Everybody's Hero

“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 had wanted entanglements, the kind of entanglements that led to waking up beside the same man for the rest of her life and potty training and training wheels and soccer games and crazed, noisy Christmas mornings. All the things she’d thought she’d have with her ex but realized weren’t going to happen. All the things that had never really happened with her own family.

All the things she could tell would never happen with the man sitting at her kitchen table.

The microwave dinged, shaking her awake enough to edge back from that emotional vortex. She got out the bowl and set it in front of Joe, handed him the box of crackers, poured him a glass of tea, sat down at the table and said, “So what were you doing in Tulsa earlier today?”

Huh. So she’d decided to go on the attack. Interesting, if a mite disconcerting, since he’d apparently hit a nerve he hadn’t meant to hit. Not this time. Yeah, when he’d told her she was pretty, he’d definitely been trying to get a rise out of her. He’d had a long day, he was stressed to the gills and for a single, stupid moment, he thought it would be amusing to rattle her chain. But this…this was different. This reaction, he couldn’t quite figure out. Except that something must be threatening her sense of control—an illusion, if ever there was one, but it wasn’t as if Joe couldn’t relate—so she became the aggressor.

What she didn’t know, however, was that if she wanted the upper hand, she’d have to fight him for it. So he scarfed down several spoonsful of chili before answering. “My boss asked me to take on another project at the last minute. I couldn’t turn it down.”

“Why?”

What she also didn’t know was that Joe’d always had a thing for women who didn’t make a man turn cartwheels trying to figure out what was going on in their heads. For some weird reason, the more direct the woman, the more turned on he got. Which, in this case, was one of those good-news, bad-news things.

“Because I need the extra cash, for one thing,” he said. “And because I need to prove to Wes—my boss—that I’m the right person to take over for him when he takes semiretirement next year.”

Taylor turned her glower on his empty tea glass, like she was trying to figure out how to be a good hostess without giving him any ideas about women serving men. Then she got up, apparently deciding the solution was to plop the pitcher in front of him so he could refill his glass any time he wanted.

“But how on earth are you going to handle two projects in two different places?”

“I have no idea. But I’ll manage.” He picked up a cracker and dunked it in his chili. “I have to.”

“You don’t sound all that happy about it.”

Happy? When had he last thought of his life in those terms? The muscles in his upper back mildly protested when he shrugged. “Just being realistic, is all.”

She snorted. “Honestly—what is it with men and their need to prove themselves? No matter what the cost?”

His gaze fixed on his food, Joe stilled and then lifted his eyes to hers. “I’m not sure how being responsible is the same as proving myself. Besides, seems to me men don’t exactly have the market cornered on ambition.”

A second passed before she pushed out a breath. “You’re right,” she said, and he thought, point to him. “It’s just that…I don’t know. Men get this whole protective thing going and…”

“And what?”

“And they can’t see that they’re accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they think they are.”

Joe leaned back in his chair, brows drawn, arms folded across his chest. “You think there’s something wrong with a man wanting to provide for his family?”

“No, of course not. Except…” He was startled to see her eyes soften with tears. “Except when he neglects his family in the process.”

He thought of all the things he could ask, wanted to ask. Wouldn’t ask. Not now, at any rate. Probably not ever, if he were smart. Because asking questions might get him answers, but it could also get him involved. And getting involved, now, with her—with anyone—wasn’t in the cards.

So he did what any sane man who didn’t want involvement would do—he turned the tables on her. Not rudely, or meanly, but with the conviction of somebody who didn’t need some female making him question his own motives, for crying out loud.

“You know,” he said quietly, “you’re cute and all, but you’ve got a real problem with judging folks when you don’t know them worth squat.”

She flinched a little, then recouped. “I’m not judging you. I’m just familiar with the signs.”

“Of what?”

Another breath. “My father was a workaholic, Joe. So was my ex-husband. And it sucks.”

The words were brittle, as if years of acid had eaten away at them. And they arrowed straight from her heart to his.

“Your father…”

“…Literally worked himself to death. When I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry,” Joe said softly. “But I’m not a workaholic, Taylor.”

For several seconds, their gazes tangled like a pair of kids scrapping over a toy, until Taylor got up from the table and walked over to the kitchen window, her hands stuffed in her back pockets. “How many hours a week do you work? And that includes work you bring home.”