All He Ever Desired (17 page)

So their relationship had an ellipsis. Like there was more to come, but it was open-ended due to lack of detail. “Okay.”

“But you think it has a question mark?”

“I think it has a lot of question marks.”

He set his empty paper plate on the coffee table and then leaned back against the couch, his body angled to face her. “There are always question marks.”

“But if we’re heading toward being the kind of couple who spends family holidays together, I’d like to turn some of those question marks into periods. Or at least into the dot-dot-dots.”

“I know you have a son and family and a home and a life in Whitford. I know I have a home and a business in Brookline that I need to get back to. Four and a half hours across state lines is a big question mark, but it’s not one that can be answered today.”

“And you want kids of your own, Ryan. That’s a big one, too.”

That widened his eyes. “It’s probably a little premature to be talking about having babies.”

“No, it’s really not, since we’re talking about our relationship. Babies are relevant because you want them and I’m not having any more.”

“Oh. Did you...you know, have the surgery or whatever?”

“No, but I don’t need surgery to know I’m thirty-four years old, I have a sixteen-year-old son and I don’t want to start all over again with another baby. Trust me, that clock hasn’t ticked in years.”

“And you’re convinced I want babies?”

“I saw you with your cousins’ kids. And look around.” She waved a hand in the direction of the stairs. “You built a four-bedroom house.”

“And I still barely had enough room for the entire family when I threw Sean’s welcome-home party. Now that Mitch and Sean have wives and the babies are going to start coming, I can’t fit everybody in. I’ll be throwing sleeping bags down in the game room.”

“Don’t you usually have family get-togethers at the lodge?”

“Yeah. But Sean was going from Boston straight to New Hampshire. Liz was flying in and out of Logan with less than forty-eight hours between flights, and I live here. It made more sense for Josh and Rose to drive down than for all of us to go up.”

She wasn’t sure if he was being deliberately obtuse or if he didn’t get what she was trying to say. “My point is that you didn’t build a four-bedroom house on the off chance your family would all show up at the same time.”

“No, I built a four-bedroom house with two and a half bathrooms and a bonus room over the garage because it’s the ideal meeting of floor plan and price for this neighborhood. I’m a builder, Lauren. Everything I do is about the market and the property’s resale value.”

It all sounded very logical, but she had a hard time believing it. “I don’t think you’d be happy never having kids of your own.”

“I’ll be honest. I haven’t thought that far ahead. But I do know, without a question mark, that being with you makes me happy.”

“Being with you makes me happy, too, but—”

“Sometimes, if you stick with something and go with it, those buts have a way of working themselves out.”

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t that easy for her. She had a son and she had to consider him, too, and whether or not he might get attached to Ryan. But she knew Ryan knew that, and she knew he was too decent a guy to toy with her if he didn’t believe those buts would work themselves out.

Besides, she’d had a wonderful day and she didn’t want to bring it down any more than she had. “Self-resolving buts, huh?”

“Yeah.” He grinned, as though sensing she was ready to put the discussion to bed, if only temporarily. “Besides, you told me I might get lucky tonight.”

She laughed. “You did get lucky.”

“That was evening.
Now
it’s night.”

“You’re insatiable.”

“If that means I can’t get enough of you, you’re right.” He stood up and held out his hand.

It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. And maybe he was right, she told herself as he tried to pull her shirt off and walk at the same time. Instead of getting worked up and worrying, she’d go with it and hope those buts resolved themselves.

* * *

Ryan cursed and slapped the snooze button again. He needed a quieter alarm clock. Preferably one that had a longer snooze time, too.

“You’ve hit that four times,” Lauren muttered from somewhere deep inside the nest of covers she’d made by stealing his.

“It keeps going off.”

“And when it does, you’re supposed to get up. I swear, you’re worse than Nick. At least he keeps his clock on the far side of his room so he has to work for those few extra minutes.”

“I notice
you
haven’t gotten up yet.”

She snuggled deeper under the blankets. They looked warm. Too bad he didn’t have any. “I’m waiting for you to go make coffee.”

“I have one of those kinds that instantly brews a single cup.”

“Good. When my single cup is instantly brewed, I’ll get up.”

He slapped the lump he thought might be her ass, then swung his feet to the floor and scrubbed at his face. The alarm would go off again in a few minutes and she’d have to leave her cozy nest to deal with it.

