Katie sighed. “I’d keep it open until I was very pregnant, then maybe do a couple of hours a day. Then everybody would have to survive five or six weeks without a haircut. Josh and Rose are convinced that together they can take care of a baby, especially if I cut back the shop’s hours a little.”
“I have no doubt Josh and Rose can take care of a baby, but it sounds like a lot on you.”
“I think, with four of us at the lodge, we can make it work.”
Liz tried to imagine having a baby come into her life and couldn’t. She felt so unsettled and, while she couldn’t imagine a better support system than her family and Rose, she wasn’t prepared for that kind of commitment. But the idea of Josh and Katie raising the next generation of Kowalskis at the Northern Star with Rosie’s help made her throat tighten a little. At least she wouldn’t miss it.
“Hey,” a male voice said from outside the fence and Liz sighed as they both turned to see Sean leaning on it. They’d been found. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up that some of us guys are heading out for a ride, but the kids have talked the other adults into bringing them to the pool for a swim before they start getting ready for bed. They’ll be here any minute.”
“It was fun while it lasted,” Katie said mournfully.
They wrapped up in their towels and left the pool area in the knick of time. The kids whooped and hollered as they ran by, which always made Liz laugh. The running did them no good since they couldn’t go in before the adults got there and they were taking their time.
Liz and Katie parted ways, since the cabin and her tent were in opposite directions, and Liz took a shortcut around the bathhouse. She was rounding the corner, paying attention to her wet sandals slipping in the fallen pine needles, when she ran into a very solid chest.
She almost lost her footing but Drew grabbed her by the elbows and steadied her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Sorry.” She sounded breathless to her own ear and felt ridiculous.
“Have I told you how much I like that swimsuit?”
She realized her towel had slipped and was in a terry puddle at her feet. “I don’t think you have.”
“I like it a lot.”
They couldn’t be seen from either the pool area or from where the guys were getting the ATVs ready to go out, and she realized this was as alone as they’d been since they got there. “I heard you guys are going out for a ride.”
“Yeah. We’re all going to pretend we’re teenagers again without getting ourselves killed.”
His grin made her want to melt up against his body, which wasn’t too far away since he was still holding her arms. “Don’t get too stupid.”
“I’m trying not to do anything stupid.”
He was staring at her mouth and, with a shiver, Liz realized he wasn’t talking about four-wheeling anymore. As much as she’d resolved earlier he needed to be all in or stop touching her, she couldn’t bring herself to step back. Instead, she inched closer.
“What are you doing, Liz?” he asked in a low, husky voice.
“I’m trying not to do anything stupid.”
His hand moved from her elbow to her hip and he tugged a little, pulling her up against him. When he brushed his cheek over hers, his breath hot against her skin, she shivered.
“I shouldn’t kiss you,” he whispered.
“I shouldn’t let you.” She tucked her arms under his so she could run her hands up his back. Even through his T-shirt, she felt his muscles quiver at her touch.
“Why can’t I stop thinking about you? Why do I have to touch you?”
She could hear the battle he was waging with himself in his voice. He obviously felt like he was doing something wrong, but didn’t have the strength to stop doing it. Maybe it was up to her. If she shut him down, that would save them both some angst and drama.
But she thought about him, too. She wanted him to touch her. Before either of them could do what may or may not be the right thing and back off, she turned her face and pressed her lips to his.
“Where the hell is Miller?” Mitch yelled, and Drew physically flinched.
“I have to go.”
She pointed at his shirt. “Your shirt’s a little damp. From my bathing suit, I guess.”
“I’m putting a sweatshirt on before we go out, anyway.” He took a couple of steps, then paused and looked back, as if he was going to say something else.
“They’re waiting.” She didn’t want to hear whatever it was. An apology. A reminder nobody could know Drew had been kissing Mitch’s little sister at the bathhouse.
She wondered if that’s how he thought of her in his head while he was beating himself up. Mitch’s little sister. Screw that. She had her own identity, thank you very much.
Without saying another word, she ducked into the closest bathroom and bolted the door. After a few minutes, she heard the gravel crunch as he walked away. She stayed where she was until she heard the roar of the four-wheelers driving away.
* * *
Pounding through the woods, Drew had no room in his head for woman or best friend issues. His concentration was focused on the trail—every rock, bump, rut and corner rushing at him—and it felt damn good.
He leaned through a tight corner and then came to a rise in the trail. Goosing the throttle, he enjoyed the brief sensation of all four wheels leaving the ground. Then his headlights were cutting through the trees as he leaned into a hard left turn.
When Evan’s taillights dropped in front of him, Drew slowed down for the waterbar, and then they were running hard again. They’d been out two hours and they’d already done more than twice the miles they’d done as a group earlier in the day.
By the time they slowed for the last bit of trail into the campground, Drew was tension-free and ready for a shower and a beer. Then he was going to sleep like a baby.
After pulling the ATV into the overflow site they were using for parking, Drew took a back path to his tent to gather his things. Luckily most of the other guys who’d been out had RVs with private showers, so it wasn’t a race.
