Magic In A Jelly Jar. Sally Hayes Tyler

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СКАЧАТЬ he could see outside of the jacket was a pair of delicate hands—no rings, he noted—and the enticing curve of her throat and neck. She had pale peach-colored lips, eyes as blue as that fake sky. Her hair was honey-colored and pulled back from her face into an intricate braid Dani would have loved and seriously envied, and it hung to a point halfway down her back. She had dainty moon-shaped earrings, and an absolutely dazzling smile that was directed, full force, at his son, who was positively glowing.

      Joe told himself he was being rude, staring at her this way. He simply couldn’t help it.

      “Dad!” Luke was tugging furiously on Joe’s jeans. Bending down, Joe let Luke whisper in his ear, “It’s her!”

      “Who?” Joe was still staring at her and thinking that he hadn’t been so blown away by the sight of a woman in years. He thought he was over that—that having his and his children’s hearts ripped out by a woman who had pledged to love them forever would have cured him.

      “The tooth fairy!” Luke whispered loudly enough for the mischievous-looking woman to hear. He looked as if he was ready to explode with excitement. “She came to my school, ’cept she was all dressed up then in the blue dress with the stars. She even had her magic wand with her. I know it’s her. And she’s real. She’s the tooth fairy.”

      “Luke, there’s no such thing as—”

      “Uh-hmm.” The woman cleared her throat loudly.

      Joe stopped just in time. “Sorry.”

      She gave him a conspiratorial wink, then turned to Luke and stuck out her hand. “I’m Dr. Carter. And you are Luke, aren’t you? Please tell me I’m in the right room.”

      Luke took the hand she offered and whispered, “You’re her, aren’t you?”

      “Who?” she said with a smile.

      “The tooth fairy.” Luke was still whispering, as if he couldn’t say it out loud.

      She laughed, a sound that invited everyone around to laugh with her. Joe would have, if he’d been able to make a sound.

      “But tooth fairies are magic,” she said quite seriously. “I’m just a dentist.”

      Then she pulled a quarter from behind Luke’s right ear and handed it to him.

      “Wow! Did you see that, Dad? She is magic.”

      Dr. Carter was still grinning down at his son. Her hand headed for Luke’s other ear, and before Joe could say anything, she pulled a plastic spider ring from behind Luke’s ear.

      “Wow!” Luke just stared up at her and grinned.

      “So, what seems to be the problem here, Luke? Or are you just here for a checkup?”

      “I dunno,” Luke said, Mr. Innocent now.

      “I need to talk to you,” Joe said, not wanting to explain the problem in front of Luke.

      “All right.” Dr. Carter turned back to his son. “Luke, I have a very special chair that goes up and down when you press this little button. How ’bout I let you sit in it and take it up and down?”

      “Can I really?”

      “Sure.” She helped Luke into the chair and showed him the button. “But you have to promise that when Mary comes in to count your teeth and when I check them, you’ll leave the chair alone. Deal?”

      She held out her palm. Luke slapped it with enthusiasm. “Deal!”

      The chair was revving up and down when the dentist led Joe from the room.

      “Don’t the kids wear out the chairs?” he said.

      “Eventually, but it makes them happy to take them up and down.” She said it as if that was the only thing that mattered—making the children happy. “Besides, it’s impossible to keep them from playing with the chairs, kind of like telling them to be still or to stay out of the mud on a rainy day. So I cut a deal with them—they can play for a minute, get it out of their system, then they have to leave the chairs alone while we work.”

      She led him down the hall and to the right. Joe found himself watching the muscles flex in those trim calves of hers as she walked, and he wished she’d take off that white coat so he could see what was beneath it. She opened a heavy wooden door to the right, then offered him a seat in front of her desk. The desk was old and solid, made of polished cherry, and he guessed it weighed a ton. Joe couldn’t help but admire it.

      “They don’t make pieces like this these days,” he said, running a finger around the intricate trim work.

      “I know. This was my father’s. In fact, almost all the furniture in here was his.” She stood beside a big leather swivel chair that seemed as if it would swallow her.

      Joe glanced around the room, saw bookshelves overflowing with thick heavy texts, a dozen or so plants of all sizes and shapes that almost took over the room, and another glass cabinet with dozens of fairy figurines inside it.

      “You’re really into this tooth-fairy thing, aren’t you?”

      “My father was. He was a dentist, too, and he’s been collecting fairies since before I was born. He died last year.”

      “Sorry,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

      She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But Joe knew it did. The woman who’d been so animated in the other room with his son was quite different now. No mischievous smile waited on her lips, no twinkle in those amazing blue eyes. Joe wished he hadn’t taken her smile away.

      “So.” She moved to the front of the desk, then leaned against it. “What’s wrong with Luke?”

      Joe ran through the list in his head. Luke wouldn’t give up his teeth. In fact, the ones he had given up to the tooth fairy, he’d cried and begged to buy back within days of giving them up. He played dentist at school, tearing out Jenny’s tooth, and was in some kid’s mouth with a flashlight in the lunchroom earlier that day. He had a mother who’d left and probably wasn’t ever coming back. How much of that could Joe share with this woman who pulled quarters from behind little boys’ ears to make them smile?

      “It can’t be that bad,” she offered, then reached a hand out to him.

      Joe sat back in the chair. He felt her fingertips brush his chest above the pocket of the clean shirt he’d donned in the truck before he picked Luke up from school, and then she pulled a long yellow scarf from his shirt pocket. It seemed to take forever, and Joe was baffled by the whole procedure.

      Being this close to the woman, having her touch him in such an inconsequential way, having her smile at him, then blush as if she’d embarrassed herself—it all baffled him.

      Because it felt so good.

      Time to go out on a date, he supposed, dismissing the idea just as quickly as he considered allowing another woman into his life. One had been more than enough.

      And then he looked up at the woman with the yellow scarf in her small elegant hands, a flush СКАЧАТЬ