Something About Joe by Kandy Shepherd

stroller at NASCAR speed, even up the
steep incline away from the water. Allison had to run alongside to
keep up. “Whoa,” she said, panting. “I didn’t mean that fast.” Joe
slowed down to enable her to catch up.
    She matched her steps to his long-legged
stride. Anyone seeing them, she supposed, would take them for a
happy little family.
    Despite her
worry about work, she smiled. How incongruous they must seem, Joe
in his faded jeans with his long hair and earring, her in her
boss-lady suit. Then she sobered. What did she know of happy little
families? Her dismal childhood had taught her nothing.
    As they
hurried along, Allison was conscious of how close she was to Joe.
When his body nudged hers, every now and then, tremors of awareness
shot through her. One part of her wanted to fight the feeling;
another just to enjoy it.
    She glanced at her watch. Lunch would be
over, she’d have to head straight back to the office.
    “Running late?” asked Joe.
    Briefly,
Allison filled him in on what had happened. To her dismay, he
laughed. He didn’t take her dilemma with anything like the
seriousness she felt it warranted.
    “Why do you take that kind of crap?” he
said. “You’re allowed to have a family life, aren’t you?”
    “Not really,” she said, and realized she
meant it.
    “Can’t you be a banker and a mother
too?”
    “ There are
hundreds of men in our organization but very few woman at that
level of management. Some of them resent me; think I’m not part of
the club. I cramp their style. They believe I should be home with
my child, though they actually don’t come out and say that. I have
to act as if I have no family encumbrances if I’m to meet them on
their own ground.”
    “Aren’t some of them fathers?”
    “Of course. But it’s different for them.
Every one of the guys in my team has a stay-at-home wife to look
after the kids.”
    “So why do you stay in this job?”
    “ When I
started out, I loved it. It was such a buzz to make the figures
work, to set up deals worth millions of dollars. Every day was fun,
exciting. It didn’t matter that I was a woman because I wasn’t at
the same level of management—and I didn’t have Mitchell. I still
love the work, but it’s different now.”
    Corporate
environments at the executive level were not kind to women who
wanted to spend time with their children. She thought about the
current deal and how, if she made it happen, she might have more
choice about how she lived her life.
    She’d talked enough about her. “What about
you? Why did you leave your job? Teaching, I mean? You’ve obviously
got a gift for dealing with children.”
    Joe was silent. All she could hear was the
sound of Mitchell’s stroller wheeling rapidly along the sidewalk.
One wheel had squeaked from the get-go, but she’d never gotten
around to oiling it. Mitchell had gone to sleep almost as soon as
they’d started walking.
    “ Yeah. I
guess I do,” said Joe. “I love kids and I think I understand them.
But I didn’t like the way the state education system was going.
Bureaucracies and I don’t mix.”
    Somehow that didn’t surprise her. Joe didn’t
seem the kind of guy who’d easily kow-tow to an authority he didn’t
respect.
    Not like
her. She’d had her path in life dictated for her by her father.
Work hard at school, harder at college, get a good job as soon as
you can and stick with it. Her own need for security had seen her
follow that path without veering. With men, too, she’d only dated
the safe and predictable. Marrying Peter and moving to Australia
had been an aberration. And look where that had gotten
her.
    “Couldn’t you have found a school that
suited you? A private school maybe?”
    “Heck no.” Joe grinned at her. He was
impossibly handsome. Those amazing navy blue eyes, those marvelous
teeth, so white against his tan. No wonder every woman who had
walked past them since they left the park had covertly checked him
out. “I won’t knuckle