitting like a lump in the pit of her stomach? “No, of course you aren’t. Because you’re only here for the summer.”
“Right. And I’m not much for starting things I can’t finish.”
“Not to mention that you’ve got enough on your plate already. With Seth.”
A fraction of a second shuddered between them before he said, “Exactly.”
“Well,” she said. “That’s good then. That we got this out in the open.” Oh, yeah, let’s hear it for responsible adulthood.
“Just what I was thinking.” His gaze nestled up to hers and settled right in. “So nobody has to wonder. About what might happen.”
“Right.”
“Sure can’t help wondering what it would feel like to kiss you, though.”
A short laugh burst from her throat even as her eyes—the traitors—zinged right to his mouth. “Did you really mean to say that out loud?” she said, looking at his mouth.
“Just figured you for the type of woman who likes to know where things stand.”
Heaven knew how long she stood there, staring at his mouth and thinking wayward thoughts, before she finally said, “This is true.” Then she added, because it seemed like another one of those good ideas, “But it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“No. It wouldn’t.” His brow creased. “Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because if the kiss was good, I’m not sure I’d want to stop.”
His eyebrows practically shot straight up off his face.
“Did I shock you?” Taylor said.
“No. Of course not. After all, why shouldn’t a woman—”
“—be just as sexually up-front as a man? I agree.” Then she leaned forward. “My divorce was nearly four years ago. I’ve been celibate since. You do the math.”
His stare was hard and long and impossible to misread. “You’re not making this any easier.”
“Just letting you know I’m probably not the safest bet to fool around with if you’re not looking for entanglements.”
“Real dry kindling, I take it.”
“Oh, buddy, you have no idea.”
Praise the Lord, Seth chose that moment to wander into the kitchen, because if they continued this conversation any longer, she was going to pull a Meg Ryan-in-the-deli right there and then. And she wouldn’t be faking it.
“C’n Oakley come outside with me?” he asked.
Taylor smiled. “If he wants to, sure.”
Apparently the dog did, since he actually roused himself with something resembling enthusiasm and followed the boy outside. Joe got up from the table to watch them through the kitchen window. “I know this was all unplanned,” he said quietly, and the atmosphere calmed down enough for them to function like rational adults instead of bonkers bunnies, “but I think being here is doing him some good. Having something else to focus on besides his pain.”
Taylor came up beside him—but not too close—just in time to see Oakley bring the boy a stick to throw. Seth took hold of it willingly enough, but when the dog wouldn’t let go, he gave up, plopping himself back onto the ground to mess with the car.
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“He’s actually playing with the car. He wanted the dog to come out with him. Believe me, that’s an improvement. And I have to think part of it’s because he’s in a real home, even if only for a little while.” He glanced at her and then back out the window. “We can’t let that happen again.”
Confused, she looked up at the side of his face. “What?”
A muscle flinched in his jaw. “Flirt like that. Because right now, I can’t let myself get sidetracked from getting that little kid healed up.” He rubbed his chin and then slipped his hand back in his pocket, still not looking at her. “Because it’s been a long time for me, too.”
The longing in his voice wrapped itself right around her heart, a longing she suspected went way beyond sex. “Ah. Got it. Um, should I step away?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
So she did. Then she said, “You don’t have a real home?”
“Oh, I’ve got a place in Tulsa.” Joe walked away from the window and sank back down at the table, his legs stretched out in front of him. “An apartment I’m rarely in. So I’ve never really bothered to fix it up much. Besides, since it took me the better part of two weeks to sort out the mess my father left behind, we came straight from Oklahoma City—where I picked Seth up—to here. Kid’s been living in a motel of one kind or another for nearly a month. That can’t be helping him any.”
Taylor unhooked her gaze from Joe’s and again looked out the window, at the sad little boy now sitting under a tree, absently watching one of the robins. And once again, she felt herself being sucked in by the vulnerability edging Joe’s words, by her own inability to resist wanting to help. But she didn’t want to get sucked in, dammit, by either the kid or his big brother, didn’t want to give in to impulses she knew would bring nothing but aggravation and heartache. Because there’d been a time when she
