“They’re worse than kids,” he muttered, handing the check and the company credit card to Paige.
“You took their cell phones away? Totally a dad-like move.”
“I’m not that old.” He signed his name to the slip she handed him, then took his card back. “If you talk to Mitch, let him know I’ll be around for a while this time.”
“I will.”
As he turned to leave, he was aware of the door opening and he stopped walking so he wouldn’t run into anybody while tucking his card back into his wallet. Then he looked up.
Dirty-blond hair. Dark-chocolate eyes. A body that time and some added pounds had molded into curves any man would take his time savoring. And a familiar face that hit him like one of his brother’s wrecking balls.
* * *
Lauren might have forgotten how to breathe for a few seconds. God, he looked good. Even better than he had in her imagination. Since his brothers had aged well, she shouldn’t have been surprised by the still-thick dark hair or the flat stomach and broad shoulders shown off by the Kowalski Custom Builders polo shirt. But part of her wished he’d gone downhill a little. Or a lot, actually.
She’d seen him a couple of times since Josh had broken his leg, but always at a distance. So she hadn’t been able to see the blue eyes or the way the years had added character to his face, nor could she have smelled whatever delicious cologne or aftershave he was wearing.
And distance meant not having to do this awkward dance of not knowing what to do or say. They hadn’t actually spoken since Nick was a baby, when Ryan had asked her a question that could have changed her life and she’d said no.
He was supposed to stay away. It was unspoken, but understood.
“Hi, Lauren.” His voice was deeper. Stronger.
“How have you been?”
For a few seconds he looked like he was trying to figure out how to sum up fifteen or so years in a few words, but then he smiled. But it was the polite smile, not the full, devastating grin, for which she should probably be thankful. “I’ve been good.”
“Good. And how are things at the lodge?”
“Good.”
“And Josh’s leg?”
“It’s good.”
“That’s...good.” Now that they’d established everything was good, she’d reached the end of her having-a-clue-what-to-say rope. “I don’t have a long lunch break, so I should probably order.”
“Of course.” He stepped out of her way. “I’ll see you...around.”
He left before she could say anything else and that was fine, since all she could think to say was “good.” And seeing him around would be anything but.
As she sat down, Lauren tried to shake off the nerves that being so close to him seemed to have set to quivering, only to find herself pinned by Paige’s all-too-observant stare. She should have made the time to pack a lunch this morning.
“Coffee?”
Lauren pressed a hand to her stomach, cursing the butterflies. “I think I’ll have decaf.”
“They have that effect on women.”
“Coffees?”
“Kowalskis.”
Uh-oh. The last thing Lauren needed was the population of Whitford thinking she had a thing for Ryan. “Hectic morning. Nick didn’t want to get out of the house and then things at the office were crazy. I’ve already had more than my fair share of the high-test stuff.”
“Mmm-hmm. What are you eating?”
“Grilled cheese on wheat, I guess. With coleslaw instead of fries.”
“So, the regular, in other words.” Paige rolled her eyes and went to give the order to the cook, but she was gone only a few seconds. “Weren’t your ex and Ryan best friends back in high school?”
It was to be expected, Lauren told herself. The woman was marrying a Kowalski, so it was natural people would fill her in on the family details. “Yeah, they were.”
They weren’t anymore. There hadn’t been a fight between the guys, but Dean seemed to think Ryan had gone off to become a big shot and forgotten where he came from. There was some resentment on Dean’s part, but it was misplaced. Lauren had never told her ex-husband about Ryan’s visit, even though it had been a serious betrayal of the guys’ friendship. Ryan had gone away, and every week, then month, and finally year he was gone made it easier to justify not telling Dean.
“And?”
She’d almost forgotten Paige was standing there, no doubt waiting to hear the rest of the story. “And Ryan got his degree and moved to Mass and that was that.”
“Oh, come on. It’s me!” Paige bent down and rested her forearms on the counter so they were at the same height. “Mitch thinks there’s some kind of history between you two.”
“Nope, sorry.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, either. It was time to change the subject. “Speaking of Mitch, when are you guys getting married?”
Paige’s face lit up and, almost by reflex, she put out her left hand to admire the sparkling ring on her finger. “It hasn’t even been two weeks since he asked me.”
“From what I’ve heard, Mitch is in a hurry and you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have you kidnapped and put on a plane to Vegas.”
“We want to get married at the lodge, but we don’t want to do it during the sledding season and he doesn’t want to wait until spring.”
“That doesn’t leave you a lot of time.”
“We’re thinking about Columbus Day weekend,” Paige said. “It falls early this year, so maybe we’ll still have some fall foliage.”
“It’s also not quite three weeks away.”
“We don’t want anything fancy. He’s going to call everybody when he gets home and see if we can make it work. As long as his aunt Mary and uncle Leo can make it from New Hampshire, and his brother Sean and his wife, we’ll probably go for it. But he’d like his sister to fly in from New Mexico, too.”
“I haven’t seen Liz in ages.”
“I guess nobody has, except when Sean got out of the army. They had a party for him at Ryan’s.”
