All He Ever Needed (6 page)

A few more people wandered in as she poured sodas for the construction guys, so she didn’t get a chance to drop back into the conversation before Katie had to get back to the barbershop and Mallory went on with whatever came next in her non-sick day.

She kept busy until two, when Ava showed up. Ava was almost sixty, though she was fighting a valiant battle against the years with deep-chestnut hair dye and a variety of facial creams she bought from infomercials, but she loved waiting tables and she was good at it.

When given the choice as they’d prepared for the diner’s grand reopening, Ava had chosen the two-to-closing shift. Her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack the year before and she’d said those hours—the after-work, dinner and evening-news hours—were the time she missed him the most, so she’d rather keep busy. Paige hadn’t had a preference, so she was the one knocking her alarm clock across the nightstand at four-thirty every morning.

“Did Mitch come see you this morning?” Ava whispered to her when they passed each other at the pie case.

“No. Why would he?”

Ava winked. “Just wondering.”

As she finished cleaning her tables so she could get the hell out of there, Paige mumbled under her breath. It would be a lot easier not to think about Mitch Kowalski and his killer smile and pretty eyes if people didn’t talk about him all the damn time.

* * *

“I need a ride into town.”

Mitch looked up from the ledger book he was stuck skimming through since his brother thought Excel was something you did in sports, and saw Josh standing in the office doorway, leaning on his crutches. He looked a lot better than he had the night Mitch arrived in town and his attitude had improved a little, but he was still sadly lacking in charm. And manners.

“Please,” Josh added before Mitch could call him on it.

“You couldn’t have thought of that before I went to the diner for breakfast?”

“I didn’t know you were going, though I should have since you go every damn day. Will you give me a ride or not?”

“Sure.” Mitch could see the muscles in Josh’s jaw flexing as he closed the ledger book and set it aside, but the tension was unavoidable.

It had to burn Josh’s ass a little, watching big brother go over the books when he really didn’t have anything to do with the lodge, but they were all equal owners and he had the right to do it. All he could do was be as cool as possible about it and make it clear he was just getting a feel for things so he could help, rather than checking up on the operation. So far it looked pretty simple. Reservations and income were down. He could see where Josh and Rosie had worked on getting the expenses down, too, and the lodge wasn’t as bad off as he’d thought. By pinching every penny, they’d kept the ledger ink black, but it was close. There was no wiggle room for hiring a carpenter or a painter.

Or a tree service.

“Where we headed?” he asked, following Josh into the kitchen where the keys to the pickup hung behind the door.

“You need to stop at the market and pick up a few things,” Rose called from the pantry.

“You got a list?”

“I called Fran with the list and it’ll be waiting for you.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “I lose the list one time and now it’s like I’m twelve and can’t be trusted to remember milk.”

“You only lost the list once, but you lost it the day before Thanksgiving.”

Mitch laughed and held the door open for Josh. “We’ll be back, Rosie.”

“Leave the market for last, or the half-and-half will go bad while you two stand around yapping with people.”

Josh had mastered the art of climbing into the pickup one-legged, so at least he was spared the indignity of a brotherly boost. Mitch tossed the crutches in the back and walked around to the driver’s side. The truck cranked over hard and he swore under his breath, hoping they weren’t going to add vehicular issues to their list of problems.

“You didn’t tell me where we’re headed,” he reminded Josh.

“The hardware store. I need to drop off a check to Dozer to square up for last month. I was going to bring him a check right after I was done limbing that damn tree.”

He’d gone to the emergency room instead. Mitch didn’t bother asking him if he had enough in the account. Josh would be insulted, and if there was one thing Mitch knew after spending the day looking at the books, it was that his youngest brother might be stupid enough to foot a ladder in the back of a truck, but he was fiscally responsible.

“I haven’t seen Paige Sullivan doing the walk of shame out the back door yet,” Josh said, sounding a little smug.

“I prefer spending the night in
their
beds. Keeps them from lingering after breakfast.”