After turning on the coffee machine so it could heat up, he put the coffee in it and stuck a cup under the spout. Sure enough, just as he was stirring the milk and sugar into the first mug, he heard the
beep beep
of his alarm, followed a few minutes later by Lauren’s bare feet slapping on the polished kitchen floor.

She’d thrown on one of his older T-shirts and brushed her hair into a messy ponytail, but she looked cute as hell anyway, all sleepy-eyed and utterly kissable.

“Coffee.”

He set the cup on the marble countertop of the bar and gestured for her to pull up a stool before turning back to the machine to make a cup for himself. About halfway through her cup, Lauren started waking up and even smiled at him.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, leaning on the opposite side of the bar to drink his coffee. He couldn’t look at her face if he sat next to her.

“Good. Your bed’s amazing. How about you?”

“Once I got to go to sleep, I crashed. And you call me insatiable.”

Her cheeks got a little pink. “Complaining?”

“Hell, no. As a matter of fact—”

“No.”

Damn. “I meant after you finish your coffee, of course.”

“After I finish this cup of coffee, I’m going to have another cup of coffee.” She pointed her finger at him. “And
you
should have shaved a little better. I have stubble burn on my thighs and I have to sit on the back of that bike for hours.”

“Could put a little cream on it.” She arched an eyebrow at him and he laughed, holding up his hand. “I mean the real stuff, honest. Moisturizing crap.”

“I’ll definitely put some moisturizing crap on it, thank you.”

“You’re a little cranky in the morning.”

“You should see me on Mondays.”

He laughed and got the machine ready to brew her a second cup, but he didn’t feel all that amused. It would probably be a long time before he got to wake up next to Lauren on a Monday morning. His brain tried to tack an
if ever
on the end of that thought, but he resisted. He would. It would just take a while to sort out.

It took another hour to get her out the door so they could grab some breakfast. All he had was a package of English muffins and they were in the freezer, so she hadn’t been too enthusiastic about those. It was colder than he’d anticipated, so he made her put on Josh’s leather coat and the gloves before they hit the highway.

He kept his speed a little lower than he usually would, because of the cold, so Nick was already home when they get there. He waved at them through the window while Ryan rolled the bike to a stop next to Lauren’s car.

“I’ll just go,” he told her once he’d gotten her purse and tote out of the side bag.

“No, come in for a bit. I know you must have to pee as badly as I do, and you can visit with Nick for a few minutes, at least.”

He’d planned to pull over and take a leak on the side of the road as soon as he was out of sight of her house, but her plan was probably better. Officer Bob Durgin, the old bastard, hated the Kowalskis and would love to happen by and slap him with an indecent exposure ticket. Come to think of it, Drew Miller would probably get a kick out of it, too.

“Sure, thanks.” He carried her bags in and said hi to Nick, who’d sprawled on the couch, while Lauren sprinted for the bathroom.

“Heard you’re kicking butt at school lately,” he said.

Nick nodded and Ryan could see the pride on his face. “It’s actually not that hard if you pay attention and do the homework.”

“Keep it up.”

“I will. Mom’s going to see when the next driver’s ed class starts.”

“Cool.” He almost offered to take him out for practice hours when the time came, but in the nick of time he remembered he wouldn’t be around. He’d be in Brookline on the weekdays and Nick would be with Dean on the weekends.

One of those question marks Lauren talked about. A pretty shitty one, too. Not only did he need to build a relationship with her son if the one with Lauren was going to work, but he liked Nick.

Once Lauren was done in the bathroom, Ryan took his turn and returned to the living room to find them in midconversation.

“The movie was kind of dumb because Alex and Adrienne are little,” Nick was saying, “but Jody made popcorn and Dad turned off all the lights and it was kinda cool.”

“I told you they wouldn’t be upset.”

Nick shrugged. “Jody asked if I’d watch the kids one night a month and I said sure. I don’t mind doing it. Just not every weekend.”

“I’m glad you talked to them.”

Ryan felt like a third wheel, standing there watching them talk. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what they were talking about, but there was no place in the conversation for him. Especially since it concerned Dean.

When Lauren saw him standing in the junction of the hallway and living room, she smiled. “I was thinking about making some hot chocolate to warm me up. You want some?”

“Hey, the game starts in like ten minutes,” Nick said. “You should stay and watch it with us.”

