All He Ever Needed Read online

  “Six a.m.” At least she managed not to groan out loud in dread of the four-thirty alarm.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Let me rephrase that. How late can I get breakfast?”

  It hadn’t occurred to her she’d be seeing that much of him. It was a lot easier to resist temptation when temptation wasn’t sitting at her counter, watching her work. “Breakfast all day, but no poached eggs after eleven.”

  He looked as if he was going to say more, but the couple from table six had figured out it was closing time and were on their way to the register. After giving her a smile that jump-started the forbidden zinging again, he walked out and she focused her attention on cashing out her final customers of the very long day.

  When she went to twist the dead bolt on the door behind them, Mitch was at the edge of the parking lot, getting ready to pull out onto the road on what was a very big bike. The motorcycle rumbling between his legs was a black beast of a machine. While the leather saddlebags hid her view of his thighs, she couldn’t miss the way his T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders.

  As he revved the engine and pulled into the street, Mitch turned his head and for a long moment they made eye contact. Then he smiled and hit the throttle, disappearing into the night.

  No men. Paige flipped off the outside lights and turned away from his fading headlights. For two years she’d avoided having a man in her life. But temptation had never come in a package like Mitch Kowalski.

  * * *

  Mitch stood next to his bike with his arms crossed, his pleasure at being home eclipsed by the condition of the Northern Star Lodge.

  How could things have gone so downhill in just three years? The front of the lodge—what he could see by the landscaping lights—looked, if not quite run-down, at least a little shabby. Paint on the porch peeling. Weeds growing around the bushes. One of the spindles on the stair railing was missing. He didn’t even want to imagine what the place looked like in the full light of day.

  His great-grandfather had built the lodge as a family getaway back when the Kowalskis were rolling in dough, and it had started its life as a massive New Englander with a deep farmer’s porch. It was painted the traditional white, and the shutters, originally black, had been painted a deep green by his mother in an effort to make it look less austere. He could see one of those shutters was missing and several were slightly askew. They all needed painting.

  At some point his great-grandfather had added an equally massive addition in an L off the back corner, with the downstairs becoming a large kitchen with a formal dining room, and the upstairs being the servants’ quarters.

  His son, Grandpa Kowalski, hadn’t fared well with the stock market, though, being a lot more of a risk taker than he was a savvy businessman and, when the old family money was gone, along with the big house in the city, he’d reinvented the vacation home as an exclusive gentleman’s hunting club, and the Northern Star Lodge was born. The servants’ quarters became the family quarters. With the next generation, the hunters eventually gave way to snowmobilers and now Josh ran the place, but the five kids owned it together.

  The boards creaked under Mitch’s feet as he climbed the steps to the heavy oak front door, which squeaked a little on its hinges. The place was going to hell in a handbasket.

  The great room was lit up, and his youngest brother, Josh, was sprawled on one of the sturdy brown-leather sofas, one leg encased by a glaringly white cast from foot to knee. There was a set of crutches on the floor, lying across the front of the couch. Josh had a beer in one hand and an unopened can sat on the end table next to Mitch’s favorite chair.

  He sank into it and popped the top. “How’d you know I was coming?”

  “Mike Crenshaw saw you walking into the diner on his way home from the VFW. He told his wife, who called Jeanine Sharp, who called Rosie at bingo. She called me.”

  Rosie Davis was the part-time housekeeper-slash-surrogate mother at the lodge and had been since Sarah Kowalski died of an aneurism when Mitch was twelve.

  “You come to babysit me?”

  By the look of his baby brother, he could use a nanny. And a shower. Their father had stamped his build on all of his children—all of them, even Liz, pushing six feet and lean—but there were differences. Josh had a rounder face with their mother’s nose, and Ryan and Sean a more square jaw and their grandfather’s nose. Josh and Mitch had their father’s dark hair, while the others were more of a dark-blondish like their mother. Mitch’s face was strong, with the Kowalski nose, and he was the best-looking of the bunch, naturally. They all had their father’s eyes, too. A brilliant blue that made people, especially women, take a second look.

