Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (15 page)

Both turned to look at Jo, who was draining macaroni into a colander.

“Nope,” she said. “Never use it.”

“The kitchen would be tied up a lot, too,” Kathleen said.

“We can work around you,” Jo assured her. Or not. They could order pizza, Chinese takeout, fast-food burgers… Personally, she wouldn’t mind if she cooked dinner only once a week instead of twice.

“The other thing is…” Kathleen sat back, new anxiety tightening her face. “Well, this will cost.”

Helen nodded. “We’ll have to get printing done and buy stuff for packaging and probably letterhead and business cards…but we can do that at Kinko’s.”

“Not just that. I’ll have to make lots of soap. I should experiment, try to develop recipes
that are mine alone or find ones that we’re all agreed are the best. And the ingredients can be expensive. Lye, of course, cocoa butter, glycerin, fats—and the oils! I can’t just snap them up at the grocery. Olive oil, for example. Unless I buy pomace, the soap would smell of olives.” She wrinkled her nose. “Coconut oil, castor oil, palm oil, jojoba…not to mention the essential oils that provide the scents and the therapeutic qualities. And I’ll need more molds and a food processor or spice grinder. I’ve always done without, but…” She shrugged. “You see? We’ll have to invest. And I don’t know if I can afford to.”

Helen sat silent for a moment. “We could start small,” she said at last. “Try to sell in just a couple of stores, then use any income to buy more supplies.”

“I guess we’ll have to,” Kathleen agreed, “but that will mean not experimenting as much, and keeping the packaging really minimal. No boxed sets, for example.”

Jo put the casserole dish in the oven, closed the door and turned to face her housemates. “I have a better idea.”

They looked at her in surprise. “You do?” Kathleen said.

“Borrow from your brother. He’d love to
help. He’d
give
you money—” she waved off objections before Kathleen could voice them “—which I know you wouldn’t take. But this is different. Pay him interest. Offer him a small percentage of profits. Make it business. You’ll need an investor if you’re going anywhere with this. Why not Ryan?”

Kathleen stared at her with a blank, almost dazed, expression. “Why not Ryan,” she echoed. She gave herself a shake. “I just don’t want charity.”

“We’ll find a way to pay him back even if we fail,” Helen said strongly. “I could put in more overtime at the store if I had to.”

“Look at it this way,” Jo suggested. “You could keep him in soap for the rest of his life.”

Kathleen rolled her eyes at the frivolity of this idea. But she looked as if she was seriously thinking about Jo’s advice. “You really think he’d be interested?”

“I think he’d be thrilled,” Jo assured her.

She cut up broccoli and put it in the steamer while the other two women continued to talk and scheme and dream. With her back turned to them, she was more aware of their voices, vibrant in a way they hadn’t been before. At night, after a day of work at jobs they disliked, both tended to sound tired, heavy. Jo
had never heard Helen crackle with this kind of energy and excitement and hope.

Let this work,
she thought. She wanted very badly for their hope not to be false, their dream dead-end. Because if they failed, they’d be more discouraged than they’d been before they started.

Ginny slipped into the kitchen and went to her mother, pressing up to her side and laying her head on her mother’s chest as Helen automatically wrapped an arm around her. As was her habit, she said nothing, becoming invisible, only listening as the women talked, her eyes alive and aware in her small face.

“I could ask my brother-in-law, too,” Helen said suddenly. “He’s offered to help before, but I didn’t like to feel…dependent.”

“I didn’t know you
had
a brother-in-law.” Kathleen sounded startled. “You’ve never mentioned him.”

“I don’t think he ever liked me.” Helen glanced down at her daughter, then said quickly, “No, that isn’t right. We always got along fine. It’s that…I think Lyman admires women who are go-getters. Women who are smart and ambitious and capable. I was just a housewife. He didn’t understand why Ben loved me.”

“But he offered financial support after your husband died?”

“Yes, but with an air of…irritation. Duty. His brother might have chosen foolishly, but he felt obliged. You know?”

Kathleen nodded, her lips thin. Jo felt a spurt of rage. How dare that…man have made this kind, gentle woman feel inadequate, and at a time when she grieved so terribly for his brother?

“But I could ask now. He’d loan us money, I’m sure.”

“You know what?” Kathleen said. “Let me ask Ryan first. I’d much rather tell your brother-in-law to go to…” her gaze flicked to the little girl listening, “um, where to go.”

