“She does know that baking soda and baking powder aren’t the same thing, right?”
Rose might have shushed her, except Katie was being a pain and had insisted on putting her earbuds in so Rosie couldn’t “interfere.” She wanted to make them all on her own and, with music blasting straight to her eardrums, she couldn’t hear any helpful suggestions.
“This is painful,” Paige said. “Let’s go in the living room and stop staring at her like she’s a zoo exhibit.”
They carried their tea into the other room and Rose settled in the couch corner she was getting all too tired of. But it was an easy reach to the coffee table and her teacup, so she smoothed the blanket over her lap and picked up her knitting. She could knit and visit at the same time.
“Christmas present?” Paige asked. She’d chosen the armchair with the side table for her tea.
“Nope. I finished my Christmas knitting in the hospital.” She held up the little red sweater she was knitting, with a white band near the bottom separated from the red with thin blue stripes. “For Sean and Emma’s baby.”
“Guess those colors aren’t girl or boy specific.” After a beat, Paige’s face lit up. “Oh, wait, I get it! New England Patriots colors, right? The football thing?”
It still blew Rosie’s mind one of the boys had married a woman who knew absolutely nothing about sports, but the girl was trying. “Yes, the football thing.”
Paige gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Since Mitch talked me into getting a TV and cable, I’ve tried watching the games with him when he’s home, but I don’t really get it.”
“You must be a really good cook,” she teased.
“Or pay two really good cooks who are willing to make things to go.” After taking a sip of her tea and listening to see if anybody was coming, Paige leaned forward a little in her chair. “So? How are things going?”
“Something happened.” When Paige’s face lit up, Rose held up her hand. “Nothing big, I don’t think. But Josh is definitely acting weird and there’s tension in the air.”
“It’s almost inevitable. Everybody can see it but them.”
“If I have my way, there will be a baby sleeping on a blanket in front of that tree next Christmas.”
Paige looked at the tree, as if imagining it. “What about the fact Josh plans to leave Whitford as soon as they figure out how to make it happen? Mitch feels pretty bad about the way they all abandoned him. He’s really dedicated to making it happen.”
“Once Josh realizes he loves Katie, he’ll lose that itch to wander.”
“Or take her with him.”
Rose’s hands stilled, her fingers clutching the needles. Not once had she ever considered Katie moving away with Josh. The possibility she could lose the lodge and her daughter made her hands tremble and she set her knitting in her lap so she wouldn’t drop any stitches.
“Rosie, are you okay? You’re pale all of a sudden. Should I get Katie?”
The panic in Paige’s voice snapped her out of it and she forced herself to smile. “I’m fine. I just…I don’t think Katie would leave her dad’s barbershop. She worked too hard for it.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. Of course she won’t leave Whitford. I can’t imagine her leaving you and the barbershop at all. And all her friends are here.”
“Of course she wouldn’t.” She said it mostly to make Paige feel better, though. Rose was old and wise enough to know women made sacrifices like that for men they loved all the time. “How are things at the diner?”
“Business is better than I ever expected. If the guys really do manage to connect the lodge to the ATV trails and get them access into town next summer, I might even have to hire more people. Ava’s great, but if the supper rush gets any bigger than it is, she won’t be able to do it alone. As it is, she’s called Tori in two Friday nights in a row.”
Rose didn’t know Tori Burns very well, yet. She was Jilly Crenshaw’s niece and she’d just recently moved from Portland to escape her parents’ divorce. She was in her mid-twenties and worked from home, but liked picking up part-time hours at the diner, which gave Paige a little more freedom with her own hours.
“They’ll have to make a concrete decision on the lodge before spring, I’d think,” Rosie said. “If everybody goes through the red tape and elbow grease of getting the four-wheelers into town, it doesn’t seem fair to cut it off again if somebody buys the lodge and doesn’t want ATVs. If they decide they’re for sure going to sell it, they should hold off and leave it to the new owners to deal with.”
“Mitch is pretty torn up about it,” Paige confided in a low voice. “He doesn’t want to sell the lodge, but he’s not willing to step in and run it day-to-day, so he doesn’t think it’s fair to make Josh do it. But it’ll break his heart.”
Rose’s too, though she didn’t say so. This was a hard enough decision for the kids, and she tried not to make herself too big a factor in it. She knew they were worried about what she’d do, but she didn’t want any of them sacrificing their own wants or needs because of her. No matter what happened, she’d have Katie.
Unless she moved away with Josh.
“When are you two going to make me a grandbaby?” she asked in a desperate attempt not to think about Katie leaving anymore.
Paige’s eyes widened at the blunt question, but then her face relaxed into a soft smile. “Soon. Mitch thinks it would be nice to have a baby close in age to Sean and Emma’s.”
“I agree. You should work on that.”
Paige blushed and picked up her tea. “We’ll probably wait until we get home.”
Chapter Seven
Dave Carmody and his son, Dan, rolled up to the lodge in the late afternoon on Friday. Josh met them in the drive and shook Dave’s hand through his open window.