And back to Ryan again. Thankfully the bell dinged and Paige left to pick up Lauren’s grilled cheese sandwich, because Lauren could feel the heat creeping into her face. She was going to have to come up with a way to stop doing that or wear more makeup or something. She couldn’t blush every time somebody mentioned the man’s name.
To make matters worse, it wasn’t some leftover attraction to a young Ryan, which was more nostalgia than anything. It’s not as if she’d been lusting after him while running around with his best friend. She’d loved Dean and, while she found Ryan attractive, it wasn’t until later her subconscious mind had given him the starring role in her sexual fantasies. Probably because he was safely far away so fantasy couldn’t intrude on reality.
But right now, grown-up Lauren’s body, which hadn’t been up against a naked man’s in way too long, seemed to think the very grown-up Ryan was just the man for the job.
Paige set Lauren’s lunch in front of her, then untied her apron. “I hate to run out on you, but I have an appointment to look at a house.”
Lauren had been so wrapped up in trying not to think about Ryan Kowalski, she hadn’t even noticed that Ava, the second-shift waitress, had shown up. “I have to inhale this and get back anyway. When I step out for lunch, it’s like Hurricane Gary passed over my desk during the half hour I was gone.”
“Don’t make any plans for Columbus Day weekend,” Paige reminded her as she headed for the door. “I’m not planning on having bridesmaids, but you and Hailey have to be at my wedding.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Lauren said, and she meant it. But as the door swung closed behind Paige, her undersexed mind coughed up a tantalizing image.
Ryan in a suit. Her in a sexy dress. A few drinks. A slow
dance or two...
She shoved a forkful of coleslaw in her mouth and told herself to get over it. There was enough on her plate as it was and she already knew they had almost nothing to say to each other. He was as good as a stranger now and, no matter how her hormones felt about the matter, it was best he stay that way.
It seemed like he’d been avoiding her for years. Now it was time for her to avoid him. Simple as that.
Chapter Two
Ryan wasn’t surprised at all that the first thing Rosie Davis did, after wrapping him in a suffocating hug, was try to feed Dill and Matt.
“They’re here to work, Rosie, not be adopted.” He knew any attempt to mark boundaries with the lodge’s housekeeper was an act of futility, but it was a good reminder for the boys. “Besides, we stopped at the diner on the way in.”
“Oh, did you see Paige?”
“Yup.” Along with Lauren Carpenter, and seeing her had thrown him so far off balance he was still sideways.
As he always did when he thought of her, he remembered back to the day he’d asked her to leave her husband. He’d promised her he’d love her in a way Dean didn’t seem capable of, and that he would raise Nick as if he was his own son. The memory of feeling like a humiliated, stupid ass as he’d driven out of Whitford alone was still almost as vivid as the reality.
Running into her so unexpectedly had brought out the stupid ass in him again, he thought as he grabbed his bag out of the backseat of the truck. He knew how to hold a conversation, for chrissake, but one look at Lauren and all he’d been able to say was “good.” Everything was good. Life was good. She probably thought he was a total idiot, and maybe that was good, too.
Josh stepped out onto the porch, his hair still wet from a shower. “You brought backup this time? Must be getting serious.”
“I had to bring somebody who’d work instead of taking bubble baths halfway through the afternoon.”
Josh grinned. “When you spend the day working on the insulation in the attic, you can take a bubble bath in the afternoon, too.”
It was damn good to see his little brother smile. Ryan had been blown away by Josh’s shitty attitude after being summoned home because Josh had busted his leg. His brother had been surly, drank enough to raise eyebrows and looked like hell.
It had taken a while, but Josh finally confessed he wanted out. Out of Whitford and away from the Northern Star. One by one, his brothers and sisters had left home until he was the only one left to help out. Then, after their dad passed away, he was stuck holding down the fort and it had never occurred to the others he didn’t want to be there. Suddenly he was thirty and he’d never done a damn thing.
Now they had a plan and the first step was working together to get the lodge back on its feet financially. Then they’d put it on the market or hire somebody to run it. Either way, the old place needed some structural work and a face-lift, and that’s why Ryan was there, along with Dill and Matt for the heavy lifting.
Rose gestured to the two carpenters. “I’ll show you boys where you’re sleeping and you can get settled.”
“They can bunk at the end of the hall. The room with the double bunk beds.” It was an overflow room, generally used for groups of guys who wanted to split the bill and keep costs down.
“We have plenty of rooms and you’ll all be gone before the snow flies.”
“They don’t need to be mucking up two rooms.”
She put her hands on her hips and gave him the look. “Did you come to pound nails or are you going to run the place now? I got some toilets that need scrubbing if you are.”
He could be stubborn, too. Especially in front of guys who worked for him. “They’re not paying guests.”
When she just kept giving him the look, one eyebrow raised, he felt the heat creeping up the back of his neck. He hated when she did that. Had since he was a little kid. He couldn’t remember how old he was when his parents had hired Rosie to help his mother around the lodge. But he was eleven when Sarah Kowalski died of an aneurism and, with help from his aunt Mary, who lived a state away, Rosie had stepped into the void she’d left. The housekeeper had done everything a mother would do for him as he’d grown up, including giving him that damn look.
