Playing For Keeps

“No,” she said, her brow puckering. “This is a business. My livelihood. I can’t afford not to be practical…why are you laughing now?”

“Would you listen to yourself? I can’t think of many things more impractical than making dolls that sell for three hundred bucks a pop.”

“Which is why I don’t sell too many of them. I mean, I’ll never get rich from these.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because…they feed something inside me.”

“Then trust me…they’ll feed something inside everyone who buys one, too. Something none of that mass produced stuff can ever do. Sure, most folks are perfectly content buying what they’re gonna see in half their neighbor’s living rooms. But you and I know that’s not enough for everybody.” He leaned his hands on the edge of the counter, hooking her gaze in his. “Not for the fools who have the nerve to try to compete with Toys “R” Us and Target and K mart, or the ones who spend hours making a single doll instead of holding down a regular job in some office with a guaranteed paycheck and a dental plan. Or for the ones who pay five, ten, a hundred times more for something than they have to, just for the satisfaction of having something that nobody else does…”

“Joanna! Come here!”

She jumped, tearing her eyes away from the crazy man and toward her mother, who was beckoning her to the back of the store. Joanna wended her way through the narrow aisles to look outside at a display of wooden play forts with attached swing sets, each one bigger and badder than the next and more expensive.

“Wouldn’t the boys love one of those for their birthday?”

“Right. Honestly, Mom—I paid less than that for my first car.”

But her mother, hanging on to the stuffed frog she’d apparently decided on for the new baby, had already turned to Dale, who’d followed Joanna. “My twin grandsons’ eighth birthday is two weeks from today—can you have one of these delivered by then?”

“I can’t let you spend that much on the boys—!”

Glynnie quelled her with a don’t-be-rude look as Dale assured her that was no problem. Then another customer arrived and, with a “Be right back, ladies,” Dale took off. Glynnie smacked Jo lightly in the arm.

“For God’s sake, Joanna. It’s just money. Loosen up.”

“Been down that road already, Mother. I’m perfectly happy being my tight little self again.”

“Happy? Hell, you haven’t been happy in years.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Is not.”

“Is, too.” Glynnie glanced over, presumably to make sure they couldn’t be heard, then lowered her voice anyway. “I saw him making goo-goo eyes at you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Joanna whispered back.

“Don’t tell me what I didn’t see, young lady. I could feel the buzzing from clear on the other side of the store.”

“That’s because you forgot to take your Prozac this morning.”

“Joanna Swann! You know full well I haven’t touched that stuff in years. And anyway, that has nothing to do with the fact that your flirting skills could use a major tune-up. And here’s a perfectly good learning tool, tossed right in your path. So what could it hurt to practice?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s a total stranger? Because for all I know he’s married? Because—” this had just come to her “—I haven’t got the time or energy right now to start from scratch?”

“Honey, if you’re waiting until they bring out the heat ’n’ serve variety, you’re outta luck.”

“Mother. Even discounting his questionable marital status or the fact that I’ve known him for, oh, five minutes, the man is nuts.”

“Why do you say that?”

Joanna showed her the check. Glynnie’s eyes shot to Joanna’s. “And this is for…?”

“Eight Santas.”

“Oh?” Glynnie frowned. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. What kind of crazy person gives a total stranger a check for twenty-four hundred dollars, with no paperwork, nothing, no assurances that I’ll even deliver? The man is not well. Or at least, not fiscally responsible.”

“Okay, maybe you have a point,” Glynnie said, her attention straying to Dale, helping the man who’d come in to pick out a computer learning game. “But come on, admit it…when was the last time you saw somebody that cute?”

“This morning,” Joanna said. Glynnie looked at her. “Your grandchildren’s father? Dark hair, dark eyes, charming smile? Totally clueless—”

“Okay, ladies, I’m back,” Dale said, making them both jump. “Now, which one of these would you like? I’ve got ’em all in stock.”

“That one,” Glynnie said before Jo could protest again, naturally pointing to the largest one in the batch. She whipped out her AmEx and smacked it down on the counter, dumping the hapless frog beside it. “And you said you can deliver it in time for their birthday?”

