Playing For Keeps

“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.