All He Ever Needed Read online

  All He Ever Needed

  By Shannon Stacey

  Born to Roam

  Mitch Kowalski lives out of a suitcase—and he likes it that way. Traveling for work has the added bonus of scaring off women who would otherwise try to tie him down. But when he’s called home to help with running the family lodge, he’s intrigued by the new girl in town and her insistence that she doesn’t need a man—for anything. If there’s one thing Mitch can’t resist, it’s a challenge, especially a beautiful one.

  Looking for Home

  After a nomadic childhood, Paige Sullivan is finally putting down roots. Determined to stand on her own two feet, she lives by the motto men are a luxury, not a necessity. But when Mr. Tall, Dark and Hot pulls up a stool in her diner and offers her six weeks of naughty fun with a built-in expiration date, she’s tempted to indulge.

  Mitch won’t stay put for a woman, and Paige won’t chase after a man—they’re the perfect match for a no-strings fling. Until they realize the amazing sex has become anything but casual…

  70,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I celebrate my wedding anniversary in September, and that’s why I think of it as my month of romance. Even after eight years, the romance is still alive in our relationship, I’m married to my best friend, and I’m living my very own happily ever after.

  That’s why I’m thrilled we’re kicking off Shannon Stacey’s return to the hunky and delicious Kowalski men with the first of three back-to-back Kowalski contemporary romances this September. It feels like my very own celebration of romance! Meet Mitch Kowalski and enjoy the ride as he finds his true love in Paige Sullivan, in All He Ever Needed. Look for Ryan’s and Josh’s stories in October and November 2012.

  September is truly a month of romance at Carina Press, with all but one of our releases falling in this genre. If you find yourself wanting to remain in the here and now, be sure to check out contemporary romance Finally Home by Helen Scott Taylor. Catch up with the Men of Smithfield in L.B. Gregg’s contemporary male/male romance Men of Smithfield: Max and Finn. And take a chance on Rebecca Rogers Maher’s Fault Lines, a moving and emotional contemporary romance that had our team members calling it “amazing” and “gripping” while extolling its virtues at our acquisitions meeting.

  If you’re looking for adventure, intrigue and romance with a fantasy flavor, this month we kick off Sandy James’s fantastic Alliance of the Amazons series. Rebecca Massee discovers that not only does she possess incredible powers, she is one of four lost chosen sisters who must fight to keep humanity safe from rogue gods and demons. Can she sacrifice the man she loves if it means saving the world? Find out more in The Reluctant Amazon by Sandy James. Joining Sandy in the realm of otherworldly releases, Annie Nicholas’s Starved for Love is a delightful and thoroughly erotic tale of a succubus who wants nothing more than to be loved, and an incubus who doesn’t believe in anything but lust.

  Look no further than Fae Sutherland’s male/male space opera romance Sky Riders for a galactic adventure that will leave you longing for the days of Nathan Fillion, Serenity and Firefly. And if Sky Riders isn’t enough of an escape from planet Earth for you, then Blue Nebula by Diane Dooley will surely please science-fiction romance fans.

  Fans of comics, superheroes and The Avengers should check out our two newest superhero releases. In How to Date a Henchman by Mari Fee, our hero proves that it’s not always the superheroes who are the most heroic—sometimes it’s the henchmen who save the day—and get the girl. Yesterday’s Heroes by Heather Long poses the question of what might happen when two superheroes have different goals. Drawn together by passion, and on a collision course with fate, can Rory and Michael work together to change the future? And though not a superhero romance, J.K. Coi’s steampunk romance Broken Promises, a follow-up to Far From Broken, brings back super-spy Jasper and his modified wife, Callie, for a continuation of their romance as Callie joins Jasper in the world of spies, danger and intrigue.

  Also this month we’re rereleasing Christine d’Abo’s three erotic contemporary novellas into one bargain-priced bundle. Get all three novellas in the Long Shots Bundle for $6.99. BDSM, ménage, love and hot, sexy, intense encounters—this bundle has it all. Buy it now and find out what makes sex club owner Josh so appealing before he makes his appearance in his own novel, Calling the Shots, in October.

  Last, though the month of September is filled with romance of all designs, it also brings with it one rich, engrossing and compelling historical mystery in Tainted Innocence by Joss Alexander. Fan of authors such as Deanna Raybourn and C.S. Harris won’t want to miss this engaging debut novel.

  Celebrate my month of romance with me this September and try one or two (or five or six) of our new releases. You’ll find new authors to love and stories you can’t wait to share!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  For Jaci and Angela because, when the nights are dark and stormy, I can always depend on you guys to drag me out from under the bed…or join me, with books, flashlights and snacks.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Mitch Kowalski was doing sixty when he blew past the Welcome to Whitford, Maine sign, and he would have grinned if grinning on a Harley at dusk in a shorty helmet wasn’t an invitation to eat his weight in bugs.

