“We haven’t had dinner yet.”
“Sometimes you have to have dessert first. Besides, I’m not letting Dill and Matt leave here without having some.”
“I might have two slices and say screw dinner altogether.”
“That’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” She started to laugh, but it triggered another damn coughing jag.
“You okay? You’ve been coughing a lot lately.”
“’Tis the season. Grab some plates and let’s get that cake cut before those guys escape.”
* * *
On Wednesday morning, Hailey called Lauren at work. “I’m going to piss everybody off and close the library for an hour lunch today at one. Can you get out of the office? We can go to the diner and harass Paige and eat too many French fries.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Nope. I just haven’t seen you or Paige hardly at all since her wedding and it looks like this is the only way I can schedule myself into your lives. But let’s call it an emergency if it makes Gary feel better.”
Lauren’s boss had a fleeting moment of panic when she said she was taking off an hour for lunch, but he recovered quickly. She was allowed a lunch break but, more often than not, ate something from home at her desk. He was smart enough not to complain on the rare occasion she actually left the office.
When one o’clock rolled around, she flipped the answering machine to a prerecorded “closed for lunch” message she rarely used but which saved her from having to scour for messages on Gary’s desk, and then reminded him she was leaving.
Hailey was already at the diner when Lauren got there and she was surprised to see Paige sitting at a booth with her. Paige rarely even stood still at lunchtime, never mind sat down.
Then Lauren saw a young woman in a Trailside Diner T-shirt step out of the kitchen, and she got more confused. How did she not know Paige had hired somebody new? And it was Whitford. How did she not know the somebody Paige had hired?
Hailey spotted her and slid over on the bench, waving her over. Lauren hung her coat on one of the hooks near the door and joined them.
“Who is that?”
Paige looked over her shoulder. “That’s Tori Burns, Jilly’s niece. Gavin’s cousin.”
“Did I know Jilly has a brother?”
Paige laughed at her confusion. “Probably not. Jilly’s originally from Portland, remember? Mike met her at college and brought her home. Tori moved here a couple of weeks ago because her parents are divorcing and it’s pretty ugly. They keep trying to put her in the middle of it, so she packed up and moved into one of the apartments over the bank.”
“She looks like she’s twelve.”
“She’s almost twenty-five, actually.”
Lauren scowled, feeling old. “So now that you’re Mrs. Kowalski, are you becoming a lady of leisure?”
“That’s what I asked her, just before you walked in,” Hailey said.
“I’d go nuts,” Paige said. “Tori’s very part-time. It’d be nice for me to not get up at four-thirty in the morning every single day, especially when Mitch is home, and there are times Ava wants to do something in the evening. With only two of us, it’s really hard to cover each other’s shifts without dropping from exhaustion. Tori works from home and just wants to pick up a few hours here and there to get out of the house and meet people.”
“What does she do for work?” Lauren asked.
Paige shrugged. “She didn’t say.”
“And you didn’t ask?”
“No.”
“Did you have her fill out an application? Did she write down her current job?” Lauren asked.
“No. She’s Jilly’s niece and she’s willing to work odd hours for little money. I had her fill out the IRS forms and that was that.”
“It’s so sad.” Hailey shook her head. “Two years you’ve lived here and you still haven’t figured out how to be all up in everybody’s business. Fran needs to give you some lessons.”
“The person whose business I want to be all up in is Lauren’s.”
Lauren looked at Paige and laughed. “Since you’re married to a Kowalski and spend a fair amount of time talking to Rose, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you already know more about my business than some people.”
“Like me,” Hailey grumbled.
“Actually,” Paige said, “Ryan’s kind of the closemouthed one of the bunch. A genetic flaw or throwback gene or something. But anyway, I heard that, starting Sunday night when he leaves, he’ll be back to only coming up on the weekends.”
“He has to run his business. He’s been gone a month already.”
“And what are you going to do?” Hailey asked.
Lauren felt herself tensing up and tried to force herself to relax. She’d thought she was meeting Hailey for a fun girl’s lunch with Paige, so she hadn’t expected the Spanish Inquisition.
Tori chose that moment to finally stop by the table, giving Lauren a couple extra minutes to remind herself these were her best friends and of course she was going to tell them everything. That’s what best friends were for.
After they’d ordered and she’d put in her own for a grilled cheese and coleslaw, with copious amounts of coffee, she sighed and started folding and refolding her napkin. “I’m going to roll with it and see where it goes.”
Both women frowned, but it was Hailey who spoke. “That doesn’t sound very...I don’t know what word I’m looking for.”
“Committed,” Paige said. “Serious. Stable. Relationship-ish.”
Lauren snorted. “What’s not relationship-ish about it? And what, exactly, do you two think I can do about it? He has to go back to work.”
“Long-distance relationships suck,” Hailey said, even though Lauren knew for a fact she’d never been in one.
“Paige, Mitch travels and you don’t get to see him every single day, but that was still relationship-ish enough so you married him.”
