Josie Day Is Coming Home

by Lisa Plumley

  No problem. She’d read some interesting stuff about Jennifer Aniston’s birthday party for Brad Pitt just this morning in US Weekly magazine. She’d join in.

  Before she could, one of the mothers waved a flyer. “If she thinks she’s getting my Brianna in on this, she’s crazy!”

  “Yeah.” The nearest mother nodded. “She’s not teaching my child indecent stripper moves!”

  Josie froze. They were talking about her.

  “I can’t believe she has the nerve to even suggest such a thing,” Thomas’s mom said. “These are kindergartners!”

  “You’re right. You should throw those flyers in the trash, Justine,” another mother advised. “That woman is a bad influence. Our children don’t need to learn ‘dancing’”—she added spiteful “air quotes” to the word—“from someone like her.”

  Josie was stunned. The nasty comments hit her right where it hurt…smack in the middle of her hopes for the future.

  Well. If those prissy, two-faced, know-it-alls thought they were going to pass judgment on her, they had another think coming. Josie sucked in a breath. She barreled forward, her burlap-bag dress sailing behind her like a muddy flag.

  “For your information,” she began, “I’m—”

  “Ouch!” bellowed a masculine voice from the corner. “I think I broke my toe!”

  Luke. Hesitating for a nanosecond, Josie glanced backward.

  He lay curled on the floor, incongruously huge compared with all the pint-size furniture. Gaping kindergartners surrounded him. Wincing, he grabbed his booted toe.

  “Arrgh. Arrgh!”

  Whatever he’d done, it must have been agonizing. There was no way a burly guy like Luke would practically bawl in front of a bunch of five-year-olds—not unless something drastic had happened.

  The snooty mothers forgotten, she rushed over. Jenna and Hannah joined her halfway there, looking concerned.

  “Luke, what happened?” Josie crouched beside him, checking for injuries. She touched his biceps, just above the tattoo that encircled it. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine now.” He scowled. “Must have been a cramp.”

  “A toe cramp?”

  “Sure. Yeah.” He nodded, looking vaguely defensive. His gaze shot to the mothers. They were gawking now, too. He bared his teeth, a menacing expression darkening his features.

  What the…? Startled, Josie blinked. But when she glanced at Luke’s face again, he seemed his usual happy-go-lucky self. She guessed she’d imagined the whole thing.

  “Come on,” she said, hauling him up. “Why don’t you try walking it off so that toe cramp doesn’t come back?”

  “Good idea.” Purposefully, Luke strode toward the gossiping mothers.

  They scattered like sunshine before a storm.

  Hmmm. Weird. Josie turned to Jenna, only to find her sister watching Luke with a speculative expression.

  “I was just thinking,” she mused. “Maybe those tattoos don’t tell the whole story after all.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Luke watched Josie approach the customer service desk at the Donovan’s Corner chamber of commerce office, a clipboard in her hand. Despite the grueling afternoon she’d been through, she smiled at the female employee sitting there.

  “Excuse me. I’m not sure about filling out this form. Should I put my name here”—she tapped the clipboarded form with her ballpoint—“or the name of my business?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you,” the clerk said. “Most new businesses fail, you know. In a couple of months, it probably won’t even matter.”

  Luke stared. Was it his imagination, or did the clerk seem just a little too gleeful about the prospect of Josie’s dance school failing? His muscles tightened. Intervening on Josie’s behalf was getting to be a habit.

  She tilted her head—a pose Luke recognized as her version of patience. “Thanks for the advice. But I’ve been doing the unexpected my whole life. I figure that ought to work in my favor this time around.”

  The woman hmmphed. Apparently, she was immune to Josie’s amazing smile. “Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks,” she said sourly. “Don’t count on it.”

  “I’m counting on talent. And maybe a little luck.”

  “Not to mention a G-string,” the clerk muttered, “and a little baby oil….”

  That was it. Luke rose. “She’s a dancer. In a revue.”