Relief lightened Helen’s face again, restoring her prettiness. “Okay. I like Ryan better.”

“Then we’re agreed? We’re going into business?”

“As partners.” Helen held out a hand.

Kathleen took it and they solemnly shook.

“I wonder,” Kathleen said, “what Emma will think.”

E
MMA WAS POUTING
when she opened the door to Ryan. “Uncle Ryan,” she said unenthusiastically. “Mom’s in the kitchen.”

“Hey! Wait.” He put a hand on her arm to stop her and had quite a time not recoiling. Wow! She was nothing but bone.

“What?” she snapped.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“What would be wrong?”

“You don’t seem to be in a very good mood.” She shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, letting her go. “Talk to me when you’re ready.”

His niece went up the stairs without looking back. He couldn’t help noticing how slowly she went, as if she had to drag herself up each step.

In the kitchen he found all three women clustered around the table, so intent on their conversation they didn’t see him right away.

“Aroma, fragrance, essence,” his sister said.

“Attar,” Jo contributed with satisfaction. She sat as she often did with one foot tucked under her, the baggy sleeves of her shirt pushed up. “I always loved that word.”

“Bouquet,” Helen said. “Or how about ‘natural’ or some takes on that?”

“Pure,” Kathleen said thoughtfully. “But
that sounds more like a description of ingredients than a name.”

“What’s in a name?” Ryan asked rhetorically. “‘That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.’”

Laughing, his sister said, “Thank you for that contribution.”

His eyes meeting Jo’s in a silent greeting, Ryan pulled a chair up to the table. “Contribution to what?”

“Well.” Kathleen glanced at the other women, who started to push their chairs back. “I wanted to ask you something.”

That zeroed his attention in on his sister. “Is this about Emma?”

“No, it’s…um…” She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together on the table. “I actually wanted to ask you…”

With a last look at him, Jo followed Helen out of the kitchen.

“I’m starting a business,” Kathleen said in a rush.

“What?”

“A business!” She scowled. “Is that so unlikely?”

“It’s just…not what I expected.” He’d been waiting to hear that Emma had collapsed, or
that Ian had decided to quit paying child support, or that… “What kind of business?”

“Soap.” She looked defiant. “I’m going to make it and Helen will sell it.”

“Helen?” He felt guilty raising doubts, but felt obligated. “She’s so timid. How is she going to sell anything?”

“That’s what she does, you know. She works for Nordstrom on commission.”

He shook his head. “It’s a long ways from smiling at women shopping for clothes and telling them how wonderful they look in puce to convincing store owners to carry a product.”

“Yes, but I think she can do it. When she suggested the idea, she came alive.” Remembered amazement crossed Kathleen’s face. “She’s the one who pushed me into trying to sell my soap.”

Frowning, Ryan considered. “I like the soap you’ve given me. It smells nice, and it lathers better than the stuff I buy at the grocery store.” He hesitated, not wanting to rain on her parade, but not wanting to see her stumble and fall, either. “The question is, can you make better soap, or package it more appealingly, than all the other noncommercial ones already available?”

She didn’t like being doubted by him, that was clear, but she was a fair woman. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“And?”

She tilted up her chin in pride. “I make extraordinary soap. Whether we can get it out there to compete, I don’t know. Helen believes we can.”

Ryan smiled and tilted his chair back. “Okay. What did you want to ask me?”

Now she twitched and fidgeted, a sight he thoroughly enjoyed. His big sister hadn’t had to ask many favors of him in her life, and she was clearly wishing she didn’t have to ask this one, either.

Finally she spit it out. “I need an investor.”

“You want money.”

She flushed. “I don’t
want
money! I need equipment and supplies to make soap on the scale we’re envisioning. Plus we’ll have costs for printing labels, invoices, business cards and so on, as well as buying the material for packaging. This is strictly a business proposition.” She was getting madder as she went. “I’ll pay you interest or a percent of my profits so that you’re essentially a minority partner. But if you’re not interested, I can find someone else!”

He crossed his arms and grinned at her, going for infuriating. “What makes you think I’m not interested?”

His sister gritted her teeth. “Are you?”

“Maybe.” He drew the word out. “Now, let me think…”

She let out a huff of rage.

Ryan let the chair legs drop to the floor, hard. “Kathleen! How many times have I offered financial help? If you just asked me for money, I’d give it to you! It insults me that you’re doubting for a minute that I’d be there for you.”

