All He Ever Desired (7 page)

He’d found a table in the back, away from the counter, which was filling up with lunch regulars, and he smiled when she slid into the booth across from him. “You missed a little bit of dust, right on the side of your nose.”

She wiped at it and he nodded to let her know it was gone. “Dad uses the cheapest paper towels he can buy. I washed my face, but that brown paper just smeared everything around.”

“I’m in construction. I like women who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.”

He didn’t say it in any kind of flirtatious way, but she felt herself blush a little. “I grew up in a hardware store. I don’t think I even had fingernails worth breaking until I left home.”

“I remember.”

“True.” Sometimes she had a hard time connecting this adult, sexy man with the kid she’d grown up with.

Paige stopped by to take their orders, and they both asked for coffee and burgers. She wrote it down, then pointed her pen at Ryan. “I meant to tell you, I was up at the lodge yesterday and I can’t believe how much work you’ve done on the outside. It’s going to look great for the wedding, so thank you.”

“Dill and Matt have worked pretty hard on it, so I’ll pass your thanks along to them. They’ll head out Thursday night, since the family’s coming Friday morning, and they’ll put all the sawhorses and scaffolding and stuff in the barn with the tools before they go.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I hope you realize you owe us a movie night,” Lauren said.

“I had to cross movie night off my calendar to write in my wedding,” Paige confessed. “I was hoping nobody would notice.”

The first Saturday of every month was movie night in Whitford. A bunch of the women took turns hosting it and the host got to pick the movie. There were also snacks and no shortage of drinks.

“When you get your new house, you’re going to have to throw an epic movie night to make up for it,” Lauren teased. Paige’s trailer was so tiny, she’d never been able to host the other women.

“Guess I’d better buy a television then.”

“Mitch hasn’t bought one yet?” Ryan asked. “I’m surprised.”

“He hasn’t been home a lot. And, trust me, he’s TV shopping. I think he’s waiting for me to pick a house so he can measure the living room wall.”

The bell rang, signaling food in the pass-through window, so Paige had to run. She was back a minute later with their coffees, but couldn’t chat anymore.

“So tell me about your life since you moved away,” Lauren said as they fixed their coffees. “I hear little bits and pieces, but not a lot.”

“You know the part where I landed a job with a Boston builder when I graduated from college.” He’d told her that the day he’d asked her to divorce Dean and leave with him. “I worked my way up with him, got married, kept working, got divorced, started my own business, worked a lot more, built a house in Brookline...more work. And I’m here. Working.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “I suspect that’s the abridged version.”

“That’s pretty much the only version. There’s not a lot more to it than that.”

“Was your divorce a bad one? I mean, all divorces suck, but did you fight?”

He shrugged. “Not really. We drifted apart and both came to the conclusion about the same time that we didn’t really want to be married anymore. Last I heard she’d married a guy from Rhode Island. I think. Or maybe it was Jersey.”

“I guess, with no kids, it’s easier to move on. At least there’s no custody battle and child support and visitation schedule to fight over.”

He stirred the spoon in his coffee cup, staring at the swirling liquid. “On the flip side, though, I have no kids.”

There was something in his voice that made her sad. Her divorce had sucked. Since the marriage’s death blow was her finding Dean in bed with Jody, it had been ugly. And there was no putting him behind her, or being so over it that she wasn’t even sure where he lived. There were smiles past clenched teeth and arguments over who had to pay for what and holidays spent alone because it was dad’s turn.

But she had Nick. He made everything—from being married to Dean to going to work every day to smiling at the current Mrs. Carpenter—worth it.

“Okay,” she said. “Leave it to me to sit here across from a great guy, drinking good coffee on a beautiful day and bring up divorce.”

He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “You think I’m a great guy?”

“I don’t think that’s a secret. You Kowalskis are all great guys.”

The grin faded. “But I’m greater than the other ones, right?”

“Are you serious right now?” She laughed at him.

“Of course not.” Then he held up his hand, his thumb and forefinger about a quarter-inch apart. “Okay, maybe a little serious.”

“Fine. I think you might be a little greater than your brothers.”

He winked at her. “That’s what I like to hear.”

They made small talk while they ate. They talked about Nick and the snake he’d found in the rock wall and how they’d found out Dill was a little phobic about snakes when Nick tried to show it to him. Luckily, he hadn’t actually fallen off the ladder. Ryan told her about Rosie’s shopping list for the wedding weekend, which was pushing three pages long, and that was with double columns.