“You made it,” Josh said, just as he did every year. Dave was always the first guest. He had a standing reservation for the weekend of the fifteenth and the only time he didn’t make it was the rare occasion Josh had to call him and tell him there was no snow. Then his reservation was floated to the first weekend the trails opened.
“You’ve done some work around the place,” Dave said. “Looks good.”
Josh swept a critical eye over the lodge and the outbuildings. It did look good, and he felt a small swell of pride. Whether he’d wanted to or not, he’d been the one to keep the place going for a long time. And it had taken his brothers’ help to make it look good again, but the heart and the bones of the place were all his.
“Let’s get you parked and unloaded.” He slapped Dave’s door and stepped back.
Dave owned a trucking business down in Rhode Island, so he had no problem backing his truck and trailer into the patch of lawn off the driveway they kept plowed for just that purpose.
Dan jumped down from the truck the second his dad put it in park, which released the door locks. Josh grinned at his enthusiasm. “How old are you now, Dan?”
“Almost thirteen. I’ve got a new sled. Wanna see?”
It made Josh feel a little old following the kid to the back of the trailer and watching him drop the door down so they could walk inside. If he remembered correctly, Dave had brought Dan along with him for the first time the winter before Josh’s dad passed away. He’d been little enough to ride in front of Dave on one machine. Now he was on his third snowmobile and he didn’t need any help unstrapping it and backing it down onto the snow-covered lawn.
He wanted to go for a ride, but Dave shook his head. “Grab your bag and we’ll go say hi to Mrs. Davis. Then we’ll go hunt up some supper.”
“Is there enough snow so we can ride to town?” Dan asked.
Josh shook his head. “Not yet, bud. Sorry. You’ll have to take the truck into town, but at least they were able to groom the trails and get them open.”
“I�
��ll wear him out tomorrow.”
That he would. It was a long ride from Rhode Island, so Dave spent every possible minute riding, not wanting to waste a moment of it. “Rose is getting over pneumonia, so her daughter’s staying with us to help out. Her name’s Katie.”
Dave nodded. “Pretty sure we’ve met her. Pretty blonde about your age, right?”
“Yeah.” A very pretty blonde.
The Carmodys headed for the door, but Josh held back for a minute. Since they had the first reservation every year, they had dibs on the room, too. Theirs was the only one with two double beds and its own bathroom, and they took it every time they came up, so they knew the way.
It twisted his gut a little, looking up at the lodge. Dave was right. It did look good. More like it did in his distant memory when the economy was strong, his father was still running things, and they had so much business they had to turn people away almost every weekend there was snow.
It was times like these, sharing memories with a longtime guest, that he felt the connection to the Northern Star. It was home—his home—and he felt the emotional and nostalgic bonds that came with that. He loved the old place. But all he’d ever wanted was the right to make a choice for himself, and the lodge stood in his way.
Shaking off the melancholy, he went inside to make sure Dave and Dan settled in. Nothing much had changed since their last visit. When they woke up in the morning, they’d find the coffeemaker with a freshly brewed pot in the same spot on the counter, and a basket of home-baked blueberry muffins. Luckily for the Carmodys, Katie had mastered the recipe on the third try. Josh hadn’t been so lucky, since he was the taste test dummy.
The Northern Star didn’t offer meals to their guests, but they did offer the coffee and baked goods in the morning to hold them over until they rode by a place offering a real breakfast. And they did occasionally have a group who hadn’t gotten dinner before every place closed for the night, and Josh would offer some reheated leftovers or access to the deli meats.
Katie was the only person in the kitchen, so he assumed the Carmodys were in their room. “Where’s Rosie?”
“Apparently you guys replaced the television in that room since the last time they were here and she wanted to show them how to use it.”
“Oh, I forgot about that.”
“It’s a little weird.”
“What is?” He grabbed a soda out of the fridge and popped the tab.
“Having other people—strangers, I mean—in your house.”
“I’ve never known it any other way, I guess.” He shrugged. “And we get a lot of repeat business, so people don’t stay strangers very long.”
She leaned against the counter and crossed her arms in a way that would have drawn attention to her breasts if he wasn’t very deliberately keeping his eyes on her face. “What does Rosie usually do while you have guests? I mean, what should I be doing right now?”
He laughed. “The guests being here is the easy part. It’s the getting ready and the cleaning after that sucks. Juggling the calendar. Accounting. But they come here to ride the trails and we’re pretty much just a place to sleep.”
“That seems a little anticlimactic.”
Katie not talking about climaxes at all would be good. “Every once in a while we’ll get a phone call and have to take the truck and trailer out to rescue a guest whose machine broke down, if that keeps it exciting.”
“I’ve been out with you on a rescue run, remember? Not that exciting. But I’ve never been staying here at the same time as paying guests. It’s just a little hard to know what to do.”
“You keep your focus on that stupid party. Let me worry about the guests.”
“About the party—”
“Hold on, I think I hear a truck coming.” As soon as it was quiet, they could definitely hear a truck coming up the driveway. “They’re first-timers, so I need to get out there and tell them where to park and make sure they unload okay. Introduce them to Dave and his son and all that.”