  Not many people would take a second look at Josh right then, though, unless they were trying to figure out if they’d seen his picture hanging in the local post office. His hair was a train wreck and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. Worn-out sweatpants with one leg cut off at the knee to accommodate the cast and a T-shirt bearing the stains of what looked like spaghetti sauce didn’t help.

  “Do I look like a babysitter?” Mitch took a long draw of beer, considering the best way to handle his brother. Head-on didn’t tend to work well with Kowalskis. “Heard a rumor there was a hot new waitress in town. Thought I’d check her out.”

  “Yeah, right. Rosie call you?”

  “’Course she did. Your cast probably wasn’t even dry yet and she was on the phone. When’s the last time you took a shower?”

  Josh snorted. “No showers for me. I get to take baths, like a woman, with this damn thing propped up on the side of the tub.”

  “Got some fruity-smelling bubbles?”

  “Screw you. How long you staying this time? Three days? A whole week?”

  Tired. His brother looked tired more than anything else, and Mitch felt a pang of worry. His little brother just flat out looked like hell. “Rosie said you were limbing that big oak out front and fell.”

  “Didn’t fall. The ladder slipped.” He shrugged and sipped his beer.

  “Probably because you had the ladder footed against your toolbox in the back of your pickup.”

  “No doubt. Didn’t have a tall enough ladder.”

  “Why didn’t you call in a tree service?”

  “Gee, Mr. Fancy Engineering Degree, why didn’t I think of that?”

  Rather than rise to the bait of his brother’s tone, Mitch drank his beer and waited for Josh to realize he was being an ass. Mitch wasn’t the one who’d been stupid enough to foot a ladder in the back of a truck or too stubborn to ask for help, so he wasn’t going to sit and take crap where crap wasn’t deserved.

  “Fine. I should have called a tree service. I didn’t. Now my leg’s fucked up. Happy?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.” Mitch drained the last of the beer and tossed it into the wastebasket somebody—probably Rosie—had put next to the couch for his brother’s substantial collection of empties. “How many of those are from today?”

  “Not enough.” Josh knocked back the last of his can and crumpled it in his hand before dropping it into the basket with the others.

  Mitch wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever Josh’s problem was, it wasn’t a busted-up leg. Every time Mitch came home—which, granted, wasn’t as often as he should—Josh’s attitude seemed to have climbed another rung on the shittiness ladder.

  “Why don’t you get cleaned up in the morning and I’ll take you out for breakfast,” Mitch said. “We can sit and watch the new waitress work.”

  “Paige? She’s the owner, not a waitress, and she’s not interested.”

  “She was interested.”

  “Every single guy in Whitford’s taken a shot with her and, I’m telling you, she ain’t interested. She’s lived here like two years and hasn’t gone on a single date that anybody knows about. And in this town, somebody would know.”

  Mitch thought of the way her gaze kept skittering away from his and how she’d blushed, and decided she’d just been
waiting for the right guy to come along. There was no lack of interest on his part and, as long as she understood he was only Mr. Right in the right now sense, he was more than willing to break her alleged two-year dry spell. They could have a little fun while he got the Northern Star in order and then he’d kiss her goodbye and go on to the next job with no regrets and no hard feelings. Just like always.

  Chapter Two

  At fifty-six, Rose Davis had better things to do than run herd on the Kowalski kids. Things like knitting a stockpile of blankets for the grandbaby her daughter Katie didn’t seem to be in a hurry to give her. Maybe take a nice, long trip down to that fancy casino in Connecticut with her friends.

  But she’d been looking after the kids since they were twelve, eleven, nine, seven and five, and she couldn’t walk away from them yet. Probably never would, or at least not until they found special someones of their own willing to marry them and keep them from acting like idiots. After their mother died, and with their father trying to keep the lodge going well enough to feed his five kids, it had taken damn near everything Rosie had to keep those kids on the straight and narrow. She’d had her own Katie to raise, but with the help of the kids’ aunt Mary—who lived in New Hampshire and was raising four kids of her own—Rosie had managed to help them grow into reasonably well-adjusted adults.

