He thinks I’m brilliant. Besides, it pays to have children believe their parents just might have special powers, or eyes in the backs of their heads. At least until they’re old enough to know better than to touch matches or play with unknown dogs, or take candy from strangers. Right now, I’m omnipotent to Zachary, and he believes everything that comes out of my mouth. Believes and obeys. And that’s the way I’m going to keep it, at least until he’s heading for college.”
“How old is he? Nine? Ten?”
“Nine and three-quarters,” Janna told him, pulling a face. “I’m running out of time, aren’t I? I mean, last week he asked me how he got here.” She rolled her eyes. “I told him, of course, as you should always answer serious questions truthfully, but I didn’t say much—no more than he’d asked. But I won’t say it isn’t hard for a mother and son, especially in situations like that. There are times when I miss Mark so much….”
Then she grinned again, her eyes coming alive once more. “Here we are. How good are you with a caulk gun?”
Ryan didn’t answer for a moment. He was too busy thinking about what Allie had said. What was it? Oh, yes, something about Janna Monroe putting on those bright colors and happy smiles to hide something sad inside her. How he hated when his grandmother was right.
And then there was the fact that he had, without really noticing, somehow walked down the hallway and straight into what could only be Janna’s bedroom.
This room, compared to the other rooms he had seen, seemed plain, almost stark. A virgin room, with a single bed, and no sign of color or froufrou lace he’d come to expect in a woman’s bedroom.
For all the verve, the color, the absolute joy of the rest of the house, this room could have been plucked straight from an eighteenth-century nunnery.
Yes, Ryan told himself. This was a woman who held a few secret sorrows. A widow with a son and a lot of memories she was either trying to banish or hold to herself, cling to by not surrounding herself with womanly things, loverlike things.
“Ryan—yoo-hoo? Caulk guns? Are you familiar with them?”
He looked at the thing Janna was now waving in front of his face. Big. Gray metal. Sort of like a gun, but not like a gun. And totally incomprehensible to him as to how the thing could and should be used.
He gently pushed the caulk gun to one side, so that it was no longer pointed at him, even if it wasn’t loaded. “My mother never allowed me to play with guns,” he said, hoping a little levity—no matter how bad—might defuse this potentially embarrassing situation.
“You don’t know, do you?” Janna asked, but he could tell that it was a rhetorical question, so he didn’t answer. “Do you want to learn?”
“Why don’t you ask me if I want a root canal? That answer might be yes, as it seems more painless. What do you do with that thing?”
Janna proceeded to demonstrate, loading a container of caulk into the gun and then motioning for Ryan to follow her into the bathroom.
“Gun, tub. Caulk, crack. Aim, fire,” she said, each word punctuated by hand movements that certainly brought her point across, but that did nothing to make Ryan feel as if she were Tom Sawyer and he should now be looking longingly at a pail of whitewash and a mile of fence.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Janna tipped back an imaginary cowboy hat with the plastic tip of the caulk insert, then rubbed a hand under her nose as she leaned against the shower stall. “Whatsa matter, bucko? You chicken? Here,” she declared, all but throwing the caulk gun into his hands. “I’ll even hum the theme from High Noon, if that will help.”
Chicken? How dare she…how dare she laugh at him! And look so damn cute while she did it, which only made him angrier than he’d been, and he had been getting pretty peeved at this whole idea. Cleaning a garage was one thing. Not a great thing, but he had felt some stupid sense of accomplishment once the chore had been completed. But to be dared—pretty close to double-dared—into getting down on his hands and knees inside a cramped shower stall and shooting gunk into the cracks between the bright-pink tiles?
Not in this lifetime, he wasn’t!
Yes, he was. Because she had dared him, and the twinkle in her huge brown eyes told him she already knew she’d won.
Janna stepped past him, back into the hall. “I don’t think I can watch this. I’ll be downstairs, starting the grill for lunch. You do like charbroiled hamburgers, don’t you?”
“If I said I was hypoglycemic and needed red meat now, would you let me start the grill and kill the shower stall after lunch?”
Janna tipped her head to one side, considering his offer. “You’re not, are you? Really hypoglycemic, that is? No, of course you’re not. But I have to hand it to you, that was a good excuse. Just don’t ever repeat it around Zach, okay?”
“So I get to start the fire?” Ryan asked, wondering if he sounded as pathetic as he felt. Here he was, a grown man, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to do a simple household repair. But then, why should he? He’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, and had never done any more onerous chores than making up his own bed. He didn’t know if he could justify his lack of mechanical skills, or if he was just plain embarrassed by that lack.
Either way, he figured starting a gas grill won hands down over caulking tub tile.
“Tell you what. You start the fire and I’ll caulk the tiles. Deal?” Janna said, and if she was laughing at him or rescuing him he didn’t know. He just knew he felt a sudden urge to grab her up, kiss her senseless for her compassion.
Still, like a man fighting over a lunch check, he did the polite thing and responded, “No, no. There’s no need. I can fix the tile after lunch. Really.”
“Really?” Janna shot right back at him. “Now, is it my turn to say you shouldn’t be silly, that I’ll do it? Because if it is, you’re plain out of luck, bucko, because you’re on. You can do the job after lunch.” She put down the caulk gun, laying it carefully on a plush rug with a huge pink rose sort of blossoming in the middle of it. “I’m feeling filthy after wading through the dirt in the garage. I think I’ll just go take a shower in the other bathroom, then come downstairs when I smell the burgers cooking.”
Ryan watched her go, tried very hard not to imagine her in the shower. Her wet skin glistening. One of those weird “net” things all soapy as she ran it over her skin.
Down her arm. Across her legs.
Bending to soap her leg.
He closed his eyes tight, tried to banish the image. Shame, shame, shame on him.
Go downstairs and light the fire? He wouldn’t even have to turn on the propane. Hell, all he’d have to do was look at the coals and they’d ignite!
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