“Sure thing. If you’ll just fill this out—” he handed her a clipboard with a form of some kind on it “—we can get it all set up for you.” While her mother did as he asked, he turned his attention to Joanna. “So. You’ve got kids?”

Was it her, or did she detect just the slightest edge to that question? “Three,” she said. “The boys and an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

Before Joanna could answer, Glynnie said, “Oh, it’s not so bad.” She handed him back the clipboard. “They’re with their father every weekend. Are you married, Mr. McConnaughy?”

Dale dropped the clipboard, which clattered to the counter, while Joanna fumbled for her brain before it landed on the floor and rolled away. When he looked up, Joanna pointed to her mother behind her back, then mimed hanging herself.

Then he did this slow, lazy grinning thing, and Joanna felt her blood heat up a degree or two. “Why?” he said to her mother. “You fixin’ to ask me out?”

Nice save, she thought as her mother—or the alien that looked like her mother—merely smiled. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for myself. I’m happily married, thank you.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Ms. Swann. But you know…” Dale leaned forward, bracing his hands against the edge of the counter. Those nice, slender, sinewy hands. “Maybe you should be careful who you ask that question. Some folks might take it the wrong way. Especially from a woman as attractive as yourself.”

Glynnie laughed. “Boy, you really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”

“Just speaking the truth, Ms. Swann,” he said, ringing up the sale. “Just speakin’ the truth. As a matter of fact, when you two first came in—”

“Please don’t tell me you thought we were sisters.”

Again with the loopy grin. And a noncommittal shrug. “A man can’t help what he sees.” He bagged up the frog, then handed it to her, along with the charge slip and a copy of the order. “Somebody’ll give you a call before we come out, okay?” he said, and then a mini swarm of customers came in, affording Joanna the perfect opportunity to grab her mother’s arm and drag her out of there.

“What were you doing?”

“Just having some fun,” Glynnie said, wresting her arm out of Joanna’s grasp. “Remember fun?”

Joanna stomped around to the driver’s side of the van, unlocked the doors and climbed in. “Yeah,” she said, slamming shut her door as her mother got in. “I remember fun.” To her annoyance, her eyes burned. “I think.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—you don’t think I really meant anything by that, did you?” her mother said. “I was just testing him. And you’re right. That smile, that attitude…He is like Bobby. And God knows you don’t need to go through that again.”

Joanna twisted the key in the ignition, backing the van out of the parking space the instant the engine growled to life. “God knows,” she echoed, probably shaving five years off her mother’s life by darting across four lanes of traffic to make a left turn.

Two weeks later the roof still leaked, Bobby still hadn’t reimbursed Joanna for his half of the plumbing bill and Gladys, Henry Shaw’s Great Dane, was still pregnant. On a brighter note, however—well, brighter for Joanna and the female canine population of Corrales—immediate and permanent sanctions had been imposed on Chester’s wild oats. The dog seemed to be resigned to his fate, even if, judging from his actions, he was still a little fuzzy on the ramifications of his visit to the vet. But then, as long as Joanna knew he was shooting blanks, she really didn’t care all that much what the dog knew.

So all in all—she steered the van into the pickup lane in front of the elementary school—things were about the same.

The bell rang. Joanna didn’t bother looking for the boys in the blur of shrieking children disgorged from the sprawling series of buildings. A minute later, however, she picked out their shrill little voices like a mama sheep recognizing her lambs’ bleats from all the others in the herd.

“I called shotgun!” Matt, the oldest twin by ten minutes and the image of his father with his dark eyes and straight hair, bellowed beside the van. The twins were fraternal, not identical, as different in temperament and personality as they were physically. Although they were extremely well matched when it came to fighting over something they both wanted.

“Nuh-uh, I did!” Ryder bellowed right back as somebody yanked open the passenger side door and a whirlwind of elbows and knees and backpacks flew into the front seat. “Mo-om! Tell him to get in the back!”

It never ceased to amaze her how they could have the same argument, day after day, over something neither one had ever won. “Both of you get in back and your seat belts on,” she said mildly. “We’re gumming up the works here.”

“Aw, Mom…it’s just to the house.”

“Now.”

With a lot of grumbling and shoving and one backpack smacking Joanna in the face, they crawled through the space between the front seats and plopped into the back. “Didja bring any snacks?” Matt asked. “I’m about to starve to death.”