“Unless you’ve gotten better at lowering yourself out of your window, you’ve been in your own bed every night.”

Now he sounded smug
and
amused, and Mitch snorted. “I’ve been a little busy, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“A little busy sitting at the counter watching Paige work. And everybody saw you swing and miss at Old Home Day. You’re striking out with her, just like every other guy in Whitford.”

“I’m just getting warmed up,” he muttered.

Fortunately, a good song came on the radio and Josh cranked it up, so they rode the rest of the way into town singing along and playing the drums on various parts of the truck interior. Mitch pulled the truck up in front of Whitford Hardware and grabbed the crutches, while Josh slowly and carefully lowered himself out of the passenger’s side.

An ancient brass bell jangled when Mitch pushed open the door, and Albert Dozynski—permanently dubbed Dozer by his new hometown when he’d bought the place in the seventies—looked up from the shelf of gardening supplies he was straightening.

“I heard you were back in town,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. He was a child when his family had immigrated to America, but his parents had only spoken Polish at home and he still had a trace of their accent. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good.” He shook the man’s hand. “How’s business?”

Dozer shrugged. “Slow, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Josh pulled a checkbook out of his back pocket, and he and Dozer moved to the cash register to settle up, so Mitch wandered off to look around. The store was a treasure trove of hardware and miscellaneous anything and everything, begging to be explored. A person couldn’t go into one of those big home-improvement warehouses and find a carburetor float set from a generator made in the early 1980s, but there was a good chance Dozer had one. He could dig up a nut for any bolt and a fitting for any pipe. And maybe his prices had to be a little higher than those big-box stores’ prices, but at those places a woman had to carry her purchases to her car and you couldn’t borrow a pipe bender or a blowtorch if you were only going to need it once.

“You lost?” he heard Josh call, and he abandoned the crate of old tractor parts he’d been digging through. He wasn’t sure their old tractor even needed any parts, but you never knew what you’d find at the bottom of a box buried at the back of Whitford Hardware.

“You do me a favor,” Dozer said as they headed toward the door. “If you see my grandson, you tell him he’s supposed to be helping me move things around and clean up this week.”

“Will do,” Mitch said as he held the door open for his brother again.

If he remembered correctly, Nick, the AWOL grandson, would be about sixteen. Just the right age for blowing off helping out at Grandpa’s store. Mitch knew the boy’s mother a little because she’d married Ryan’s best friend, but he hadn’t seen Lauren Carpenter in years. He’d have to remember to ask Rose how she was doing. He scanned the area while Josh climbed into the truck and handed him the crutches, but he didn’t see any kids who looked like they might be Nick Carpenter.

“You got any other errands to run while we’re in town?” he asked Josh as he pulled away from the curb.

“I was thinking about stopping in to see Andy Miller.”

Andy was Drew’s dad. He’d been a good friend to their dad—one of his best friends—and he’d been around the lodge a lot when they were growing up. “How’s he doing?”

“I heard he was asking around for work, and we could use some help.”

“Ryan’s going to come up.”

“Eventually. And he’ll be looking a the big picture and only be able to do so much. I was thinking more about all the little things I’ve let slide by. I don’t really want to spend any more money than we have to, but the place is starting to not look like the pictures on the website, and that turns customers off.”

Mitch thought it was probably a good idea, except for one thing. One really
big
thing. “What about Rosie?”

Rose Davis didn’t speak to Andy Miller. Ever. Nobody knew why and, after almost three decades, nobody dared ask, but she didn’t like the man. He couldn’t imagine she’d be pleased to have him working around the Northern Star.

“She works for us,” Josh said.

Mitch laughed so hard he almost drove off the road. “You keep telling yourself that, Josh.”

“Screw you. Just head out to Andy’s place.”

“No problem. I’m looking forward to watching you try to run from Rosie on one leg.”

