Читать книгу: «Playing For Keeps»

Chapter 1

If Joanna Swann had learned nothing else in her thirty-two years, it was that bad news rarely came à la carte. If one thing went wrong, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop. This phone call, however, had to make at least the thirty-fourth shoe to drop within the past few weeks, which was sorely taxing her good humor.

For a single bright, glistening moment, the temptation to leave her three children to fend for themselves and to take to her bed was nearly overwhelming. However she scraped together her last ounce of reserve and said, “Mr. Shaw—” she tried to place her relatively new neighbor, but all she was getting was a beer belly and a cowboy hat large enough to shelter a family of six “—how is that even possible? Chester doesn’t even come up to Glady’s knees. Let alone her—”

“I saw ’em with my own eyes! Right out here in my own goddamn backyard! Your goddamn dog got up on the top step of my goddamn back porch and got my bitch pregnant! We were just about to have her bred, too, and we were counting on that income! You have any idea how much a Great Dane puppy with papers brings?”

Her neck muscles cramped from cradling the cordless between her jaw and her shoulder as she tossed Bob the Builder fruit snacks into the boys’ lunch boxes. Joanna glared at the fur bag lying with his head on his paws, bushy white eyebrows twitching. Damn dog had been nothing but trouble from the moment her ex-husband had brought him home for the kids’ Christmas present, year before last. Without consulting her first, natch. And if the kids hadn’t been so attached to the mangy beast, he would’ve long since been history. His manners were atrocious, his libido embarrassingly healthy, and there hadn’t been a fence or wall invented he couldn’t dig out of. But Chester was purebred, so Bobby had said it didn’t make sense to get him fixed until they’d put him out to stud a few times, at least. Apparently, Chester had decided to take the initiative on his own.

Heaven help them, this was going be one butt-ugly batch of puppies.

“No, Mr. Shaw,” Joanna said, eyeing the clock and frowning—Bobby was late picking up the kids for school. Again. “I have no idea how much—”

“Six hundred bucks a pop, that’s how much! And Gladys always has at least ten pups! That means I’m out six thousand dollars, lady. So what’re you gonna do about it?”

“Me?” she squeaked, the sleep-deprivation fog lifting just enough for her to realize where this conversation was going. Glowering, she dumped out an inch of murky water from the bowl she’d left on the counter last night to catch the drip from the leaky roof. “You expect me to compensate you for an…an…accident?”

“Damn straight I expect you to compensate me! Wasn’t my dog that got out, it was yours! Your fault—you have to pay up. We can go to petty court if you like, but that’d only add court costs to what you already owe me. So I’ll be sending you a bill soon as Gladys delivers.”

Wham! went the receiver in her ear just as the father of her three children picked that inauspicious moment to drag his sorry hide through her back door.

“Next time you bring me an unneutered dog, Bobby Alvarez, make sure he knows how to use a condom!” And long as the gun was loaded, might as well get off another round. “And where the hell have you been? Kids!” she bellowed in the general direction of their rooms. “Your father’s here!”

“Whoa, babe, back up.” Bobby dug a blue-and-red-striped tie from the pocket of his top-of-the-line JCPenney sportsjacket, threading it through his shirt collar. “What’s this about the dog and condoms?”

Joanna pointed to Chester, whose eyebrows twitched some more.

“That…thing knocked up the neighbor’s Great Dane.”

Bobby stopped knotting his tie to grin at the dog. “Chester! My man!” He bent at the knees, extending one hand. “Give me five!” The dog hesitated, then belly-crawled to Bobby, eyeing Joanna warily as he shook hands with the only person in the room who currently didn’t wish to see him stuffed. Bobby did the praising thing, then sidled over to the coffeemaker. “This fresh?”

Fumbling to hook an earring one-handed into her left lobe, Joanna gulped down the cold remnants of her first cup of coffee, refusing to let the crooked, charming, you-wouldn’t-really-smack-somebody-this-cute-wouldja? look in those hot-fudge eyes get to her.

“Touch that coffee and die. And since you find your dog’s sexual escapades so amusing, then I guess it’s okay to send the bill to you.”