Outside his tent, he pulled off his boots and sweatshirt. He debated on dropping his pants, too, since it was fairly dark, but the presence of a teen girl somewhere in the campground sent him inside. Trying to keep his filthy pants from brushing against anything, he gathered what he needed and shoved his feet into sandals for the walk.
Drew grimaced when he saw the light shining out from under every door along the front of the bathhouse. Between sweating and the dust on the trails, he felt as if dirt had been ground into every nook, cranny and pore of his body, and he was desperate for a shower.
Before he got there, though, a door opened and Sean—who’d been riding at the front so had beat him back to the campground—walked out, framed by a billow of steam. The guy’s skin was practically pink from the heat and scrubbing, and Drew silently vowed to kick his ass if he’d used all the hot water.
Sean waved to his wife, who was talking to a couple of the other women over by the clothesline they’d strung to cope with endless wet towels and then walked off toward his camper. Drew ducked into the steamy bathroom before anybody could beat him to it and bolted the door.
He’d stripped down and was about to turn on the shower when he saw the sticky note stuck to the frame of the still-foggy mirror.
After the baby goes to sleep, I’m going to...
Drew slapped his hands over his eyes like a kid who’d seen his parents kissing. Obviously Sean had left that note for Emma, who he’d thought would be following after him. But she’d gotten sucked into a conversation and Drew was the recipient of the square yellow sexual promise instead.
Lucky him. Nothing like a written reminder he wasn’t having sex with anybody.
He turned the shower on lukewarm and spent
a few minutes rinsing the surface grime off. Then he lathered his hair and scrubbed the hell out of his scalp to get rid of the sweat and grit his helmet seemed to grind in.
When it came to soaping his body, it was tempting to linger below the waist. Maybe just take the edge off his sexual frustration a bit. But it was weird, since there was a sex note from Sean to Emma a few feet away and, since he’d read it, it felt weird to now take matters into his own hand, so to speak.
Instead he cranked the knob over to cold and almost yelped when the water turned icy. He finished rinsing off and then leaned his head against the shower wall, letting the cold seep into his body.
Kissing Liz has been a stupid thing to do. He’d known it. She’d known it. But his wanting her was like a runaway train and, even though he knew the whole thing would derail on them, he was helpless to stop it. No matter how often he tried to apply the brakes, even if only mentally, they didn’t stick.
Once he’d dried off and dressed, he braced himself for a visit to the campfire. It would be burning low, with the kids either in bed or allowed some quiet electronics time, and the adults would be sitting around talking.
He took the sticky note with him when he left the bathroom. The Kowalskis didn’t really need that kind of reputation if one of the few campers not with them wandered in.
After dumping his stuff in his tent, he grabbed a beer and wandered down to the campfire. As he got near, he started scoping out which empty chair was best to sit in, and then he saw Liz. She was holding Johnny and the sight made him stop in his tracks.
An electrified cattle prod couldn’t have moved Drew from that spot. She cradled Sean and Emma’s son against her chest, singing to him in a soft voice. There wasn’t a Kowalski born who could carry a tune as a rule, but there was something about her singing to a sleepy baby that made it a beautiful sound.
It made his chest ache, the way Liz looked down at Johnny. He’d been waiting to be a dad his entire adult life and seeing the woman he was in some crazy, undefined not-quite-a-relationship with holding the infant made him feel as though his world was shifting. He wanted that—the visual in front of him—and he had to remind himself that not only was that not his baby, but Liz wasn’t even really his woman.
“Hey, Drew.” Sean was leaning back in a chair, waving him over.
Drew shook off the emotions threatening to show all over his face and walked over to take the empty chair to the left of Sean. Emma was on the other side.
Sean leaned close so he could whisper, “So, uh, you went in the bathroom after me?”
Drew chuckled and slipped him the sticky note, which he’d folded into quarters. “Thanks for the offer, but you’re not my type. I also don’t have that body part.”
“I didn’t even see you. Emma was waiting to go in after me because she didn’t want both of us away from the baby at the same time, but she started talking.”
Drew laughed, then turned toward the conversation about tractors Leo and his dad were having because they were in the opposite direction of Liz and the baby and he wouldn’t be able to see them.
He saw them when it was time for bed, though, and he was stretched out on the air mattress with his eyes closed. He tried not to, but nothing else on the planet mattered enough to replace that image in his mind.
That’s what he wanted. Not some faceless woman whose most important trait was wanting to be the mother of his children. He wanted Liz. He could picture those kids now, with her blue eyes and their dark hair, running wild with their cousins playing games that involved no rules but always doom.
But even if he manned the hell up, looked Mitch in the eye and told him he was falling for his sister, his gut told him Liz wasn’t lying in her tent, imagining what their children would look like. She had bigger things in mind for her life, apparently.
And he knew what he wanted well enough to know a relationship with a woman who didn’t want kids would be, as the Kowalski kids would call it, a romance of doom.