  “Yeah?” The clerk rolled her eyes. “Have you ever seen her ‘dance’? ‘Cause I heard—”

  She went on jabbering. But it was her “air quotes” on the word dance that had Luke seeing red. He stepped nearer.

  Josie grabbed him. “Luke, don’t. This is silly.”

  He didn’t think it was silly. That clerk’s attitude was the last thing Josie needed today—especially after the abuse those hoity-toity PTSO mothers had heaped on her. He shot the woman a warning look.

  “Really,” Josie insisted. “Stop. You might get another toe cramp.”

  Luke backed down. Reluctantly. He needed Josie to believe in his stupid toe cramp diversion. Otherwise, she might realize the truth—he’d invented the whole thing to keep her from goading those PTSO ninnies into snubbing her altogether. He only wished he’d caught on to what was happening before Josie had heard them trash talking. Protectively, he stayed where she’d stopped him.

  Keeping one hand flattened against his chest, Josie pulled something from the depths of her purse. She slapped a business card on the counter—a handwritten discount voucher for a free dance lesson. She’d been sprinkling them around town all day. She’d even left several at Hannah’s school for the teachers and staff. Right about now, Luke figured they were being used as cage lining for the school’s mascot, Herbert the gerbil.

  “If you want to find out what I really can do,” she told the clerk evenly, “bring that card to my dance school’s grand opening next month. Who knows? By then, I might actually have figured out how to fill out these forms.”

  Flashing another impossible smile, Josie held up the clipboard. The chamber of commerce paperwork fastened to it fluttered, partly covered with her loopy, curlicue handwriting. She wrapped her hand tighter around Luke’s arm, then tugged him toward the seating area with her.

  “Come on. I’ll just wing it with this paperwork.”

  Frowning, Luke let himself be led—but not without another cautionary look at the clerk. He made a mental note to make sure Josie’s application eventually got filed. If it were up to this employee, it might accidentally get “lost.” He was just familiar enough with paper shuffling—thanks to his unwanted days at Donovan & Sons’ corporate headquarters—to know those things happened sometimes.

  Josie wiggled onto the seat next to him. She studied the clipboard. “Okay. This can’t be that tough, right?”

  But as she peered at the application, frown lines puckered her forehead. Her lips moved as she reread the instructions. Her shoulders hunched. Josie filled out a few more blanks, hesitated, then scribbled out her answers and wrote new ones. She chewed her pen, looking worried.

  Finally she drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and banged her head against the wall behind them. Thump.

  Luke couldn’t stand it. “Want some help?”

  “Sure.” She groaned, rubbing her head. “Have you got a brain transplant handy?”

  At her obvious frustration, tenderness filled him. He wanted to make things right, to crush everyone who’d disappointed her, to fix it so Josie was never unhappy again. Luckily, her eyes were still closed. She couldn’t see any of those cornball feelings on his face.

  “Let’s see. Brain transplant…brain transplant.” He patted his jeans pockets, then his dark blue T-shirt. He shrugged. “I must have left it in my other suit.”

  A fleeting smile passed over her features. That was better.

  “It figures.” She opened her eyes, treating him to a disarmingly vulnerable gaze. “Me plus paperwork? Ugh. You might have noticed, but brainpower isn’t real
ly my strong suit.”

  Luke remembered her mother trotting out the same tired theory. But he didn’t believe it.

  “Anybody who can figure out how to get TJ to dust all twelve of the chandeliers has plenty of smarts,” he said. “And who’s the genius who dreamed up those peanut butter and pineapple sandwiches last night?”

  She waved her hand. “That doesn’t count. We were out of bologna. I was only improvising.”

  He gave her a mock fierce look. “Who?” he demanded.

  Another wavering smile. “Me.”

  “I told you so. They were good.” He’d polished off two of those freakishly tasty sandwiches himself, and not just because the Ding Dongs were gone. “And who figured out how to work the power buffer to polish those miles of Blue Moon flooring?”

  Josie had. “That was simple. It was a weight-counterweight question. Intuitive body mechanics. Anybody could have done it.”

  Luke disagreed. “You did it. You’ve got brainpower. It’s just nontraditional. Like mine.”

