Playing For Keeps

“…bustles with characters and surprises.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An inventive and consistently surprising plot as well as a smart and likable heroine set this romance apart from the pack.”

—Booklist

“…filled with lovable characters and their hilarious quirks…a fun book and a perfect beach read.”

—Romantic Times

“Well written, warm-hearted and funny…an example of Chick Lit at its best…reminiscent of Jennifer Crusie’s work, perhaps crossed with a bit of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum for good measure….”

—Susan Scribner, The Romance Reader

“Get ready to laugh until there are tears! Karen Templeton makes the move from series romance to chick lit with élan.”

—Judith Ripplemeyer, The Word on Romance

Dear Reader,

While I love a good edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller as much as the next person, I’ve long believed the most compelling stories are those found in everyday life—the day-to-day challenges of raising kids and dealing with family relationships; the way life forces us to grow in ways we never expected to; the breath-stealing awe of finding new love. To this end, I tend to write about people the average reader might know, or even be, characters no less exceptional simply because they do eight loads of laundry a week or worry about a learning disabled child or sometimes wonder how they’re going to make it to the next payday. These are people who find joy in the scent of a roasting turkey, the feel of a child in their arms, the satisfaction of knowing that beat-up old minivan in the driveway is theirs. And these are people no less worthy of finding true love simply because they’re “ordinary.”

This book, my first single title for Silhouette, is no exception. Since the story is set in my adopted hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, these people see what I see every day, shop where I shop, deal with many of the same issues I—and most of you—face every day. Yet for five months, as they revealed their fears and hopes and deepest desires to me, their quiet drama kept me on the edge of my seat. I pray they do the same for you.

Playing for Keeps

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-02531-7

PLAYING FOR KEEPS

© 2003 Karen Templeton

Published in Great Britain 2014

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2018-07-18

To everyone who hangs out in the AOL Books Community Writing Series Romance folder—thanks for seven years (and counting)of cheers and commiseration. (Not to mention answers to any off-the-wall question I can think up!) I love you guys.

And to Trish, Holly, Susan and Alice, for reassuring me the story made sense.

And to Gail—I’m holding you to that promise to edit my next three hundred books!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 1

If Joanna Swann had learned nothing else in her thirty-two years, it was that bad news rarely came à la carte. If one thing went wrong, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop. This phone call, however, had to make at least the thirty-fourth shoe to drop within the past few weeks, which was sorely taxing her good humor.

For a single bright, glistening moment, the temptation to leave her three children to fend for themselves and to take to her bed was nearly overwhelming. However she scraped together her last ounce of reserve and said, “Mr. Shaw—” she tried to place her relatively new neighbor, but all she was getting was a beer belly and a cowboy hat large enough to shelter a family of six “—how is that even possible? Chester doesn’t even come up to Glady’s knees. Let alone her—”

“I saw ’em with my own eyes! Right out here in my own goddamn backyard! Your goddamn dog got up on the top step of my goddamn back porch and got my bitch pregnant! We were just about to have her bred, too, and we were counting on that income! You have any idea how much a Great Dane puppy with papers brings?”

Her neck muscles cramped from cradling the cordless between her jaw and her shoulder as she tossed Bob the Builder fruit snacks into the boys’ lunch boxes. Joanna glared at the fur bag lying with his head on his paws, bushy white eyebrows twitching. Damn dog had been nothing but trouble from the moment her ex-husband had brought him home for the kids’ Christmas present, year before last. Without consulting her first, natch. And if the kids hadn’t been so attached to the mangy beast, he would’ve long since been history. His manners were atrocious, his libido embarrassingly healthy, and there hadn’t been a fence or wall invented he couldn’t dig out of. But Chester was purebred, so Bobby had said it didn’t make sense to get him fixed until they’d put him out to stud a few times, at least. Apparently, Chester had decided to take the initiative on his own.

Heaven help them, this was going be one butt-ugly batch of puppies.