Ryan had hoped to make it back to the lodge in time to watch it with Josh, but what the hell? Probably more fun to watch it with Nick anyway. He looked at Lauren and, when she nodded, said, “Sure. Sounds like a plan.”

It was a good time, he thought later, when he kissed Lauren goodbye and walked to the bike, even if he was going to freeze his ass off between there and the lodge since the temp had gone down with the sun. He’d spent a few hours yelling at her television and high-fiving her son while she curled up at the other end of the couch and read a book.

“I’ll be pretty slammed this week,” he told her. “I’ve got a lot to wrap up before I go back to Brookline next Sunday. But I’ll call you and I’ll see you tomorrow when you pick up Nick. Unless you want me to bring him home.”

If he brought Nick home after work, maybe she’d invite him to stay for dinner and they could all hang out and watch some television together.

“I’ll come get him. I don’t want to miss out on Rosie’s baked goods du jour.”

“Okay.” So they’d leave it as it was. “I’ll see you then.”

She waved to him from the window as he backed the bike out of the driveway, so he gunned the engine a little taking off and saw her laugh.

One more week. Then it was going to start getting harder unless he figured out what the hell he was doing and how to be in two places at once.

Chapter Seventeen

Rose was worried about Ryan. Watching him through the window as he talked and laughed with Lauren and Nick should have warmed her heart. Instead it was adding to the forehead wrinkles and the gray hair.

Since she’d seen it happen on Monday and again on Tuesday when Lauren picked up Nick, Rose was pretty certain she’d see it again today. As soon as Lauren’s car disappeared down the road, Ryan’s smile would fade. His shoulders would tense, his jaw would clench and she’d have to say his name three times to get his attention.

Her boy was in love and he had no idea what to do about it. The first step would be admitting it to himself, but she wasn’t sure he’d gotten that far yet. If Mitch was in town instead of whichever city needed a building imploded this time, she would have seriously considered interfering to the point of asking him to have a heart-to-heart chat with Ryan, but he was out of town until Friday or Saturday.

Coughing, she turned away from the window when Nick started toward the car. She wasn’t so nosy she’d spy on Ryan kissing Lauren goodbye.

Five minutes later, he walked into the kitchen. Just as she’d thought, it was as though somebody had turned off his inner light switch.

“I walked around the place with Dill and Matt earlier,” he said, going to the sink to wash his hands. “They’re done here. They’re going to grab their stuff and head out shortly.”

“Just like that? I could have made them a special dinner or dessert or something. All I have is a chocolate cake.” She was going to miss having those two around. Unlike some men who sometimes took her for granted, Matt and Dill appreciated her fussing over them and made sure she knew it.

“I told you on day one that they’re employees, not family. And they’re leaving now because I told them they don’t have to report in to Wendi until Monday morning, so if they go tonight, they’ll have four full days at home.”

Normally she would have snapped him with a towel or given him a verbal dressing-down. Not only did she not care for his tone, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew Dill and Matt worked for him. But she cut him some slack because she knew he was twisted up inside.

Still, it took a lot of willpower not to get weepy when the two guys passed through the kitchen on their way to pack their things. They’d kept their shared room very neat, probably out of fear of the boss, so it wouldn’t take them very long.

“Can I ask you a stupid question?” Ryan asked when their footsteps had faded down the hall.

“You can try, but I don’t think you can top Sean wanting to know how much Kool-Aid he’d have to drink to turn his pee blue, especially since he was old enough to shave when he asked it.”

That got a brief smile out of him. “If you had met a guy you wanted to marry when Katie was younger and he wanted you to move away from Whitford, would you?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It wasn’t just Katie. I can’t imagine I’d have left you five kids and you weren’t mine to take with me. And Katie’s dad was gone. Nick’s dad gets him every weekend.”

Ryan’s jaw flexed and he gave a terse nod.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Was I supposed to pretend I don’t know this is about Lauren?”

“Yeah.”

“Too late, so talk to me.”

“That was pretty much it.” When she just looked at him, waiting, he leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “She also thinks I won’t be happy long-term because she doesn’t want any more kids.”

“Some might consider that more important than two hundred miles. How do
you
feel about it?”

He shrugged. “I always thought I’d have kids someday. To be honest, I’ve never really thought about
not
having kids.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d bandaged their skinned knees and nursed them through colds and teenage melodrama, but making a decision not to be a father was something a man had to do for himself.

“I love her.”