Chapter Six

Rose saw the dishes in the sink the second she stepped into her kitchen and shook her head. Those would be Mitch’s breakfast dishes, since she’d long since trained Josh to put his dishes in the damn dishwasher rather than leaving them for her to deal with.

It was good that Mitch had eaten at home, because maybe it meant he’d given up on Paige Sullivan, but it wasn’t good that the corn flakes he’d left in the bowl had hardened into splotches of whole-grain concrete she’d have to chisel off the side of the bowl. She turned the faucet on, hoping some hot water would soften them up, and looked out the window to see if she could spot the offender.

She spotted an offender all right, but it wasn’t Mitch. Andy Miller was standing in her backyard with a tool belt slung slow around his waist and a tattered Red Sox hat shading his eyes. The swoosh of anger through her veins was immediate and familiar. He wasn’t welcome at the Northern Star Lodge, and he damned well knew it, too.

Dropping the bowl in the sink with a clatter, she turned off the faucet and dried her hands. She hadn’t spoken to the man in twenty-six years, but she was going to break that silence and give him a piece of her mind. And then she was going to chase his sorry ass out of the yard, even if she had to use the tractor to do it.

Before she could get to the back door, it opened and Mitch stepped in, smiling when he saw her. But, as he closed the door, he must have seen she was unhappy, and his gaze flicked to the sink. “I meant to rinse that.”

“To hell with your dirty dishes. What is that man doing in this house?” She’d almost said “my” house, but stopped herself just in time. The Northern Star Lodge belonged to the kids, no matter how long she’d been the head of the household.

“He’s not in the house. Andy needs work and we need some help.”

“There are plenty of people in this town who need work. You
know
how I feel about him.”

“I know you don’t like him and nobody knows why. I also know Andy Miller is not only my best friend’s father, but was my dad’s best friend. They were like brothers.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’m not paying him to play Scrabble or share knitting patterns with you. I’m paying him to work.”

“I really don’t want him here.”

Mitch’s jaw hardened, and the little boy she’d raised and was hoping to appeal to was lost behind the mask of a man who’d built his own business out of nothing. “Are you going to rebuild the front steps and paint the porch?”

She shook her head. “No, but Ryan could do the building, and all you need is a high school kid for the painting.”

“Ryan’s dragging his ass about coming up. It’s done, Rose.” Mitch started to walk away, then stopped. “You’re one of the friendliest and most generous women I’ve ever known. Why do you hate Andy so much?”

“I have my reasons,” she snapped, and then
she
walked away. Out of the kitchen and up the stairs and straight down the hall to her room, where she slammed the door like a teenager in a snit.

She was stuck. Mitch wasn’t going to consider firing Andy Miller unless she gave him a good reason, and she would never tell anybody why she hated Andy. She’d never tell a soul.

Maybe Mitch and Josh didn’t have to take her feelings into account when it came to running their business, but they damn well
did
have to live with the consequences.

* * *

Mitch slammed the pantry door and then kicked it when it didn’t close all the way. Andy Miller had started work Tuesday, now it was Thursday, and Mitch didn’t know where Rose kept the extra coffee filters.

Josh didn’t know. He said Rosie always made the coffee. Mitch would ask her, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She was on strike…or whatever you called a woman lounging in her room all damn day, knitting and watching television. Meanwhile, the guys who actually owned the place—and signed her paychecks—couldn’t make a pot of coffee.

Swearing under his breath, he grabbed the keys off the hook and started for the back door.

“Going somewhere?”

So she’d come out of her room. Holding a stack of DVDs, no less. “I’m going into town.”

“Good. You can stop by the library for me. I’m done with these movies, and Hailey called to tell me she found more I’d like in a box of donations. She’s holding them at the desk.”

She set the pile on the table and walked out before Mitch could point out the irony of her asking him for a favor—and
asking
was a stretch—when he couldn’t make a pot of coffee because she was pissed off at Andy Miller. Adding a few more creative words to his string of expletives, he grabbed the stack of DVDs and went out the door. Josh and Andy were in the back, going over a list of supplies, and he hoped to get out unseen. He wasn’t really in the mood for company.

