What It Takes: A Kowalski Reunion Novel

by Shannon Stacey

  She’d taken the time the women were relaxing around the pool to do a thorough cleaning of the lodge and restock the bathrooms. Then after the men rolled back in, she’d taken her break and retreated to her camper. She made herself a grilled cheese sandwich because she’d loved them as a child but never eaten them again once she met Patrick. But she’d seen Beth making some for the kids on a griddle attachment for the grill, and fallen in love with them all over. That and a couple chapters from the book she was reading should have cleared her mind.

  But even a good book couldn’t distract her from the fact Ben had ridden in with the rest of the guys. He must have run into them out on the trail system and, since they all looked happy and relaxed—if really filthy—she assumed they hadn’t dragged him out there for a 911 call.

  The knowledge Ben was in the campground was like a low electrical humming she couldn’t ignore. She could eat her dinner and even read the words on the page, but part of her was always tuned in to that hum.

  But she was determined to stick to her plan to give the Kowalski family some space and give herself some alone time. Once everybody seemed to have cleaned up and the grills were being lit, she would go clean the bathhouse and make sure they had everything they needed, and then retreat back to her camper. A good movie turned up enough to drown out the sound of his laughter should it drift all the way to her camper was just the thing.

  Maybe a movie without kissing, though. Or sex. Or romance. A thriller, maybe, though thrillers without a love interest weren’t easy to find. A horror flick was probably safe, but the last time she’d watched a horror movie and then done a late lap through the campground to make sure everything was good for the night, a guest stepping out from behind the tree he’d been peeing on had almost given her a heart attack. The feeling had apparently been mutual and as she walked away, she’d heard him trying to explain to his wife why he’d screamed.

  No, probably not a horror movie.

  But before she scrolled through the streaming options, looking for something devoid of anything that might make her think about the fact Ben wasn’t that far away, she wanted to get the bathhouse clean.

  It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, maybe because the men had all been raised by two women with high expectations they demanded be met. And partly because she knew from a conversation she’d overheard that the guys would strip to their boxer briefs outside the bathroom door if they were really muddy and Lily and Brianna weren’t around.

  She went through each bathroom, sweeping up the dirt. Then she sprayed down the showers and gave each toilet and sink a quick scrubbing. The toilet paper dispensers were fine, but all the bathrooms needed the paper towel dispensers filled and the trash cans emptied, probably because they’d all tried to clean up after themselves. Because the guests were all family and were staying so long, they were leaving shampoos and soaps in the bathroom, along with some other toiletries, so she left them alone.

  It took her about an hour, since she wasn’t hurrying. Once she’d put the cleaning supplies back in the storage closet, she washed her hands and called it good.

  It looked like the family was cleaning up after dinner, which meant her timing had been perfect. She could hear a four-wheeler running, though, which seemed odd. When she walked around the back of the bathhouse, she could see it, driving around out in the field. It was Sean, she realized, with Johnny sitting in front of him on the seat. The helmet looked huge on the little boy, and he had his hands on the handlebars, as if he was steering. Sean had control of the grips and the throttle, though, and she knew he was safe.

  She wondered how old Johnny would have to be before he got to ride his own, smaller ATV. She knew they made little ones because she’d seen Lily and Brianna taking turns riding a little pink one in the field, with adult supervision.

  Too late, she realized the guy leaning against a pickup truck parked at the edge of the field wasn’t one of Sean’s brothers or cousins. It was Ben and, when he saw her, he smiled.

  He was dirty. Even from a distance she could see that he hadn’t cleaned up yet. There were even smudges on his face, and she wondered what it would be like to be riding behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist, while he splashed through mud.

  Then he raised his hand and made a come over here gesture. She shook her head, but he only laughed. She could barely hear it, but she could see it, and then he waved her over.

  And because she couldn’t—or didn’t want to—say no to Ben when he grinned like that, she went.

  * * *

  Ben had waved Laney over without thinking about it, but as she walked toward him, he didn’t regret it. She was beautiful and nothing short of a real emergency could have torn his attention from her as she walked.

  She’d been spending so much time outside, her skin had taken on a sun-kissed glow. Her hair had even lightened a little, and it was hanging loose past her shoulders. And she was wearing denim cutoff shorts and a Northern Star ATV Club T-shirt, which amused him considering what he was going to try to get her to do.

  “You have some dirt on your face, right there,” she said when she was close enough, pointing to his cheek. Then she opened her hand and made a big gesture like washing a window. “And pretty much all over...there.”

  Laughing, he pulled up the hem of his T-shirt and wiped at his face, knowing it wouldn’t do much good. There was a smear of trail dust left behind on the fabric, but nothing short of a shower was going to get him clean.

  But when he looked at her over the T-shirt still bunched in his hands, intending to ask her if that was better, she was staring at his bared stomach. He might not be twenty years old anymore and she couldn’t count his ab muscles, but good genes and physical activity meant he didn’t reflexively suck in his gut as she looked.

  When he dropped the T-shirt, her gaze lifted and he did his best not to show any reaction to the light flush across her cheeks and the skin exposed by the V-neck of her shirt. “Did I get it all?”