He talked some about the family coming from New Hampshire, and she was captivated by the warmth in his voice when he talked about his cousins and their kids. And his aunt Mary and uncle Leo. He was a man who obviously loved his family deeply, and she thought back to that odd note in his voice when he’d pointed out he didn’t have any kids. He was really good with Nick, according to her son, and he’d probably make a great dad. Some woman out there was definitely missing out on a good man.

That was a depressing thought, so she shoved it aside and focused on the story he was telling her. Something about a cell phone quacking like a duck. Dill’s, she gathered.

“You’re the boss and you don’t seem to have any problem being a hard-ass. Make him change it.”

“I’m only a hard-ass when it’s called for. Okay, which is almost all the time. But I don’t make him change it, because it’s distinctive and I hate it so it catches my attention. Helps me keep track of how much time he’s spending playing with his phone and not working.”

“I’m surprised you put up with it at all. Aren’t there a dozen other guys who’d take his job and not quack all day?”

“Dill might be driving me nuts right now, but he’s got a knack for building, strong leadership skills and he holds himself and the other guys on a job with him to a standard of quality as high as mine. Once he outgrows this annoying-puppy stage, he’s going to be one of my best builders. He’ll be running jobs in a few years if he doesn’t screw it up in the meantime.”

She liked listening to him talk about his business. It was a world he was obviously comfortable in, and the relaxed confidence he exuded was pretty damn sexy.

Way too soon, their plates were empty and it was time for her to head back to the store. It had already been closed almost an hour, which was going to give her father fits if anybody complained to him.

“Thank you for lunch,” she said when they were standing out on the sidewalk.

“I enjoyed the company. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

She nodded, her heart doing a little happy dance in her chest as he walked to his truck. She’d like that. A lot.

Chapter Seven

There were no power tools running. Ryan closed the door of his truck and listened more closely. No work sounds at all.

Monday morning he’d had to make the drive back to Brookline to put out a few fires. An accounts receivable fire. An HR fire, because one of the dumbass new guys got fresh with his secretary’s assistant and only Ryan had the authority to fire anybody. And the electrical outfit they’d subbed a job to because Ryan’s regular guys were booked had started pulling wires before they’d pulled a permit and the inspector was good and pissed.

Now it was Wednesday and he’d gotten up at the butt crack of dawn to get back to Whitford so he could bust his ass alongside the guys to make sure the lodge looked as good as possible for his brother’s wedding.

But the guys apparently weren’t busting their asses. Somewhere, for some reason, they were sitting on them.

And he’d bet a week’s payroll Rose would know where they were. He went into the lodge and, after listening for a few seconds, heard some faint noises coming from the guest-room wing. He went down the hall and turned into the room the scuffling noises were coming from.

Rose wasn’t in the guest room. Dill and Matt were, though. Matt was standing in front of a set of bunk beds, frowning, with his arms folded across his chest. Dill was up on the top bunk, wrestling with a fitted sheet.

“What the hell are you two clowns doing?”

They both jumped a mile, and the one corner of the sheet Dill had managed to hook over the mattress popped off. “Shit!”

“Rose put us to work,” Matt said, as if that explained everything.

“You work for
me
.”

“Not today, boss.”

It was tempting to walk over and cuff him upside the head, but it wasn’t really their fault. When Rosie decided something was going to happen the way she wanted it, it generally happened that way. She’d probably steamrolled right over them.

“This isn’t possible.” Dill sounded as if he’d jump off the side of the bunk bed if only the drop was high enough to put him out of his misery. “You can’t reach the back of the damn mattress from the ground, but you can’t pull the mattress up to tuck the sheet in if you’re on top of it.”

“You can’t make a bed, but I let you build houses for me?”

“Oh, you think you can do it better?”

Ryan couldn’t even tell them how many times he’d made up that particular set of bunk beds. And the other set in the room. And the others in the lodge, along with the double beds and the queen beds. The chore list when you grew up in a lodging establishment was long and royally sucked.

“Get down,” he said. “I have to show you how to do everything. How you even managed to knock up your wife without help is beyond me.”

Dill snorted as he climbed down the ladder. Ryan waited until he was out of the way, then climbed most of the way up the ladder. Reaching across the bunk, he curled the mattress toward him and held it with one hand while he used the other to hook the top, back corner of the sheet over it. Then he switched hands and did the bottom back corner. He yanked on the center of the edge to tuck it all down the side, then slowly rolled the mattress down. Getting the front two corners on and tucking it down the side was a piece of cake.

“No shit,” Dill said.

“Give me the flat sheet.”

