Exclusively Yours

by Shannon Stacey

  He rolled his eyes. “No, I didn’t. I don’t know why men do that.”

  “It’s romantic.”

  “It’s stupid. So anyway, she opened the box and I was waiting for her to get all teary-eyed and throw her arms around me. Instead she looked like she’d sucked on a lemon.” He paused and blew out a deep breath. “Started lecturing me on how she’d expected something a little more substantial and befitting the future Mrs. Joseph Kowalski, and how the wife of a famous, wealthy author shouldn’t have jewelry anybody could get at their local flea market.”

  “That bitch!”

  The shocked anger in her voice eased the humiliation that, even though it was but a pale shadow of what he’d felt at the time, still made his gut ache like bad heartburn. “So I took it back. Told her I wasn’t the Joseph Kowalski she was looking for. That I was just Joe.”

  “And she had the nerve to sue you?”

  “I guess she felt the amount of networking she’d put into my career, along with the so-called emotional investment, entitled her to something.”

  “I can’t believe you paid her. She never would have won that case.”

  Sometimes he couldn’t believe he’d paid her, either, but most of the time he considered it money well spent. “By paying her off, I was able to tie the money to an ironclad confidentiality agreement. If we’d gone to trial, win or lose, she could say anything to anybody, and everybody would have known what a blind, stupid sap Joe Kowalski was.”

  “You do realize there are people out there—like Tina, for example—who think you did something horrible or perverted to her.”

  “Better they think that than think I’m so pathetic I fell for a gold digger.”

  “Oh, that is such a guy thing to say.”

  Yeah, it probably was, but maybe she had no idea what it was like to feel that stupid. He’d not only been duped by a woman, but a woman he’d been intimate with. A woman he’d asked to be his wife. Even now he couldn’t stomach what a moron he’d been.

  “So now you know my deep, dark secret,” he said when the silence stretched on.

  “You make it sound like you did something to be ashamed of, but at least you tried.”

  Something in her voice made him look over at her. “Did you ever come close?”

  “Mostly just arrangements with fellow career-obsessed singles. Coworkers with benefits. I thought I was close once, but when he started making noises about getting married and starting a family, I realized I didn’t love him more than I loved my job.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he hit Save and shut down the laptop. “This is depressing. Let’s go see what the family’s doing.”

  “A volleyball game? Are you serious?”

  “Not just a volleyball game,” Brian protested. “The Annual Kowalski Volleyball Death Match Tournament of Doom.”Oh, yeah. Like she really wanted any part of that. “I don’t play volleyball. I…don’t know how.”

  “Liar,” Terry chirped. “Remember the whole we all went to high school together thing? I’ve seen you play.”

  “And I suck.”

  “I didn’t say you played well.”

  “And now I’m not playing at all.”

  Bobby shot up off the picnic table bench. “Uncle Joe said you were gonna play!”

  Or she’d be breaking his dumbass rules and she wouldn’t get to ask him a question. “Fine, but I want to be on the same team as Terry.”

  “That’s not how we choose teams,” Brian said, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry, but your aunt has a mean spike and I do not want to be on the opposite side of the net.”

  Terry laughed. “My spike isn’t all that mean anymore.”

  “We won’t divide evenly this year,” Danny pointed out. “There are thirteen of us.”

  “I’ll keep score,” Keri was quick to offer. “I don’t want to mess up the math.”

  “We’ll count Bobby and Ma as one player,” Terry said.

  It ended up with Mary, Kevin, Mike, Lisa, Joey, Bobby and Steph on one team and Leo, Danny, Brian, Terry, Joe and Keri on the other. And the ball was an oversized inflatable, slightly weighted beach ball designed to look like a volleyball, but smaller, lighter and a lot less painful if you took it in the face.

  Keri found that out personally a few minutes later when Mike decided to take his frustrations out on the ball and she didn’t duck quick enough. Fortunately, as the ball bounced off her face, Joe dove across the grass and kept it from hitting the ground. Danny sent it over the net and, though Joe did give her a quick glance to make sure she was okay, the play went on.

