All He Ever Needed (13 page)

“That was Sunday night?” Paige nodded, too intent on saving every drop of melting chocolate to answer. “And he was there Monday night. And Tuesday night. So counting Friday night, but not Saturday, you’ve had sex almost every night for half a week. I hate you. Seriously, you should give me your ice cream when I’m done with mine.”

“He’s been coming in for a late breakfast every day, too. I can’t even imagine what Rosie and Josh must think.”

“Knowing Rosie, she’s thankful he’s saving them money on the grocery bill.” Hailey licked the last of her fudge pop off the stick, then scowled at it. “I need to get out of Whitford. Maybe find somebody to date.”

“There are plenty of single guys in town. Josh is single and it’s not like he can run away right now.” Hailey wrinkled her nose. “Ryan will be back in town for a while. How about him?”

“The Kowalski guys just don’t do much for me. No offense, and one teenage indiscretion notwithstanding, of course. And even if Katie doesn’t know it yet, me hooking up with Josh wouldn’t be cool, because someday she’ll admit
she
wants to hook up with him and I don’t want the
friend’s ex
thing standing in the way. And Ryan? He’s almost a stranger now. Even when he’s in town, he’s rarely
in
town.”

“There has to be somebody. I’m going to start feeling guilty if I’m having amazing sex on a regular basis and all you’re getting are brain-freeze headaches from all the consolation ice cream.”

“I hate you a little right now. And I’m probably going to blow my entire household budget for next month shopping online when I get home.”

“You do have great shoes.”

Hailey rolled her eyes. “I’d rather have great sex.”

Paige wiggled her toes in her raggedy flip-flops and smiled. So would she. “Once he goes back to New York, maybe I’ll buy a pair of outrageous high heels and a gallon of chocolate chip ice cream. And chips, of course, because you can’t have sweet without the salty, crunchy chaser when you feel like crap.”

“When are you going to see him again?”

“Don’t know. He didn’t say when. Or even
if
. Ryan’s supposed to come back today, so I think they’re going to be busy at the lodge.” Paige elbowed Hailey. “It’ll give me time to recuperate.”

“I hate you even more now. Stop before I push you off the bench and steal all your money to buy ice cream.” They both laughed, but when they stood to throw their trash away, Hailey grew serious on her. “You’re not getting too attached to him, right?”

“Of course not.” Maybe she’d said it too quickly, because Hailey didn’t look convinced. “I’m just having fun, like you said I should. Reel him in, keep him a few weeks, then throw him back and let him swim away. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Just checking. Shoe shopping and ice cream might be fun, but I don’t want to have to nurse you through a broken heart.”

“You won’t have to, I promise. No hearts are being harmed in the making of this bizarre fish metaphor of yours.”

It was all catch and release where Mitch was concerned.

Chapter Thirteen

When she heard a truck pull in the drive, Rosie stuffed the rag and the can of furniture polish into the cleaning tote and rushed to get it back into the closet. She didn’t want anybody to know she’d been cleaning.

She knew she wasn’t technically on strike if she was stealth cleaning the lodge, but once she’d made her point, she didn’t want to imagine what the place would look like if she hadn’t lifted a hand in the meantime. The boys were muddling through the big, obvious stuff, but she’d never catch up if she didn’t sneak in some spit and polish here and there.

Thinking the truck was Ryan’s, since he was coming up for a few days, Rosie went out the kitchen door and around the house. She didn’t see the man or the truck until it was too late to turn around without being seen.

Andy Miller looked her in the eye and then, instead of doing the decent thing and pretending he didn’t see her, he walked directly toward her. Rose wanted to turn and run, but, by God, this was her home and she was no coward.

“It’s been twenty-six years, Rose,” he said. “And Earle’s been gone the last fourteen of them. How long are you going to hate me?”

Whether or not to answer was a struggle. She’d managed to go twenty-six years without speaking to the man, but he’d asked her a direct question this time and ignoring it would be more rude than she usually cared to be.

“Longer than twenty-six years, I guess,” she told him.

“I’m sorry. You know, you’ve never given me a chance to tell you that.”

“Because I don’t care.”

“You’re a hard woman, Rosie Davis.”

She turned on him, fighting the urge to reintroduce the flat of her hand to the side of his face. It had been a long time since she’d slapped him, but she’d never lost the urge to do it again. “Don’t you dare call me that. Only people who care about me call me Rosie.”

He shook his head, his expression sad and his shoulder slumping a little. “I didn’t make him do anything he wasn’t willing to do. He was a grown man and he made his own choice.”

She almost did hit him then, because it was the truth and she didn’t want to hear it. It was a lot easier to blame Andy for what Earle had done. “I want you to leave now.”

For a long moment she thought he might argue with her, but then he walked past her and disappeared around the house.

Though she thought she was done shedding tears over the situation, a few gathered in her eyes and she swiped at them with the back of her hand as she walked halfway around the lodge in the opposite direction to get to the front door.