  He was home again. Or he would be after he passed straight through town and nursed the bike down the long dirt drive that led to the Northern Star Lodge. As eager as he was to get there, though, he eased up on the throttle as the first lights of Main Street came into view.

  It had been three years since he’d visited his hometown, but he could have navigated the road with his eyes closed. Past the post office where he’d landed his first real job, then lost it because old man Farr’s Playboy subscription was a hell of a lot more interesting than sorting electric bills. Then the Whitford General Store & Service Station, owned by Fran and Butch Benoit. Junior year, he’d taken their daughter to the prom and then taken her up against the chalkboard in an empty classroom.

  Mitch downshifted and executed a lazy rolling stop at the four-way that passed for the town’s major intersection. To the left were two rows of ancient brick buildings that housed the bank and town offices and an assortment of small businesses. To the right, the police department—which had had its fill of the Kowalski boys in their youth—and the library, which had been fertile hunting grounds for a teenage boy looking to charm the smart girls out of their algebra homework.

  Yeah, it was good to be home, even if everything was closed up tight for the night. The people of Whitford knew if they had business in town, they’d best get it done before the evening news.

  He went straight
through the intersection, but he didn’t go far before the old diner caught his eye. Or the sign did, rather, being all lit up. Last time he’d passed through, the place had been closed up tight—driven out of business by a bad economy and an owner who didn’t care enough to try to save it. But now there was a new name on the sign, a couple of cars in the parking lot and flashing red neon in the window declaring it open.

  His stomach rumbled, though he felt it rather than heard it due to the loud pipes on his bike, and he pulled into the parking lot. Josh, his youngest brother, wasn’t expecting him—unless the boxes of clothes and other stuff he’d shipped ahead had arrived—and he would have already eaten anyway. Rather than go rummaging for leftovers, Mitch decided to grab a quick bite before heading on to the lodge.

  The first thing he noticed when he walked through the door was the remodeled fifties decor, with a lot of red vinyl and black-and-white marble. The second thing he noticed was the woman standing behind the counter—a woman he’d never seen before, which was rare in Whitford.

  Mitch put her at maybe thirty, seven years younger than him, and it looked good on her. She had a mass of brown hair twisted and clipped up into one of those messy knots that begged to be let loose. Jeans and a Trailside Diner T-shirt hugged sweet curves, and her ring finger was bare of either a gold band or a fresh tan line.

  A little plastic rectangle was pinned above the very nice mound of her left breast. Name tags were a rare thing in a town where relationships were formed in playpens and cemented in the kindergarten sandbox, so it caught his attention. By the time he took a seat on a red padded stool at the counter, he could read it. Paige.

  He deliberately sat with his back to the two other couples in the place in the hope they wouldn’t recognize him right off. One, because he’d rather Josh heard he was back in town from him, not the grapevine. And, two, because he was a lot more interested in maybe getting acquainted with Paige than getting reacquainted with whoever was in those booths.

  “Coffee, sir?”

  “Please.” Her eyes were brown, even darker than the coffee she poured into an oversize mug for him. “You’re new here.”

  She gave him a look over her shoulder while setting the carafe back on the warmer. “I’ve been here every day for almost two years, but I’ve never seen you before. New’s relative, I guess.”

  He plucked a menu from between the condiment rack and the napkin holder, wondering if the food choices had gotten an update, too, along with the sign and the vinyl. “I had my first taste of ice cream in that booth right over there.”

  She leaned her hip against the stainless steel island the coffeemaker sat on and looked him over. “Tall, dark and handsome, with pretty blue eyes. You must be one of Josh’s brothers.”

  Usually a guy didn’t like being told he had a pretty anything, but he’d learned a long time ago having pretty eyes led to having pretty girls. “I’m the oldest. Mitch.”

  Her smile lit up her face in a way that elevated her from just pretty to pretty damn hot. “Oh, I’ve heard some stories about you.”

  He just bet she had. There was no shortage of stories about him and his brothers, but he couldn’t help wondering if she’d heard the one about the backseat of Hailey Genest’s dad’s Cadillac since it was a Whitford favorite. Rumor had it when old man Genest finally traded the car in for a newer model, it still had the cheap wine stains in the carpet and the gouges from Hailey’s fingernails in the leather.

  Even though he’d only been seventeen at the time—to Hailey’s nineteen—he still heard about those gouges if he got within speaking distance of Mr. Genest. Since Mrs. Genest’s looks came off as a little more speculative than condemning, he tended to avoid her altogether. Not easy in a town like Whitford, but he could be quick when he needed to be.

  “So you’re the one who blows stuff up?” she asked when he didn’t offer up any comment about the stories she’d heard, as if there was anything to say. While there might be a little embellishment here and there, most of them were probably true.

  “You could say that.” Or you could say he was one of the most respected controlled-demolition experts in the country. His education, hard work and safety record never excited people as much as the thought of him getting paid to blow stuff up, though. “You still got meatloaf on the menu?”

  “First thing the selectmen told me when I applied for a permit is that you can’t have a diner in New England without meatloaf.”

