All He Ever Desired (3 page)

“These are golden years and I want to enjoy them.”

“You’re hardly in your golden years yet. Maybe things will get better soon and he can afford to hire somebody to work a few days a week.”

“How much does that insurance company pay you?”

Oh, no. She’d been dodging this conversation with her mother for several years. “They pay me more than Dad could, and I get health insurance. Plus, remember when I was a teenager? Dad and I don’t work together all that well.”

Her mom sighed. “It seems like it’s taking forever for Nicky to grow up.”

Lauren opened her mouth and then closed it again. Nick wasn’t going to take over Whitford Hardware when he graduated from high school. Not only did Lauren want him to go to college, but her father wanted more for his grandson and had made that clear over the years. It was only her mother who was convinced that if Nick stepped into his grandfather’s shoes, it would make everybody happy.

She heard Ryan laugh and she lost her train of thought as the deep sound echoed through the store. The man was distracting as hell, and she only half-listened as her mom moved the conversation to preparations for winterizing her garden.

And when he turned the corner at the end of the building-supplies aisle and looked at her again, she lost all interest in when a person should cut back her peonies.

The look in his eyes made her wonder if he was having the same kind of thoughts about her as she was having about him. And when he smiled at her, she had to become suddenly interested in untying and retying her shoelace to keep the heat that rushed through her from showing on her face for everybody to see.

“I’ll need to borrow Nicky one day after school,” her mother was saying. “It’s almost time to yank the annuals out of the garden, and he can push the wheelbarrow to the mulch pile for me.”

Lauren nodded and, for once, was thankful her mother’s obsession with her garden gave her something to focus on. This was Lauren’s real life, and she needed to keep her fantasies about Ryan out of it and firmly in her imagination where they belonged.

* * *

Ryan was doing his best not to ogle Dozer’s daughter right in front of the man—and her mother—but she drew his attention anyway. And, because he liked the way a little bit of pink colored her cheeks when he smiled at her, he did it again.

When she bent over to retie a shoe that didn’t need retying, it took all his willpower not to chuckle at her. Luckily, Mrs. Dozynski was talking to her about something and didn’t seem to notice that her daughter was blushing.

“You want this on the Northern Star account?”

Feeling guilty, even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong, Ryan stepped up to the counter and turned his back on the corner where Lauren was perched on a stool. Dozer not only was the guy who controlled the building supplies in town, but he could probably break Ryan in half if he wanted to. “No, I’ll throw it on my card.”

He stood in silence while Dozer ran the transaction, trying to think of some small talk he could make. At the very least he should ask Mrs. Dozynski how she’d been or ask Lauren how Nick was doing, but he felt so awkward lusting after her while her parents were in the room—to say nothing of Matt, who was standing at his elbow—that he just waited to sign the credit slip and grabbed one of the bags from the counter.

“Have a good day,” Dozer said, as he always did.

“You tell Rose I said hello,” Mrs. Dozynski added.

“I will.” He nodded at Lauren and fled, not even making sure Matt grabbed the other bag and followed him out.

“Pretty lady,” Matt said on their way back to the lodge. “The one sitting on the stool, I mean.”

“Yeah.” That was an understatement. She’d only gotten more beautiful with age.

“I wonder if she’s single.”

Ryan’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Doesn’t matter, since you’re here to work, not socialize.”

“Can’t work all the time.” Matt was looking out the window, so he most likely missed the boss’s knuckles turning white. “I’ll probably have to make trips to the hardware store. Maybe I’ll run into her again.”

“And maybe her father, who was the barrel-chested guy behind the counter, will bury your body in the woods.”

“Dads always love me. I’m a solid guy, or so I’m told.” Matt laughed. “Moms love me, too. My problem is finding a woman who loves me longer than a couple of months.”

“Maybe you need to worry more about them and less about impressing moms and dads.”

“True. But I bet I could romance the hardware store–guy’s daughter without getting buried in the woods.”