He made quick work of that, too, then moved on to the other three bunk mattresses in the room while the guys handled the less taxing job of smoothing quilts over the sheets. He’d hated this job as a kid, much preferring to work with his dad doing outside stuff, but Rose had kept a chart and the kids had rotated jobs to be fair. She’d paired them off, younger with older. She’d claimed it was so they could watch over and teach the little ones, but he suspected it was because the younger kids would tattle if the older kids slacked off or took shortcuts. Mitch got Josh and Ryan got Sean, who had really sucked at making beds. Liz and Katie were supposed to do chores together, but Liz preferred the baking and cleaning and fussing over throw pillows, while Katie wanted to change the oil in the lawn mower and tag along after Ryan’s dad.

“You guys got it now?” He wasn’t spending his day making beds. Unless Rose told him to, of course, but he was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

“Yeah,” they both said in unison.

“Where’s Andy?”

“He escaped,” Matt said. “Saw her looking for us with a big old list and he ran for his truck. She called after him but he pretended not to hear her and got away.”

“He’ll come back. Everybody does eventually.”

Ryan left them to their housekeeping and went in search of Rose. He found her in the backyard, stringing twine between stakes she’d driven into the ground.

She straightened when she saw him, pushing her hair back away from her face. “You’re home. I didn’t hear you pull in.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out where I want the tent.”

He shook his head. “Why don’t you have Dill and Matt doing this, since you decided to shanghai my crew?”

“Well, for one thing, no matter how many stakes they drive in and how much string they run, they still won’t know where I want the tent.” She blew out a breath and stretched her back. “And for another, I really, really hate making up those bunk beds.”

He laughed, but seeing her press her hands to her back and arch it like that gave him a pang of worry. Whether they kept the place or Rose stayed on with new owners, it wasn’t going to be long before she needed help, even if it was just a part-time high school girl to help with making beds and laundry and vacuuming. Rose would fight it, though, because she was stubborn and taking care of the lodge was her business and nobody else’s.

“Where’s Josh?”

“He went to pick up the canopy I rented. He’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“You could have waited for Nick to help you with this,” he pointed out.

“I can handle setting a few stakes and running some string, young man.”

And that was the end of
that
line of conversation. “Nick show up yesterday and the day before?”

“Of course he did. Did everything asked of him, just like always.”

“And Lauren picked him up?”

“No. She abandoned him here so we can raise him as one of our own while she runs off with the circus.”

“
You
are a crazy woman.” He turned and walked away. “I’m going to find actual work to do.”

“You’re going to drag the throw rugs out so I can beat them,” she called after him. “And next time you want to know how Lauren Carpenter’s doing, just ask.”

He slammed the kitchen door so hard it was a good thing he’d replaced it with steel, because the old one probably would have cracked.

* * *

Rose watched through the kitchen window as Ryan, Josh, Dill and Matt put up the canopy she’d rented. It was a big one and she was sure if she stepped out the back door, she’d get quite an off-color vocabulary lesson.

She didn’t want to deal with it after the family arrived tomorrow, even though there would be plenty of guys, so she’d talked Ryan into having the guys help him and Josh before they headed back to Massachusetts for the long weekend.

Andy walked into the kitchen, not looking much happier than the guys outside did. “I’m done.”

Because he was tall, she’d asked him to go through the lodge and dust the ceiling-fan blades before she vacuumed a final time. There were a lot of ceiling fans. “Thank you. I have to haul around a step stool and climb up and down for every one of them.”

“I’ll go see if I can give them a hand.”

She watched him walk across the yard, amazed at the difference not even two months could make. Way back when Katie was a little girl, Rose’s husband, Earle, had gone on a sledding trip with Andy, who was his best friend. There was drinking and Andy talked two women into joining them in their motel room. Earle had broken his wedding vows. Blaming Andy had helped her forgive her husband enough to rebuild their marriage into the long and happy one it was until he passed away.

After more years than she cared to remember now of her not speaking to Andy, Mitch and Josh had hired him to do some odd jobs around the lodge. She didn’t care if he’d been a friend of their dad’s and was Drew Miller’s father. She was mad as hell. But having the situation shoved into her lap had caused her to give some thought to it and she’d finally forgiven him. Sometimes it was still strange, the way he was so at home at the lodge, but she was slowly getting more comfortable having him around.

Leaving the men to the canopy, she made a slow, careful tour of the house, making sure everything was ready for tomorrow. They might be family, but Rose took a great deal of pride in the place and she wanted it to look its best for the wedding.

Suddenly feeling a little weepy, she sat down on the staircase and ran her hand over a tread worn smooth by generations of Kowalski feet.