He went to the library first, just to get it over with. Hailey was at the circulation desk, as always, and she raised an eyebrow when she saw him.

“Don’t see you here often,” she said.

“Don’t get here often.” He didn’t live there, for one thing, which she very well knew.

And the older he got, the more tired he grew of the
nudge-nudge-wink-wink
that followed him around this town. Sure, he’d sewn some wild oats. So had Hailey—hell, they’d sewn a few together—but everybody had accepted
her
growing up and becoming the librarian, and she wasn’t subjected to innuendo and suggestive looks everywhere she went.

That was one of the reasons he embraced traveling for work. He could sew oats to his heart’s content and then put it behind him. Nothing was ever behind him here.

“Rose said you had some DVDs for her.”

Hailey pulled a small pile of movies out of a drawer and, after doing something on her computer, swiped each one with a handheld scanner.

“I don’t have her library card with me,” he told her.

“I pulled up her name in the system. We got the new computer system a couple years back and there was a learning curve, but worth it.”

He nodded, waiting while she put the DVDs into a plastic bag, not sure what he was supposed to say to that.

She handed him the bag, but didn’t release it when his hand slipped through the loops, holding him there for a second. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but don’t give up on Paige. If you keep chasing her, she’ll let you catch her.”

He wanted to deny he was chasing Paige and then demand to know where she heard that, but that seemed a little junior high, so he simply smiled. “Good to know.”

“She’s worth catching.”

He thought so, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

His next stop was the Whitford General Store. There was probably an entire box of coffee filters in Rose’s kitchen, but they didn’t do him any good if he couldn’t find then.

“Rose didn’t call in a list,” Fran informed him from her perch behind the counter. She moved to the tall stool when she had customers, but behind her there was a plush office chair, a computer and her knitting basket.

“Don’t need a list, Fran. I’m a big boy.”

She snorted and then he wandered up and down the aisles, wishing he had a list. Coffee filters he knew, but he couldn’t remember what else was or wasn’t in the pantry. He grabbed bread and milk, since everybody always needed those, then added some junk food to the basket. Just because he could.

Good enough, he decided. Later he’d go through the kitchen and make a list. Then he and Josh could take a ride into the city and hit the grocery store. Josh could drive one of those motorized carts around, and it would do them both good to get out of town, even if it was only for a few hours.

The whole time she was ringing up his purchases, Fran looked as if she had something she wanted to tell him but wasn’t saying. Rose had probably called her, and the woman was holding back a lecture about loyalty or something along those lines. Or maybe Rose hadn’t called. Andy working at the lodge was everybody’s business by now, and it never had been a secret how Rose felt about Andy.

“I’ve known you your whole life, Mitchell Kowalski, and I probably know more about you than you think I do.”

That sounded serious. Though she probably didn’t know as much as she thought she did. If the Benoits had heard what he did with their daughter on prom night, Butch would have ripped him apart while Fran bagged up the parts to put out with the garbage.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” was all he said.

“Don’t break Paige Sullivan’s heart.”

“You’re not the first person to warn me away from her.” And he was getting tired of it.

“Oh, I’m not warning you away from her. I think Paige could use a little…temporary romance in her life. You have a knack for leaving women satisfied and happy when you take off, rather than brokenhearted. Make sure Paige is no different.”

He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. He wasn’t sure there was anything he
could
say to that. Having a woman old enough to be his mother—if not his grandmother—talking to him about his sex life was pretty high on the
awkward
list. And he didn’t even want to think about Paige’s reaction to hearing that Fran Benoit was trying to get her laid. By him.

Okay,
that
he had no objection to. But everybody being in everybody else’s business, especially their personal business, was just one of the things about the town that put his teeth on edge.

“I have no intention of breaking Paige’s heart, Fran.” He wasn’t going to address whether or not he had any intention of offering up some temporary romance, as Fran had so delicately put it.