  Until Steph ended up on her Uncle Kevin’s shoulders, slamming the ball back over the net with ease.

  “Hey, that’s against the rules,” Keri protested.

  “No rules in The Annual Kowalski Volleyball Death Match Tournament of Doom,” Joey yelled at her from across the net. “Whiner!”

  “Cheater!” she yelled back, earning boos and hisses from the cheating team.

  They tried to offset the advantage by putting Brian on Joe’s shoulders, but since Kevin was taller than Joe and Steph was taller than Brian, they remained at a disadvantage.

  Until the cheating team scored five unanswered points. Before she realized what was happening, Joe’s head popped between her legs and he was hoisting her onto his shoulders.

  “Oh my God!” she yelped. “Don’t you dare!”

  She would have struggled, but Joe was already trying to stand up straight, with Terry’s help, and she was afraid she’d fall. This wasn’t like playing chicken in the pool, where a big splash was the worst that would happen. Joe was tall and the ground was hard.

  “Quit squirming and pay attention,” Leo barked as Lisa prepared to serve for the other team.

  As the ball came over the net, Joe sidestepped to line her up with it, but the swaying motion caught Keri by surprise and—instead of slamming the ball back over the net—she gripped a handful of Joe’s hair to steady herself and watched it sail past.

  “Ow! Easy on the scalp, babe.”

  “Put. Me. Down.”

  “Hit. The. Ball,” Leo ordered.

  The next time the ball came over the net, she was ready and, though she kept her left fingers tangled in Joe’s hair, she reached out with her right hand to hit it back.

  “I did it,” she yelled.

  Then Steph spiked the ball back over the net, where it hit Joe in the face because he couldn’t let go of her legs to defend himself.

  “Ow,” he said again.

  “I’ve got it this time,” she promised.

  Almost ten minutes of intense volleyball ensued until, with the score evened up, Keri was pretty sure she could feel Joe’s knees trembling through his body.

  “Are you going to be able to put me down without dropping me?”

  It sounded like he tried to laugh, but the sound was a little breathless. “Sure. Hey, Pop. Gimme a hand.”

  In the process of getting her down, Leo’s hand inadvertently grabbed her ass, which made everybody laugh, causing her to be unceremoniously dumped on the grass. Joe collapsed beside her, his face red with exertion.

  “I’m not twenty years old anymore,” he grudgingly admitted.

  “Neither is Kevin,” she replied.

  He turned his head to frown at her. “If we’re going for the cheap shot, let me point out Steph’s a little lighter than you.”

  She would have slapped him, but Leo loomed over them, casting a big shadow and pointing at Keri. “Next year, you ride on Kevin’s shoulders and Steph can go with Joe. That’ll even things out.”

  Her smile froze in place. Next year?

  There wasn’t going to be a next year and this was exactly what she’d been afraid of before they’d even had sex. His family thought they were a couple. Not only did they think they were a couple, but his father obviously thought they’d still be together in a year’s time.

  “I think it’s time for a lunch break,” Mary declared and there was
a chorus of agreement and a mass exodus in the general direction of shade and the drink coolers.

  “He didn’t mean anything by it,” Joe told her.

  So he’d noticed it, too. “I warned you this would happen. They think we’re together.”

  “So what? It’s not like they haven’t survived my break-ups in the past. They survived you leaving. They even survived Lauren. I’m sure they’ll be okay this time, too.”

  Well, he didn’t have to make it sound like she was so easily discarded, either. “By the way, even if I was here next year, I’m never playing volleyball with you people again.”

  He stood up and then grabbed her hand to haul her to her feet. “Next year? That was only the first match of the day, babe. It’s not called The Annual Kowalski Volleyball Death Match Tournament of Doom for nothing.”

  “I hate you.”

  Joe was pondering the least obvious way to get Keri untangled from his family and back to the cabin for a little post-lunch dessert when his father toppled off the conversational high-wire.

