Asking for Trouble by Rosalind James

you can help Alyssa.”
    So that had become Joe’s chore on Kincaid holidays, which
had given him the idea for the present he’d thought up for Susie this year,
which he was pretty proud of. When it was his turn to distribute his gifts on this
fifteenth Christmas afternoon, he handed her a long white envelope, then sat
back and watched a little nervously while she opened it.
    “I know you’ve always said you didn’t need it,” he said as
she unfolded a certificate for a year’s worth of weekly housekeeping service,
“but I needed to give it, to both of you. To say—” He shrugged. “To say
thanks.”
    It had occurred to him over that busy wedding weekend a
month earlier, watching her move from one set of endless tasks to another, that
the reason she’d always declined Alec’s offers of a housekeeper wasn’t that she
enjoyed housework, because who did? In a flash of insight that had left him
astonished that he hadn’t figured it out sooner, he’d realized that she hadn’t
wanted to embarrass Dave by accepting something from her son that her husband
couldn’t provide, that she didn’t want him to think that the life he’d given
her wasn’t good enough. But if it came from Joe instead, he thought—he
hoped—that it would be different.
    “It’s not even that much work anymore,” Susie said. “Not
with just Dave and me.”
    “Seems to me that everybody should get to retire sometime,”
Joe said. “And the lady I found to do it, she’s a single mom. She needs the
work.”
    That did the trick, just as he’d planned. “Well,” she said,
putting the certificate carefully back into her envelope, “I’d better not say
no, then, had I?” She got up, came over and bent to give him a kiss on the
cheek. “I think I should just say thank you, sweetheart. That was very
thoughtful of you. Very sweet.”
    He could feel a lump forming in his throat, to his horror. Luckily,
Dixie came to his rescue.
    “I said you’d be a catch,” she pronounced, “and dang if I
wasn’t right, wouldn’t you say, Desiree? Don’t you think some girl’s going to
get mighty lucky one of these days?”
    “Rae’s not going to agree with you,” Joe said, the
vulnerable moment past. “She doesn’t think I’m good with women.”
    “Hmm. Maybe slow to warm up,” Rae said. “You’re all right
once you get there.” She smiled at her business partner. “I’ve got no
complaints these days.”
    “And I think you’re just fine,”
Susie said. She reached to adjust the shoulder of the gray sweater she’d
knitted him, along with the ones she’d made for her sons. “I messed up on this
seam. You need to give it back to me later today, and I’ll redo it.”
    She’d always given him clothes,
ever since that first year. He hadn’t expected anything, had felt awkward
enough sitting around the Christmas tree with the family, still in his borrowed
shirt. But when Susie had handed out her presents, two squashy packages had
landed in his lap.
    “Because you need a Tall size.
Those things you have are too short,” Susie had explained when he’d ripped the
tissue paper open to reveal a pair of new Hanes T-shirts, one each in navy blue
and gray. He’d have felt embarrassed about that, like a charity case,
especially when he’d opened his other package and found three pairs of socks,
except that she’d just given her sons the same things.
    “Just be glad she didn’t give you
underwear,” Alec said with a grin. “It’s been known to happen. Nothing like
wearing boxers picked out by your mother.”
    “If women didn’t buy underwear for
men,” Susie retorted, “half the men in America would wear them until they
couldn’t tell which ones were the leg holes. I have to sneak in and throw out
Dave’s old things while he’s not looking.”
    “Because they’re not comfortable until
they’re broken in,” Dave protested. “And who’s going to see them? A little hole
or two never hurt anything.”
    “I see them,”