She knew it was selfish, but she hoped the kids didn’t sell the Northern Star. She wouldn’t tell them that. They all had their own lives to lead and maybe they didn’t want to be saddled with it anymore. And Josh deserved the chance to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, even if it meant she’d lose this place.

Logically, it made sense to sell it. Mitch and Paige wanted a house of their own. Ryan owned a beautiful house and a successful business in Brookline. Even if whatever was going on between him and Lauren bloomed into something, he wasn’t coming back to Whitford to play innkeeper. Sean was settled with Emma in New Hampshire, and Liz was in New Mexico. And Josh...she’d just about given up on Josh seeing that what he really wanted was right in front of him, because he was so blinded by what he thought he wanted. Katie was doing her own thing and wouldn’t care if Rose retired and moved into a little apartment over Main Street.

She was tired. And it didn’t seem that she was going to get to hear the thunder of little feet overhead again, so maybe it was time to start letting go of the Northern Star.

After
the wedding.

* * *

By Thursday night Lauren had to admit, although only to herself, that she was disappointed she hadn’t seen Ryan since they’d had lunch on Saturday.

It had been a bit of a letdown when she’d pulled into the driveway on Monday to pick up Nick and Ryan’s truck hadn’t been there. Nick had told her that Ryan had to go back to Mass for work stuff until probably Wednesday morning. Then on Wednesday, he must have been busy doing something, because she didn’t see him then, either. It didn’t look like she’d see him again until Paige’s wedding.

“Is there something wrong with that wine?” Katie asked, jerking her out of her thoughts.

“No, why?”

“Because you’re scowling at it.”

“Oh. Just lost in thought, I guess.” And because she knew the question was coming, she went ahead and made up a fake answer. “Nick’s going on a camping trip with his dad this weekend and I’m trying to remember if I packed his wool socks.”

Katie waved her hand. “Wool socks are for tomorrow. Tonight is for fun.”

On such short notice, and with Mitch taking Paige off to New Hampshire to meet his family on the only free weekend, they weren’t able to throw a proper bachelorette party for her. But they’d all gathered at Hailey’s for an impromptu Thursday-night potluck dinner, with wine.

It would have been nice to wait until Mitch’s female relatives could be there, but their Friday arrival and the Saturday wedding didn’t leave enough time. They’d just have to party all over again at the reception.

Paige was currently sitting in Hailey’s rocking chair, which had been thoroughly toilet-papered in lieu of white streamers. Whitford didn’t have a party store and Hailey had forgotten to stop at one when she’d gone into the city to buy gifts.

“Oh, my God, Fran,” Paige said, while Hailey almost doubled over laughing beside her.

Lauren could see why when Paige held up the present. Fran had knit her a short, spaghetti-strapped nightie...out of a nice, sturdy wool. It was the most bizarre thing she’d ever seen.

“Hey, you didn’t leave me enough time to knit the matching peignoir,” Fran said. “But that’ll keep the important bits warm while still looking sexy. Maine-style.”

Lauren had lived in Maine her entire life and she’d never seen a wool negligee, but the gift was definitely the hit of the party, even if Paige did decline modeling it for everybody.

“I’ll save it to wear for Mitch,” she said, folding it carefully and adding it to the pile of more traditional sexy underwear and nighties she’d received.

When the gifts had been opened, the desserts were broken out and more wine was poured. Lauren opted out, since she was driving, but she doubled up on the chocolate cream pie to make up for it.

“Okay,” Hailey said to Paige when they were standing at the counter, eating. “Spill. Where are you going for your honeymoon?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Lauren had to agree with Hailey. “How can you not know where you’re going on your wedding night?”

Paige shrugged. “He doesn’t want me to know. He’s afraid I’ll tell somebody and his brothers and cousins will be able to find us. We’re only going for a few nights because of the diner and the fact he has a lot of travel coming up, so it’ll be someplace close.”

“I can’t believe he won’t tell anybody where he’s going to be,” Katie said. She’d skipped the Red Sox ball cap for the occasion, though the ponytail was in place.

“If he told anybody, it would probably be Rose. Or maybe Ryan. He’s the least likely to tell everybody else, I think. He told me all I needed was my toothbrush and maybe a robe to put on when room service came around.”

Hailey snorted. “If he’s just going to keep you in a hotel room the whole time for nonstop newlywed sex, you may as well save money and stay right at the lodge.”

“Mitch and I didn’t really talk about it, but I suspect having Rose
and
his aunt Mary under the same roof would be...inhibitive, let’s say.”

“What about me?”

They all turned, and Katie pointed at her mother. “You’re getting sneaky in your old age.”