“I imagine you’ll survive until we get home,” Jo said, pulling out into the single-file stream of minivans and SUVs and pickups leaving the parking lot. “Either of you got any homework?”

“Nope,” Matt said. “Did it all in school. An’ I got all my spelling words right on my pre-test, too, so I don’t have to take the test tomorrow!”

Joanna’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror to catch Ryder’s sinking expression. Damn. For the millionth time, she tried to gauge how to respond to Matt’s good news without further damaging her other son’s increasingly fragile self-esteem. “Wow, Matt-o. You must’ve studied really hard.”

“Nuh-uh. I just knew ’em without even looking.”

Thank you, Matt. “How about you, Ry?” she said gently, wishing she could ruffle his cinnamon curls, which even as short as she kept them were every bit as obtuse as her own. “You have much work today?”

“I don’t remember.” His green eyes, a little darker than hers, flashed in the mirror’s reflection. “I think I finished all my math in school, maybe.”

“You did? That’s wonderful!”

His mouth stretched into a thin smile and Joanna’s heart cracked. The child had been tested every which way to Sunday, but there seemed to be no real reason why the very material that came so easily to Matt should be such a struggle for his brother. Joanna knew, even if she didn’t find two or three unfinished papers in his backpack, there was still a good hour to hour and a half of spelling and reading and math fact practice, just so Ryder wouldn’t fall more behind than he already was. It was hard on her, it was even harder on a child who’d already spent six and a half hours at school, but what was hardest of all was seeing the perplexed expression in Ryder’s eyes at his brother’s seemingly effortless success.

From birth, they’d been total opposites. Matt had come out protesting his confinement at the top of his lungs. Ryder had opened his eyes right away, calmly taking it all in, flinching only at his brother’s raucous cries from across the room. Matt had been the first to roll over, the first to crawl and walk and talk, always barreling through life at full throttle. Ryder, however, had to be coaxed to go down the same slide his brother had just rocketed down ten times in a row. And then only if Bobby or Joanna went down with him. He was the one who’d patiently spend ages building the three-foot-tall tower of blocks, his brother the one who’d knock them down.

Academically, however, they’d seemed to be on a par with each other until last year. While Matt continued to gobble up new skills like the hungry little caterpillar, Ryder had begun to struggle. Although quiet and attentive in class, he was now almost a full grade level behind. What got Joanna, though, was that she would have expected the reverse to be true, that the one who’d spent the first five years of his life in perpetual motion, except when he was asleep, would have been the one more prone to learning difficulties, not the quiet, contemplative one.

The quiet, contemplative one whose self-confidence was beginning to leak at an alarming rate, no matter what Joanna did to caulk it.

Both boys were out of the car and into the kitchen before Joanna could close her door and drag her weary butt into the house. Dulcy, her middle-schooler, had already been home for a half hour. What passed for music blared from her room. Cats swarmed Joanna’s ankles, begging her to make it stop.

“Turn it down, Dulce!” Joanna hollered automatically, hanging her car keys on the hook by the back door. The music dimmed from brain-numbing to merely irritating; a second later, the child stomped down the hall in her customary sexless hooded sweatshirt and jeans, brown eyes flashing behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Okay, which one of you dorks was in my room?”

“Not me!” came out of two crumb-speckled mouths.

“Right.” Dulcy held up The Evidence: a box of colored pencils. “This was brand new and full when I put it in my desk yesterday, and now half the pencils are either gone or broken. And I know one of you did it—”

The phone rang.

“—and now I have to use them for a social studies project and I don’t have them and this like so pisses me off—”

“Dulcy! Hello?” Joanna said into the phone, glaring at her daughter. She couldn’t hear whoever it was for the eruption of “I don’t know where your dumb old pencils are!” behind her.

“Well, one of you does and I’m not leaving this kitchen until I get ’em back!”

“Sorry, hold on,” Jo said into the phone, then slammed it against her sternum. “Kids! Take it elsewhere!”

“But, Mom, what am I going to dooooo? This is due tomorrow!”

“I. Am. On. The. Phone. I will take care of it later. Everybody out.”