“No, Mr. Shaw,” Joanna said, eyeing the clock and frowning—Bobby was late picking up the kids for school. Again. “I have no idea how much—”

“Six hundred bucks a pop, that’s how much! And Gladys always has at least ten pups! That means I’m out six thousand dollars, lady. So what’re you gonna do about it?”

“Me?” she squeaked, the sleep-deprivation fog lifting just enough for her to realize where this conversation was going. Glowering, she dumped out an inch of murky water from the bowl she’d left on the counter last night to catch the drip from the leaky roof. “You expect me to compensate you for an…an…accident?”

“Damn straight I expect you to compensate me! Wasn’t my dog that got out, it was yours! Your fault—you have to pay up. We can go to petty court if you like, but that’d only add court costs to what you already owe me. So I’ll be sending you a bill soon as Gladys delivers.”

Wham! went the receiver in her ear just as the father of her three children picked that inauspicious moment to drag his sorry hide through her back door.

“Next time you bring me an unneutered dog, Bobby Alvarez, make sure he knows how to use a condom!” And long as the gun was loaded, might as well get off another round. “And where the hell have you been? Kids!” she bellowed in the general direction of their rooms. “Your father’s here!”

“Whoa, babe, back up.” Bobby dug a blue-and-red-striped tie from the pocket of his top-of-the-line JCPenney sportsjacket, threading it through his shirt collar. “What’s this about the dog and condoms?”

Joanna pointed to Chester, whose eyebrows twitched some more.

“That…thing knocked up the neighbor’s Great Dane.”

Bobby stopped knotting his tie to grin at the dog. “Chester! My man!” He bent at the knees, extending one hand. “Give me five!” The dog hesitated, then belly-crawled to Bobby, eyeing Joanna warily as he shook hands with the only person in the room who currently didn’t wish to see him stuffed. Bobby did the praising thing, then sidled over to the coffeemaker. “This fresh?”

Fumbling to hook an earring one-handed into her left lobe, Joanna gulped down the cold remnants of her first cup of coffee, refusing to let the crooked, charming, you-wouldn’t-really-smack-somebody-this-cute-wouldja? look in those hot-fudge eyes get to her.

“Touch that coffee and die. And since you find your dog’s sexual escapades so amusing, then I guess it’s okay to send the bill to you.”

“Bill?”

“Yeah, bill. As in, for the loss of what would have been a purebred litter. For which the mother-to-be’s daddy is suing me. Us. Which is just what I need on top of the roof leaking. Again. And why the hell are you late?”

“How can you be mad at me for so many things in one breath?”

“A time-saving strategy fine-honed after nine years of marriage. Well?”

“Hey, I’m really sorry, babe. But Tori—”

“And don’t even try to blame this on your girlfriend—”

“Fiancée.”

Joanna reeled for a second or two as shoe number thirty-five bounced off her head. “Since when?”

Something almost like apology flickered in his eyes. “Last night. I mean, this probably isn’t the best time to spring this on you—”

“No, no…” Joanna inserted the second earring. “Now, later, whenever. Congratulations. I guess. Although that’s neither here nor there,” she added, scrambling to get back up on her high horse. “The whole point of my asking you to take the kids to school today was so I could get to my appointment on time…dammit, what are they doing?” Joanna tromped across the kitchen’s tiled floor, her curly hair boinging around her face and annoying the life out of her. “Dulcy! Matt! Ryder! Now!”

“Jo,” Bobby said behind her. “It’s been more than three years since we split up. Time at least one of us moved on.”

Joanna whirled around at the precise moment the dog decided to shuffle back across the kitchen floor. Right in front of her. She clutched the edge of the counter, sloshing coffee all over her left boob. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin and started rubbing at the spot, even though some small, tired part of her brain knew coffee and peach cotton did not mix. She glared at Bobby as her breast jiggled from the onslaught. “One word about wanting to help and you’re dead meat,” she said, then added, “As for your moving on…as I recall, you did that before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.”

“You’re still pissed about the dog, aren’t you?”

“The dog, the roof, your being late…take your pick. Oh, and Ryder’s teacher called. She wants us to come in for a conference.”