  “So what’s this I hear about you wanting another baby?” Pop boomed for half the campground to hear.“Oh jeez, not another one,” Danny muttered.

  Mike immediately tensed up and Lisa gave Pop a shaky smile. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have another granddaughter to offset all these grandsons?”

  His father hadn’t even opened his mouth to answer when Mike cut in with a curt, “No.”

  “But we have four—”

  “No.” Mike stood and tossed his paper plate into the fire. “We’re done with that, Lisa.”

  “Maybe we should—”

  “I’m done. And since everybody else already knows you’ve lost your damn mind, they may as well know I haven’t.”

  He started toward his RV, and Joe was surprised when Lisa stood and followed him. They usually stuck pretty close to the Cleaver routine in front of the kids.

  “I miss having a baby, Mike. And now that they’re older, I…”

  “Now that they’re older what? What part of them getting older and more independent and giving us more freedom are you seeing as a bad thing?”

  “You won’t have any reason to stay with me.”

  Joe winced. The fact Mike had married Lisa because she was pregnant with Joey wasn’t some deep, dark family secret, but it wasn’t exactly lunch conversation, either.

  “Are you kidding me?” Mike was getting loud, and their mother stood, ready to intervene. “You think I’ll leave if you don’t have a baby on your hip?”

  “You didn’t want to marry me. Everybody knows that.”

  The campsite suddenly became a flurry of activity, and youngster-distracting freeze pops appeared as if by magic in Terry’s hands. Their parents were both making a beeline to Lisa and Mike, and it was a toss-up as to who was going to slap whom upside the head first. Keri was working her way out of the group, trying for invisible. And poor Steph crying silent tears, no doubt traumatized by watching another of the stable, role-model relationships in her life crumble.

  But everybody froze when Mike made a frustrated growling sound and plowed his fist into the side of his camper. Joey was on his feet in an instant, freeze pop dropped in the dirt as he stepped in front of Lisa.

  Joe watched the boy—so tall, skinny and scared shitless—facing off against his dad, and felt an odd tightening in his chest. Lisa wasn’t in any danger. Mike had a bit of a temper, but he’d throw himself under a bus before he raised a hand to his family.

  But his oldest nephew had just taken a giant, irreversible step toward the man he’d become, and it was an awesome and yet incredibly sad moment to watch.

  Nobody intervened when Mike turned and walked out of the site and up the dirt road. They all knew from years of experience he’d walk it off and in ten minutes be back with an apology and a better attitude.

  So Joe had no idea what to say when he heard his truck start up and then watched it drive past them and exit the campground.

  “Where’s Daddy going?” Bobby asked, melted freeze pop running down his chin and staining his shirt green. “He didn’t give me a kiss goodbye.”

  Lisa looked totally stricken, so Terry stepped in with a half-assed explanation of Daddy putting himself in time-out for being cranky.

  “He should do some timeses.”

  Lisa, obviously shaken beyond her ability to front for the kids, started to cry. “Is he coming back?”

  Nobody knew, but they all said yes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mike’s leaving not only derailed any plans to resume the volleyball game from hell, but made Keri keenly aware of her non-family status, so she retreated quietly to the cabin and her book.

  Cocooned in the pillows and blankets on Joe’s bed, she forced herself to turn each stiff, crackling page with the hope of losing herself in the story. It didn’t happen. She merely managed to move ahead several chapters without remembering a single page.She got up and cleaned the cabin, then tried to read some more. The book still didn’t grab her, so she took out her steno pad and pencil. She may as well get some work done while the Kowalskis were busy with their family crisis.

  Reworking the answers he’d already given into paragraphs that might pacify Tina without violating any of Joe’s rules was a grueling, on-going process. And she was still debating whether or not to use the drunken, Carrie Danielson-writing chapter of his life.

  Formulating each progressive question was also getting harder as the questions she wanted to ask Joe were diverging from the kind of questions Spotlight readers would want answers to.

