Janice Johnson - What She Wants for Christmas

“Summer jobs,” he said easily. “By the time I got out of high school, I was already a cutter—I was the one who climbed the trees to top ’em, or take some limbs out. Pay was too good for me to bother looking around for any other line of work. My boss encouraged me to learn to cruise—that’s estimating what a stand of timber is worth, so you can make a realistic bid on it. I always had a head for math.” He shrugged. “Got some money put away, went into business for myself. Now I keep six other men working.”

“You’re a family of entrepreneurs.”

“Who wants to work for someone else?” His gaze was shrewd. “Isn’t that why you bought into a practice?”

She paused in the midst of cutting her enchilada. “I suppose so. Well, partly. It’s not the money-making side of being a vet that interests me. I wanted more responsibility. In Bellevue I worked at this big clinic with half a dozen vets. It was like I just put in my time—I didn’t make the overall decisions, which sometimes bothered me. For example, I thought our charges were too high. Especially for preventative medicine. I wanted us to keep neutering and vaccination costs to the very minimum. The partners smiled and told me I wasn’t looking at the big picture.”

“You’re an idealist.” The faintest of smiles lurked in his eyes.

Teresa wrinkled her nose. “I suppose so. But partly I was being selfish, too. I was bored. In vet school I especially enjoyed the large-animal work, and we didn’t do any of that where I worked. I was hoping for a mix.”

“Which you found.”

“In theory.”

“They’ll come around,” he said quietly.

“Damn straight they will.” She frowned at him. “I’m going to get every one of those farmers to admit I’m the best vet they’ve ever had!”

“You show ’em.” His smile seemed a bit rueful, and she wondered why.

“Do you think a man could do a better job?” She tilted her chin up in challenge. “Come on. Be honest. What if you needed a mechanic to fix that…that hundred-thousand-dollar monster you had out at my place the other day. Would you hire a woman?”

“Skidder. And it cost a hell of a lot more than a hundred thousand.” Joe set down his fork. “Yeah, I’d hire a woman if I thought she was the best mechanic. You can’t outmuscle a machine that size, or a horse or a cow. You need to outthink ’em. I’ve seen Jess with those horses of hers. She’s a small woman. Those Arabs would do damn near anything for her.”

A sigh escaped Teresa, leaving her deflated. “Sorry. I get worked up.”

“It’s your livelihood.”

“I don’t like injustice.”

“Prejudice of any kind isn’t pretty.”

She almost asked what he knew about it. A handsome white male—he had it made, right? But she’d be a fool to leap to that kind of easy assumption. A kid could be the odd one out for any number of reasons. A teacher friend had once told Teresa there was a “leper” in every class, as if the group as a whole could only bond through rejecting someone who didn’t fit. Teresa had memories of some kids she’d gone to school with who didn’t fit. Looking back, she couldn’t even remember why. Maybe they gave off the wrong pheromones or something.

Not that there was anything wrong with Joe Hughes’s pheromones.

Figuring she’d pushed the limit on sensitive subjects, Teresa backed off over coffee. “Since clients won’t let me treat their animals,” she said, “I’ve been doing most of the billing and follow-ups. Do you ever have trouble collecting debts?”

His mouth curled. “I just tell ’em I’ll be back with the skidder and take their roof off in pieces. Check is usually in the mail.”

She laughed. “Okay. So we should get a rabid Doberman and plan to turn it loose on anyone over thirty days late?”

“There you go.” The smiling intimacy in his eyes was enough to make her think about other even more intimate expressions—and about the approaching end to the evening.

Surely he would kiss her. She hadn’t been on a date where the man didn’t at least give her a peck on the lips. Although truth to tell, she hadn’t been on that many dates. After Tom’s death, she had gone into shock. It must have been a year or more before the numbness began to wear off, letting her be mad as hell at him. And miss him.

She was embarrassed to remember her astonishment when a fellow vet asked her out to dinner and to the symphony. She’d almost blurted, “Me? You want me to go with you? Why?” Then a vague memory of such rituals had clicked in, and she’d realized that, yes, he was a man and, yes, she was woman. Both single. Good Lord, he was interested in her!

She’d gone; why not? She knew him, if not well. It seemed an easy reintroduction to the world of dating. She wasn’t all that impressed, either with that date or the scattered few that followed. She never had liked groping for conversation or realizing halfway through dinner that she didn’t want that wet mouth to cover hers.

No such problem tonight. Obviously she’d been celibate too long. That had to be the explanation for why she kept staring at Joe’s hands, big and tanned and callused, and imagining how those calluses would feel against her skin. Tom had been an airline pilot. Smooth well-kept hands. Nothing like this man’s.

And that mouth, tight and controlled. He tilted it into a smile from time to time, even grinned roguishly, but somehow she never had the sense he was really relaxing. Oh, yes, she’d like to see him lose control.

At this point in her speculation, of course, she realized that he was watching her with interest, one eyebrow raised, and that she must have been staring, her expression giving away God knew what. She’d never been accused of being poker-faced.