Rather than let on he had his own eye on Lauren—not that it meant anything—Ryan let the conversation die and turned up the radio.

Not only was Lauren being at the hardware store a kink in his plan to stay out of her way, but now the whole thing was twisted up. If he kept doing the hardware store runs, there was a good chance he’d keep running into Lauren. But if he sent one of the guys, which made more sense, it would be Matt, since Dill was temporarily unable to drive thanks to a combination of driving too fast and forgetting he hadn’t renewed his license. While he didn’t see why women found Matt irresistible, he’d seen and heard enough to know they did and he didn’t want the man around Lauren.

He was just going to have to make damn sure they planned ahead for the work they were doing and could keep supply runs to a minimum. Considering the way both his brain and body seemed to short-circuit when he was around her, it would only be a matter of time before he said or did something stupid.

Asking a woman he’d been in love with once upon a time out on a date when he was only in town for a month or so would definitely be stupid. Not only would he be starting something he couldn’t finish, but she had a teenage son. Things could get messy when kids were involved.

When they got back to the lodge, he left the supplies for Matt to deal with and went into the house. He had an email from an architect he needed to deal with and the PDF sheet with the specs was too small to read on his phone. He fired up the desktop in the office and waited for it to boot up.

And waited, and waited. When Josh stuck his head in, Ryan growled and gestured at the PC. “How old is this damn thing?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s antique in computer years.”

“How am I supposed to work with this? And how are you supposed to keep up with a website and a Facebook page when it takes this long just to turn on. I’m afraid if I try to check my email, it’ll start smoking and spew computer parts all over the place.”

“Mitch has somebody from his company working on the computer crap.”

“Finally.” Ryan started on the process of signing into his email account. “Were you looking for me or just being nosy?”

“I wanted to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Maybe he should go fix a snack while the piece of crap took its sweet time opening the attachment.

“Ry.”

He realized he was multitasking badly and gave all his attention to his brother. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to tell you I appreciate you coming up here. I know you’re busy with your business and all. And I’m sorry I couldn’t swallow my pride and ask for help before it got so bad.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get up here more often. I should have seen what was going on and we all should have realized we’d left you holding the bag.” He’d stayed away because of Lauren and wounded pride, and his family had suffered for it. “We’ll have the place fixed up in no time and then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

When his brother nodded and left, Ryan tried to focus on the spec sheet the computer had finally displayed for him. There was some argument about how far the generator would be placed from the electrical panel and what gauge wire had to be run, and he wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with before calling the electrical inspector.

But he kept picturing Lauren sitting on the stool in her father’s hardware store just as she’d been doing for as long as he could remember. When it was his turn to go to town with his dad as a little kid, she’d often be sitting there during the summer, and she’d offer to share the penny candy she’d gotten at the variety store, which had been gone for years now.

Even then he’d been aware of how pretty she was and that her smile made his belly feel kind of funny. As he got older and realized what that funny feeling was, he’d never worked up the courage to ask her to go steady. And then, one day, Dean had.

Ryan was a grown man now, but that smile still made him feel kind of funny. And he suspected if he ran into her too often, he might have to resort to his younger self’s way of dealing with it, which involved a lot of time in the shower with plenty of lathery soap.

With a growl, he forced his focus back to the computer screen. Just like Matt, he was there to work, not socialize. But, unlike Matt, he
would
work all the time if it kept his thoughts off Lauren Carpenter.

Chapter Three

“I can’t make it this weekend.”

They were the words Lauren dreaded hearing on a Friday afternoon. Nick was going to get home from school expecting Dean to be there to pick him up right after dinner, and instead she was going to have to tell him his dad wasn’t coming. It didn’t happen a lot, but often enough she’d grown to dread seeing the disappointment on her son’s face.

“You and I need to talk,” she told her ex-husband, trying not to squeeze her phone until it popped. “He’s already had detention this year.”

“So we’ll talk next weekend. One week isn’t going to make a difference.”