“I think you’re using this as an excuse to avoid talking about appetizers.”
“Would I do that?” He gave her his best angelic smile and then practically ran out the door.
* * *
Even though she didn’t have to do anything, so to speak, living in a house that ended up with eight strangers in it for the weekend was a drain on Katie and she was so thankful when Sunday rolled around. They all hit the road back to their own homes and she and Josh made short work of stripping the beds and giving everything a quick once-over.
Of course, now she had a veritable mountain of bedding to wash and thorough cleanings to give when tomorrow morning rolled around, but right now it was Sunday night, Andy had offered to watch a movie with her mom, and she was parked on Max’s couch to watch some Sunday Night Football.
It was made both more awkward and more amusing by Josh’s inability to get comfortable. At least that looked like the problem to everybody else, she guessed, even though she knew all the shifting and rearranging was him trying to avoid his body coming into contact with her body. As a matter of fact, he seemed to be trying to pretend she wasn’t there at all.
Funny, considering they’d ridden over together in his truck because it made no sense to take separate vehicles. He’d been fine on the ride over, talking about the trails and something about groomer parts and stuff, but once it came time to hit their usual sofa spots, he’d started getting weird again. He was also a little more enthusiastic than usual in his dislike of San Francisco’s team and the referees. Katie had even spotted Butch turning down his hearing aid.
In the break between the first and second quarters, Katie decided to give Josh a short reprieve by going into the kitchen to replenish the chips and dip. A few seconds later, Max followed her in, carrying everybody’s empties.
“Confession time,” he said in a low voice. “What did you do to Josh?”
Katie shrugged, but the blush heating up her cheeks gave her away. “I ran into him in the kitchen on a midnight snack run a few nights ago. Tank top, skimpy shorts. No bra. He looked like somebody had just smacked him upside the head with a shovel.”
“Ha! I knew you guys would hook up eventually.”
“We haven’t actually hooked up. He told me to put some clothes on and went storming up to his room. Alone.”
Max stared at her for a few seconds, his head cocked to one side. “Okay, wait. It’s midnight. You guys are alone in the kitchen and you’re barely dressed and…he told you to put some clothes on?”
“Yeah. And ever since he realized I’m not actually one of the guys, he’s been acting weird. Not all the time, but a lot.”
“Probably only when he’s thinking about having sex with you.”
That gave her pause, because if Max was right, that would mean Josh thought about having sex with her a lot. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have, I don’t know, kissed me or something, instead of criticizing my lack of clothing and leaving the room?”
“That’s probably how most guys would have played it.”
“So what’s his problem?”
Max gave her a good impression of a deer in the headlights, before shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid of mucking up your friendship?”
That’s what she figured, too. “It’s pretty mucked up already.”
“Maybe if you hook up, it’ll kill the awkwardness and everything will be normal again.”
“That’s what Hailey said, too.”
“Who’s Hailey?”
She held up her hands in total disbelief. “Max, how can you have lived here five years and not know who Hailey Genest is? She’s the librarian.”
“Which librarian? I’m really bad with names.”
“Whitford only has one. Blond. Attractive. A little older than me?”
/> “Oh, her. She seems nice. And we seem to be in agreement on you and Josh having sex.”
Katie laughed. “There you go. A consensus. You guys obviously have a lot in common. You should take her out on a date.”
He recoiled. “With the librarian?”
“Why not? You can have some dinner and get to know each other better. Talk about her work. Talk about your work. Maybe have a drink or two.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in an almost-smile and she guessed she hadn’t been subtle enough. “This is my busy season, but maybe I’ll at least say hello at some point.”
A clue! “So you get busy before Christmas?”
“Yup. Hey, grab that bag of pretzels on your way out, would you? And maybe for that Christmas Eve thing I hear you’re doing, you should wear a sexy dress and spike his eggnog.” And just like that he was gone.
Katie refilled the chip bowl and grabbed a new tub of dip out of the fridge, but she stopped to scowl at the alarm panel on the basement door before grabbing the pretzels. She’d been close this time. She was sure of it.
A few plays had already been run by the time she got comfortable again and normally Josh would have given her a recap, but this time he didn’t look away from the television.
This had to stop, dammit. If she was going to lose her best friend over sex, it certainly wasn’t going to be because they didn’t have it. That would be a waste all the way around.
Hailey’s advice echoed through her head. Seduce him, use the hell out of him, and then send the oversexed, possibly dehydrated husk of him out into the world.
To hell with it. She had one week to find herself a drop-dead sexy dress.
* * *
“If you could stop ogling your wife long enough to answer my question, that’d be great.” Maybe meeting Mitch for a late breakfast-slash-early lunch at the Trailside Diner hadn’t been Josh’s greatest idea, but at least he’d been correct in guessing they’d have the place more or less to themselves at ten-thirty on a Wednesday morning.
All He Ever Dreamed (The Kowalskis) Page 8