She wrung her hands in agitation. “I don’t want ‘help’! You know how I feel about that! I’m asking you to risk money because you have faith I can pay you back. That’s not the same thing.”

Ian had done a number on her, Ryan thought not for the first time, but with new anger. Yeah, his sister had always been independent, but at eighteen or twenty she wouldn’t have been terrified by the idea of depending on someone else.

He reached across the table and gripped her hand, feeling it quiver in his. “Kathleen, I have always had faith and pride in you. You’ve never set out to do anything and gone
halfway.” He didn’t add that he’d spent much of his life feeling inadequate in comparison. “You can count me in. I’ll enjoy watching ‘Kathleen’s Soaps’ burgeon into an empire.”

Cheeks flushed again, but this time, he thought, with pleasure, his stubbornly self-reliant sister made a small sound of protest and tugged her hand free. “I’m not hoping for an empire. Enough success so that Helen and I could quit our day jobs would satisfy me.”

“Then,” he said, “let’s celebrate a beginning.”

“W
ANT TO STUDY
at my house?” Ryan asked.

“Sure,” Jo said readily. “I’ve got to feed everybody first, though.”

He shifted his cell phone to his other ear as he climbed the stairs in a client’s home to inspect the tile work a subcontractor had done in the bathroom. “Are you cooking?”

“Kathleen has commandeered the kitchen.” Jo sounded remarkably cheerful about it. “We’re doing Chinese tonight. You want to join us?”

“I’ll do even better. I’ll pick it up if you call in an order.” He crouched to get a better look at the work around the tub. “Oh great,” he muttered. “I wish you worked for me.” The simplest job, no elaborate pattern, just a plain, muted peach-and-white checkerboard, and Jacobson had screwed up just because he was in a hurry.

“What?”
Jo asked.

“Tiling. You should see the size of the gap between the outlet pipes and the cut edges of
the tiles.” He whipped out a tape measure and laid it across the hole, shaking his head at the result. “The fixture isn’t going to cover it.”

“What will you do?”

“Call my subcontractor back and make him redo as much of the job as necessary. I get the clients I do because I set high standards. We don’t hide mistakes.”

“Oooh,” she teased, “a hardnose.”

He grunted and eyeballed the work around the sink. Better. “That’s me.”

They agreed on a time and he stuck his cell phone back in its case on his belt.

Things were going well with Jo. Better than before Thanksgiving. She’d relaxed in small ways, as if she were more willing to let him get closer to her.

Earlier in the fall, she hadn’t liked to bring her books over to his place, for example. Dates had to be just that—planned, definable occasions, after which he was to bring her back to her house. Now she seemed content just hanging out at his place as well, or letting him hang at hers.

It was also true, though, that she’d never said a word about his declaration of love. He hadn’t repeated it—she hadn’t asked him to—
and she sure hadn’t echoed it. She’d chosen to pretend he’d never opened his mouth.

Ryan told himself he was willing to pretend, too. He’d known it was too soon, that she wasn’t ready, that he might even scare her. He was lucky she hadn’t pulled back, or sent him packing. She’d warned him she wanted neither his heart nor his hand. And what had he done? Fallen in love anyway and been stupid enough to tell her, that’s what.

For a couple of weeks, he didn’t push, he didn’t demand, and he demonstrated his passion when they kissed but bit back the words. In one way, he was content with the results: she was becoming more open, more likely to tease, to tell him a secret from her childhood or about why she’d isolated herself the way she had. But he also knew his frustration was growing.

If she hadn’t changed her mind, was he doing himself any favor to spend this kind of time with her? More of his heart seemed to crumble off every day, every time she smiled just for him, every time she came to him for a kiss or argued with him because she held so many strong beliefs, every time he saw how gentle she was with Hummingbird. Maybe he could still save himself now, if he didn’t
let her keep shattering him with the way she moved and laughed and thought.

There were days when he had hope, when he’d swear she felt the same as he did, words or no, when she smiled at him with her eyes dreamy and her mouth so soft, or when they were walking down the street and she laughed and elbowed him and then laid her head on his arm as if doing so came as naturally as breathing.

That evening was one of the times he could believe marriage was in their future. When he showed up with the food, everybody gathered in the living room, where they passed around cardboard containers of rice, spring rolls, sweet-and-sour pork and chicken with snow peas, dishing up onto paper plates. Ginny sat on her heels using the coffee table to dine, while the adults sprawled on the sofa and comfortable chairs with their plates balanced precariously and their cans of soda near to hand. Jo settled next to Ryan on the couch as if her place was a given.

