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.” She told him about starting as a page shelving books, about working nights as a clerk while getting her college degree, about stepping in as acting branch librarian. “Library budgets are always tight. Somehow they just let me stay. I did the job, they saved money. After a while, I resented that. And openings would come up that might have interested me—in outreach, or reference at headquarters, or the step above me, the librarian who oversaw branches—and I, of course, wasn’t eligible. I decided I could stew, or do something about it.”
“How long is the program?”
He listened in turn and encouraged her to talk about her classes, her need for a part-time job, and her decision to rent a room at his sister’s rather than look for an apartment on her own.
“Are you glad? Sorry?” he asked.
“Undecided,” Jo admitted. “They’re both nice women, but I hadn’t bargained for the kids, and I’m used to more privacy than I have now.”
His attention never wavered. “You didn’t have a roommate? Or a significant other?”
She shook her head. “I owned my own condo. I’m afraid the equity is financing my tuition.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Nobody serious.” She didn’t tell him “serious” wasn’t in her game plan. “You?”
Ryan shook his head in turn. “I’ve been divorced less than two years. Most of my spare time until a few months ago was spent with my kids.” A ripple of emotion passed through his eyes. “My ex remarried and this summer they moved to Denver.”
“Can she do that?”
“Regrettably, yeah.” He abruptly stood. “That’s us.”
Us? Jarred, she realized their pizza was ready.
Once they started dishing up and eating, Jo didn’t ask any more about his kids. Obviously, he missed them. But because they lived half a country away, she wouldn’t have to have anything to do with them. Thank God—she couldn’t see herself pretending to have great fun taking someone else’s children to the zoo or the water slides. Maybe this relationship had more promise than she’d feared.
As though tacitly agreeing to avoid subjects too personal, Ryan started in on local politics and the resultant taxes on a small business like his, grumbling about having to help pay for SafeCo Field for the Mariners. “Blowing up the damn King Dome.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it? Perfectly good stadium.”
“Aren’t you a baseball fan?”
“Yeah, sure I am.” He grinned. “I even like SafeCo Field. It’s cool that they can roll back the roof on a sunny day. But they just keep piling on the taxes, and I can’t afford it. I sure as hell don’t make any more money when the Mariners are successful.”
Corralling a long strand of cheese, she said, “No, I suppose not.”
“Hey.” He