“Good.” She took his money and gave him his change. “She’s a nice girl.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He grabbed his groceries and walked out before she could say any more. Once he was in the truck, he debated on where to go next. He didn’t really have any more errands to run, but he didn’t want to go back to the lodge yet. With Josh’s attitude and Rosie’s snit, Mitch was left being the voice of reason, so it made sense to avoid the place until he’d shaken off his bad mood and could be reasonable.

His stomach growling made the decision for him. It was late for breakfast and early for lunch, but he wanted some damn coffee. And maybe an omelet. Seeing Paige again couldn’t hurt, either.

* * *

It had been a slow morning and, having run out of busywork, Paige was leaning against the counter, flipping through a magazine, when Mitch walked through the door, and she lost all interest in the article she’d been reading about all-natural industrial cleansers.

He smiled when he saw her and took a seat at the counter, at the end farthest from the pass-through window to the kitchen, where Carl was prepping for lunch. “Morning, Paige.”

“Hi, Mitch. Coffee?”

“Lots of coffee. Lots.” He gave her a wink that made her tingle in all the right places.

No, the wrong places. No tingling, she reminded herself as she poured a coffee and set it down in front of him. “Anything else, or just the coffee?”

“I’ll take a hash and cheddar omelet with home fries, skip the toast, and some company.”

He was looking her in the eye when he said it, and she hoped what she was feeling on the inside couldn’t be seen on the outside, because it could be summed up in three words.
I want him
.

“It’s pretty quiet right now,” she said. “If you’re looking for company, you’ll have to make do with me.”

“There’s nothing ‘making do’ about you, Paige Sullivan.”

Even as the tingling and zinging and other-
ing
words intensified, she laughed. “That was pretty slick. You’re even smoother than the stories give you credit for.”

“Is it working?”

“Nope. Sorry,” she lied. “Let me go put your order in.”

Since Carl had disappeared from the window, Paige had an excuse to slip out back for a few seconds. Mitch Kowalski was hell on her nerves. And not the nerves that got rattled when children ran amok in her diner while their parents sat and drank coffee. He was hell on the nerves that were connected to body parts that had been severely neglected for the past two years.

She didn’t hide long though, because, after Carl took the slip from her, he gave her a funny look. “You feeling okay? You’re a little flushed.”

Great. “I’m okay. It’s a little warm in here.”

“No, it’s not.”

She shook her head and went back through the swinging door. Mitch was drinking his coffee, but it looked a lot like he’d been watching the door for her return. Even though there were some newspapers piled near him, he was ignoring them and, since he’d said he was looking for company, she didn’t really have a choice but to visit with him.

After topping off his coffee, she poured herself an iced tea and leaned her hip against the center island. She could have sat on one of the many empty stools, but she either had to sit far enough away it would seem rude if he was looking for conversation, or close enough so those nerves might start getting ideas again.

“After Ava comes in later,” he said, “you want to go for a ride with me?”

Yes. Yes, she did. “I have plans after work, but thanks anyway.”

“It would be fun. We could go over by the lake. See where we end up.”

It was the seeing where they’d end up that was the problem, because there was a pretty good chance if she was alone with Mitch, she’d end up in his arms. Or his bed. “Maybe another time.”

Rather than taking the hint, he leaned forward and grinned. “Come on. I’ve even got a helmet that would fit you.”

“Helmet?”

“For the bike. I’m talking about taking a ride around the lake on the bike, not in the truck.”

Oh, that’s just what she needed after two-plus years of self-imposed celibacy—a hot guy between her legs and a vibrator on wheels under her. “I…can’t.”

He leaned back again, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug, but he didn’t look rejected. Curious, maybe. “Why don’t you date, Paige?”

“Sorry, but details about my personal life aren’t on the menu.”

“I don’t get it. You’re beautiful. You’re obviously smart and driven, since you not only brought this place back to life, but you made it better than it ever was.”