Monkey Wrench (11 page)

“I—I guess not.”

“So it's only demeaning to women if you assume cooking and cleaning and making a home is solely women's work.
I'm
not the one who decides which member of the family ought
to do the car repairs and who ought to do the laundry. That's up to my viewers.”

“I see,” said Gina, blinking and standing up straight.

“Now,” said Susannah. “Is your father at home?”

“He's not, I'm sorry,” Gina replied, remembering her manners at last and suddenly behaving like a girl who was accustomed to helping run her father's business. “Sometimes he works on Saturday mornings. After he got back from Mrs. Atkins's house, he went over to an auction in Bonneville to buy some salvage stuff—some old porch railings, I think. Are you the one he's buying them for?”

“No, I'm not. I have some other business to discuss with him.”

“I'll take a message,” Gina said. “Will you come inside while I write everything down?”

The girl stood aside, giving Susannah a glimpse of the cozy interior—a living room with overstuffed furniture and a jumble of books and magazines on the coffee table. Susannah quailed at the thought of setting foot in Joe's house. Already, she felt like an intruder in his life. And besides, there were some things best said in person.

“No,” she said to Gina, backing down the first porch step. “I'll catch up with him later.”

“I'll be glad to tell him anything,” Gina offered.

“Thanks. I'm sure you do a good job for your father. But I'd rather talk to him face-to-face.”

Gina shrugged, looking at Susannah curiously. “Have it your way.”

Susannah went down the porch steps, feeling both relieved and frustrated. She'd been almost happy to avoid a confrontation with him, but a part of her wished she could have another chance with Joe. After all, his heart was in the right place. Once she'd screwed up her courage to confront him, she hated leaving without speaking to the man. But she had no choice.

Queerly churned up inside, Susannah walked back to the square and decided to do a little shopping to calm her nerves
while waiting for Rose to finish with her doctor's appointment.

Shopping was better than tranquilizers.

Gates Department Store had always been
the
place to shop in Tyler. When Susannah was growing up, the establishment had been a child's adventure, with its three floors of merchandise, a quiet luncheonette in the basement and two brass elevators to whisk customers throughout the store. The display windows brought gawkers from far and wide with their beautiful and sometimes extravagant tableaux of merchandise. Ellie Gates, the founder and owner, had been an eccentric single woman with a flair for the dramatic and artistic. In her youth, Susannah had greatly admired the indomitable woman.

The lunch specialty on Saturdays had included a scoop of chocolate ice cream with colored sprinkles, a detail that was still surprisingly vivid in Susannah's memory. At Gates, Tyler citizens could buy a spool of thread, a pair of shoes, a toaster or even a parakeet, and the loyalty of the shoppers had prevented the development of a giant shopping mall that would have spoiled the surrounding countryside.

Susannah tried on a pair of pearl earrings, admired the selection of handbags and bought one for Rose for Christmas. Eventually she also bought herself a red sweater she didn't need—particularly if she intended to leave Tyler shortly for the Caribbean. The friendly clerk chatted as she wrapped the sweater and processed Susannah's credit card by running the papers through the store's old-fashioned pneumatic tubes.

Deciding to forgo the chocolate ice cream with sprinkles because the last thing she needed was a sugar-induced depression, Susannah walked back to Dr. Phelps's office.

“Oh, hi, Susannah. Your grandmother left about fifteen minutes ago,” the receptionist, Anna Kelsey, told her.

“Where did she go? Is she all right?”

“She seemed fine to me. I think she was heading home.”

Susannah thanked the woman and walked back to her grandmother's house along the snow-dusted sidewalks.

She froze on the corner when she noticed Joe Santori's truck parked at the curb in front of her grandmother's house.

“Now what?” she mumbled to herself, startled to find herself trembling all over.

She mounted the porch steps and let herself into the large house. “Granny Rose?”

No answer. With exasperation, Susannah wondered if her grandmother had intentionally left her alone to deal with Joe.

Susannah softly closed the door behind her and kicked off her boots. She cleared her throat and called unsteadily, “Anybody here?”