“It’s pretty important, Dean.”

She heard him sigh over the phone, and she clenched her jaw. “Look, the kids don’t feel good,” he said. “Jody said there’s something going around at day care and she’s already got her hands full. Plus, if Nicky’s having trouble in school, getting sick wouldn’t be good for him.”

Their son hated being called Nicky and she’d forced herself to break the habit when he hit middle school. But trust Dean to turn it around so it looked as if he was doing Nick a favor, even though Lauren knew he’d deliberately called before school let out so he wouldn’t have to break the news to Nick himself. The insurance office closed at two on Fridays, so she beat Nick home from school and Dean knew that.

“You and I can meet somewhere and talk,” she said.

“I don’t know. Like I said, Jody’s got her hands full with the kids and I think she’d be pissed if I take off.”

And a pissed-off wife trumped a pissed-off ex-wife. “Fine. I hope the kids feel better soon.”

She hung up and tossed the phone on the counter rather than giving in to the urge to chuck it across the room. Her ex-husband had that effect on her a lot. He wasn’t a bad guy and she knew he tried, but sometimes he really drove her crazy. One of his worst habits was trying to dodge the hard stuff when it came to Nick, leaving it squarely on her shoulders to be the tough one.

Lauren had been having a pretty decent week, too. Nick had done his homework every night. He was in a slightly better mood. And she’d managed two days without seeing Ryan Kowalski. She hadn’t gone two days without
thinking
about him, but at least she hadn’t run into him again.

Usually she used her free Friday hour to crank up the radio and wash the kitchen floor, but today she didn’t give a damn. The linoleum was getting old, anyway, and didn’t hold a shine for much longer than it took to dry.

Instead, she turned on the television and, when she got tired of flipping through channels, watched some show about a bunch of housewives who whined their way through spending obscene amounts of money.

She’d just started being able to keep track of which blonde was which when Nick walked through the door. He tossed his backpack down, then froze when he saw her.

“How come you’re not washing the floor?”

Gee, at least she wasn’t stuck in a rut or anything. “I decided to see how real housewives live instead.”

He made a face at the television, then plopped down on the sofa next to her. “Dad’s not coming, is he?”

“How did you know?”

“You have that look, like you don’t want to tell me something but you have to. That’s pretty much the only thing you don’t like telling me.”

“He said the kids are sick and they don’t want you getting sick, too.”

“Whatever.” He lifted one shoulder.

“You want to do something tomorrow?” What, she didn’t know. She had to go grocery shopping before they totally ran out of food and she didn’t even want to think about the laundry pile.

“I’ll just hang out. See if Cody’s around.”

Cody had been Nick’s best friend since kindergarten, but Lauren had heard from Fran—who owned the Whitford General Store & Service Station with her husband, Butch—that Cody had been getting in some trouble lately, and Nick didn’t need any more of that. “Stay out of trouble.”

He rolled his eyes. “Like there’s any trouble to get into in Whitford. I can’t believe you won’t let me take driver’s ed. If one of us had a car, we could actually go somewhere.”

“If you can’t handle homework, you can’t handle driving.” This wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion. “When I see a semester with no detentions, all your assignments done and the best grades you can achieve, we’ll talk about it.”

“Whatever.” He got up and grabbed his backpack. “I have to write a stupid book report about some stupid book, so I’m going to go read.”

More than likely, he was going to shove earbuds in his ears, crank some angry rock music on his iPod and stare at his ceiling, but she left him alone. If she tried to make him feel better, she’d have to make excuses for Dean and she wasn’t in the mood.

Her phone rang and she saw the library’s number in the caller-ID window. Hailey Genest, the Whitford librarian, was not only one of her best friends, but was fun and fairly drama-free, so she welcomed the call. “The dog ate my library books.”

“Ha, you’re funny,” Hailey said. “Though that’s actually happened. You should have seen what was left of the book. Anyway, you have to get out of work early on October fifth.”