  Reasonably well-adjusted and lazy adults, considering it was eight in the morning and Mitch had yet to drag his butt out of bed and say hello to her. Since she’d given her friend Darla a ride to bingo the night before, where she heard Mitch was back, she hadn’t been able to leave until Darla had finally given up hope of winning, and the boys had already gone to bed by the time she got home. And, when she’d given in to the temptation of pressing her ear against Mitch’s door, she’d heard him snoring, probably tuckered out from the long ride to Maine. Despite wanting to, she hadn’t woken him.

  But it had been three years since the boy had been home and she wanted to see him, so she broke out the vacuum. It was an ancient beast with a noisy motor and she didn’t take as much care as usual to avoid bumping the walls in the hall outside his room.

  It wasn’t much more than ten minutes before Mitch emerged from his room with mussed hair and a scruffy jaw and a sleepy smile. “Hi, Rosie.”

  She barely had time to hit the vacuum’s off switch before he enveloped her in a warm bear-hug. His chin rested on the top of her head and she knew if she allowed herself to remember when it was the other way around, she’d come undone.

  “Three years is too long,” she told him as she gave him a good squeeze.

  “I know. I keep meaning to get home for a holiday, but most of my top people have wives and kids and I got in the habit of picking up the slack so they could be with their families. Before I knew it, there’s three years gone by.”

  She released him and stepped back so she could give him a stern look. “You have a family, too, even if you haven’t found a wife of your own. And don’t think I haven’t been praying you do.”

  He grimaced, as always, and changed the subject. “Speaking of family, is Josh up yet?”

  “I heard the tub running before I started vacuuming and he was swearing up a blue streak, so I’d say he’s in the bath right now.”

  “What’s going on with him, Rosie? He’s so tired and angry. And this place is falling apart.”

  “Things have been tight, Mitch. Very tight. With the economy the way it is and gas prices and all that, fewer people can drive all the way up here to spend a week, or even a weekend, snowmobiling. If the snow’s good enough, they’ll ride locally. If not, they don’t ride.”

  “Why the hell hasn’t he said anything? He’s been making the deposits like usual. How were we supposed to know the lodge is in trouble?”

  “You weren’t.”

  “But we’re in this together.”

  “No, you’re not.” She gave him a warm smile, hoping to take a little sting out of the words. “You all went off to lead your own lives and Josh was left to carry this place. He was here when you and then Ryan went off to college and Sean joined the army and Liz ran off with that useless waste of a man. And he’s been carrying it alone since your father died.”

  “He hasn’t needed us.”

  “’Course he has.”

  “Then why hasn’t he said so?”

  “Pride, maybe? You decide to go into demolition, and now look at you. Northern Star Demolition is one of the top companies in the country. Ryan goes off to pound nails for a living and now he makes custom, million-dollar homes for people with too much damn money. Sean and Liz may not be as well-off financially, but they’re out there in the world, doing what they want to do.”

  Mitch couldn’t really wrap his mind around it. Josh had always been more interested in the lodge than any of them. He’d shadowed their dad and tried to run the place since he was old enough to walk, and he’d never mentioned wanting to do anything else. “I’m taking him out for breakfast today. Maybe I can get him to talk to me.”

  “Tread lightly.” Rose put her hands on her hips and pinned him with one of her looks. “And why aren’t you staying here and letting me make your favorite French toast for you?”

  “It’d do him good to get out. We’ll just go to the diner and get reacquainted.”

  As if she didn’t know how the male Kowalski mind worked any better than that. “You leave Paige Sullivan alone. She’s a sweet girl and she’s made a nice life for herself here. She doesn’t need you turning it all upside down before you leave again for who knows how long.”

  He grinned at her, even though he had to know by now his charm was lost on her. “What’s her story, anyway?”

