Love a Little Sideways Read online

  Then she looked across the table and saw Rose watching her with what could only be described as rampant speculation. Uh-oh.

  If Rose got it in her head Liz and Drew would make a good couple, especially considering she knew there was physical attraction between them, they were doomed. If not for the fact Liz’d watched her family mill around, deciding where to sit, she would wonder if being next to Drew was Rosie’s doing.

  “Did I tell you I Skyped with Emma yesterday?” Katie asked once everybody was served. “Johnny’s getting so big.”

  “I need to go see them again soon,” Rose said, and Liz was relieved to see her focus shift away. “My sweet grandbaby and he’s hours away. And Nick’s not only in Massachusetts, but teenage boys are fast on their feet when you’re trying to smother them with kisses.”

  Even though she sounded mournful, Liz smiled. It didn’t matter that there was no blood between Rose and the Kowalskis. She was Grammy Rose and Liz had no doubt Sean felt as strongly about that as Rosie did. They all would.

  “I need some grandchildren here in Maine, too,” she continued with a pointed look in Mitch and Paige’s direction.

  “Hey, we’re working on it,” Paige said. “Maybe Katie or Liz will beat me to it.”

  Liz swallowed a chunk of bread that went down hard, shaking her head. “Maybe you don’t get how the whole making a baby thing works, Paige.”

  “Explains why she’s not pregnant yet,” Ryan said, and they all laughed.

  But Paige was always the optimist. “Hey, you could fall in love tomorrow and start making babies.”

  Now Rose was giving her that look again, and Liz fought the urge to squirm in her chair as the woman’s gaze bounced between her and Drew. That so wasn’t happening. “I really doubt I’ll fall in love tomorrow but, even if I did, there won’t be any babies. Not for a while. I’m doing other things right now.”

  “Like what?” Ryan asked.

  “I don’t know. I might go back to school or take some online classes or take up skydiving. Since I don’t know yet, it would be pretty dumb to have a baby.” She wanted out of this conversation. Badly. “I can picture a playpen in the corner of the barbershop, though.”

  Katie pointed her spoon at Liz. “Oh, no you don’t. Josh and I aren’t having a baby until after our honeymoon.”

  “Where are you going?” Liz asked.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “When are you going?”

  “After the wedding,” Josh replied.

  “Which there’s no date for,” Rose said. “I’m going to have to call Mary and arrange to go visit again so I can kiss my baby grandson.”

  And on that note, Liz decided it was time for a subject change. “Lauren, do you know who’s been mowing the lawn? I didn’t see a lawn mower anywhere and I wasn’t sure if the real estate agent was having it done.”

  “The boy three houses down does it, actually,” Lauren said. “He wanted to earn money mowing lawns but his mower didn’t really work. When I moved I sold him mine in exchange for him working off the cost. I think you have two more mows and then you’ll have to negotiate with him yourself or buy a mower.”

  “Good to know.” She shifted in her chair, then shifted back when her knee brushed against Drew’s. “I’ll probably have him keep doing it.”

  “He’s a really good kid.”

  They talked about the house a bit, while other conversations went on around them. She was aware of the rich timbre of Drew’s voice as he talked to Josh about the ATV trails, which made it hard to concentrate on what Lauren was telling her about the heating system in her house. She’d probably have to ask her again when it was time to turn it on.

  “It’s a problem when my officers can’t get to the folks doing something wrong,” Drew was saying to Josh. “I’m trying to get a grant to buy the department a four-wheeler, but I think we’re going to see more of a presence on the state level, too. We’re drawing enough of a crowd to keep a game warden busy.”

  Liz leaned forward to take a couple more slices of bread out of the basket and, when she did, her entire leg brushed the length of Drew’s. She was off balance, so she couldn’t pull away, leaving her keenly aware of the contact.

  Sitting back down, she slowly ate her bread, avoided making eye contact with Rose and tried not to touch Drew again.

  * * *

  If Liz’s leg didn’t stop touching his, Drew was afraid he’d jump out of his skin right there at the dinner table.

  Even worse than the touching was her soft laughter. She was obviously enjoying being back with her family and, as she talked with each of them, she’d occasionally laugh and the sound seemed to vibrate through his entire body.

  It was a reaction he had to completely hide, of course, since Mitch was sitting at the other end of the table. And he kept catching Ryan watching him, giving him a look that seemed to bore right through him and he wasn’t sure why.

  He made a mental note to have more police business scheduled at the same time as Kowalski family functions.

  After wrapping up a conversation with Josh, who he worked closely with regarding the ATV trails they’d opened to give access to the town, he did his part helping to clear the table.

  Mitch loaded up with an armful of cold beers from the fridge and the men made a break for it as the women argued over who was doing the dishes. When they made it to the front porch without being called back, Mitch started handing out cans.

  “None for me,” Drew said. “I’m out of uniform but I’m covering a shift, so technically I’m still on duty.”

  “All work and no play, my friend.”

  “Are you calling me dull?”

  “I think he was,” Josh said.

  “I get to carry a gun. That’s not dull.”

  Mitch smirked and popped the tab on his beer. “I blow stuff up.”