Chapter Ten
A couple of days passed in an easy rhythm of laughter, riding, swimming and dodging projectile marshmallows, and Liz was glad she’d let Rose and Paige talk her into coming. Maybe Drew was being a pain in the ass, with his running hot and cold, but the total-immersion method of re-bonding with her family was a huge success.
Today it was quiet. Joe, Keri, Kevin and Beth had taken all of the kids out for pizza, which meant Mike and Lisa had disappeared someplace private. Uncle Leo, Aunt Mary, Rose and Andy were playing cards inside. A bunch of them, including Drew, had taken advantage of having no kids or older folks to go for a ride.
Liz had opted out. She hadn’t been sleeping well, thanks to Drew and her less-than-high-quality camping gear, and she just wanted to kick things down into a lower gear and relax. She read for a while, slowly working her way through the pile of books Hailey had chosen for her, but eventually she went looking for company.
After grabbing a water from the cooler, she joined Paige and Emma in the screen house on Mike and Lisa’s site. A shady, bug-free zone and the company of her sister-in-law and her cousin’s wife were just what she was in the mood for.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go riding,” Paige said when she’d zipped herself in with them.
“Just wasn’t in the mood.” While everybody else seemed impervious to it, the tension between her and Drew was as taut as an overstretched rubber band and she was enjoying the absence of it. “I’m sorry you can’t ride, though. Bad timing on the baby’s—”
She covered her mouth, a few seconds too late, but Paige just smiled. “Emma knows.”
“Oh, good. Maybe in the future, you shouldn’t tell me any secrets.” She watched Emma’s foot, gently rocking the baby carrier at her foot where Johnny was sleeping. “Were you drunk when you agreed to come camping with an infant, or are you just flat-out crazy?”
Emma laughed. “If we hadn’t taken over almost the whole campground, I’d be worried about him bothering other people. But I have most of the comforts of home and no shortage of people willing to help me take care of him.”
“I noticed playing pass the baby is a favorite family game. Although it’s a blessing they don’t call it pass the baby of doom.”
“I do have to be pretty firm if it gets out of hand. It makes him fussy and, oh good lord, the germs.” She smiled at her son through the netting. “But I’m going back to work soon and, even though Sean and I are coordinating our schedules so one of us is always with him, it’s nice to have this last bit of quiet family time. Or quiet-ish, anyway.”
Liz leaned forward to peek at Johnny. “I’ve noticed the kiddo can sleep through anything.”
“Self-preservation. If loud kids woke him up, he would have been a hot, twitchy mess by the time he was two weeks old.” She smiled down at her son. “And he may as well get used to the crazy now. Lily and Brianna will be a bit older, but he and Paige’s baby will be close in age. Kevin and Beth are trying for another. And Katie’s working her way around to being a mom soon, from what I’ve heard.”
That ticking biological clock Liz never paid a lot of attention to came to sudden, clanging life and she sat back in her chair. Maybe there’d been too much immersion-method bonding. Just because they were all having babies didn’t mean she had to.
Sure, she wanted kids someday. She had time. But having kids that would grow up as bonded and close as her siblings, cousins and Katie had would be fun. If only she was in a place in her life where having kids was really an option.
“So, Liz,” Paige said after they’d all watched Johnny sleep for a few minutes. “How do you like working at the diner? Be honest.”
“You’re my boss and married to my brother. But, luckily, I can honestly say I like it. Great staff, great food, busy enough without being crazy.”
“It’s probably not the highest-paying job you’ve ev
er had.”
“It’s not, but it doesn’t need to be. Lauren’s only charging me enough rent to cover her costs on the house and it’s not like I have a fancy car payment.” They laughed, but then Liz got serious again. “And I like working there. I don’t wake up dreading the day and then spend the hours after my shift dreading the fact I have to get up and do it again the next day. Trust me, that matters.”
“It does,” Emma agreed. “I think we’ve all been there at some point.”
“Yeah, well, try being the underachiever of the family. Everybody owns their own damn businesses, except me. I wait tables.”
Paige held up a finger. “But you do it exceptionally well.”
“And it makes you happy,” Emma added.
All true, but she still felt as if she should want more. She wasn’t sure where the feeling came from. Maybe because she’d spent her adult life to date working to support a guy whose desire to be an artist came from an unwillingness to have an actual job rather than artistic drive. But now that she only had to want things for herself, she felt some pressure to want something. She just didn’t know what yet.
“Hey, did anybody tell you tonight’s dirty Scrabble night?” Emma asked.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what that means. Dirty, depending on the context, may or may not be more enjoyable than doom.”
“No doom. And only the grown-up women can play. And there’s alcohol. It’s basically a girls’ night out without going anywhere. Or so I’m told. Paige and I haven’t played it yet, either. They only play during their camping trips, I guess.”
“Do we lock the men in the bathhouse?”
Emma laughed. “No. I guess they have a men-only campfire far enough away so it’s like a guys’ night out. Only here.”
“What makes it dirty?”
“I guess it’s regular Scrabble, but you get a double word score if you wouldn’t say the word in front of the kids. And if it’s a word you wouldn’t say out loud, it’s a triple word score.”
“So the alcohol might make a difference,” Paige said.
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