“Bill?”

“Yeah, bill. As in, for the loss of what would have been a purebred litter. For which the mother-to-be’s daddy is suing me. Us. Which is just what I need on top of the roof leaking. Again. And why the hell are you late?”

“How can you be mad at me for so many things in one breath?”

“A time-saving strategy fine-honed after nine years of marriage. Well?”

“Hey, I’m really sorry, babe. But Tori—”

“And don’t even try to blame this on your girlfriend—”

“Fiancée.”

Joanna reeled for a second or two as shoe number thirty-five bounced off her head. “Since when?”

Something almost like apology flickered in his eyes. “Last night. I mean, this probably isn’t the best time to spring this on you—”

“No, no…” Joanna inserted the second earring. “Now, later, whenever. Congratulations. I guess. Although that’s neither here nor there,” she added, scrambling to get back up on her high horse. “The whole point of my asking you to take the kids to school today was so I could get to my appointment on time…dammit, what are they doing?” Joanna tromped across the kitchen’s tiled floor, her curly hair boinging around her face and annoying the life out of her. “Dulcy! Matt! Ryder! Now!”

“Jo,” Bobby said behind her. “It’s been more than three years since we split up. Time at least one of us moved on.”

Joanna whirled around at the precise moment the dog decided to shuffle back across the kitchen floor. Right in front of her. She clutched the edge of the counter, sloshing coffee all over her left boob. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin and started rubbing at the spot, even though some small, tired part of her brain knew coffee and peach cotton did not mix. She glared at Bobby as her breast jiggled from the onslaught. “One word about wanting to help and you’re dead meat,” she said, then added, “As for your moving on…as I recall, you did that before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.”

“You’re still pissed about the dog, aren’t you?”

“The dog, the roof, your being late…take your pick. Oh, and Ryder’s teacher called. She wants us to come in for a conference.”

To give Bobby credit, concern flashed across his features. “I thought he was doing better this year.”

“Yeah, well, so did I. But apparently not. So believe me, your getting married again doesn’t even make the short list. But honestly, Bobby…” Joanna gave up on the rubbing and looked at her ex. “Can Tori even vote yet?”

“She’s twenty-one, for God’s sake. Besides, in some ways she’s older than I am—”

Which, Joanna thought uncharitably, wasn’t all that much of a stretch.

“—and she’s pregnant.”

At this rate Joanna could open a damn shoe store. “Well,” she said after a moment, “at least no one’s holding Chester accountable for that puppy.”

“That’s why I’m late,” Bobby said, ignoring her. “Tori was so sick this morning, she didn’t want me to leave.”

Oh, no. Uh-uh. Not that she didn’t genuinely feel badly for Bobby’s girlfriend, who clearly had no idea what she was getting herself into. But no way was Joanna about to let sympathy sully the righteous indignation she’d spent the past half hour polishing to a high gloss.

“You are totally out of your mind,” she said.

The corners of Bobby’s mouth pulled down. “Why do you say that? You know how much I love kids.”

“Yeah. I also know you barely make enough to support the ones you already have. Not to mention this problem you have with picking them up on time.”

“I told you—”

“I don’t just mean this morning. I mean…oh, never mind,” Joanna said as her daughter and twin sons finally came trooping into the kitchen, huge grins erupting on their faces when they saw their father. All three began chattering at once, even though they talked to their father every single night and spent every weekend with him. Joanna watched the interaction with an aching heart, thinking, as she had many, many times since the divorce, what a shame it was that the man was so pitifully clueless in every other aspect of his life but this.

He really did love his kids. Of that, she’d never had a single doubt. For that, she’d be eternally grateful. But their marriage had been built on the sands of impulse and boredom and infatuation; its collapse had been inevitable from their wedding day. That he seemed about to embark on the journey with someone new…

None of your business, Joanna. Let go.

So she kissed each of her dark-haired babies goodbye, slipping in an extra word of encouragement for Ryder who, thank goodness, wasn’t complaining about his stomach hurting this morning. The kids filed out the back door, Joanna barely noticing the sheet of paper on the counter in time to call Bobby back. He eyed it as if it was a snake coiled for attack. And rightfully so.