  Drew wasn’t alone in rolling his eyes. It was hard to win the whose-job-is-cooler contest when a guy owned a controlled demolition company. “Imploding’s not as cool as exploding.”

  “Whatever you say. It all goes boom.”

  Drew relaxed into one of the rockers as the trash talk turned to sports, tuning them out a bit. The brothers could get rowdy when it came to second-guessing professional coaches and Drew didn’t care enough to immerse himself in the debate. Especially sitting on the front porch on a beautiful summer afternoon.

  He should put a porch on his house, he thought. It might not have the view the lodge had, but it wasn’t a bad way to close out a day. It’d be nicer if he had somebody to sit out there with, but he hadn’t put much effort in looking for that somebody.

  Thinking of the way his body reacted when Liz’s leg brushed against his, he shifted in the rocker. What he wanted was a woman who made him feel the way Liz made him feel, but who wasn’t talking about going back to school or jumping out of airplanes before she’d even think about having children.

  “Hey.” Mitch kicked his ankle. “Where’d you go?”

  “Oh, just thinking about work,” he lied. “Paperwork and shit.”

  He hated lying to Mitch. There wasn’t a single time in his entire life he could remember that he hadn’t been totally honest with his friend, until he had a weak, stupid moment and slept with Liz.

  The lying felt like crap, but all he could do was keep his relationship with Liz one hundred percent platonic in the future and focus on putting himself out there in the dating world a little more. Once his mind was on anybody but Liz, it would be a lot easier to face her brother.

  They all shot the bull for a while, until Josh started checking his watch every few minutes and keeping an eye on the end of the driveway.

  “We should get out of here,” Mitch said, “before guests start arriving and Josh puts us to work.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a long
drive ahead of us,” Ryan agreed.

  “You’re not staying here?” Drew knew the family rooms were still kept separate, so there was plenty of room.

  “Not this time. We have a few things we wanted to get done around the house this weekend while Nick’s with his dad.”

  The guys went into the kitchen, which was where most of the women were gathered. The dishes had been dried and put away, except for a plate on the counter covered in crumbs.

  Katie smiled at them. “If you all hadn’t run away so fast so you didn’t have to help with the dishes, you would have known there were brownies. Now they’re gone. Sorry.”

  “You don’t look sorry.” Josh slapped her on the ass.

  Since it looked like the goodbyes were going to take a while, Drew took that opportunity to duck out of the kitchen for a bathroom break. He went through the living room, but as soon as he turned the corner to the hall, he almost ran smack into Liz.

  He came to an abrupt halt, struck by how similar this moment was to the last time he and Liz had been in the lodge at the same time.

  “Wow. Déjà vu, huh?” Liz said with a tight laugh, as though she’d been thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah.” The last thing he wanted was for the awkwardness to rear its head again. “Except this time the fact you ladies ate all the brownies will give me the willpower to keep on walking.”

  She narrowed her eyes and the corners of her mouth tilted up in a wicked little smile. “What if I tell you I didn’t have a brownie?”

  He should have run, he thought. Maybe not literally, but when he saw her, he should have stepped around her and kept on walking. He wasn’t sure his willpower could withstand blatant flirtation from her, so he needed to nip it in the bud. “Not twenty minutes ago, I told your brother I was thinking about work when I was really thinking about you. Lying to him feels really shitty, so I don’t want to add to the list of things I’m hiding.”

  “I was just playing, Drew.” The tightness replacing the flirtation in the set of her mouth made him wonder if he wasn’t the only one lying. “The last thing I want to do is cause any more trouble between you and Mitch.”

  She tried to brush by him, but he stopped her by putting a hand on her arm. “You have no idea how much I wish things were different.”

  Her eyes met his for a few seconds and he thought he saw a shimmer of regret there, but then she shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m your best friend’s sister and you’re a guy who wants a lot more commitment than I have to offer. So we’re going to be friends and stop beating ourselves up about something we can’t go back in time and change.”

  She started walking again, but he said her name and she stopped. “Even if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change what happened between us.”

  “Yeah? Well, I not only had one brownie, but I had three.” She gave him a saucy wink and went to say goodbye to her family.

  * * *

  Liz was up bright and early on her first day at her new job. Or maybe not bright, since the sun wasn’t fully up yet, but definitely early. With her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her name badge pinned to one of the Trailside Diner T-shirts Paige had given her, she felt as ready as she’d ever be.

  She wasn’t too worried about waiting tables. It was all she’d ever done, and at some restaurants a lot busier and more fast-paced than Whitford could offer. She’d memorized the menu, and the boss was her sister-in-law. But a new job was still a new job, and low-level anxiety hummed through her.

  An hour later, she’d shadowed Paige as she opened the diner for business and served the first wave of early birds. Carl, the first-shift cook, didn’t say a lot, but Liz could see he put out an amazing-looking breakfast. And, since she wasn’t much for cooking herself, she already knew they tasted as good as they looked.

  Once the initial rush petered out, Paige started giving her a more in-depth tour. “I haven’t decided if I want to invest in a computer system or not yet. Maybe next year. For now, it’s old school. Write down the order, stick the sheet up in the pass-through window and then, when they’re done eating, use the calculator to write down the total. Don’t forget the tax.”