  “Yours? Oh, yeah?” Raising her eyebrows, Josie leaned back in her chair, her clipboard across her knees. She gave him an interested look. “How’s that?”

  “Well, look at me. I’m educated, talented—”

  “Modest.” She grinned.

  “—and ambitious. I was brought up in a good household, with every advantage. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do or have or try.” Whoops. At Josie’s curious look, Luke scaled back on the Silver Spoons routine. “The way most people figure it, I ought to have a skinny-ass pencil-pusher job someplace. Withering under fluorescent office lights. Punching out the guy in the next cubicle because he stole my stapler. Bulldozing my way up the corporate ladder. Right?”

  “Well, I think a bulldozer would pretty much destroy the corporate ladder. But I get your point.”

  “But I wanted to work with my hands.” Luke held them up, turning them over, spreading his fingers wide. They were callused. Scratched. Even scrubbed clean of motor oil, they bore all the signs of being workingman’s hands. “Fixing things was what I was good at. What I’ve always been good at. Taking things apart, putting them back together again, tweaking whatever I can get a grip on. I was made to be a mechanic.”

  At the words, he felt it. Now more than ever. Why couldn’t his damned father see that?

  “But most people don’t count that as a smart career move,” he said. “Most people don’t count that at all.”

  Josie took his hand. She enfolded it between her soft palms, then lay her cheek against their joined hands. Her gaze met his. Steadily. Knowingly.

  “Most people don’t know how brilliant you are at it. Or how much you love it.”

  Luke scoffed. Feeling weird and raw, he withdrew his hand. He hadn’t meant to give away so much. He frowned. “‘Love it’ is pushing it.”

  “No, it’s not.” Her intent gaze never left his face. “You do love it. When you’ve got something scattered in pieces around you—the furnace at Blue Moon, a bunch of motorcycle thingamabobs, that lawn mower TJ accidentally broke—”

  “He was racing it against the push mower.” Luke knew, because he’d been driving the old-fashioned version. Damn it.

  “—you get this look on your face,” Josie insisted. She took his hand again and squeezed it. “I think…I think it’s the same look I get when I’m dancing.”

  Struck by the comparison, he gazed back at her. In that moment, a connection grew between them—a connection born of understanding. Similarity. Acceptance.

  And lies, his conscience niggled at him. She thinks you’re a handyman.

  Screw you, Luke told his damned conscience silently. He had more important things to think about right now. Like the admiration in Josie’s face. The sparkle in her eyes. The warmth in her touch. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him with so much affection…so much faith. Until now, he hadn’t known how hungry he was for both.

  “I haven’t seen that look,” he told her, giving her hand an answering squeeze. “I haven’t seen you dance.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. “No kidding? Now that my ankle’s better, I practice every day in the studio—even without a ballet barre and mirrors and a sound system.”

  He made a face, trying to joke about the improvements he never intended to make. Still, her reminder stung.

  “I’ve got to be ready for my students,” she went on. “I really want to give something to them, you know? Something good. I think that was what was missing in my Las Vegas life. Giving.” She tilted her head, studying him. “Come on. You mean you’ve never sneaked a peek at me?”

  Luke shook his head. He’d heard the music coming from her boom box, had heard the muffled shump-shump of her feet as she’d moved across the former ballroom, had seen her emerge afterward all sweaty and glowing. But he’d never watched her.

  The guilt had kept him away.

  “I never wanted to watch,” he said honestly.

  Which, it turned out, was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  Luke didn’t know how or why, but all of a sudden Josie stiffened. Tension ratcheted up between them. Even the clerk sensed it. She scurried to some chamber of commerce back room, leaving him and Josie alone in the dingy reception area.

  I never wanted to watch, he reviewed. Nah, that seemed harmless to him.

  “You’re afraid.” With an expression of dawning revelation on her face, Josie let go of his hand. “You’re afraid you’ll see something you don’t want to see. You’re afraid they’re right!”

  “What? Who’s right?”

  “You’re afraid everyone in this town is right. You don’t want to see for yourself that I am a stripper!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not a stripper.”