Lauren walked over to the calendar hanging on the fridge. “That’s two weeks from today, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Why do I need to get out of work early?”

“I made us a salon appointment. You know, for Paige’s wedding?”

“Is she definitely getting married on the sixth?”

“I guess Mitch is still waiting to hear from Liz, but the rest of the family can come from New Hampshire, so they’re going to do it. Paige said Mitch will get Liz here one way or another.”

She grabbed a pen and wrote
wedding
in the Saturday block. “What time is the appointment? Oh...wait. Dean’s coming on Friday to pick up Nick. They’re going camping for the long weekend, so I had to get out early anyway. What time did you make the appointment for?”

“Two. I’m closing the library at noon and we’re heading for the city, baby.”

“Dean’s picking Nick up at noon. It’ll be close.”

“We’ll make it. And it’s my treat. Hair, facials, manicures, pedicures, the works.”

It sounded like heaven. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to a salon. Usually she ran into the barbershop during a lunch break and had Katie trim her hair. “I’m not letting you pay.”

“You can’t stop me. It’s going to be awesome girl-time
and
we’ll look hot as hell for the wedding. Oh, and speaking of hot, what’re you wearing?”

“I haven’t gotten that far. I looked in my closet, but all I have is a funeral suit and a dress with shoulder pads and sequins I don’t remember buying.”

“Since you were still a kid in the eighties, I’m going to pretend you went on a drunken shopping spree. We’ll find you a dress on the fifth, too. Something sexy and slinky.”

Lauren laughed. “I was thinking something warm, since Paige is getting married outside in October.”

“Trust me. We’ll find the perfect dress. Something you can dance in, too.”

She didn’t plan on doing any dancing. It was something she wasn’t very good at and tended to save for very dark nightclubs that served copious amounts of alcohol. “I have to go wash my floor.”

“And I have to batten down the hatches for the homework club. Last week the homework seems to have been to sneak all the sexy romances into the Y.A. room and giggle over them.”

“Lucky you. I’d rather mop my floor.”

By the time she was satisfied the old linoleum was as clean as she could get it, Nick had come out of his room. “You want a snack, honey?”

“I was thinking, you wanna watch a movie or something?”

She didn’t, really. She needed to get started on the laundry and make a shopping list. But it was his way of reaching out, so she nodded. “You get the movie, I’ll make the popcorn.”

* * *

Ryan knew he should be doing the final prep work so he could pull the kitchen windows out and put the new ones in with as little inconvenience to Rosie as possible, but he couldn’t be bothered. Instead, he sat on the porch with a beer, enjoying the quiet.

He’d always considered Saturdays just another workday, but he didn’t have a lot of ambition today. Matt and Dill had headed back to Massachusetts for the weekend the night before in one of the trucks. Rosie’s car was in the shop, so she’d taken Josh’s truck to some antique place with Fran Benoit. And because she had Josh’s truck, Josh had taken Ryan’s truck into town to do some errands.

Ryan couldn’t go anywhere without a vehicle and he didn’t feel like working, so he’d popped a beer and sat down. An hour later, he woke up, groggy and with a stiff neck from his head flopping over in the chair.

A sound caught his attention and he lifted his head, trying to place it. It was a weird
plink
, like something tapping glass, and probably what had woken him up. It wasn’t until he froze, straining in the silence, that he heard the pop of a pellet gun.

Somebody was shooting at the new windows. No doubt the same damn somebody who’d been making a nuisance of himself for weeks.

Ryan’s instinct was to go running out back, where the windows were leaning up against the barn waiting to be installed, but he didn’t. Instead he crept around the house and peeked until he spotted a teenage boy just in the tree line. Though it would probably cost him a pane of glass, he took his time moving to a spot where the kid couldn’t see him and sneaked into the woods. He slowly made his way through the trees and, by the time the vandal saw him it was too late.

