Raffling Ryan

“Yes, but that flamboyant coloring, those clothes. I think she’s hiding behind them a little, Ryan, to make up for some courage she lacks. In fact, I’m willing to wager she’s had her heart broken at some time.” She patted his cheek again. “But you’ll fix that, won’t you?”

“I’ll fix—damn,” Ryan ended. He was talking to the air, for Allie was already back in the crowd, hanging on Charlie’s arm and making the pseudocowboy look good for it.

“Hi, again,” Janna said as she walked over to stand in front of him. “Quite the mad bidding war, wasn’t it? I was going to give up, but the auctioneer was so sure she had you that I just knew I had to rescue you. You can thank me later, unless you really wanted to be caught in her clutches for a whole day and evening. Besides, I was also being selfish. You’re the tallest man here.”

“Tall. Yes, you mentioned that before. What does my being tall have to do with anything?”

Janna’s smile dazzled more brightly than the strobe lights that had begun to flash again. Ryan would have looked to the runway to see what was causing the women to begin howling in delight, but he didn’t think he had the courage to see much more of the auction. Not if he had to face whoever was up there across a table at a business lunch anytime soon.

“What does it have to do with anything? Didn’t you read the rules?” she asked. “You’re mine for the day, for whatever—as long as it’s legal, I’m assuming. Well, I need a handyman, and you’re it. And you’re tall because, even on a ladder, you have to be tall to replace the lightbulb in the fixture over my front door. Oh, I could do it myself, but I get sort of dizzy up high, so I’d rather you do it. See?”

“No, no I don’t see. You just paid two thousand dollars to use me as a handyman for a day? You could have hired three handymen for that price. Half a dozen.”

“True, true. But I wouldn’t have this nice charity write-off, now would I? And besides, have you ever tried to find a handyman who just wants to do small jobs?” She threw back her head, showing her own long neck, and it was longer, and whiter, than Marcia’s. “Lots of luck, that’s what I say, trying to find a man like that.” She grinned. “So I bought you.”

“Because I’m tall. Because I can reach the light fixture over your front door. That’s it? That’s your reason?”

She stuck out one leg, and her rather adorable chin, and braced one hand on her hip. “No,” she said, her smile gone. “I picked you because of those killer bedroom eyes of yours. I took one look and wanted to jump your bones, big boy. There, happy now?”

Ryan had the grace to look ashamed, even feel ashamed. “You really do want me to be your handyman for the day. I—I’m sorry I didn’t understand from the first.”

“That’s all right,” Janna said, patting his shoulder, the way he imagined she’d pat a puppy who’d just got nervous on her carpet. She handed him a piece of paper. “Here. This is my address. According to The Weather Channel—if you’re into wild prognostications—this Saturday is going to be a lovely Indian summer kind of day. Perfect for handyman jobs. Be there at 8:00 a.m., okay? Now, I’ve gotta go see someone about a check.”

He pointed toward the registration desk. “You’re going the wrong way. You pay over there,” he told her, still trying to figure out what had just happened to him. Was he happy to have been rescued from Marcia? Or had he just been tossed from the frying pan straight into the fire, as the old saying went?

Janna grimaced, looking as comical as a pretty woman could, which, in her case, was pretty comical. Rather like watching a young Lucille Ball coming down the stairs in a ball gown, then looking into the camera lens and deliberately crossing her eyes. He had to smile, in spite of himself. “I know. But first I have to see…I have to…well, don’t you worry about me. I’ll see you Saturday morning.”

And then she was gone, and Ryan was standing there, holding the note, written, it appeared, in dark-brown eyebrow pencil: “Janna Monroe. 540 Washington Avenue. Eight o’clock. Be there or be square.”

Chapter Two

Janna stood at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at the sun as it rose slowly in the sky. It was Saturday, the sun was shining, and The Weather Channel had been right on target, because the expected high today was seventy-two degrees.

She glanced at the clock on the wall above the cabinets, watching for a moment as the turquoise-blue plastic cat wagged its tail as each second passed, bringing the time closer to eight o’clock. The cat’s big yellow eyes also moved with the second hand, shifting side to side in true feline fashion, and she grinned at it, thinking it was grinning at her, anticipating an interesting day.

Tansy, her real-life blue-cream shorthaired cat and boon companion since she’d rescued the then small, fuzzy kitten from the animal shelter eight months earlier, politely rubbed up against her jean-covered leg, reminding Janna that she hadn’t been fed yet. “Always the lady, Tansy. Good for you. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

The cat looked up at her hopefully, then hopped onto the counter without seeming to move at all. She was just on the floor one moment, and standing next to the soapy water-filled sink the next. Tilting her head to one side, Tansy began to “talk” to Janna.

And she really did talk, Tansy did. Just because nobody understood her didn’t mean she didn’t talk, or so Janna had explained to Zachary when her son teased her for talking back to a cat.

“Yes, yes,” Janna said, “I’m washing your dishes now. Yes,” she continued after Tansy held up her end of the conversation, “the pink one with the flowers on it. I know it’s your favorite.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Tansy began her premeal ablutions, licking her front paw and then rubbing it over her whiskered face.

Janna shook her head. “I really should get out more,” she said, not to Tansy but to herself. “Next thing you know, I’ll be talking to the clock, too.”