“What’s that?”

“Plumber’s bill. I already paid it, so you owe me half.”

His eyes twitched to hers. “I told you I’d fix that leak—”

“That was two weeks ago, Bobby. What was I supposed to do? Go without the second toilet until you ‘got around’ to fixing it?”

“It’s just things are kinda tight right now, y’know?”

“Oh, forget it!” Joanna snatched the bill out of his hand. “I don’t know why I bother trying to get you to do anything—”

“Dammit, Jo—there you go with the drama queen act again.” He stuck out his hand. “Give me the bill. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”

“And what about the roof? And taking care of Chester’s little indiscretion? And Mrs. Kellogg wants me to set up that appointment ASAP—”

“Jeez, Jo—why can’t we deal with one thing at a time?”

“Because life doesn’t hand me one thing at a time!”

He let out a heavy sigh, then gestured toward the bill again. “Give me the damn bill,” he said quietly. “I’ll call you later about the other stuff. I swear.”

She passed it back to him, even though she knew he’d put it somewhere and never look at it again.

“Da-ad!”

“I’m there, sweetheart,” he shouted to his daughter. He turned back to Jo, that damn smile spreading across olive-skinned features a little less sharply defined than they had been in his twenties despite the field of one-inch black spikes jutting from his scalp. Figured he’d manage to get younger-looking as time passed, while Jo was rapidly approaching hagdom. “You know, babe, you really gotta trust me a little more.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. And I don’t mean the calling me ‘babe’ part, although that’s not exactly winning you points, either.”

He shrugged off her comment, the gesture of a man determined to never let the turkeys—or anybody else—get him down. Then his eyes tangled with hers. “You know I wanted to have more kids. With you, I mean.”

This, she didn’t need. “Wasn’t in the cards, Bobby.”

“No. I guess not.” Then off he went, leaving Joanna to wonder if it was too early to start drinking. Oh, right. She didn’t drink. An unfortunate oversight on her part.

After a millisecond’s pang of empathy for Tori, she flew down the hall to her bedroom, stripping off the coffee-stained jersey dress as worries pelted her like sleet. Not that, in theory, Bobby’s news was a worry. Joanna hadn’t had a claim on his affections in years. He was free to marry whomever he liked and to have as many kids as he liked. But she knew Bobby and his Trust me, babe…it’ll work out, you’ll see. If he couldn’t handle his responsibilities to her and the kids when they were all still living under one roof, how the hell did he think he was going to add a new wife and child to the mix?

The man couldn’t take anything seriously if his life depended on it. Which ironically was exactly what had appealed to the twenty-year-old Joanna, exhausted from trying to live up to her parents’ expectations. She, however, had come to grips with reality. Bobby Alvarez’s view of “reality” began and ended with Survivor. Hence the divorce.

Hey. It was better than murder.

Now sporting a denim dress she prayed wouldn’t turn her into Melba toast when the cool early October morning gave way to the blistering hot October afternoon, she rammed a pair of silver combs into the chaos that was her hair and sailed back down the hall, ignoring the cyclonized kitchen as she zipped through into the converted garage that served as her workshop. She now had less than forty-five minutes to load up the van and get across town to the hotsytotsy gallery that had agreed to take a couple of her handmade Santa Clauses.

Not that she was thrilled about leaving them on consignment, something she hadn’t done since the early days when she’d been doing well to sell one or two at a craft show here and there. But the High Desert Gallery carried some of the most prestigious names in the Southwest art world. Placing her work there was a coup of no small proportion, well worth the commission she’d pay the gallery for any special orders that resulted. Her mother thought she was insane, looking to take on even more work when she could barely keep up with the orders she had. Yeah, well, Joanna thought, slinging her saddlebag up onto her left shoulder as she carefully lifted the sturdy shopping bag packed with a pair of Father Christmasses off her worktable, she’d given up sanity about the same time she’d stopped wearing panty hose.