Tonight the house smelled like peppermint, so pungent it made Ryan’s eyes water. Kathleen had stripped off goggles and rubber gloves when she came from the kitchen. Helen, meantime, had been working on the
computer in the den, apparently designing order forms and practicing introductory letters. Both were preoccupied—Kathleen distracted enough to look as if she didn’t know who Emma was when he paused before seconds to ask where his niece was hiding.

“Oh, she’s upstairs somewhere,” Kathleen said vaguely. “She wasn’t hungry.”

Ryan swore. “She’s wasting away, Kathleen. When are you going to do something?”

That got to her. Her chin shot up and her eyes narrowed. “We go to counseling weekly. She sees a dietician on her own. What do you want me to do? Stick a tube down her throat?”

“Maybe the time has come for that,” he said grimly. “She looks sick.”

Speaking of timing—his stank. Ginny listened with anxious eyes, Jo stirred beside him as if to send a message and Kathleen’s expression was less than receptive. She didn’t like criticism, and she’d like it even less in front of others. But he could see his niece wasting away, and not much being done about it. “We’ve agreed—
all
of us, including Emma—that if her weight falls below eighty pounds, she’ll be hospitalized. She’s managed to keep it above that.”

“Eighty pounds.” Shocked, he shook his head. Sixteen-year-old Emma was five-four or five. How could a human being survive weighing that little?

“They do check her bloodwork regularly. I’m not entirely negligent, Ryan.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were.” He grimaced. “She just scares me. She went up the stairs the other day as if every step was a gigantic effort. You’d see more spring in the step of a mountain climber at 20,000 feet above sea level without oxygen.”

Kathleen wasn’t in a forgiving mood. “You think
I’m
not scared?”

“No…”

Beside him on the couch, Jo spoke up in his defense. “We’ve all noticed that she doesn’t look good, Kathleen. You’re better informed than the rest of us. You know what’s worrisome and what’s not. All I see is that Emma’s cold most of the time, and she’s quit taking Ginny for walks.”

“But she always exercises,” Kathleen protested. “She wouldn’t quit!”

“I think she has. She goes straight to her room when she comes home from school.”

Kathleen grabbed for straws. “Maybe she’s doing calisthenics there.”

“Maybe.” Jo kept most of the doubt from her voice, returning her attention to her food, as if she’d said all she meant to.

Forehead pinched, Kathleen set down her plate as if her appetite had deserted her. Sounding defeated, she said, “I’ll talk to her counselor this week. What else can I do? They tell me not to try to monitor what she eats or to comment on how much time she spends exercising. If I ask questions or say anything, she blows up.” She lifted her hands and let them fall helplessly. “She’s my daughter, and I have to watch her starve herself to death.”

“Maybe she’s like an alcoholic who has to reach a crisis.” Ryan felt as though he were offering a pat on the back to someone who needed a wheelchair. He couldn’t blame her for being angry at him.

“Maybe.” Eyes blind, Kathleen stood up. “Excuse me. I’ll check on her and then I’d better get back to work. I shouldn’t have taken a break.” She walked out with her head high, but he wondered if she was going to her bedroom for a quick cry.

In the silence after she was gone, he felt like a heel. But later, after they’d left the
house, when he said as much to Jo, she shook her head firmly.

“No. You love Emma, too. You have a right to say something. She does look awful, and I’m not sure Kathleen lets herself see. She wants so desperately to believe Emma is doing better.”

“But she’s not, is she?”

The night was clear and frosty, stars distant and brilliant. Fallen leaves crunched underfoot on the uneven sidewalk. Their breath lingered in white plumes when they passed under a streetlight.

Jo shook her head, then hunched into her parka. “She gets dizzy when she stands up. And have you touched her?” She shivered. “She’s not just moody, she’s shutting us out. Even Ginny.”

He nudged her to cross the street to his parked pickup. “Do you think Kathleen
should
do something?”

Tone subdued, Jo said, “I don’t know. How can I? Maybe she can’t help Emma beyond offering her the resources she already has. Maybe only Emma can help herself.”

Anger rasped in his voice. “But if she’s not…”

“Like Kathleen said, do you stick a tube
down her throat, as if she were a turn-of-the-century suffragette?”

He made an impatient, choppy gesture. “That was political, a different thing.”