  Nothing she couldn’t handle. A sheet of paper next to the register with a running tally of slash marks under the days of the week caught her attention. “What’s that for?”

  “Those are for Gavin’s specials. He’s saving up to move to the city and get into a culinary school. In the meantime, I let him try out new recipes on the good citizens of Whitford. Since we’re not computerized yet, just put a hash mark down whenever somebody orders one of his specials. I’ve thought about separating it out so non-residents, who seem to be a little more adventurous, are broken out, but this is enough to give us both a general idea of what works and what doesn’t. He’s had a few flops, but overall his recipes are well received.”

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact Mike Crenshaw’s son is all grown up.”

  “And you know Tori is Jilly’s niece, right? Her brother’s daughter. She moved here last year from Portland because her parents’ divorce was not amicable and she was tired of being stuck in the middle.”

  Liz didn’t really know Jilly Burns Crenshaw. Mike met her while he was away at college and she couldn’t remember when they’d moved back to Whitford. There was a lot of that throughout the morning. Faces she knew. Some that were vaguely familiar. Many she didn’t know but who knew who she was.

  Everybody, of course, had something to say about her driving Chief Miller’s Mustang.

  She was tempted to greet every customer with, “Yes, I’m Liz Kowalski and I’ve moved home from New Mexico because I missed my family and I’m driving Chief Miller’s Mustang because I wrecked my car, but I’m okay, and he lent it to me because I’m his best friend’s sister and no other reason.”

  But she didn’t think that would go over well. Not with this crowd, anyway. They liked to ferret out information for themselves, with a whole heap of wild assumptions thrown in.

  The chief himself showed up after the lunch rush was over, taking a seat at the counter. “Hey, Liz. How’s it going?”

  She hadn’t seen him since he’d rejected her pretty overt attempt at flirting three days before, and she was worried things would be weird between them again. But he seemed normal enough, so she tried to relax. “I guess you’d have to ask Paige, but I think it’s going good.”

  He ordered a salad topped with grilled chicken and a diet soda. “I went on a cheeseburger binge after my divorce, until I woke up one day and had to suck in my breath to button my uniform pants. Spent the better part of two weeks sitting at my desk because I could unbutton them and nobody was the wiser.”

  “I was sorry to hear you and Mallory split up.” She had been, too. That was, of course, before she’d gotten him to herself for a few minutes.

  He shrugged. “Wanted different things.”

  It was a lot worse than that, from what Rose had told her. Mallory kept putting off starting a family until Drew finally dug in his heels and told her he didn’t want to wait anymore. She’d finally confessed she’d never planned to have kids and didn’t tell him because she was afraid of losing him. He tried for a while after that, but besides the fact he still wanted kids, he couldn’t get over the fact Mallory had started lying to him before they were even married and never stopped.

  “Better cheeseburgers than alcohol,” she told him, trying to lighten the mood again.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, until you can’t strap on your gun belt and live in fear of having to chase somebody down.”

  She handed his order slip to Gavin, who’d replaced Carl and was preparing for dinner. The special was a steamed haddock with a sauce in a language Liz didn’t understand, so she suspected Ava wouldn’t be putting many checkmarks on the specials sheet during the dinner hour.

  Paige h
ad disappeared into the office and they’d pretty much finished the prep work, so Liz poured herself an ice water and went back to talk to Drew. “So, based on customer comments today, we’re quite the Facebook sensation.”

  “I swear there are people inventing reasons to talk to me just so they can ask about it.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  He scoffed. “Of course not. This isn’t the first time the good folks of Whitford have speculated about my personal life.”

  “It’s something I’ll have to get used to again, I guess. I was a little more anonymous in New Mexico. In some ways it’s freeing to live someplace where people haven’t known you since you were born. But in other ways, it’s lonely. It’s nice having a shared history with people. Stories, you know?”

  “Like the time I put the plastic wrap over the toilet bowl in the bathroom your brothers always used, but Rosie was cleaning the other one, so you used that one and peed all over yourself?”

  She’d screamed so loud Rose had come running, with her father close on his heels. Drew had been sent home, which meant calling his father and asking him to pick him up out on the road, since Andy wasn’t allowed on the Northern Star property. “I still haven’t forgiven you for that. Someday there will be payback.”

  He grinned and butterflies started dancing around in the pit of her stomach. He’d always been handsome, but a little more serious than her brothers, so when he flashed that boyish grin, it really hit hard. “Your old man made me split a cord of hardwood for that. I paid my dues.”

  “Not to me.”

  Gavin called out her name, so she went to the window and grabbed Drew’s salad. He didn’t want any dressing, which she thought was weird and said so.

  “My dad doesn’t like dressing, either. I’m not sure we ever had any in the house, so I’m used to it plain.”

  “Salads are made to be covered with cheese, bacon bits and ranch dressing.”

  He shook his head, sprinkling salt and pepper over the plate, which she thought was even more weird. “Pretty sure a cheeseburger would be better for you.”