Damned if she didn’t blush. “Sorry. I, uh…”

“You were thinking,” he said tactfully. Then a grin twitched the corner of his mouth. “Not that I wouldn’t be interested in knowing what you were thinking, but to get back to your question, actually I don’t have too many problems with debt collection. As you know, I get half up front, which is enough to pay the men. A lot of my work is on a larger scale than your job. I log land that’s going to be developed, for example. I suspect it’s the smaller bills people put off paying.”

“I hate dunning people.” Teresa made a face. “But then, that’s what I let myself in for when I insisted on a partnership.”

“In a perfect world—”

“In a perfect world, everybody would have plenty of money to pay their bills. And my daughter would be eagerly making new friends. And the woman you take out on a first date wouldn’t spend it whining.”

“You haven’t whined. You’ve talked about your problems. I don’t mind.”

“You haven’t talked about yours,” she said.

His lean dark face went expressionless again. “I guess I don’t have any pressing ones at the moment.”

If he’d just quirked an eyebrow or smiled apologetically or done anything else, she’d have believed him. As it was, she had the feeling she’d just walked up against an electric fence: invisible but powerful.

The waiter presented the bill; Joe paid. Outside, the sun was sinking in the west over Puget Sound and the hazy line of the Olympic Mountains. It must be eight-thirty, but days were still long at this time of year. Teresa didn’t protest when Joe used his hand on the small of her back to steer her toward his pickup. As if she didn’t know where it was.

“Sure you don’t want to go to a movie?” Joe asked.

“I wish I could,” she said, meaning it. “But I’d better not. I have to be at work awfully early tomorrow.”

He nodded, and she wished she could tell if he had asked again only to be polite. The short drive to her house was mostly silent. She wondered what he was thinking, anticipated that moment when he’d turn toward her, hoped her children would be tactful enough not to dash out to meet her when they heard the engine. She should have rented them a video, something engrossing. Next time…

The pickup pulled into her long driveway. She needed to mow again, she noticed, with one tiny corner of her consciousness. The rest of it was occupied with agonizing. What if he didn’t kiss her? Maybe he’d invited her out because he’d felt cornered; she’d been obvious enough, coming right out and asking if he was married. Maybe he didn’t like direct women.

Then they might as well forget the whole thing right now, she admitted.

The pickup slowed, stopped. No dogs; the kids must have let them in the house. He killed the engine. The front door of her house didn’t fly open. He turned toward her.

Teresa took a deep breath and smiled. “Thanks for dinner, Joe. I enjoyed myself.”

“Me, too.” His voice had roughened slightly. With surprising awkwardness, he said, “I don’t suppose we have an awful lot in common, but…maybe we could do it again.”

Was that a brush-off? Good Lord, why was she panicking? This was a first date! If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, it didn’t.

“Sure,” she murmured.

He reached out more tentatively than she might have expected, although his hand was solid and warm on the back of her neck. His thumb traced a circle around the bump of her vertebra, which had the effect of tapping a Morse code directly into her spinal cord. This feels good. More. More.

He bent his head as though giving her time to withdraw. Fat chance. His lips were soft and dry and as warm as that big hand, gently massaging her neck. Their mouths brushed together, once, twice, before his settled more firmly on hers and nudged her lips apart. By that time, she was enthusiastically participating.

If he minded her leaning into him and nibbling at his lower lip, his groan wasn’t a good way of telling her. His other hand gripped her upper arm and tugged her even closer. Somehow his mouth was hot and damp now, and his tongue had touched hers, circled it just like his thumb was circling on her nape. She felt as mindless as a teenager making out with the object of her first crush.

More. More.

Joe was the one to pull back a little and let out a shaky breath. “I think,” he said huskily, “we’d better say good-night.”

“Good-night?”

“Isn’t that the appropriate way to bid someone farewell in the evening?”

Consciousness was returning. She tried to straighten with dignity. “I knew what you meant.”

“Good.” The trace of amusement in his voice didn’t show in the molten blue of his eyes. His hand tightened on her neck, then released her. “How about a movie next week? I’d suggest tomorrow night, except…”

When he hesitated, she finished, “I might have a rebellion on my hands. Next week sounds good.”

He muttered something inarticulate, gave her a quick hard kiss, then got out. She was dazed enough to wait until he came around and opened her door, offering a hand to the little lady so she could hop down from the high seat. He walked her to the door, smiled, his eyes intense, touched her cheek and left her there.

It was the first time since her husband’s death she’d gone out with a man she wished wasn’t leaving.

NICOLE WAS DISCOURAGED, but she wasn’t about to give up. This was her life she was talking about!

Mom didn’t even listen when she tried to tell her about her day at school.

“The bathrooms are gross,” she said. “And the girls are all ignoring me. It’s like I don’t even exist.”

“Are you sure you’re not ignoring them, too?” her mother asked, handing her a cookie and a glass of milk, as if she were five years old, home from a day at kindergarten.