  That made her laugh. “No. Unless you want me to get a hose, I think it’s a lost cause.”

  “I’ll pass.” Not that being blasted by cold water would be unwelcome after the way she’d just been looking at him. “You ready for a lesson?”

  Her eyes widened. “A lesson?”

  He pointed off to his right, where a couple of ATVs sat. One of them was Beth’s, which was a lighter machine with a smaller engine, and it had the keys in it. “You want to learn how to ride?”

  “Right now?”

  While she looked hesitant, he hadn’t missed the way her eyes lit up when she first looked at the four-wheeler. “Sure. You can just drive around the field a little, like Sean.”

  Not exactly like Sean, he hoped. While it might be smarter for him to be on the machine behind her, her butt between his thighs, he was hoping she’d take to it well enough so he could keep his feet on the ground.

  “But it’s okay if you don’t want to,” he added. “Not everybody likes it. Hell, even Rosie doesn’t ride, though she’ll go out on the snowmobile with Andy if it’s not too cold and he promises not to go too fast.”

  “I think I want to.” She bit at her bottom lip for a few seconds and he noticed her hands balled into fists at her side. Then she gave a sharp nod. “I want to.”

  He grinned. “Then let’s do it.”

  Operating the thing was fairly simple. Turn the key on and hit the start button. It had Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Low. The thumb throttle was on the right grip and there were squeeze brakes, like on a ten-speed bicycle. There was also a foot brake on the right side foot well, but she wouldn’t need that.

  “Okay,” she said when he’d explained it all to her.

  “Just sit on it for right now. See how it feels.”

  She stepped into the foot well and threw her leg over the seat. Then she put her hands on the rubber grip and look
ed it over. When she turned her gaze to him, he could see the excitement in her eyes even before she smiled. “It doesn’t feel as big when you’re sitting on it as it looks when you’re standing next to it.”

  “Go ahead and start it.” He deliberately didn’t tell her how again. He wanted to know how much of the information she’d retained. When she double-checked that it was in Park before turning the key to the on position, he smiled. Then she hit the run button and the engine fired. “Okay, now leave it in Park and give it just a little gas. Get a feel for the throttle and how the pressure you put on it makes the engine rev up.”

  A few minutes later, there was nothing else she could learn sitting still, so he handed her Beth’s helmet, which had been sitting on the front rack, and helped her buckle it. With Sean and his little guy out in the field, Ben wasn’t comfortable just letting her take off on her own. Sean was aware of what they were doing and he’d watch for her, but Ben wasn’t taking chances with a three-year-old out there.

  “I’m going to sit on the back for a few minutes, until you’ve got the hang of it.” But he didn’t want to distract her from what she was doing—or torture himself—so he didn’t straddle the seat behind her.

  Instead he stepped onto the foot well and sat sideways on the back rack. The metal tubes weren’t exactly comfortable, but he knew he wouldn’t be there long. He held on to the rack with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to yank her thumb off the throttle or grab the bar.

  “Okay. Hold the brake and put it in Drive. Then let go of the brake and give it a little gas. Nice and easy.”

  He didn’t think she’d mash the throttle and wheelie him off the back, but he tightened his fingers around the rack just in case.

  But Laney was smooth on the throttle and she drove across the grass without a problem. Then, before he could prompt her, she squeezed the brakes and brought the ATV to a stop. She repeated the process a few more times, and Ben liked the fact she got a little more adventurous each time. Going a little bit faster. Braking a little more aggressively. Getting a feel for its turning radius.

  “Okay, stop for a second,” he told her. Once she had, he hopped off. “Go ahead and drive around for a while.”

  “By myself? Are you sure I’m ready?”

  “Absolutely.” Plus, his hip couldn’t take sitting sideways on the metal rack anymore.

  She drove around the field for about ten minutes. Once Sean saw that she had a good handle on what she was doing, he and Johnny played four-wheeler follow the leader with her. Sometimes she was in front and sometimes Sean pulled around her and led. It made Johnny happy and, judging by the smiles she sent his way, it made Laney happy, too.

  Then Sean led her toward the woods and she stopped at the edge, looking at Ben. He waved for her to go and, after a few more seconds of hesitation, she followed Sean onto the trail and out of his sight.

  Ben wasn’t worried about her. He knew Sean wouldn’t take her very far, especially since he had Johnny with him, and riding around in a grass field wasn’t the same as being out on the trail. He did wish he was the one taking her out in the woods, though. Seeing her embrace something new that she clearly enjoyed made him happy and he was sad he’d be missing out on part of the experience.

  But then again, maybe being alone with her out in the woods wouldn’t be such a good idea, either. Sitting on a hard metal rack had caused him enough discomfort so he could handle sitting behind her on the ATV without his self-control slipping. But out in a clearing in the woods, with the machines shut off and nobody else around, he might forget he wasn’t touching her again.

  Chapter Ten

  Laney was a matter of mere paragraphs from the big whodunnit reveal in the mystery she was reading, since she hadn’t been able to settle on a movie, when somebody knocked on the side of her camper. A moment later, Liz’s face appeared on the other side of her screen door.

  “Hey, Laney, what are you doing?”