The boys trooped into the family room to watch TV; Dulcy thumped back down to her room, wailing about how much her life sucked. Joanna—who at the moment could relate more to her daughter’s lament far more than she’d ever let on—sighed and held the phone back up to her ear.

“I’m sorry. Who is this again?”

“Dale McConnaughy, ma’am. From Playing for Keeps? Just calling to confirm that we’re delivering that play set to your house tomorrow afternoon?”

The boys began arguing about something in the other room, Dulcy cranked up her music again and the dog began to hack up something in the middle of the kitchen floor. And suddenly, because clearly she was closer to losing it than she thought, all she wanted to do was to wrap herself up in that Bourbony Southern accent and never come out again. Because, see, this was the one thing that had changed during the past two weeks.

Whether Joanna liked it or not.

Long-buried images came roaring to the surface of her desexitized brain, of hot bodies and cool sheets and endless orgasms. Preferably hers. Not that she’d ever had endless orgasms, but a girl can dream.

“Ms. Swann? Is everything all right?”

“What? Oh, yes…Sorry. I was…distracted,” she said, her gaze wandering over to the cupboard where she kept the baking stuff. For the past week, in those scant milliseconds when she wasn’t worrying about a kid or a roof or her work or her ex, and sometimes even when she was, thoughts of Dale McConnaughy had stormed her brain like a bargain hunter at K mart the morning after Thanksgiving. She didn’t understand it, she sure as hell didn’t like it, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing she could do about it. Other than taking the edge off the pain with chocolate. Which was why she was now yanking open her cupboard door, letting out a small sigh of gratitude that she hadn’t been hallucinating the package of chocolate chips. She’d make cookies. Warm, gooey cookies packed chock full of hundreds of little orgasms for the taste buds.

One learned to adapt.

“So…we’re on for tomorrow?”

Joanna ripped open the bag and tilted it to her upended mouth. Cookies, hell. Who had time for foreplay?

“Yes,” she managed to get out around a mouthful of squished chocolate. Maybe not quite as satisfying as when combined with butter and brown sugar and…nuts, but sometimes, you just can’t wait for the, um, full package. “Their…party is at five, so as long as it’s…up by then, that should be fine.”

She stuffed more chips into her mouth.

“No problem.” A pause. “Uh, ma’am? You sure you’re okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“What? Me? No, I’m fine,” she said, and he said okay as though he wasn’t really sure and then they hung up—just as something crashed in the other room.

Joanna knocked back another handful of chips, thought about Dale’s long, slender hands and orgasms for another twenty seconds or so, then went to clean up the dog’s little present.

Chapter 3

Although Dale knew there were some pretty highfalutin homes in Corrales, a small, horsey community flanking the western edge of the Rio Grande on the fringes of Albuquerque proper, he still hadn’t been sure what to expect from the address he’d been given. The mother clearly had money, but he got the feeling Joanna was one of those types determined to make it on her own if it killed her. So when Jose steered the store truck down the dirt road leading to the house, and the spreads kept getting bigger and bigger, he began to wonder just what the heck was going on here.

Especially when the house itself came into view. Like a large, odd-shaped bug hugging the landscape, the traditional earth-toned adobe, with its flat roof and portal stretching across most of the front, looked to be one of those that had been added on to as the mood struck over the years. The property took up a good three or four acres, he guessed, with an open horse shelter and paddock off to one side. Mature, drooping cottonwoods, their leaves mostly yellow this time of year, and gnarled, dusty green olive trees sheltered the house; a dozen or so terra-cotta pots in various sizes, spilling over with assorted late-season flowers, had been plunked in no particular order along the meandering stone walk between the driveway and the front door. And there were cats everywhere, three or four of which were now lazily making their way toward the truck like they had nothing better to do.

Except for the muffled barking of a dog inside the house, it was dead quiet. Peaceful. And had he been somebody else, Dale might have thought the place looked real inviting.

In a life filled to the gills with crazy doings, this had to be one of the craziest. When Charley had called in sick this morning, Dale could’ve gotten someone else to fill in. No reason for him to go getting it in his head that a little exercise and fresh air on this beautiful fall day was just what he needed. Except he knew damn well fresh air and exercise had nothing to do with it.