Damn him. Damn Andy Miller and his too-late, not-enough apology. And damn Earle Davis, too.

They’d gone over to New Hampshire snowmobiling, just the two guys. It was something they did every couple of years, just to see some new scenery. Earle had come home a different man and it wasn’t but a few days before guilt drove him to confess he’d cheated on her.

They’d been at a restaurant, having steaks and a few beers after the mileage was done for the day, and Andy had met up with a couple of pretty women at the bar, one of whom tripped his trigger in a big way. The only way she’d go back to their motel room, though, was if her friend could go, too. A few more beers and a hot young thing jealous her friend was getting some action, and Earle had broken his wedding vows.

She hadn’t left him. They had a seven-year-old and a home and she knew, at heart, Earle was a good man. But their marriage was never the same after that. His confession was like a spot of tarnish on a piece of heirloom silver. You could treasure that heirloom and shine it up and show it off, but that bit of tarnish was always there, a sore spot you couldn’t rub away.

And she blamed Andy Miller for it. Not that she didn’t blame Earle, but she believed in her heart her husband would never have strayed if Andy hadn’t put him in the position he’d been in. The man became as good as dead to her and, if Earle and Andy continued their friendship after that weekend, she didn’t see or hear evidence of it. And her husband was never gone overnight again.

Rose pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table, feeling a little shaky. She couldn’t put the sorrow and regret she’d seen in Andy’s eyes out of her mind, and that made her even angrier. When she was being honest with herself, she knew that blaming and hating Andy had made it easier for her to live with forgiving her husband. Nothing Andy—or the woman—could have done would make Earle cheat if he wasn’t of a mind to already.

And she had to begrudgingly respect the fact nobody in Whitford ever found out Earle Davis had cheated on his wife. She and Earle certainly hadn’t told anybody. But she knew if Andy had told even a single soul, everybody in town would have eventually heard, and that would have made it a lot harder to pretend everything was fine during the long months—or years, really—it took for the pretense to eventually become reality again.

Because she wasn’t quite ready to admit it was unfair to blame a guy who hadn’t even done anything wrong back when he was young, single and stupid, Rose went back to the cleaning closet and grabbed the big basket of supplies and a pair of rubber gloves. Any dirt or stray toothpaste with the audacity to hide in one of the Northern Star’s bathrooms was about to bear the brunt of her frustration. Some women indulged in retail therapy. Rose scrubbed.

* * *

Mitch was tired. He was physically tired from spending much of Sunday night in Paige’s bed, followed by much of Monday night and even more of last night. He was mentally tired from worrying about the lodge while keeping his thumb on Northern Star Demolition from a distance and thinking about the fact he’d spent a good part of three nights in a row in Paige’s little bed.

And he was really damn tired of wading through the mindboggling amount of crap his family had managed to cram into the barn. He’d thought emptying the building out to redo the floors would be a quick job, but now he was beginning to wonder if they’d even be able to start replacing planks before Josh lost the cast and crutches.

A long stream of curses cobbled together to make colorful compound swear words made Mitch turn to see Ryan trying not to lose his grip on a crate of old tools while extricating his boot from a hole rotted in the floor.

He was about to tell him to hang on a second and he’d grab the crate, when Ryan threw the thing, and decades worth of screwdrivers and wrenches scattered. Once his foot was free, Ryan crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling, as if praying for the fortitude not to simply burn the whole mess to the ground.

“I need a break,” Mitch said. “Let’s take a ride out back.”

The words “out back” got Ryan’s attention, but he looked skeptical. “With as much care and attention as everything else around here got, the four-wheelers probably don’t even run anymore.”

“I fired them up last week just to see, and Josh said he changed the oil in them not too long ago.”

“Should we tell them?”

Mitch snorted. “Hell, no. They’ll hear us leave and figure it out. I don’t want to give anybody a chance to point out how much shit’s left on the to-do list.”

The four-wheelers had been parked behind the barn and it only took a minute to undo the rope and pull back the tarp that covered them. The keys were in them and they each fired one up. They were old ATVs, without the luxuries of electronic fuel injection or independent rear suspension or power steering, but they were familiar and dependable and just what they needed.

Mitch followed Ryan across the backyard and into one of the cuts through the woods surrounding the lodge. There was a little fresh growth, but the trails they’d been using since they were kids were still there, and Mitch felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders as he thumbed the throttle and made his four-wheeler jump over a bump in the trail.

They had enough land to have multiple trails that cut back and crossed each other at unmarked intersections. Somebody else would have been hopelessly lost within the first twenty minutes, but they knew every tree, boulder and other natural landmark on the property. Growing up, they’d all rushed through their chores so they could climb on the ATVs and go adventuring in the woods. There was one for each kid, disreputable beasts held together with duct tape and Loctite, but Katie usually went out with them while Liz stayed behind to shadow Rosie.