To give Bobby credit, concern flashed across his features. “I thought he was doing better this year.”

“Yeah, well, so did I. But apparently not. So believe me, your getting married again doesn’t even make the short list. But honestly, Bobby…” Joanna gave up on the rubbing and looked at her ex. “Can Tori even vote yet?”

“She’s twenty-one, for God’s sake. Besides, in some ways she’s older than I am—”

Which, Joanna thought uncharitably, wasn’t all that much of a stretch.

“—and she’s pregnant.”

At this rate Joanna could open a damn shoe store. “Well,” she said after a moment, “at least no one’s holding Chester accountable for that puppy.”

“That’s why I’m late,” Bobby said, ignoring her. “Tori was so sick this morning, she didn’t want me to leave.”

Oh, no. Uh-uh. Not that she didn’t genuinely feel badly for Bobby’s girlfriend, who clearly had no idea what she was getting herself into. But no way was Joanna about to let sympathy sully the righteous indignation she’d spent the past half hour polishing to a high gloss.

“You are totally out of your mind,” she said.

The corners of Bobby’s mouth pulled down. “Why do you say that? You know how much I love kids.”

“Yeah. I also know you barely make enough to support the ones you already have. Not to mention this problem you have with picking them up on time.”

“I told you—”

“I don’t just mean this morning. I mean…oh, never mind,” Joanna said as her daughter and twin sons finally came trooping into the kitchen, huge grins erupting on their faces when they saw their father. All three began chattering at once, even though they talked to their father every single night and spent every weekend with him. Joanna watched the interaction with an aching heart, thinking, as she had many, many times since the divorce, what a shame it was that the man was so pitifully clueless in every other aspect of his life but this.

He really did love his kids. Of that, she’d never had a single doubt. For that, she’d be eternally grateful. But their marriage had been built on the sands of impulse and boredom and infatuation; its collapse had been inevitable from their wedding day. That he seemed about to embark on the journey with someone new…

None of your business, Joanna. Let go.

So she kissed each of her dark-haired babies goodbye, slipping in an extra word of encouragement for Ryder who, thank goodness, wasn’t complaining about his stomach hurting this morning. The kids filed out the back door, Joanna barely noticing the sheet of paper on the counter in time to call Bobby back. He eyed it as if it was a snake coiled for attack. And rightfully so.

“What’s that?”

“Plumber’s bill. I already paid it, so you owe me half.”

His eyes twitched to hers. “I told you I’d fix that leak—”

“That was two weeks ago, Bobby. What was I supposed to do? Go without the second toilet until you ‘got around’ to fixing it?”

“It’s just things are kinda tight right now, y’know?”

“Oh, forget it!” Joanna snatched the bill out of his hand. “I don’t know why I bother trying to get you to do anything—”

“Dammit, Jo—there you go with the drama queen act again.” He stuck out his hand. “Give me the bill. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”

“And what about the roof? And taking care of Chester’s little indiscretion? And Mrs. Kellogg wants me to set up that appointment ASAP—”

“Jeez, Jo—why can’t we deal with one thing at a time?”

“Because life doesn’t hand me one thing at a time!”

He let out a heavy sigh, then gestured toward the bill again. “Give me the damn bill,” he said quietly. “I’ll call you later about the other stuff. I swear.”

She passed it back to him, even though she knew he’d put it somewhere and never look at it again.

“Da-ad!”

“I’m there, sweetheart,” he shouted to his daughter. He turned back to Jo, that damn smile spreading across olive-skinned features a little less sharply defined than they had been in his twenties despite the field of one-inch black spikes jutting from his scalp. Figured he’d manage to get younger-looking as time passed, while Jo was rapidly approaching hagdom. “You know, babe, you really gotta trust me a little more.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. And I don’t mean the calling me ‘babe’ part, although that’s not exactly winning you points, either.”

He shrugged off her comment, the gesture of a man determined to never let the turkeys—or anybody else—get him down. Then his eyes tangled with hers. “You know I wanted to have more kids. With you, I mean.”

