“You have good timing,” Ryan said, holding up a beer in one hand and a soda in the other. “We’re getting ready to fire up the grills.”
“It doesn’t take a smart man long to figure out what time Rosie likes to put supper on the table.” He took the soda and popped the tab. “Thanks.”
“How are you liking being back in Whitford?”
“It’s a big change, but a good one. I’m glad to be back.”
“I know the town’s glad to have you.” Ryan opened the beer Ben hadn’t chosen and took a long swallow. “I think if things keep growing the way they are around here, the state’s going to have to consider some kind of regional medical center that’s centrally located for the trail system, even if it’s a small one.”
“Whitford’s kind of centrally located.”
Ryan nodded. “Yes, it is.”
Ben asked how business was and they talked about the custom home business Ryan owned down in Brookline. While Ryan was older than him, if you were friends with one Kowalski, you got to know them all. Sean had been in the middle—Mitch, Ryan, Sean, Liz and Josh—but the five of them were only spread out over seven years, so they’d often traveled as a pack. Along with Katie, of course. Rosie’s daughter fell in age between Sean and Liz, so she’d practically grown up at the lodge. Ben still couldn’t believe Josh had finally smartened up and married her.
“Oh, Ben,” Rosie called, waving at him. “Have you seen Laney?”
“No.” The question had taken him off guard, but he hoped like hell he didn’t look guilty. He hadn’t seen Laney, but it wasn’t because he hadn’t been scanning the people, looking for her. “I haven’t seen her anywhere.”
“Can you do me a favor and go check her camper? The burgers are almost done and she should come have some since we made enough to feed the entire county.”
There was no reasonable explanation he could offer as to why somebody else should go knock on Laney’s door, so all he could do was nod. “Sure. I’ll go find her.”
After excusing himself from the guys, who were talking about the possibility of luring a private medical clinic to the area, he walked toward the front of the campground, to Laney’s camper. Josh had chosen the spot well, because she could see almost everything through the tinted windows. But he’d angled it so her door and awning—and her cheerful pink chairs—were on the side facing away from everybody else. That gave her some privacy during her downtime and also didn’t give the guests the feeling she was watching them all the time.
When he turned the corner, he stopped short at the sight of Laney. She was sitting in one of the chairs, with a tablet propped on the arm. She had earbuds in and, as he watched, she smiled at the screen. A big smile, as if she would have laughed if she knew nobody would hear her.
When he took another step, she must have caught the movement in her peripheral vision because she started. When she realized it was him, she tapped the screen and then pulled the earbuds out.
“Hi, Ben. I didn’t hear you coming.” She held up the earbuds. “I guess that was obvious.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you. What are you watching?”
“A sitcom that’s been on for years, I guess, but I just started watching it a few nights ago. It’s ridiculous, but it makes me laugh.”
He loved her laugh and found himself wishing he could watch it with her. “Rosie sent me to find you. It’s almost time to eat.”
“I can smell the burgers.” She stood and wrapped the cord for the earbuds around the tablet. “Does she need help bringing stuff out? Like condiments and stuff?”
“I don’t think so. It looked they have everything on one of the picnic tables.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll go ask her what she needs, then.”
“Laney, she doesn’t need anything. She wants you to go eat. And I hope you’re hungry because there were three grills going. There are a lot of burgers. And hot dogs.”
She looked at him for a long moment, indecision written all over her face. It probably wasn’t easy working for people like Rosie and Josh, in what was their home. If she was the kind of person who liked well-defined lines between employers and employee, she was going to have a hard time adjusting.
“I...don’t know what to do,” she blurted out, and then her cheeks turned pink. “Is she just asking because it’s polite, and I should be polite and say thank you, but I have dinner plans?”
He could almost feel her anxiety, and he felt like maybe somebody—like an asshole ex, maybe—had made most of her decisions for her in the past. “You can do whatever you’re comfortable doing. I can tell you Rosie’s not just being polite. You’re part of the Northern Star, so she’s going to take care of you, even though you’re an employee. But she also won’t be offended if it would make you more comfortable if I tell her you already made yourself some supper and are watching TV. What do you want to do?”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and Ben had to force himself to focus on her eyes. “Those burgers do smell awfully good.”
“Then let’s go have one. Or maybe five or six.” When she gave him a shocked look, he laughed. “Seriously, you are not going to believe how much food they cooked.”
Ben waited for her to put the tablet inside and then they walked back toward the area near Terry and Evan’s RV where they’d gathered all the picnic tables together. It felt good to have her next to him, as if he wasn’t quite as alone, even though they weren’t a couple. And maybe, in another time and place, it would have been a date.
In this time and place, though, it wasn’t. But at the very least, they’d become friends, and that would have to be enough since Laney had made it very clear she didn’t want more.
Chapter Eight
“You were not kidding about the food,” Laney said in a low voice to Ben.
“The really amazing part is how much of it is gone,” he whispered back and she chuckled.