“I'd rather not be,” rumbled Joe's voice from the kitchen.

Susannah followed the sound and entered the kitchen with trepidation.

She found Joe—or the lower half of him, anyway—lying on the kitchen floor wedged under the sink, while a pool of water puddled around his body. His long legs lay diagonally across the wet linoleum, with one boot braced against a kitchen chair. Water dripped from his jeans.

“What in the world are you doing?”

“Working on the sink,” Joe replied from deep inside the cabinet. “What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Swimming,” Susannah replied.

“There's always a comedian in every crowd,” Joe grumbled, dropping a wrench onto the floor with a splash. “Is that you, Miss Suzie?”

Folding her coat over another kitchen chair and placing her Gates bag on the table, Susannah said, “It is. And I've been looking all over town for you.”

“How flattering,” said Joe from beneath the sink. “You missed me, huh?”

Susannah was glad he couldn't see her blush. “No.” She leaned down and tried to peer into the darkness of the cabinet. “I was supposed to tell you that my grandmother wants you to fix up her kitchen before the party next week, but I see you got the message.”

“Mrs. A. flagged me down on the street.”

“Where is she now?”

Joe began to ease his way out from under the sink. His voice was a little breathless as he inched backward. “I dropped her at the drugstore, and then she was going to pick up some fabric for a quilt. She said she'd be home soon.”

“Should she be walking?”

“Maybe not,” Joe said. “But I had no luck convincing her that I could be her taxi.”

A moment later, Joe emerged gingerly from underneath the sink, shaking his grease-stained hands to shed some of the water he'd collected. His hair looked curlier than ever, and possibly because it was Saturday, he hadn't shaved. The resulting growth of beard, even more noticeable now than earlier, gave Joe a tough, piratelike air. And Susannah had always had a soft spot for pirates.

Hastily, she banished that thought from her mind. “I was supposed to hire you for this job,” she said primly. “What are you doing, exactly?”

Joe gestured with his thumb. “This old sink leaks. I figure I better check the pipes before I put in a new one or start replacing the counter.”

“How is it going?”

“Miserably,” he admitted, looking at his dirty hands.

“Perhaps you ought to call a plumber before you get in over your head.”

“Oh, I don't mind getting in over my head once in a while.” He glanced up shrewdly. “Do you?”

Susannah felt her face color, and she couldn't think of a good comeback. As a result, a short, uncomfortable silence stretched between them, during which Joe watched Susannah with a wary gaze. Apparently, he wasn't ready to forgive her for the scene on the basement stairs earlier that morning.

Susannah summoned her composure and said, “As a matter of fact, I'm no stranger to plumbing problems. Shall I have a look?”

He looked startled. “Are you kidding? This is dirty work. Plus I'm sitting in a puddle, in case you haven't noticed.”

She'd noticed, all right. The water made Joe's jeans look like a second skin, and his shirt clung damply to his chest, too. But Susannah avoided looking at his chest. “Do you mind if I examine the situation?”

“Be my guest. But your clothes...”

“It will only take a moment to mop up this mess. Here. This is what I use.”

From a nearby drawer, Susannah pulled a pair of rubber gloves—the surgical kind she recommended to all her television viewers. They were available in packages of a dozen or more, and Susannah found them highly useful for all sorts of household projects. She held them up, and Joe looked at them dubiously. When he had wiped his dirty hands on the cloth she gave him, she passed him a sponge mop from the broom closet. Joe set about willingly cleaning up the water, and Susannah donned the gloves and a wraparound apron that completely covered her clothing from neck to knee. Thus protected, she knelt on the floor.

She's a formidable woman,
Joe thought as he edged out of her way, dabbing at his shirt with the cloth. He watched as the indomitable Miss Susannah Atkins peered under the sink with the air of a determined archaeologist entering a forgotten tomb for the first time. An attractive frown creased her forehead, and her blue eyes were narrowed into an intrepid squint.

“See anything?” Joe asked, hoping his voice sounded normal.