Her musings were interrupted by Zachary’s footsteps thundering down the hallway. He slid into the kitchen, stopping precisely next to his chair at the table. “Hi, Mom,” the nine-year-old said as he picked up the granola bar Janna had laid there for him. “Bye, Mom,” he continued around his first mouthful, already heading for the door.

“I don’t think so,” Janna said, rinsing Tansy’s dish under the tap and placing it in the dish drainer. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Zachary, a brown-eyed, red-haired, freckle-faced miniature of his mother, screwed up his face in thought. “Oh, yeah, right. I’ll be over at Tommy’s. We’ve got soccer practice at ten, remember? We’ve got to practice.”

“You’ve got to practice for the practice,” Janna said, nodding. “Understandable. Now, what else have you forgotten?”

Zachary comically screwed up his face once more, concentrating. “Nope. Can’t think of anything,” he said, trying not to smile.

“Now you’ve done it,” Janna said, advancing on him as he retreated toward the back door. She grabbed his face with her wet, soapy hands and planted a big, fat kiss on his forehead, then rubbed soapsuds into his cheeks, just for the fun of it.

“Aw, Mom,” Zachary complained, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was in too much of a hurry to run past her and scoop up some soap bubbles of his own. Once armed with two near mountains of bubbles, he advanced on Janna, heh-heh-hehing like the evil landlord about to toss poor, defenseless Little Nell out into the blizzard.

Janna rapidly retreated, looking for weapons as she went. Nothing. Not close enough to the refrigerator to get the canned whipped cream; too far away from the sink to reload there.

There was nothing else to do but make a break for it. Still watching Zachary, she struggled to open the back door, her slippery hands not making much progress on the doorknob.

Emitting eeks and acks and various other exclamations meant to show her “terror,” she finally wrenched the door open, then sidestepped quickly as Zachary, hot on her tail, couldn’t stop himself from running straight outside…and smack into the man standing on the back stoop, holding up his hand as if ready to knock on the door.

The two small mountains of soap bubbles became a casualty of the collision, some of them slamming into Ryan Chandler’s chest, some of them flying up and finding new homes in Zachary’s hair, on Ryan’s nose.

Ryan’s hands came down on Zachary’s shoulders to steady him, and he looked past the boy to the mother, who was leaning against the back door, laughing, and not trying to be quiet about it, either. Her laugh rang out pure and full and with genuine enjoyment, even as she pushed herself away from the door and grabbed a dish towel, handing it to Ryan. “Hi, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “You and Zachary have already bumped into each other, I see. Do come in.”

“Gotta go, Mom,” Zachary said, wiping his hands on his sweatpants. “Tommy’s mother drives today, so I’ll be home around lunchtime, okay? See you, um, Mr. Chandler. Oh, and sorry about that.”

With that, Zachary was off, racing across the backyard to his friend, and Janna didn’t bother to stop him. After all, he had apologized, hadn’t he?

“I didn’t know you had a son,” Ryan said, handing back the dish towel as he entered the house behind Janna and looked around the kitchen, pretty much as if he’d never seen one before today.

Janna looked around with him. She really loved her kitchen. It was the one room in the house where she had definitely let herself go, indulging her love of color as well as cramming every available space with one of her first loves: gadgets.

The kitchen set was a genuine antique, a sort of Art Deco chrome-legged set with Formica top—a turquoise Formica top, with matching padded chairs. She’d seen a set much like it at a local furniture store, new, and had laughed to think that her grandmother’s cast-off set from the fifties had stuck around long enough to show up in decorating reruns.

The walls were also turquoise, bright against the high old, glass-fronted cabinets she’d covered with not one but six careful layers of white paint and decorated with chrome pulls and handles in the shape of pineapples.

Then there was the bright-white tile floor she’d laid herself, with turquoise, pink and yellow tiles scattered throughout, ruffled curtains of turquoise, pink and yellow stripes she’d patched together out of remnants, the colorful prints on the walls, the dozen or so birdhouses and green, trailing plants in the space between the cabinets and the ceiling, the turquoise Formica countertops covered with bread maker, toaster oven, can opener, blender, pasta maker and several other can’t-live-without-it gadgets and…well…it was a “full” kitchen. No doubt.

One might even call it cluttered. To look at Ryan Chandler, he was one of those who definitely would.

“Would you like a cup of coffee before you get started?” she asked, drying off her hands and setting the flowered bowl on the floor, filling it with dry cat food. “Of course you do. You sit down over there while I get it. Oh, and the list is on the table.”

When she turned away from the coffeepot to approach the table holding two stoneware cups, one pink, one turquoise, Ryan was staring at her. In fact, she got the feeling that he had done nothing but stare at her since his first inspection of the room.

She looked down at herself, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. She was wearing jeans. Okay, old jeans. Okay, very old jeans. Very old, soft, and somewhat tight jeans, worn low on her hips and hugging her very long legs.

What else would she wear if she and Ryan were going to be working on odd jobs all day? Well, a knit sweater, for one thing. And she was wearing one. A dark-gray sweater-vest once belonging to her late husband—which had shrunk badly in the wash—that she sometimes wore with a blouse, and sometimes without.

She looked down at herself again. Okay, so she should probably have worn a blouse under it today.

And maybe a bra.