This, she didn’t need. “Wasn’t in the cards, Bobby.”

“No. I guess not.” Then off he went, leaving Joanna to wonder if it was too early to start drinking. Oh, right. She didn’t drink. An unfortunate oversight on her part.

After a millisecond’s pang of empathy for Tori, she flew down the hall to her bedroom, stripping off the coffee-stained jersey dress as worries pelted her like sleet. Not that, in theory, Bobby’s news was a worry. Joanna hadn’t had a claim on his affections in years. He was free to marry whomever he liked and to have as many kids as he liked. But she knew Bobby and his Trust me, babe…it’ll work out, you’ll see. If he couldn’t handle his responsibilities to her and the kids when they were all still living under one roof, how the hell did he think he was going to add a new wife and child to the mix?

The man couldn’t take anything seriously if his life depended on it. Which ironically was exactly what had appealed to the twenty-year-old Joanna, exhausted from trying to live up to her parents’ expectations. She, however, had come to grips with reality. Bobby Alvarez’s view of “reality” began and ended with Survivor. Hence the divorce.

Hey. It was better than murder.

Now sporting a denim dress she prayed wouldn’t turn her into Melba toast when the cool early October morning gave way to the blistering hot October afternoon, she rammed a pair of silver combs into the chaos that was her hair and sailed back down the hall, ignoring the cyclonized kitchen as she zipped through into the converted garage that served as her workshop. She now had less than forty-five minutes to load up the van and get across town to the hotsytotsy gallery that had agreed to take a couple of her handmade Santa Clauses.

Not that she was thrilled about leaving them on consignment, something she hadn’t done since the early days when she’d been doing well to sell one or two at a craft show here and there. But the High Desert Gallery carried some of the most prestigious names in the Southwest art world. Placing her work there was a coup of no small proportion, well worth the commission she’d pay the gallery for any special orders that resulted. Her mother thought she was insane, looking to take on even more work when she could barely keep up with the orders she had. Yeah, well, Joanna thought, slinging her saddlebag up onto her left shoulder as she carefully lifted the sturdy shopping bag packed with a pair of Father Christmasses off her worktable, she’d given up sanity about the same time she’d stopped wearing panty hose.

She and the bulging bag forged through the small sea of cats who called her rambling Albuquerque North Valley adobe home. Some minutes later she was tearing across Paseo del Norte in the Blue Bomb when her cell phone rang.

Ever since some yahoo yakking on his cell had nearly creamed her after running a red light, Joanna had been none too keen about talking on the phone while driving. But—damn—a glance at the readout revealed her mother’s number.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Glynnie Swann’s voice chirped in her ear when she answered. “Why don’t you swing by and pick me up on your way to the gallery? There’s the most adorable new toy store right by there—Patty Kohler was telling me about it the other day—and since Barbara’s oldest just had another baby, I thought this would save me a trip.”

Why wasn’t her mother at work? Why couldn’t she go get Aunt Barb’s oldest’s baby a present by herself?

“I’m really running late, Mom—”

“I’ll be right in front, so you won’t even have to get out,” Glynnie said, and hung up.

And what had Joanna done in some previous life to merit her present torment?

The word railroading had been invented expressly for her mother, Joanna thought on a weary sigh as she headed into the chamisa and sagebrush-infested Sandia foothills and toward her parents’ new house, hidden so deep among the twisting, turning roads that Joanna managed to get lost every time she drove up here. The wind coming through her open window was making the curls tickle her face; she jabbed at the automatic button, only to realize that, once again, she’d missed a key turnoff.

Even as she realized that, for something that wasn’t supposed to be bothering her, she was sure thinking about Bobby’s news an awful lot. But why? It wasn’t as if she was jealous. And she certainly wasn’t envious.

Her mouth twisted. Okay, so maybe that part wasn’t exactly true, even if she of all people understood all too well the pitfalls of marriage. Such as waking up one morning and looking at the naked man snoring beside you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?

Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.

What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.

She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.

Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…

And…

Well, hell. That was it?

Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.