“But he’s away for a few days and then home for a chunk of time. And, unlike Ryan, he has more freedom to work from home, plus he moved home from New York to here. Kowalski Custom Builders can’t move to Whitford.”
Not and survive, no. “I’d see him on weekends and holidays. And vacations.”
“Like parental visitation rights, only not,” Hailey pointed out, and Lauren had to bite down on her lip to keep from snapping at her friend.
Then the flash of anger fizzled and she found herself on the brink of bursting into tears. “Stop.”
Both women instantly went into consolation mode, but that almost made it worse.
“Just how serious are you?” Paige asked once they were all fairly certain Lauren wasn’t going to have a complete emotional breakdown at the table.
“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him,” she confessed for the first time, even to herself.
“But?” Hailey prompted.
“That’s the thing. Ryan is convinced the buts will all resolve themselves if we just roll with it.”
“But?” This time it was Paige and it made Lauren smile a little.
“How can I build a life with a guy who’s only around on weekends? And how often will he get to see Nick? The few holidays he doesn’t spend with Dean?”
“Rose is worried about how long he’ll be able to keep up with that kind of schedule—working all week, then driving up here Friday night and back on Sunday night to go back to work on Monday morning.”
Hailey nodded. “Sometimes he’s going to want to chill at home. Mow his lawn or sleep in or go out with the guys.”
They weren’t telling her anything she hadn’t already thought of, but hearing it out loud made it more real somehow. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been a single mom for so long but, if and when I get married, I don’t want to keep being a
single mom. Know what I mean?”
They both nodded, but Tori appeared with their food and the conversation paused until she’d brought Hailey vinegar for her fries and refilled their coffee mugs.
“So the obvious question,” Paige asked when they were alone again, “is if you’ve considered moving to Brookline.”
“I’ve thought about it a little. But then I think about having to find a new job down there and selling my house and I have no idea how Nick would take it. He likes Ryan, but enough to move to a new state and a new school? Then there’s the fact I’d need Dean’s permission to move Nick to Mass. It makes my head hurt and I’m not going to tie myself up in knots when Ryan hasn’t even hinted at wanting us there.”
“I must be reading the wrong self-help books,” Hailey said, “because I have no idea what to tell you.”
“Me, either.” Paige pointed one of her fries at Lauren. “But I do know one thing. If Ryan loves you, nothing will stop him from being with you.”
“He hasn’t said he does. Or hinted that he does.”
“He may not realize it yet. If he’s anything like his brother, it’ll take a while to sink in.”
“And, in the meantime, I’ll get about thirty-six hours of what’s left of him after all the working and driving each week.”
“You know, this is really awkward,” Paige said, staring down at her plate. “I want to ask you if you’re going to break it off with him, but I just remembered he’s my brother-in-law now, so maybe I don’t want to know.”
“I should,” Lauren said, her heart breaking a little. “I should end it before we get any more involved or he wears himself out or Nick gets any more attached to him. He should find somebody free to step into his life, who wants to give him a horde of kids, which is a whole ’nother can of worms I haven’t mentioned. So, yes, I should break it off with him.”
“But?” This time they said it in unison.
“I can’t. When I’m with him, I can’t imagine not being with him, no matter how hard it gets. There’s no way I could tell him to leave and not come back. I just have to roll with it, I guess.”
* * *
Ryan would have preferred to meet Dean in a bar somewhere and maybe buy him a beer, but Whitford didn’t have a bar. Plus the guy was working, so he had to settle for a soda at the picnic table in the backyard of the house he was painting.
“Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” was what Ryan opened with, but he wasn’t really sure where to go from there.
“Is there a problem with Nick?”
“No. Nick’s doing great. It’s about Lauren, actually.”
Dean gave a dry laugh. “Since I managed to end our marriage so badly that it took a year to rebuild my relationship with my son, I’m probably not the guy to give you advice about her.”
“I guess it’s about Nick, too.” He took a sip of the soda, then decided for direct. “I want to marry Lauren.”
“Ah.” Dean picked at the edge of the wooden table. “So you want to take my son to Massachusetts.”
“That’s part of marrying Lauren, yes.”
“What does Lauren say about it?”
“I haven’t actually asked her yet.”
“What?” Dean shook his head. “You haven’t talked to her about it, but you’re talking to me about it? That’s not going to make her happy.”
Ryan wasn’t sure he could explain why he’d felt compelled to come here. “He’s your son. I guess I felt a need to...do it right this time. Look you in the eye, totally square, and tell you I want Nick to be my stepson and move to Brookline with his mother and me.”
“And what if I tell you to go screw yourself? I’ve got a custody agreement and you can’t take him out of the state of Maine without my permission. Might even be the county, actually. I’d have to find the paperwork. Would you still ask Lauren to marry you?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t even have to think about that. “But at least we’d know up front we’re going to have problems, and I’d remind you both that, at sixteen, if we all walk into a courtroom, Nick’s going to get to make that decision for himself.”