She and the bulging bag forged through the small sea of cats who called her rambling Albuquerque North Valley adobe home. Some minutes later she was tearing across Paseo del Norte in the Blue Bomb when her cell phone rang.

Ever since some yahoo yakking on his cell had nearly creamed her after running a red light, Joanna had been none too keen about talking on the phone while driving. But—damn—a glance at the readout revealed her mother’s number.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Glynnie Swann’s voice chirped in her ear when she answered. “Why don’t you swing by and pick me up on your way to the gallery? There’s the most adorable new toy store right by there—Patty Kohler was telling me about it the other day—and since Barbara’s oldest just had another baby, I thought this would save me a trip.”

Why wasn’t her mother at work? Why couldn’t she go get Aunt Barb’s oldest’s baby a present by herself?

“I’m really running late, Mom—”

“I’ll be right in front, so you won’t even have to get out,” Glynnie said, and hung up.

And what had Joanna done in some previous life to merit her present torment?

The word railroading had been invented expressly for her mother, Joanna thought on a weary sigh as she headed into the chamisa and sagebrush-infested Sandia foothills and toward her parents’ new house, hidden so deep among the twisting, turning roads that Joanna managed to get lost every time she drove up here. The wind coming through her open window was making the curls tickle her face; she jabbed at the automatic button, only to realize that, once again, she’d missed a key turnoff.

Even as she realized that, for something that wasn’t supposed to be bothering her, she was sure thinking about Bobby’s news an awful lot. But why? It wasn’t as if she was jealous. And she certainly wasn’t envious.

Her mouth twisted. Okay, so maybe that part wasn’t exactly true, even if she of all people understood all too well the pitfalls of marriage. Such as waking up one morning and looking at the naked man snoring beside you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?

Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.

What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.

She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.

Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…

And…

Well, hell. That was it?

Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.

Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.

“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”

“So does this.”

“But, Jo—”

“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”

“But, honey—”

“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”

Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.

“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”

“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”

“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”

“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”

“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”

“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.

“Nice color,” Jo said.

“You really like it?”

“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”

Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re not off slaying dragons this morning?”

“Because, my dear, your brilliant mother brought a particularly nasty one to its heels yesterday.”

“You’re kidding? Hawthorne versus Northstar? You won?”

“My ego really appreciates your confidence in my abilities.”

“Sorry. But from what I’ve heard, the case was anything but a slam dunk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna caught her mother’s smug grin. “It wasn’t. Which made victory all the sweeter.” The grin widened. “Your father helped me celebrate.”

“With champagne and dinner?”

“That, too.”

Joanna’s already gloomy mood got gloomier. Her mother noticed.

“Okay. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing. Exactly.”

Her mother waited. Joanna sighed. There wasn’t a person alive who could withstand her mother’s let-them-crumble-on-their-own tactic.

“Okay, Bobby came to take the kids to school this morning.”

“No wonder you’re grouchy.”

“I am not grouchy. At least, not just because he came over,” she muttered in response to her mother’s raised brows. “Tori’s pregnant. So they’re getting married. Bobby and Tori.”

“Sounds like a dance team from Lawrence Welk,” her mother said, then added, “What is the child thinking?”

Joanna had to smile. Tori had been temping at her father’s Lexus dealership—as a means of putting herself through college—when Bobby met her. By all accounts, she was bright, focused and mature for her age. How on earth she’d fallen prey to Bobby’s charms was anybody’s guess. But then…

“Ohmigod…Tori’s practically the same age I was.”

Beside her, curls bobbed. “Wondered how long it was going to take for that to click in.” She sensed her mother’s eyes on her face. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. I think. But not because I have any feelings left for Bobby,” she hastily added.

After a moment her mother said, staring out the window, “You remember that blue Ellen Tracy suit I had, the one I gave away about five years ago?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I got rid of it because it no longer fit, for one thing. And I was bored with it, for another.” She turned to Joanna. “But damn if I wasn’t pissed when I saw some woman wearing it a few months later.”

Joanna chuckled. “I get your point. But that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

And without warning, Joanna’s mouth fell open and half of what she’d been thinking that morning flew out. Including, amazingly enough, a lot of the stuff about missing sex.