  “Don’t try weaseling out of it now. The truth is beside the point. It’s perceptions that matter!”

  “But you’re a dancer,” he protested. “In a revue.”

  “Hmmph.” Josie slung her purse over her shoulder. She picked up her clipboard with jerky motions. “So you say.”

  Her emphasis on say wasn’t lost on him. His “get out of jail free” card had just gone belly up.

  “Josie.” Confused, Luke watched as she ripped off her paperwork and stuffed it in her purse. “If you were a stripper,” he asked reasonably, “don’t you think that’s something I’d want to see?”

  “Hah!”

  Hmmm. His enthusiasm to see her naked wasn’t working in his favor. Go figure. Luke scratched his head.

  “As if I’d let you see!” She stomped to the door.

  He recognized his cue. “Wait. Hang on, damn it. I thought you were mad because I hadn’t tried to sneak a peek at you. Now you’re pissed because I said I want to?”

  Josie opened her mouth. She seemed to think better of whatever argument she’d been about to make and shoved open the chamber of commerce door instead. A blast of mingled pine and exhaust scents—the ambiance of downtown—whooshed toward Luke.

  Her clodhoppers clattered down the crumbled steps.

  “Okay,” Luke tried stubbornly, grabbing their motorcycle helmets so he could follow. “Never mind. I don’t want to see you naked.” It was almost true…when she was wearing that burlap bag dress. Sort of. Okay, so it wasn’t true at all. But he was in a corner here. “How’s that?”

  Josie’s angry over-the-shoulder gaze shot to his foot. He forced himself to limp. Maintaining that toe cramp was going to be a pain in the ass.

  “Are you trying to say I’m fat?” She jabbed her finger at his chest. “Because you’re the one who got me hooked on Ding Dongs, buddy. I was a perfectly moderate Twinkie user until you came along. This last five pounds is your fault.”

  “You’re not fat.” He knew the correct answer to that question. Always. In the middle of the mostly empty sidewalk, he looked her up and down. “You’re perfect just the way you are. Even,” he added with flagrant generosity, “in that dress.”

  Not mollified, she crossed her arms. “
You’d be lucky to see me naked.”

  “Fine. Next time, I will watch you dance,” Luke said, fighting for patience. “I’ll invite TJ. We’ll make nachos. We’ll tap a keg. It’ll be a party.”

  “Let me guess. A skanky bachelor party, right? Hmmph.”

  “Huh? Who’s getting married?”

  Clearly exasperated—however nonsensically—Josie whirled. She stopped beside his motorcycle at the curb. He hoped she didn’t kick it. Those shoes of hers could snap a strut.

  “For the last time, I’m not a stripper!” she yelled, flinging her arms to the sides. “Hello, Donovan’s Corner! I. Am. Not. A. Stripper!”

  A dozen sparrows fluttered from the trees.

  “Jesus, you’re scaring the birds.”

  Josie glared. “You know what?” she announced. “I don’t want to see you dance naked, either.”

  “Uhhh…” Bummer.

  “And,” she added, waving her arm with a crazy, triumphant gleam in her eye, “I do! So there.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Both!”

  Judging by her victorious smirk, Josie thought she had him. She thought she was winning. Feminine logic. It made about as much sense as sweaters on cocker spaniels.

  There was only one way to settle this.

  “Whatever you say.” Luke set down the pair of helmets he’d been carrying, getting ready.

  “Good.” Josie tossed her head. She looked confused for an instant—probably missing the usual swoosh of her ponytailed red hair—then snatched her helmet from the sidewalk. “I’m glad we got that straight.”

  “Me, too.” Luke pulled off his T-shirt. He dropped it beside his waiting helmet, then paused.

  Josie headed for his Harley. “Let’s go.”

  He waited until she glanced backward again, then put his hand on his hip. He rotated his pelvis, Elvis-style. He gave her a wink.

  “Hey! What are you—where’d the—what the—where’d your shirt go?” Her gaze whisked up and down his naked torso. She goggled. “What are you doing?”