Somehow, without her realizing what was happening, she’d ended up sitting on a picnic table bench next to Ben. She had been sitting there talking to Beth, who did the office work for the sports bar her husband owned, and then Kevin had spotted Ben and waved him over to ask him a question about the ATV trails. After they’d talked for a couple of minutes, it had seemed natural for him to sit down. And then Mitch and Ryan had joined them, so Ben had scooted closer to her.
So here she was, in a crowd of people, so close to the man she’d kissed only twenty-fours ago that their legs kept bumping together. And the last time they’d bumped, he hadn’t bothered moving, so his thigh was resting lightly against hers. Normally, she would chalk it up to six adults sitting at a picnic table, but this was Ben. And when it was him touching her, incidentally or not, she noticed.
A child’s wail went off suddenly, like a siren, and Kevin and Beth both turned their heads toward where the kids were all eating together. Then, as Laney watched, they turned back to each other and played a fast game of rock, paper, scissors. Her paper covered his rock and after being denied a chance for two out of three, Kevin got to his feet and headed toward the kids.
“Gabe has a bit of a temper and he’s stubborn as hell,” Beth told her. “People try to tell me it’s the terrible twos, but I haven’t met a Kowalski yet who’s outgrown it.”
“Hey,” Mitch and Ryan said at the same time.
Beth smiled sweetly at them. “Are you denying it?”
When they refused to answer, Beth laughed and Laney found herself laughing, too. The family dynamics were fascinating to her. The Kowalskis were nothing like her family, and they especially weren’t like the Ballards. It wasn’t that Laney didn’t love her family, and she knew they loved her, but they weren’t very expressive about it. And they often spoke of family as a duty. An obligation.
If the Kowalski family was any more expressive, they’d be too much. They were l
oud and funny and, even when they were insulting each other, the affection they felt for one another was always evident.
Watching them with the kids really made her ache, though. If she’d had children, that’s how she would want them raised. Everybody kept an eye on them, but they weren’t forced to sit still and behave. They had rules, of course. She’d already seen Lily get a talking-to from her grandmother and Lisa had reined her teenagers in when they got too rowdy too close to the grills. But they were happy kids, obviously loved, and they were given the freedom to be themselves.
Watching them made her even more painfully aware that she’d always thought she’d have children by this point in her life, but these kids also reinforced that her lack of conception during her marriage might have been a blessing.
“You okay?”
It was Beth who asked, breaking into her thoughts, and Laney smiled at her. “Yes. I was just lost in thought there for a minute.”
Kevin came back and stepped over the bench to sit back down. “Johnny stole one of Gabe’s chips, so Lily gave him one of hers, but hers was barbecue-flavored and he did not like that.”
After a few more minutes of chatting, Laney realized she was starting to feel a little too comfortable at the table. Everybody was very friendly, but it wasn’t only that. It was sitting with Ben, legs touching, that made her feel almost as if she was a part of something she actually wasn’t. She liked boundaries and she needed to maintain some not only between her and the family she worked for, but between her and Ben. They’d survived one kiss without too much awkwardness, but she didn’t want to be sending him mixed signals.
“I’m going to help clean up,” she said, getting to her feet. “I need to burn off some of the million calories I just ate.”
“Calories don’t count if the food was cooked on a grill,” Kevin said, and Beth laughed.
Even if she hadn’t known the families camped together at least once every year, Laney would have been able to guess by their level of organization. It wasn’t long before the paper plates and napkins were tossed, and the condiments were all on trays that were easy to carry back to the campers.
“I’ll take that to the Dumpster on my way back to my camper,” she told Ryan’s wife, Lauren, who had just pulled the full trash bag out of the can. At least she wouldn’t have to lecture this group on how much raccoons, skunks and bears loved garbage and carelessly stored food.
“Just throw it on one of the four-wheelers,” Lauren said. “The keys are still in most of them.”
“I told them not to be lazy about the keys.” Mary shook her head. “We have too many little ones now to be leaving keys in the machines.”
“I’ll remind everybody. But Laney, you can go ahead and take one of them.”
“I don’t know how to drive a four-wheeler,” she confessed. “I’ve never even sat on one before.”
Not only Lauren and Mary, but a few people who were nearby turned to look at her, but it was Keri who spoke. “Never? Oh, you have to learn. I only learned the summer Joe and I got together—at the annual camping trip, no less—and it’s a lot of fun.”
“I can’t believe Josh or Andy hasn’t had you practicing,” Mary added. “It seems like being able to drive an ATV around would make some of your work easier.”
Laney thought of Ben’s offer to teach her and couldn’t stop herself from looking over at him. He was not only close enough to hear the conversation, but he was watching her to see what she was going to say. “I’m definitely going to learn. Maybe once things settle down a little.”
Ben’s lips curved into a smile and she thought he might have given her a quick nod. The other women started talking about who would be the best one to teach her—and it seemed like a tie between Andy and Ryan—but Laney just let them talk. As much as spending time together complicated things, she couldn’t really see herself trusting anybody but Ben to show her how to ride one of those things.
And from the looks of it, he was still willing to teach her.
“Evan’s got that campfire roaring already,” Keri said. “I was hoping we’d get to relax for a bit before s’mores time.”