“Hell,” her mother said, “If it was me, I’d be in the loony bin by now.”

“I could have gone all morning without knowing that.”

“And for somebody so determined to ‘do her own thing’ or whatever they call it these days, you’re the biggest prude I know.”

“That’s not true!”

“Is, too. Honey, Bobby’s moved on. He’s started another family, scary as that thought is. The feelings you’re having are perfectly normal. You need to get out there, go find a man, get—”

“—a life, I know, I know.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Joanna grimaced. “You’re saying I should throw myself back into the dating pool?”

“Ding, ding, ding! And a point to the beautiful woman on my left.”

“Beautiful, my ass.”

“Well, that’s probably pretty nice, too, but I haven’t seen that since you were ten.”

Joanna ignored her. “Right. One slightly worn, slightly droopy, recycled singleton seeks the company—”

Her mother grunted.

“—of a breathing male with a reasonable understanding of personal hygiene, most of his own teeth and at least a moderate grasp on reality.”

“See, that’s your problem. You’re too picky.”

In spite of herself, Joanna laughed as they pulled into the parking lot in front of the gallery. “I suppose the part about having most of his teeth was pushing it.”

“Better they need dentures than Viagra.”

Thinking, Hmm, Joanna parked the car and got out, retrieving the Santas from the back. When she straightened, blowing her hair out of her face, she noticed her mother frowning at her dress.

“What?”

“Somebody needs to go shopping. Bad.”

“Hey. This is New Mexico,” Joanna said. “Denim is always in style.”

Glynnie came as close as she ever did to rolling her eyes.

Dale McConnaughy happened to look out the store window right as the two women got out of the dusty, suburban-blue minivan and just in time to see an explosion of red curls catch fire in the morning sun. The women disappeared inside the art gallery next door, however, before he had a chance to get past the initial Shee-it. Which was just as well, since he had more pressing things to tend to than gawk at a bunch of obviously fake hair. Wonder how much she’d forked over to get that look?

“Excuse me? How much is this? Colton! No! Don’t touch!”

Dale turned to a shell-shocked woman, a newborn strapped to her chest, clutching the handlebar of an SUV-size stroller that had been crammed to the gills with toddlers when she’d arrived a couple minutes ago. Well, only two, actually; one about three and another one maybe a year younger. The older kid, a boy, had immediately screamed to get out, and was now tearing up and down the aisles in a crazed euphoria while his mother shrieked, “Don’t touch!” every thirty seconds or so. Well, hell—let a three-year-old loose in a toy store, what did she think was gonna happen?

“It’s okay, ma’am, it’s not like he can hurt anything—”

Something crashed.

“—too badly,” he finished, as the mother wailed, “Oh, Colton…”

Dale peered over her head, refusing to frown. “It’s just a display of model cars. Uh, son? How about you come over here and play with these puppets? Or the wooden train set—”

“No!”

“—or maybe you’d like to go on outside to the Jump?”

Obviously intrigued, the child ceased his Godzilla impersonation long enough to say, “The Jump?”

His mother, her voice tinged equally with hope and desperation, said, “Oh, he loves to jump.”

“Me, too,” Dale said, ignoring the mother’s quizzical expression as he led the child through the store and on out back where Dale’d set up several wooden swing sets inside the fenced-in area, as well as an enclosed, inflated castle-shaped Moon Jump probably bigger than the kid’s bedroom.

“Cool!” the kid said, and he was off like a shot.

“Is it safe?” his mother said, jiggling the baby who’d just awakened and was making squeaky, fussy sounds. From her stroller, the other toddler let out a single, ear-piercing shriek, just for the hell of it.

“Oh, yeah. And tell you what, ten minutes in that puppy and you won’t here a peep out of him the rest of the morning.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” she said, then asked Dale again for the price of the toy. No sooner had she done so, however, than both babies started to howl in uncomplimentary keys. Judging from the look on Mama’s face, she wasn’t far from that stage herself. Unperturbed—it took a lot more than a couple of bawling kids to shake him up—Dale grabbed a hat out of a box by the counter, a new product he’d been in the process of marking when she’d come in, and plopped it on his head. Then he squatted in front of the older baby.