  “Just reading.” She set the tablet down and went to the door. “What do you need?”

  “We don’t need anything. We want you to come play Scrabble with us.”

  That made Laney laugh, and Liz backed up so she could open the screen door and step out. “When did Scrabble become a campground game?”

  “When it’s girls’ night out. Okay, maybe not out since we’re already outside and we can’t really go anywhere, but the men are in charge of the kids, and it’s Dirty Scrabble.”

  “Dirty Scrabble?” With this crowd, Laney couldn’t be sure if a game being called dirty meant it involved sex or mud.

  “Come play and we’ll explain it to you.”

  So much for her resolve to maintain some distance tonight. She’d already gotten talked into an ATV lesson by Ben. And then she’d ridden a couple of miles down the trail and back with Sean and Johnny. And she’d loved it, more than she’d thought she would, but then she’d found the strength to excuse herself so she could get back to her original plan.

  And now this. She hadn’t been very good at alone time since the Kowalski family showed up, but maybe she was overthinking. This summer was about learning to enjoy being by herself, but it was also about rediscovering what she liked. And she liked spending time with these people.

  “Okay. Let me grab a sweatshirt.”

  Liz waited for her and when they got close to where the men—including Mike and Lisa’s two teenagers—were helping the kids make s’mores, she leaned close to whisper. “Don’t look at them. Do not make eye contact. Pretend they’re invisible or they’ll suck you into helping them.”

  Laney was tempted to laugh, but she suspected Liz was being serious. And through her peripheral vision, she saw all the men turn to look as they walked by.

  “It’s okay, Jackson,” she heard Drew saying to Liz’s little boy. “Mommy’s going to play a game, but we’ll be fine. I’ll try not to get melted marshmallow in your hair. Or smear chocolate all over the T-shirt you’re wearing, which is her favorite.”

  Liz snorted and kept walking. “He’s the chief of police. He can melt a marshmallow.”

  Laney heard the men laugh and then Andy’s voice. “That was weak, son. Don’t forget she was raised by Rosie, so if you were looking for sympathy, you’ve gotta try harder.”

  “You know what Terry says,” Evan said. “If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

  “Wow, the Kowalskis are tough.”

  That was Ben’s voice, and Laney was proud of herself. She didn’t stop and turn around, or trip over her own feet. Anybody watching her probably wouldn’t have guessed that her pulse jacked up and her cheeks got hot when she heard him talk. The more time she spent thinking—or fantasizing—about him, the stronger her reaction to seeing or hearing him, so she really needed to stop thinking about him.

  Like that was going to happen.

  The women were all gathered behind Leo and Mary’s big RV, which made sense. If the little ones could see their moms, it would be that much harder on the guys. And despite Drew’s little display, Laney guessed they were having fun being in charge and giving their wives a break.

  “You got her!” Katie waved and gestured to an empty chair next to her. “Come sit next to me.”

  Laney did, noticing that Katie was sitting in a straight-backed kitchen chair instead of a camp chair, as was Paige. “Do you want to switch chairs? That doesn’t look very comfortable.”

  “We can’t bend over the boards from those chairs,” Paige said. “I can barely bend over the board from this chair, but at least my butt doesn’t sink down into it.”

  Liz clapped her hands. “Okay, the rules are pretty simple. We use regular Scrabble scoring, but we have three boards going at a time because there are a bunch of us. You get a bonus double word score for any word you can’t say in front of the kids. And if you can
’t even say the word out loud, you get a triple word score.”

  “Obviously you want to get those words early in the game,” Lisa said, “because the longer we drink, the more uninhibited our vocabulary gets.”

  “So a shy person has the advantage?” Laney asked.

  “Somebody...” When Lisa paused, they all looked at Beth, “tried to cheat once by pretending she couldn’t say any bad words, but she forgot we know her better than that.”

  “So now we have the Beth Rule,” Keri said. “If there’s any doubt about a word being a triple, we go around and if anybody besides the person who played the word balks at saying it out loud, it’s a triple word score.”

  “Do you want something to drink?” Rosie asked. “We have these cute little wine boxes with tiny straws. They’re like juice boxes for adults.”

  “Sure.” Laney didn’t think a little wine would hurt, and she’d pretty much given up on having any kind of professional boundaries with these people.

  It went around the women a few times before they had enough of a word base to start having fun. And then it came time to lay her first dirty word, but Laney bought herself some time by staring at her row of tiles.

  She didn’t have to say it out loud, she reminded herself. In fact, it was better for her game if she couldn’t. But even putting the tiles down on the board was something she couldn’t imagine herself doing.

  But not too long ago, she wouldn’t have been able to imagine herself living in a camper in Maine, laughing and drinking wine out of a box and making dirty words with women she barely knew.

  After taking a deep breath, she picked up the first letter tile and leaned forward to place it on the board, working backward from the existing letter Y.

  S. S. U. P.

  Then she clapped her hands over her eyes. Not only would she not say it out loud, but she couldn’t believe she’d just written the word out on the board.

  The other women laughed, so she uncovered her eyes and laughed with them. “I had a pretty strict upbringing, language-wise. And my ex-husband had a stick up his...butt.”