That did warm her heart, no matter how twisted up he was because of it. “Does that make it easier or harder?”

“Both.”

“I wish there was an easy answer I could give you.”

He smiled, looking a little more like his usual self. “I do, too.”

“What I
can
do is serve up some slices of that chocolate cake.”

“We haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Sometimes you have to have dessert first. Besides, I’m not letting Dill and Matt leave here without having some.”

“I might have two slices and say screw dinner altogether.”

“That’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” She started to laugh, but it triggered another damn coughing jag.

“You okay? You’ve been coughing a lot lately.”

“’Tis the season. Grab some plates and let’s get that cake cut before those guys escape.”

* * *

On Wednesday morning, Hailey called Lauren at work. “I’m going to piss everybody off and close the library for an hour lunch today at one. Can you get out of the office? We can go to the diner and harass Paige and eat too many French fries.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nope. I just haven’t seen you or Paige hardly at all since her wedding and it looks like this is the only way I can schedule myself into your lives. But let’s call it an emergency if it makes Gary feel better.”

Lauren’s boss had a fleeting moment of panic when she said she was taking off an hour for lunch, but he recovered quickly. She was allowed a lunch break but, more often than not, ate something from home at her desk. He was smart enough not to complain on the rare occasion she actually left the office.

When one o’clock rolled around, she flipped the answering machine to a prerecorded “closed for lunch” message she rarely used but which saved her from having to scour for messages on Gary’s desk, and then reminded him she was leaving.

Hailey was already at the diner when Lauren got there and she was surprised to see Paige sitting at a booth with her. Paige rarely even stood still at lunchtime, never mind sat down.

Then Lauren saw a young woman in a Trailside Diner T-shirt step out of the kitchen, and she got more confused. How did she not know Paige had hired somebody new? And it was Whitford. How did she not know the somebody Paige had hired?

Hailey spotted her and slid over on the bench, waving her over. Lauren hung her coat on one of the hooks near the door and joined them.

“Who is that?”

Paige looked over her shoulder. “That’s Tori Burns, Jilly’s niece. Gavin’s cousin.”

“Did I know Jilly has a brother?”

Paige laughed at her confusion. “Probably not. Jilly’s originally from Portland, remember? Mike met her at college and brought her home. Tori moved here a couple of weeks ago because her parents are divorcing and it’s pretty ugly. They keep trying to put her in the middle of it, so she packed up and moved into one of the apartments over the bank.”

“She looks like she’s twelve.”

“She’s almost twenty-five, actually.”

Lauren scowled, feeling old. “So now that you’re Mrs. Kowalski, are you becoming a lady of leisure?”

“That’s what I asked her, just before you walked in,” Hailey said.

“I’d go nuts,” Paige said. “Tori’s
very
part-time. It’d be nice for me to not get up at four-thirty in the morning every single day, especially when Mitch is home, and there are times Ava wants to do something in the evening. With only two of us, it’s really hard to cover each other’s shifts without dropping from exhaustion. Tori works from home and just wants to pick up a few hours here and there to get out of the house and meet people.”

“What does she do for work?” Lauren asked.

Paige shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“No.”

“Did you have her fill out an application? Did she write down her current job?” Lauren asked.

“No. She’s Jilly’s niece and she’s willing to work odd hours for little money. I had her fill out the IRS forms and that was that.”

“It’s so sad.” Hailey shook her head. “Two years you’ve lived here and you still haven’t figured out how to be all up in everybody’s business. Fran needs to give you some lessons.”

“The person whose business I want to be all up in is Lauren’s.”

Lauren looked at Paige and laughed. “Since you’re married to a Kowalski and spend a fair amount of time talking to Rose, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you already know more about my business than some people.”

“Like me,” Hailey grumbled.

“Actually,” Paige said, “Ryan’s kind of the closemouthed one of the bunch. A genetic flaw or throwback gene or something. But anyway, I heard that, starting Sunday night when he leaves, he’ll be back to only coming up on the weekends.”

“He has to run his business. He’s been gone a month already.”

“And what are you going to do?” Hailey asked.

Lauren felt herself tensing up and tried to force herself to relax. She’d thought she was meeting Hailey for a fun girl’s lunch with Paige, so she hadn’t expected the Spanish Inquisition.

Tori chose that moment to finally stop by the table, giving Lauren a couple extra minutes to remind herself these were her best friends and of course she was going to tell them everything. That’s what best friends were for.