Lordy, she was attractive. More attractive than she knew, which made her even
more
attractive where Joe was concerned.

When she leaned into the cabinet, Joe closed his eyes and decided he wasn't going to be swayed by her appearance anymore. She might look like the best thing to hit Tyler in years, but she was pretty heartless.

Joe couldn't stop himself from taking a little peek, however. On her hands and knees, she was inadvertently giving him the full benefit of a view he hadn't enjoyed before. Her backside was nicely rounded, filling out her jeans and tapering
down to her slim legs. She wore a pair of white socks and no shoes again. Her feet were small and narrow, Joe noticed. He could see through the transparent gloves that her hands, bracing her weight on the kitchen floor, were perfectly manicured with short, utilitarian nails, and Joe found himself wondering how they'd feel if she touched him.

He suppressed a groan of longing.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

“What?” Embarrassed, Joe realized she had been talking and he hadn't heard a word.

“I said I can see the problem,” she repeated from under the sink. “You were trying to force the pipe, but actually you need a new gasket.”

“Oh, is that it?” Joe grinned wryly. He had known exactly what the problem was, but he was surprisingly pleased to hear Susannah come up with the same diagnosis he had. She was a woman of many talents.

“I don't carry gaskets in my truck,” he said, leaning against the kitchen table. “I'll have to drive over to Murphy's Hardware to get one. I'll check out the stainless steel sinks, too. Rose said she wanted a double one.”

Susannah climbed out of the cabinet, and if she guessed Joe had been taking in the scenery she displayed, she gave no hint. She caught his eye, though, and they both looked away and suddenly got busy. Joe finished mopping up, while Susannah stripped off the rubber gloves and began to tug at the strings on her apron.

But she got them tangled and gave up with an impatient sigh. “Listen,” she said, exasperated. “This is ridiculous. We're two grown adults, but we're acting like a couple of kids caught shoplifting or something. I'm embarrassed and you're...well, I won't presume to guess what you're feeling.”

Straight out, she said, “I'm very sorry about what happened this morning. I was pretty short with you, and I recognize you were just trying to help.”

“What brought this on?”

“What?”

“You had your mind made up this morning. What changed?”

“I...nothing.” She was quite unhinged, Joe could see. Her hands were trembling, and at that moment, Susannah looked a far cry from the cool television personality she was most of the time. Sitting on the floor with grease smearing one cheek and her hair escaping the smooth style held in place by pearl combs, she looked vulnerable, embarrassed and genuinely sorry for what had transpired earlier in the day.

She also looked sweet enough to nibble.

She said, “I'm sorry for the way I reacted and for the things I said.”

“All right,” said Joe, sounding a little hoarse even to his own ears. “Apology accepted.”

She smiled slightly. “Thank you.”

“You know,” he went on, hardly believing he was about to suggest such an idea, “just to show there's no hard feelings, I wonder if we should start all over again.”

“How's that?”

“Well, how about having dinner with me tonight?”

Her expression relaxed. “Dinner?”

“And a movie or something. That is, unless you're going to run off with your boss tonight.”

“No,” Susannah said. “We're not leaving tonight. We've postponed our plans. But I can't leave my grandmother. She's just been to the doctor and I'd rather—”

“Let's take her with us.”

Susannah laughed. “Now, that's the suggestion of a brave man! Can you imagine the three of us—”

“Tell you what,” Joe said. “Don't say yes or no—not until you've talked to your grandmother. Maybe she'd like a night out, and you and I could mend our fences.”

“Really, I...you and I could hardly have much to talk about.”

“How will we know unless we try?”

“Well...”

But she didn't say more. She was stumped.

With the damp cloth, Joe leaned forward and touched her face. Gently he wiped away the grease on her cheek, mean-while finding her cautious, doelike gaze irresistible. Her mouth parted—ever so slightly—and she released a long, pent-up breath. Joe thought about kissing that mouth, but caught himself. He could see the same idea had occurred to Susannah—it showed plainly in her eyes.

Well, well,
Joe thought.
What have we here?