“Fine. But they clean up after themselves.”
“We’re not kids, boss,” Dill said, but then his phone quacked and Matt snickered.
“Go.”
They followed Rose into the lodge, and Ryan dropped his bag onto the porch before sinking into one of the chairs. Josh took one beside him, stretching his legs out.
“How’s the leg?”
Josh shrugged. “Good. Not a hundred percent yet, so I’m trying to take it easy, but it could’ve been worse. What’s under the tarps?”
Ryan looked at the two company trucks, both of which had tarps covering the beds. “Windows. I noticed the living and dining room windows are fairly new, and the ones in the guest bedrooms, but we need to do the kitchen and the family rooms.”
“I’d planned to do one a month, maybe, next summer. Pain in the ass getting the tools out and then putting them back, but updated windows would save on the fuel bill.”
Ryan wanted to point out that he got a much better deal on windows than Josh could and he should have called him, but he kept his mouth shut. Pride and stubbornness had kept Josh working himself into the ground on a shoestring budget, rather than admitting to his siblings and co-owners that the lodge was in trouble. They’d already been through all that and there was no sense in rehashing it.
“I have to go see Dozer in a few,” Josh said. “He was going to mix up the paint for the shutters this morning. Wanna take a ride?”
“It’s going to take a while to unload those windows, even with Dill and Matt helping.”
“No rush,” Josh said. “I can give you a hand.”
“I just got out of my truck. Don’t really want to get back in it now.” Mostly, he didn’t want to go to the hardware store when he’d just run into Lauren.
Dozer owned Whitford Hardware. His name was Albert Dozynski, but when he’d bought the business in the nineteen-seventies, everybody had started just calling him Dozer. He was also Lauren Carpenter’s dad.
Snorting, Ryan bit back a curse. Freaking small towns.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just remembering something I didn’t do at the office,” he lied.
“Did you hear Mitch and Paige want to get married Columbus Day weekend?”
“Isn’t that like three weeks from now?”
Josh nodded. “Not quite three weeks. And they want to get married here.”
“In less than three weeks.”
“Mitch doesn’t want to have a wedding with sledders roaming around the lodge and he doesn’t want to wait for the snow to melt in the spring. But Paige wants to have it outside, so it needs to be soon. Like three weeks soon.”
“I might not be done by then.” He was almost sure he wouldn’t be.
“I told Paige that. She said it was only going to be friends and family and, as long as there are a couple of spots to have pictures taken, she doesn’t care.”
She’d care. When the day came and there were sawhorses and power tools in the yard, she’d care. Ryan had been married once—he knew that a lot of women started out focusing on the love and family and friends, but as the big day drew near, they lost their freaking minds.
“Hopefully, whatever idiot’s been vandalizing the place is bored with us now.”
Somebody had been messing around on the property and they hadn’t caught the little jerk yet. Stupid shit, like dumping paint buckets and pounding a dozen nails into a piece of lumber, but the money added up and it was a hell of a mess to clean up. “I’ll wring his neck if I catch him.”
Josh laughed. “What if it’s a girl?”<
br />
“Then I’ll sic Rosie on her.” His mind turned back to their eldest brother’s wedding. “Has Mitch called Aunt Mary yet? And Liz?”
“He’s going to when he gets home from Miami. If they can make it, and Sean, we’ll be having a wedding.”
“I guess we’d better get to work, then.” And work was just what Ryan needed. Hard, sweaty work that left his mind and body too exhausted at the end of the day to miss having a woman in his bed.
It had been a while since he’d seriously dated, but once he was done here in Maine, it might be time to start going out again. He couldn’t be happier that Sean and Mitch had found women they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with, but thinking about the upcoming wedding made him feel restless.
He was thirty-six. He wanted a wife and maybe some kids. Living alone in a house built for a family sucked, even though he’d built it himself, but he’d been so busy running his company that he’d stopped going out at night looking for opportunities to meet a woman he might like. Time to remedy that when he got home.
Right now, though, it was time to unload some windows.
* * *
On Wednesday, Lauren stopped at her dad’s store on her way home from work. She kept forgetting to call and ask him to order new filters for her furnace, so she’d just drop in while she was thinking of it.
Whitford Hardware was like a second home to Lauren, with sights and sounds and smells as familiar to her as those of her parents’ home. The jumble of displays near the front of the store that changed with the seasons. The mingling scents of lemon wood-polish, mechanical oils and lawn fertilizer.
Her dad was behind the counter as usual, a stout, dark-haired man whose broad shoulders and chest made up for his lack of height. And, as usual, his face lit up when he saw her.
“Lauren! How is my sunshine today?”
“I’m good, Dad.” She was about to mention the filters when her mother walked out of the back room. As fair as her husband was dark, Pat Dozynski was still a head turner. “Hi, Mom. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“CeeCee and I went to the yarn store and then she had to rush straight home to get her casserole in the oven. She dropped me off here, so I’ll ride home with your father.”
All He Ever Desired (The Kowalskis) Page 2