  With a sigh, she turned to a fresh page and scratched out a throwaway question. Then, disgusted with herself, she leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, the weak evening sun barely lit the cabin and Joe sat on the edge of the bed, her notebook in his hand.

  Keri sat up and scrubbed at her face. That was the first nap she’d taken in years, and she remembered now why she hated them. They left her groggy and disoriented, with no sense of time.

  “Is this your next question?” he asked, flashing the page at her.

  Why didn’t you ask me not to go?

  “No. I was playing hangman with myself.”

  “Where’s the gallows?”

  “I do that in my head. Makes it easier to cheat.”

  “Good point. I should try that.” He took her pencil and wrote something on the page. “I win.”

  He tossed the pad on the bed next to her and walked over to turn on the gas fireplace.

  Because I wanted you to be a happy zebra. Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?

  “A happy zebra?”

  “I had to get a Z in there off the top of my head. Tried to stump myself.”

  Keri grabbed the pencil. I couldn’t eXpect you to leave your Family, Joe. “X, F and J. I win.”

  He took it and sighed before writing something and handing it back. “I lost a long time ago.”

  I loved you.

  She wrote I loved you, too under it, then flipped the cover closed and jammed the pencil through the wire spiral. “How is Lisa?”

  “Convinced her husband left her.”

  “And the boys?”

  “Pretending to be distracted just to make the adults feel better.”

  “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “Since he took my keys and stole my truck, he pretty much has to.”

  “Would it help if we took the kids out for pizza or something?”

  “You’d do that?”

  Keri laughed. “I know they’re a handful, but I’ve read that children can sense tension, especially in their family, and that it throws them out of whack. As rowdy as your nephews are, I can’t imagine them out of whack.”

  Joe smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes or make his dimples pop. “Do you want kids?”

  The question flew at her from left field and she didn’t even have time to get her glove up. “I don’t know. I guess I stopped th
inking about it at some point. By the time I meet the career goals I set for myself and then go daddy shopping, I’ll have to deliver in the geriatric ward. How about you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Why not? Family’s always been everything to you, and you’d make a great dad.”

  He shrugged. “I was pretty self-involved for a while. Drinking and writing were my entire world. And then, after Lauren, I… I’ve got Steph and the boys, and being Uncle Joe’s been good enough for me.”

  But there was an unhappiness in his eyes that she’d never seen before, and it went deeper than concern for his brother’s woes.

  “They’re growing up,” he said abruptly, pacing in front of the fireplace. “Joey tonight…I was so damn proud of him. And it hurt that he’s not mine to be proud of. I almost hated Mike right then, for getting to be Joey’s dad.”

  She had no idea what to say to that, and eventually the silence stretched on to the point the moment was gone.

  “So, the pizza thing?” she asked after it was obvious no more was forthcoming.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I was actually sent here to bring you back for dinner. I got distracted by hangman. Also, I think we covered the fact Mike stole my truck, we won’t all fit in your rental and it’s a long walk to the pizza place.”

  Keri stowed her notepad and donned a sweatshirt before following Joe out the door. The extra fabric helped keep the hardiest of the mosquitoes at bay, plus the temperature had a way of going down with the sun.

  The entire family—minus Mike—was seated around the campfire, breaking out the ingredients for s’mores. Clearly the Kowalskis had already inhaled their suppers while she and Joe were depressing the hell out of each other.

  “I made you each a plate,” Mary called over. “Hurry and eat before the chocolate’s gone.”

  Keri was licking barbecue sauce from her fingers when a vehicle pulled into the campground. The others must have recognized the sound of Joe’s SUV, because their heads all swiveled in that direction and the tension level shot up into the stratosphere again.

  Mike parked across the front of the site, then tossed Joe his keys. After lifting the back hatch, he pulled out a gigantic gift box, which he barely managed to carry in Lisa’s general direction. Once it became obvious he couldn’t see and could feasibly end up in the campfire, Kevin gave him a hand.