“Was it? Force-feeding those women stole their autonomy, made them children who could be compelled to do as their betters—men—thought they should.”

“But Emma isn’t trying to
say
anything with her refusal to eat!”

Jo stopped beside the truck and faced him. “Isn’t she?”

Devastated by the small, simple question, Ryan tilted back his head and looked up at the black velvet of the sky, spangled with million-year-old stars. What if Emma had been trying to tell them all something, only they weren’t listening?

What if her last sob was her death?

Jo’s gloved hand crept into his. “I don’t know anything,” she repeated. “I’m not saying anyone has neglected Emma. I’m only guessing that Emma is expressing some huge, all-consuming need or fear through starvation. If she could find another way to say it…”

He made a ragged sound.

“She’s only sixteen.” Jo wrapped her arms around him and they embraced in the cold.
“She hasn’t been anorexic long. She has a good chance of recovering, from what I’ve read.”

“You’ve been reading about it?”

“Haven’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’ve learned nothing.” Frustration choked him. “I can’t find answers.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He gripped her tightly, his cheek against the fleece cloche hat she’d tugged on as they went out the door. With his eyes closed, he smelled peppermint.

After a long minute, he was able to relax and let her go, turning away to open the truck door. They drove to his house in near silence.

There she divested herself of parka, hat and gloves, kicked off her clogs, then in stockinged feet carried her pack into the living room and sank cross-legged on the wood floor. Unzipping her bag, she took out books and binder and spread them over his coffee table.

“You look like a kid,” he said.

She glanced up in surprise.

“A kid?”

“Are you really comfortable?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I weren’t.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Want something to drink?”

Reading already, she flapped a hand but didn’t look up. “Not right now, thanks.”

He left her for a while, writing up a bid for a job that would be very welcome come mid-January or early February, when construction work suffered an inevitable slowdown given Northwest weather. He didn’t believe in laying off his crew if he could possibly prevent it, even to the point of working for ridiculously low prices. If he could just make expenses on this one, it would be worth doing, to keep them from an idle month.

Satisfied at last, he printed the bid and a cover letter as well as copies for his own files, then wandered back to the living room, where he found Jo scribbling furiously, gaze darting between her writing and her open book.

She didn’t seem even to notice his presence, so he went to the kitchen and made coffee. When he set a cup in front of her, she grabbed it gratefully.

“Read my mind.”

“I doubt it,” Ryan said with amusement. “What are you working on?”

“Mm.” She stretched her legs out under the coffee table. “I’m analyzing studies on human
behavior that might be relevant to what makes people choose to use the public library or be turned off by it. How do people respond to layout, to the kind of order librarians tend to impose, to the institutional lighting or to the way other patrons behave or dress? What subtle motivators can we use to draw people in? Why do we lose some people? One guy who’s working on his 1962 Chevy borrows a manual from the library. His buddy would never think about the library as a source, even though he must have been dragged there as a school kid. Why?”

“Learning anything?”

“Oh, some of it’s predictable. For example, people worry about not fitting in, to be square pegs if the holes look round to them. So a guy wanders into the library, the only other patrons are a couple of nicely dressed women with young kids, the librarian in his shirt and tie looks disdainful, and our guy with grease under his nails quietly fades back out. He felt like an idiot when he was twelve and had to use the library to research the Egyptian pharaohs, and he doesn’t stick around this time long enough to discover how easy the computer is to use, that all he has to do is ask to be led right to that manual or résumé
book or
Hot Rod
magazine. If he’d come at a different time of day, seen some other guys that looked more like him there, his whole experience would have been different.”

“Okay. What are you going to do about it?”

Jo flashed him a cheerful grin. “I have no idea.” She slurped coffee and wiped her chin when she spilled. “Well, I know some ways to reach reluctant patrons. With teenagers, we take books to youth centers, even the detention hall. We talk to women’s groups. Men are tougher. I’m not sure I know, except that we need to be very conscious of how we as librarians present ourselves—
and
what we have to offer—from the get-go. We tend to be readers. Snobs. But we don’t exist just to serve like-minded fellow citizens. I’m hoping to find some studies that pinpoint relevant behavioral triggers.”

“You don’t sound as if you believe in free will.” He considered her. “Are we really ‘triggered’ that easily?”

Face animated, she argued, “Yeah, I think context is more important than we want to believe. Say I see somebody injured on the sidewalk ahead. What if it’s dark and I’m alone? Daytime and lots of other people are around, too? When am I likeliest to help?”