  “I’ll take that, and I’ll pay for an extra slab of meatloaf and a bucketload of gravy.”

  “How about I give you the extras on the house as a welcome-home present?”

  “Appreciate it,” he said, giving her one of his charming smiles—the one that made his pretty eyes sparkle, or so he’d been told. And since he’d been told that by women in the process of letting him slide into second base, he was inclined to believe them.

  He could tell by the flush creeping up from the collar of her shirt she wasn’t immune to him. Nor was he immune to the subtle sway of her hips as she walked to the pass-through window and handed the order to a young man he was pretty sure was Mike Crenshaw’s oldest boy. Gavin, he thought his name was.

  Dropping an old casino in the middle of crowded Las Vegas to make way for a grander one was an intense job, so it had been at least a couple of months since Mitch had blown off steam between the sheets. And a six-week cap on the relationship was perfect. He could enjoy the getting-to-know-you sex and the know-you-well-enough-to-push-the-right-buttons sex, but be gone before the I’m-falling-in-love-with-you-Mitch sex.

  He checked out the sweet curve of her ass when she bent down to grab a bucket of sugar packets, and he grinned. It was damn good to be home.

  * * *

  Hearing the stories—and, oh boy, were there some good ones—hadn’t prepared Paige Sullivan for the reality of Mitch Kowalski taking up a stool in her diner. With his just-long-and-thick-enough-to-tousle dark hair and the blue eyes and easy smile, he could have been a star of the silver screen, not a guy who had just happened in looking for some meatloaf.

  And maybe a little company, judging from what she’d heard. Supposedly, he was always in the mood for a little company. Unfortunately for him—and maybe a little for her—all he’d get at the Trailside Diner was the blue plate special.

  “So where you from?”

  Paige shrugged, not looking up from the sugar holders she was refilling. “I’m from a lot of places originally. Now I’m from Whitford.”

  “Military brat?”

  “Nope. Mom with a…free spirit.” Mom with a few loose screws was more accurate, but she wasn’t in the habit of sharing her life story with her customers.

  “How’d you end up here?”

  “That old cliché—my car broke down and I never left.” She topped off his coffee, but she was too busy making desserts for table six to stand around at the counter and chat.

  As she built strawberry shortcakes, she grew increasingly aware of the fact Mitch was watching her. And not just the occasional glance because she was the only thing moving in his line of sight. No, he was blatantly checking her out. Since she was out of practice being an object of interest, it made her self-conscious, and the fact he was the best-looking guy to pass through the Trailside Diner since she’d opened its doors didn’t help any.

  No men, she reminded herself. She was fasting. Or abstaining. Or whatever-ing word meant she wasn’t accepting the unspoken invitation to get horizontal in any man’s eyes, no matter what he looked like. No. Men.

  Gavin called her name a few minutes after she served up the desserts, and she grabbed the hot plate of meatloaf from the window. Mitch gave her a very appreciative smile before picking up his fork.

  Ignoring the zinging that smile caused—because she wasn’t zinging, dammit—she turned her back on him and started a fresh pot of coffee. Normally she wouldn’t so near to closing on a weekday night, but she didn’t have enough for one refill each should her customers be in the mood to forgo
sleep in favor of caffeine and small talk.

  Once the coffee was brewing, Paige pulled a clean bus pan out from under the counter and went from table to table, pulling the ketchup bottles and trying not to think about the man at the counter. She knew Mitch Kowalski had a dangerous job, and he certainly looked the part of the bad boy, in faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt hugging an upper body that screamed of physical labor.

  Come to think of it, she knew a lot about the oldest Kowalski. While all the brothers were practically heralded as golden boys around town, there was a special gleam in the eyes of the female population when Mitch’s name came up. Right on the heels of the gleam came the details, and if there was one thing she knew about the man, it was that he didn’t disappoint.

  Using her butt to push through the swinging doors, she took the bus pan of ketchup bottles back to the walk-in cooler. She wouldn’t refill them until the morning, but she took a minute, hoping the chill would cool her overheating face. Okay, and maybe her body.

  If a seventeen-year-old Mitch could make a young woman dig her fingernails into the leather seat of her dad’s new car, just imagine what an experienced, thirtysomething Mitch could do. Not that he’d be doing anything to her, since she was abstaining, but imagining was an-ing word that couldn’t really hurt.

  The strangest thing about the Mitch Kowalski stories was the lack of animosity. It didn’t seem possible a man could romance a healthy percentage of the young women in a small town without leaving a trail of jealousy and broken hearts, but it seemed to her he’d managed. Dreamy-eyed nostalgia was the legacy he’d left behind.

  By five minutes of closing, the place was empty except for Mitch and an older couple lingering over their lukewarm mugs of decaf, so she went ahead and turned off the Open sign. Her part-time waitress, Ava, who usually did the closing shift, was sick, so Paige had done the whole shebang, from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and she was ready to collapse into bed.

  Mitch met her at the cash register with his bill and cash. “What time’s breakfast?”