“Hey, Little Bit,” Dale said softly, reaching up to press the button in the back of his hat. “Get a load of this!”

Tears spiking her lashes, both the baby’s mouth and her big blue eyes popped wide open as she stared at the hat.

Then a soft chortle popped out of her mouth. Then another one, and another, until the store reverberated with the sounds of baby belly laugh. Dale chuckled right back as a pair of pudgy hands shot up toward the hat.

“Mine!”

“I want one, too,” the boy said, staggering back toward them, out of breath and flushed. The littlest one was still squawking her head off, but Dale figured two out of three was pretty good.

Mama apparently thought so, too. She plunked down the educational game she’d been holding and practically twisted herself inside out to get her wallet out of her purse. “I’ll take two of those hats.”

“Don’t you want to know how much they are?”

“Ask me if I care.”

Dale slid behind the counter, grabbed a second hat from the box and took the woman’s charge card just as the two gals he’d seen before barged through the door in a flurry of obvious agitation. At least on the younger one’s part. In fact, that hair of hers seemed to fairly vibrate around her face.

He reminded himself he had customers to tend to, even as he quickly processed how that sack of a dress seemed to swallow up the redhead’s little body. And this could be a long shot, but he was guessing that big shopping bag in her hand had something to do with the severely annoyed look on her face.

“It’s not the end of the world, Jo,” the older woman was saying, the softness of her tone at odds with her I-am-somebody attire. “You said yourself it wasn’t a sure thing.”

“Before I showed them the samples. Not after.” Red glared down at the bag as if she wanted to smack it. Then she glanced around the store, huffed out a sigh and said to the other woman, “Look, you’re the one who needs to shop. Why don’t I just go back out to the car and wait for you?”

No, somebody shouted inside Dale’s head just as the older woman—Red’s mother, maybe?—grabbed her by the arm and pulled her farther into the store. Bless you, the somebody said as Dale went through the here-you-go-have-a-nice-day-now motions associated with sending the mother and her kids on their way. “No,” the blonde was saying. “You need to get something for this baby, too.”

Now that Dale was able to devote his entire attention to the drama unfolding before him, he could see the resemblance between the two women. They were both on the short side, kinda soft and bony at the same time, the way short women sometimes were, with similarly pointed chins and straight noses that curved up, right on the very tips. The older one seemed the type almost obsessed with her appearance in a classy, conservative kind of way, while the younger one—who Dale could now see wasn’t all that young, maybe a few years behind him—looked like one of those women who threw on the first thing that came to hand.

“I’m sure the baby’s nose won’t be out of joint if you pick something out for me,” she was saying. “I haven’t even seen Aunt Barb in—what?—ten years.”

“Twelve, but that’s not the point. Oh, would you look at that adorable stuffed frog—”

“You look at the stuffed frog. I’m outta here.”

But as she turned to leave, her mother once again grabbed for her. Only instead of getting her daughter’s arm, she got one of the bag handles. The paper was no match for two equally determined women pulling in opposite directions, and the bag split in two, dumping out a pair of what looked like very fancy dolls or something on the floor. On a disgusted sigh—and what Dale surmised was a very unladylike cussword under her breath—Red squatted down to retrieve them, her hair billowing out around her shoulders. A silver comb popped loose and skipped across the floor to where he was standing.

Dale scooped up the comb and made his way over—not too fast—to help her, getting just close enough to notice her ringless left hand, to catch a whiff of her sweet, natural scent.

“Here, ma’am…let me get that—”

“It’s okay, I’m fine…” She glanced up, those crazy curls quivering around her face like they were alive, and something about her—he had no idea what—just grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Except her gaze—clear and green, like pale jade—zipped right past his eyes and on up to the top of his head as a startled shriek of laughter fell out of her mouth.

Which was when Dale remembered the stuffed hamster in the hula outfit, perched on top of his head, shaking its booty like there was no tomorrow.