“And you think he’d choose you?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not about me. He’d be choosing between you and his mother and the only thing I know for sure is that it would tear him up inside. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
Dean nodded. “Jody and I have talked about this some. Doesn’t take a genius to see you and Lauren have been getting serious.”
“Since I just figured out how serious myself recently, it’s not very comforting everybody could see it but me.”
“Nick’s gotten into some trouble here.”
Ryan wasn’t sure where that left turn in the conversation came from. “Nothing bad, though. And, to be fair, there’s a good chance he’ll get in trouble anywhere. He’s sixteen.”
“I guess the difference is, when he grows out of it, there’s still not much for him in Whitford. Not even crap for jobs around here, whether he goes to college or not. Maybe he could take over the hardware store someday, but you know as well as I do that place is always on the brink. One of those box stores opens within thirty miles and it’s gone.” He swirled the soda around in his can. “You probably got some good schools down there.”
Ryan nodded. “A lot of opportunities for him, too, no matter what field he wants to go into.”
“See, there’s the difference. You talk about fields, like real careers. Around here, we just hope we can find jobs that pay the bills. He’ll have a better future down there.”
“He’ll have more doors open to him, but he needs the work ethic and the integrity to make the most of those opportunities. You and Lauren already gave him that, no matter where he lives.”
Dean was quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought, and Ryan let him be. Brookline wasn’t that far away, but a nine-hour round-trip meant the ability to easily see each other on a whim would be gone.
“I can’t make that drive every weekend,” Dean said, as though he’d been reading his mind.
“I’d still be coming up here on the weekends for a while, until we get the lodge sorted out. And maybe we’d have to go to every other weekend, but we’d meet you halfway. And you’d get more school holidays with him.”
He probably shouldn’t be speaking for Lauren, but he needed to know where Dean stood. The last thing he wanted to do was put Lauren in a position where she felt she had to choose between Nick and Ryan. Nick would win, obviously, but it would hurt Lauren to have to make the decision.
“That sounds fair enough.” Dean nodded. “I won’t stand in the way, if you can talk her into going with you this time.”
“Thank you.” He looked at his watch. “She should be getting home soon. She gets home before Nick on Fridays and I want to be there.”
Dean snorted. “No fancy dinner and ring in the champagne glass?”
“No. If she says yes, I’d want Nick to know before he comes here for the weekend. Word gets around fast and he doesn’t need to hear the news at the market or on the street.”
Dean stood when Ryan did and shook his hand. “Good luck.”
By the time he pulled his truck in behind Lauren’s car, Ryan was what Steph would call a hot mess, but he did his best to hide it as he got out and walked to her door.
“Hey,” she said as she opened the door with a smile. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until later.”
He was supposed to spend the weekend with her. “Are you busy?”
“Just mopping the floor. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
“I’m okay.” He followed her inside and closed the door. “So I have to leave on Sunday.”
Some of the light dimmed in her eyes. “Yes, I know.”
“I want you and Nick to come to Brookline wit
h me.”
She frowned, tilting her head a little. “I don’t understand. You know Nick has school Monday. I have to go to work.”
“No.” Dammit, he was blowing it already, and every line he’d rehearsed in the car had been totally erased from his mind. “Not this Sunday. I mean...I want you to move there. To live with me.”
She sat down hard on the couch, looking up at him as if she didn’t quite understand what he was saying. “Ryan, I...”
“You what?” he prompted when she drifted into silence. “Let’s talk about it.”
“I have a job. A home. Nick has school and his friends. And I can’t move out of Maine without Dean’s permission.”
“He gave it.”
“What?”
“I just talked to him. He said he wouldn’t stand in our way if you and Nick want to move to Brookline.”
She didn’t look very happy about it. As a matter of fact, red splotches bloomed on her neck and cheeks as he watched, and her jaw tightened. Belatedly, he remembered planning in the car to open with the fact he loved her and wanted to marry her.
“You talked to Dean?”
“Yes. You’ve thrown so many stumbling blocks into this relationship and that was one of the biggest. I wanted to lay it to rest before I came here so we can focus on us and not Nick.”
“Why would you do that? You’ve done nothing but feed me the ‘just roll with it’ line, but you go and have a serious sit-down with my ex-husband?”
He really wanted her to understand he hadn’t done it to be pushy. “I went behind his back once and it wasn’t right. I mean, I had to do it because I couldn’t leave you and Nick without trying, but it was still wrong. I couldn’t do it again.”
“I’m not his wife anymore.”
He tried to stay calm, but this wasn’t going at all the way he’d thought it would. Or hoped it would. “No, but Nick’s his son.”
“I can’t believe you did that, Ryan. My relationships are none of Dean’s business.”
“Of course they are, because of Nick.” He was trying to make her see reason, but as soon as he said the words and saw the flare of temper in her eyes, he knew he made a mistake.
All He Ever Desired (The Kowalskis) Page 21