Like he said. Crazy.

Wasn’t like the signals he’d sent out to Joanna Swann the other day had been exactly reciprocated. Even if they had been, she didn’t seem the type, he didn’t think, inclined to mess around just for the fun of it. Which was all Dale was inclined to do. And she had kids, to boot. Messing around and kids did not mix. Oh, he got a real kick out of talking to ’em and watching them play, the way their imaginations took flight from the simplest things. Yeah, kids were great. Long as they were somebody else’s.

So, all in all, it was a damn fool thing, that he was here. Except it’d been a dog’s age since some gal had riled up his curiosity exactly the way Joanna Swann did. Why, he couldn’t quite figure out, although it was refreshing, her not knowing who he was. Or maybe it was because she didn’t seem that all-fired concerned about how she looked, which set her apart right there from most of the women he’d known over the past little while. He just liked what he saw, was all. And whether it made sense or not, he wanted to get to know her better, at least before making a conscious decision about whether or not she was a lost cause.

He almost flinched when Joanna stuck her head out the front door and hollered that they should drive around to the back, which they did, parking on the dirt driveway that separated the stable/paddock from a parklike area that passed for a backyard. More cats—or maybe it was the same ones, Dale couldn’t tell—swarmed them when they got out of the truck, joined by a fuzzy, medium-size brown-and-white mutt who acted like they’d just come home from the wars.

Dale waded through the furry bodies toward Joanna, now standing on her back patio. She was wearing worn jeans and a white, floppy sweatshirt, but even though it was kinda chilly out, she was barefoot. He wondered if the flagstone was cold on her feet. Which got him to wondering about other things he shouldn’t.

The cats, having already lost interest, drifted off. The dog, on the other hand, was amusing himself by trying to shove a slobbered-up old tennis ball into Dale’s hand. Joanna said, “Leave the man alone, Chester,” but more like she figured that’s what she should say than if she actually expected the dog to obey. Which he didn’t.

Dale wrestled the ball out of the dog’s mouth and lobbed it clear to the back of the yard. It felt good, throwing again. Even if he couldn’t do it over and over the way he used to.

“I didn’t expect you to bring out the set yourself,” Joanna said. Dale turned, somewhat disappointed to note that her expression wasn’t nearly as hospitable as the dog’s had been.

“Somebody got sick. I’m filling in.”

“Oh.” She swiped at a couple of loose curls that were fluttering around her face, the rest of her hair being stuck up on top of her head with a pencil rammed through it, of all things. “You can just leave the store like that?”

She sounded kind of annoyed, for some reason. “It’s my store. I can pretty much do whatever I want. But since you seem so concerned—” he turned and motioned to Jose to go ahead and start unloading the truck, then turned back to Joanna “—I’ve got a couple part-timers minding the place…”

His not-quite-full-out-flirting grin faltered slightly when a man a few years younger than Dale, shorter but more sturdily built—like a pit bull, Dale thought—came out of the house to stand behind Joanna. Despite sharp features that should have made him intimidating, the grin that split the man’s features as he approached Dale, his hand outstretched, told a whole ’nother story.

“Bobby Alvarez,” he said, his words tinged with that slight Spanish accent Dale had come to realize often clung even to Hispanics whose families had been in the area for generations. The grin widened. “Otherwise known as ‘the ex.’”

Since this fact did not seem to particularly perturb Bobby, Dale figured he needn’t let it bother him any, either. So he returned the grin, and the handshake. “Dale Mc-Connaughy,” he said, bracing himself for the reaction. Not that there always was one these days. But it happened often enough, especially with a mug that had adorned a million Wheaties boxes not all that long ago.

“Dale McConnaughy? Damn, I thought you looked familiar! Hey, babe—” he turned to Joanna “—you know who this is?”

“Yes, Bobby. Dale McConnaughy. We’ve already met.”

“No, I mean, do you know who this is? Atlanta Braves? Pitched a shutout in the last game of the World Series against the Yankees a few years ago?” He let out a whoop of laughter, then took Dale’s hand again and pumped it for all it was worth. “Man, I cannot tell you what an honor this is!” Then he frowned. “But what the hell are you doing setting up kids’ swing sets?”