After they’d ordered and she’d put in her own for a grilled cheese and coleslaw, with copious amounts of coffee, she sighed and started folding and refolding her napkin. “I’m going to roll with it and see where it goes.”

Both women frowned, but it was Hailey who spoke. “That doesn’t sound very...I don’t know what word I’m looking for.”

“Committed,” Paige said. “Serious. Stable. Relationship-ish.”

Lauren snorted. “What’s not relationship-ish about it? And what, exactly, do you two think I can do about it? He has to go back to work.”

“Long-distance relationships suck,” Hailey said, even though Lauren knew for a fact she’d never been in one.

“Paige, Mitch travels and you don’t get to see him every single day, but that was still relationship-ish enough so you married him.”

“But he’s away for a few days and then home for a chunk of time. And, unlike Ryan, he has more freedom to work from home, plus he moved home from New York to here. Kowalski Custom Builders can’t move to Whitford.”

Not and survive, no. “I’d see him on weekends and holidays. And vacations.”

“Like parental visitation rights, only not,” Hailey pointed out, and Lauren had to bite down on her lip to keep from snapping at her friend.

Then the flash of anger fizzled and she found herself on the brink of bursting into tears. “Stop.”

Both women instantly went into consolation mode, but that almost made it worse.

“Just how serious are you?” Paige asked once they were all fairly certain Lauren wasn’t going to have a complete emotional breakdown at the table.

“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him,” she confessed for the first time, even to herself.

“But?” Hailey prompted.

“That’s the thing. Ryan is convinced the buts will all resolve themselves if we just roll with it.”

“But?” This time it was Paige and it made Lauren smile a little.

“How can I build a life with a guy who’s only around on weekends? And how often will he get to see Nick? The few holidays he doesn’t spend with Dean?”

“Rose is worried about how long he’ll be able to keep up with that kind of schedule—working all week, then driving up here Friday night and back on Sunday night to go back to work on Monday morning.”

Hailey nodded. “Sometimes he’s going to want to chill at home. Mow his lawn or sleep in or go out with the guys.”

They weren’t telling her anything she hadn’t already thought of, but hearing it out loud made it more real somehow. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been a single mom for so long but, if and when I get married, I don’t want to keep being a single mom. Know what I mean?”

They both nodded, but Tori appeared with their food and the conversation paused until she’d brought Hailey vinegar for her fries and refilled their coffee mugs.

“So the obvious question,” Paige asked when they were alone again, “is if you’ve considered moving to Brookline.”

“I’ve thought about it a little. But then I think about having to find a new job down there and selling my house and I have no idea how Nick would take it. He likes Ryan, but enough to move to a new state and a new school? Then there’s the fact I’d need Dean’s permission to move Nick to Mass. It makes my head hurt and I’m not going to tie myself up in knots when Ryan hasn’t even hinted at wanting us there.”

“I must be reading the wrong self-help books,” Hailey said, “because I have no idea what to tell you.”

“Me, either.” Paige pointed one of her fries at Lauren. “But I do know one thing. If Ryan loves you, nothing will stop him from being with you.”

“He hasn’t said he does. Or hinted that he does.”

“He may not realize it yet. If he’s anything like his brother, it’ll take a while to sink in.”

“And, in the meantime, I’ll get about thirty-six hours of what’s left of him after all the working and driving each week.”

“You know, this is really awkward,” Paige said, staring down at her plate. “I want to ask you if you’re going to break it off with him, but I just remembered he’s my brother-in-law now, so maybe I don’t want to know.”

“I should,” Lauren said, her heart breaking a little. “I should end it before we get any more involved or he wears himself out or Nick gets any more attached to him. He should find somebody free to step into his life, who wants to give him a horde of kids, which is a whole ’nother can of worms I haven’t mentioned. So, yes, I should break it off with him.”

“But?” This time they said it in unison.

“I can’t. When I’m with him, I can’t imagine
not
being with him, no matter how hard it gets. There’s no way I could tell him to leave and not come back. I just have to roll with it, I guess.”

* * *

Ryan would have preferred to meet Dean in a bar somewhere and maybe buy him a beer, but Whitford didn’t have a bar. Plus the guy was working, so he had to settle for a soda at the picnic table in the backyard of the house he was painting.

“Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” was what Ryan opened with, but he wasn’t really sure where to go from there.