After close to an hour of winding through trees and pounding through ruts and over rocks, Ryan pulled off into a wide spot in the trail and Mitch did the same. Off to his right was the log they’d worked for weeks to turn into a bench, but he didn’t dare test his weight on it. Looking at it made him smile, though, as he remembered how close they’d all been as kids. They’d bickered, of course, but they’d been close in a way they weren’t as adults, in more ways than geographical proximity.

“We probably should have grabbed a bottle of water before we headed out,” Ryan said, and Mitch laughed.

“I have gum, if that helps.” He fished the pack out of his pockets and handed Ryan a piece before popping one in his mouth.

“So how are things going with Paige Sullivan?”

The question was asked innocently enough, but Mitch had no doubt Ryan was digging at him. He would already have heard from Josh that their oldest brother was creeping home from Paige’s place in the wee hours. “Good.”

“Really? That’s all you’re going to give me? Lame.”

“What do you want me to say? She’s fun, we have a good time, and I’m leaving in a couple of weeks when Josh gets the cast off.”

“And you gave her the whole ‘won’t call, won’t text’ spiel?”

“It’s not a spiel, jackass. It’s not like I’m selling her a used car.” He chewed his gum for a minute, hands shoved in his pockets. “But, yeah, she knows there’s no relationship going on.”

Saying it out loud made him wonder silently what a relationship was. Enjoying time together? Check. Great sex? A giant red check. Talking about books they both loved and about people they both knew and about their lives? Check. And, whenever they were apart, looking forward to when they’d be together again?

That was the one he was worried about. He found himself thinking about Paige during the day a little too often for comfort. He’d hear something funny and want to tell her. Or see something cool and want to take a picture to share it with her. He thought she was beautiful with messy hair and no makeup, and he didn’t give a damn if she’d just had onions on her burger when he moved in for a kiss.

If some guy told him he felt like that, Mitch would tell the poor sap there was no doubt he was in a relationship.

All Mitch could do was keep in mind there was going to come a time in the very near future when Paige wouldn’t be there to share funny stories with or talk books with. No more cheeseburger-with-onions kisses.

“Geez, you got it that bad?” Ryan was staring at him, an eyebrow raised.

“Hell, no. I was thinking about all the crap we have left to do at the lodge.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Screw you.” Mitch straddled his machine, ready to get moving again, but he couldn’t resist a parting shot at the brother who loved to push his buttons. “Have you run into Lauren Carpenter around town?”

Ryan’s expression hardened, but he didn’t say anything. He flipped Mitch the bird, then fired up his ATV with a roar. Chunks of dirt and a few rocks flew up as Ryan spun his wheels taking off, and then Mitch was chasing him up the trail.

They rode as hard as the tight and windy trails allowed until Mitch was sweating and already feeling the pull across his shoulders. As they neared the far edge of Kowalski land, where it abutted Ed Grandmaison’s property, he wondered if they’d have time to load up the wheelers and drive all the way around to the neighboring town—on the other side of Grandmaison—to the real trail system.

Even as he jerked the bars to avoid a rock big enough to stop the ATV in its tracks, the smallest germ of an idea for rejuvenating the Northern Star Lodge planted itself in his mind.

* * *

Paige was dragging. Badly. With an embarrassingly small amount of stage makeup, she could probably win an Oscar for playing a zombie.

That’s what happened when a sweet, smoking-hot man snuck out of your bed somewhere around midnight and your alarm went off at precisely four-thirty. You felt like you got hit by a freight train, but you were grinning on impact.

Folding herself into her tiny bathtub, hoping to soak as many of her body parts as she could fit in the foamy, hot water, Paige gave herself a good scrubbing before she sighed and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t be seeing Mitch tonight. His brother Ryan was back in town and they had a lot to get done. And maybe, like her, he needed to catch up on some sleep.

Just when she’d relaxed to the point she was afraid she’d fall asleep in the bath—though, thankfully, there wasn’t room to drown—her cell phone rang. It was on the edge of the sink, which she could reach from the tub, and Hailey’s name was flashing on the screen.

After a few seconds of hesitation, she answered the call. “Hello?”

“Every night this week?”

She didn’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out what she meant by that. “It’s only Wednesday night, so we’re only halfway through the week.”

“Is he there now?”

Paige smiled. “You tell me.”

There were a few seconds of stubborn silence, and then Hailey laughed. “Okay, so I know he’s not. Ryan’s in town and when Andy Miller stopped in at the hardware store, he told Dozer that Mitch and Josh were glad to see him, because it meant Rose would cook a real dinner and that they’d be going over plans after they ate.”

“So why did you ask?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe he’d ditched his brothers to sneak over and see you.”

Since the tub didn’t hold enough water with her in it to keep itself hot long, Paige pulled the plug and stood. With her free hand she grabbed a towel and started blotting herself dry. “He doesn’t sneak. You make us sound like teenagers.”

“You’re going at it like teenagers,” Hailey retorted, and Paige wondered if there was maybe a little jealousy there.

“I’m going at it like I haven’t had sex in two years. As for Mitch, I think he just really likes sex. A lot. And he’s very good at it.”