“We’ll relax,” Mary said, “and bring out the marshmallows when we’re ready. And when somebody reminds him we want more hot coals and less raging inferno with these kids.”
“I’m going to get some stuff done,” Laney said. She might be able to do a quick check of the bathhouse while they were distracted with marshmallows. “I’ll just carry the garbage bag. It’s not that heavy.”
“Make sure you’re back for s’mores,” Lauren said. “Probably about forty-five minutes or so. We have to let the fire burn down some, but we don’t want to wait too long to jack the kids up on sugar.”
“Oh, I’ll probably just go in for the night.”
“And miss the s’mores?” Mary shook her head. “They’re the best part of camping.”
“I’ve never had one, actually.”
“You’ve never had a s’more?” Lauren cocked her head. “How is that even possible?”
“We never went camping that I remember.”
Keri laughed. “Sometimes, in the winter, Brianna and I put on a movie and toast marshmallows over a candle and make s’mores in the living room. Very important to use unscented candles, by the way. Learned that one the hard way.”
“You don’t want to miss the s’mores,” Mary said, and Laney knew the issue was settled.
“I’ll definitely be back, then,” she said, and through the corner of her eye, she saw Ben smile.
Sean
There were times in Sean’s life that made him wish there was a pause button so he could treasure a moment longer. Moments like Emma and Johnny working in the garden together, singing silly songs. The way Emma laughed when Sean told her a stupid joke.
And this moment, when Johnny was trying to feed Emma a s’more and marshmallow was stuck to her chin and she was laughing too hard to bite into the graham cracker and chocolate. He was frowning in concentration, and maybe a little bit of annoyance, and while Johnny looked like him, the expression was so Emma, Sean couldn’t help smiling.
“You are one lucky son of a bitch,” Ben said from the chair next to him.
“That I am.” They were all lucky, he thought, looking around the fire. Liz was feeding Jackson little bits of lightly toasted marshmallow while the other kids made s’mores with the help of various adults. It was a messy business and occasionally dangerous if you didn’t want to get slapped with a molten marshmallow flung off the end of a stick being waved around, but he knew none of them would rather be doing anything else. “So you never got married, huh?”
“Nope. Gave too much to the job and not enough to the women who were willing to try to make a go of it with me.”
“Now you’ve got a little more free time and you can find yourself a nice hometown girl.” As soon as he said it, Ben’s gaze shifted and Sean didn’t miss it.
He’d had a hunch his old friend might be interested in Laney, and the way Ben looked at her now confirmed it. She was on the other side of the fire, holding Gabe on her lap while frowning at the ends of her hair, which had marshmallow stuck in it.
“Laney fits in well with everybody,” he said, fishing with a more obvious bait.
Ben looked at him, nodding slowly. “Yeah, she does. She’s a nice woman, so I’m not surprised.”
“What’s her story, anyway? Rosie said she was divorced and looking to leave...where was it she’s from?”
“Rhode Island.”
“Right. And she ended up here in Whitford, huh?”
Ben frowned. “She’s Nola Kendrick’s cousin, which I’m pretty sure you already know, since it probably came up during the family meeting about hiring her.”
Sean decided to dial it back a little. “That’s right. Honestly, Josh does such a g
reat job of running this place now that I don’t always pay attention as well as I should on the conference calls. Which I hate, because it’s confusing keeping track of who’s talking.”
Emma, who’d finally managed to swallow a few bites of Johnny’s s’more, walked toward them. She was holding their son’s hand since they were close to the fire ring, and grimacing at her other hand, which was covered in marshmallow and chocolate.
“Tell Daddy we need help cleaning up,” she said when they were standing in front of him.
Johnny pulled his hand free from his mom’s so he could hold them up. Judging by the amount of marshmallow and chocolate on the two of them, he had to wonder if they’d gotten any in their mouths. “We might need a hose.”
Johnny laughed, since they often joked about using a hose on him after he’d been playing outside or working with Emma in the yard. And sometimes they weren’t joking. When Emma nudged him between the chairs, he took off running toward the camper with Emma on his heels.
“The bathhouse, Johnny. Don’t you dare touch Grammy’s camper with your hands like that.”
“I better go help,” Sean said.
“I’m going to get going, anyway,” Ben said. “It’s been a long day and I ate way too much. If I don’t leave now, I might fall asleep in this chair and I don’t trust you guys.”
Sean laughed as Ben stood up, and then shook his hand. “You’ll be around, though, right? We’ll be hitting the trail tomorrow.”
“I might see you out there.”
Sean didn’t miss the glances and waves Ben and Laney exchanged before he said a general good-night and walked away from the fire. Then he heard Johnny squeal and he put his friend’s love life out of his mind. If he didn’t get to the bathhouse and help Emma, it was his own love life he’d be worrying about.
He found them in the bathroom, with Emma trying to balance Johnny on her raised knee so he could reach inside the sink. But he was too heavy for that now, so he grabbed his son around the waist and lifted him.
What It Takes: A Kowalski Reunion Novel Page 10