The kid made a break for it, but Ryan had momentum and took him down to the ground. The pellet gun went flying and he hauled the boy to his feet by the back of his collar.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The kid squirmed, trying to break free, but Ryan had been in construction a long time and had a strong grip. With his free hand, he slipped his phone out of its holster and dialed the Whitford Police Department.

“Please don’t call the cops,” the boy pleaded, but Ryan wasn’t screwing around. The Northern Star Lodge had enough woes without some punk kid making it worse.

After the dispatcher promised to send an officer, Ryan marched the kid around the house and told him to sit down. “What’s your name, kid?”

He got no response, but the sullen disrespect the boy was going for didn’t mask the fear on his face. He was probably so afraid he couldn’t talk if he wanted to.

“Suit yourself. I bet whoever shows up to cart your sorry vandalizing ass to jail will know who you are.”

Ten minutes later, a cruiser pulled up the drive and Drew Miller got out. Mitch’s best friend was the police chief now, which boggled Ryan’s mind, and they shook hands before Drew turned his attention to the vandal.

“What’s up, Nick?” The kid shrugged one shoulder, staring at the police chief’s shoes. Drew pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “I have a list here of all the incidents Rose and Josh have reported for the last few weeks. You know anything about them?”

The one-shoulder lift again, and Ryan had to give him credit for not lying outright, at least. “You know how much those windows cost? Bet your parents are going to love paying for those.”

Nick got pale and finally looked up, locking his gaze on Ryan. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the windows. And for the other stuff.”

“Have a lot of money stuffed under your mattress?” Drew asked.

“No. I can work it off. I can mow and split wood and do whatever you need me to. Please don’t make my mom pay. She’s trying to save up for new tires before winter and she just had to spend a bunch of it on school stuff for me and she works really hard....”

Ryan forced himself to keep the stern look going when the kid’s words tapered off. He was obviously choked up, but there were going to be consequences one way or another. “After all the damage you’ve done, why would I want you on the property? I have expensive tools and trucks, and the supplies aren’t cheap.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you got caught. You didn’t think anybody was home and, if I hadn’t been, you’d have come back and trashed something else when you got bored.”

Drew cleared his throat. “Nick, what’s your mother’s cell number?”

He punched it into his cell phone as the kid mumbled the digits, then stepped away to make the call.

“I’ll work it off,” the kid said again.

Ryan shook his head. “You sneak around, destroying our property, and now you expect me to believe you have a work ethic? And the integrity to stick it out?”

It was too bad, though. The kid was young, but looked fairly strong. And, if nothing else, he could pick up after he, Dill, Matt and Andy Miller—who was Drew’s dad and had been working around the place for a few weeks—were done for the day. Cheaper than paying his guys to pick up tools. But the kid was trouble and he didn’t need any more of that.

Drew walked back over, putting his phone away. “Your mom’s on her way.”

Nick’s shoulders slumped and he stared down at his feet. Ryan decided to leave him to his sulk and turned to Drew. “You have that list?”

Drew handed him the paper and a pen. “He’s never done anything like this before. He’s always been a good kid.”

Ryan went down the list, putting estimated dollar amounts to each incident. He wrote in the cost of the windows at the end, but a quick glance had shown him that only two were damaged. The total wasn’t huge, just a few dollars over nine hundred, but that wasn’t counting the aggravation, either.

He handed the list back to Drew and, with nothing else to do until the kid’s mother showed up, decided on small talk. “How are things going?”

“You probably heard Mallory and I split.” Ryan nodded. “Other than that, everything’s the same old shit. My dad said you run a tight ship over here.”

Ryan let him get away with the swing in subject. Divorces sucked. “Dill and Matt are good guys, but if I didn’t have my thumb on them, they’d be on those damn phones all day.”

“Did you ever find out what happened between Rosie and my old man?”

Rose Davis hadn’t spoken to Andy Miller in almost thirty years and nobody knew why. She’d thrown a fit when Mitch and Josh had hired him to work around the lodge, but something had happened and she’d forgiven him, apparently. For what, none of them knew.