  “Her story is her business, and you stay out of it. You’ve got enough to do here, helping your brother, without toying with that woman.” A bang and a curse from down the hall let them know Josh was out of the tub and probably trying to get dressed, so she pointed her finger at Mitch. “I mean it.”

  “I need to jump in the shower. Don’t let Josh get into the beer before I’m done.”

  “He’s not that far gone,” she said, shaking her head as Mitch went into his room and closed the door. “Yet.”

  Since she’d called Mitch less for help around the lodge and more for help dragging Josh out of the funk he seemed to be sinking into, Rose could only hope Paige Sullivan didn’t become a distraction.

  * * *

  Four-thirty in the morning had royally sucked.

  Paige had slapped at the alarm clock until it stopped beeping so she could close her eyes again. A few minutes later, though, it started beeping again, and she made herself sit up and swing her legs over the side of the bed before shutting it off. She was so not a morning person, especially when it was still dark.

  As she stumbled into the tiny kitchen toward her not-so-tiny coffee mug, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time if she wanted to sleep in, she shouldn’t have bought a diner in a town full of early-rising Yankees. Being slow to wake up wasn’t helped any by the fact she’d covered Ava’s shift and hadn’t even left the diner until after she was usually in bed.

  Then, when she’d finally crawled between the sheets, she’d lost some precious sleeping time to thinking about Mitch Kowalski and how he’d looked back at her from the edge of the parking lot. It was a look that promised…something. Something good and maybe naughty and she wasn’t sure what else. But pondering the possibilities had kept her tossing and turning until she wished she’d never met the man.

  Once she was dressed—and, no, she didn’t primp any more than usual just because she might see the man in question again—she left her very small mobile home and walked the twenty or so yards to the back door of her diner.

  They’d been a package deal—the closed-up, outdated restaurant and the small, even more outdated trailer—and the price had been right. More importantly, the town had been right. Sure, it might have been nice to buy a little house for herself, with a yard consisting of more than a few feet of sorry-looking g
rass between the trailer and the parking lot. But she’d sunk almost every last penny into renovating and reopening the restaurant.

  The important thing was the fact they were hers. Her name was on the deed for the diner and the tiny trailer and, no matter what, they were home. She’d finally put roots down and, while they may not go very deep, they were taking hold.

  Carl, her first-shift cook, parked his pickup in the lot as she was unlocking the door, and he gave her his usual morning grunt. Carl didn’t say much, but she’d practically wept the first time he cooked her a perfect over-easy egg, with just a little golden crunch around the edges. When he’d followed that up with French toast and pancakes that were better than anybody’s grandma had ever made, she’d readjusted her budget, tightened her belt and paid him the slightly higher-than-average wage he needed to provide for his wife and help his daughters through college.

  At six exactly, she unlocked the door, and by six-thirty the seats at the counter were mostly full and a few of the tables, too. Paige had gone over the numbers—her personal budget as well as the cost of doing business—crunching them hard so she could find the lowest menu prices she could charge and still make enough profit to support herself. As a result, she’d done what she’d set out to do. The Trailside Diner, with its affordable prices and great food, was more than a place to eat. It had become the social center of her adopted town again, and people gathered before work to share the latest news. Unfortunately, today’s news was all Mitch Kowalski, all the time.

  “Did you hear Mitch Kowalski’s back in town?” Katie Davis asked Paige when she paused long enough to refill Katie’s coffee cup.

  “I met him last night when he stopped in for dinner.”

  “Oh, that’s right! You’d never met him. What did you think?” Under the brim of her Red Sox cap, Katie’s eyes crinkled when she smiled. She’d run the town’s barbershop since her father died, and Paige was sure her picture was in the dictionary as the definition of tomboy.

  What did she think? She wasn’t about to share her late-night thoughts about Mitch with the daughter of the Northern Star’s housekeeper. Everybody was connected to everybody else somehow and, in Whitford, they didn’t make it as far out as six degrees. She’d learned very quickly to mind what she said.