What It Takes: A Kowalski Reunion Novel

by Shannon Stacey

  “It’s not like you to not plan out your year in advance.”

  Laney grinned. “I know. Isn’t it great?”

  They moved on to other topics, like a television show Nola had recommended and Laney was catching up on. Movies they both wanted to see badly enough to make the long drive to a movie theater. Whether or not Laney wanted Nola to teach her how to knit. But once they were done eating, they couldn’t linger because Nola had to get back to the town hall.

  “You should take an actual night off sometime soon and come over so I can teach you how to knit.”

  “I might do that.” She’d always been told knitting while watching television or listening to audiobooks was relaxing but the time she’d tried to teach herself how had been a disaster and pretty much the opposite of relaxing.

  “Where did you park?” Nola asked when they left the diner.

  Laney felt herself blush. “I parked at the market and walked over here.”

  “That’s quite a walk.”

  “I don’t have any trouble driving Andy’s truck in a forward motion, but backing up? It’s a little bigger than my Camaro. And there’s zero chance of me ever parallel parking it, so taking it straight to the market was safest for everybody.”

  “I’m going the other direction, so I’ll see you later. Good luck shopping.”

  Laney waved and set off in the direction of the market. She didn’t hurry, not minding the warm sun today, since the humidity level was low. She had told Rosie she might try to see if Nola could take a later than usual lunch and been assured they were in no hurry for the groceries, so she could take her time in town.

  Despite the beautiful weather and the nice lunch she’d just shared with Nola, Laney couldn’t fully enjoy the walk. She wished Nola hadn’t mentioned her mother.

  It did make her feel good to know her mother cared enough about how she was doing to reach out to Nola’s mom, but she wasn’t ready yet to let her parents back into her life. They’d encouraged her to stay with Patrick long past her realization she was unhappy, and they’d actively campaigned for reconciliation through the divorce process. In this case, reconciliation didn’t mean communication and compromise. It meant Laney giving up on whatever midlife crisis they imagined she was having and stepping back into the same life she’d been living for ten years. And she was having a hard time forgiving them for that.

  She happened to glance over when a couple of kids shouted to each other, and she realized she was across from the fire station. The big, double garage door was open and a couple of men were standing outside talking. They were next to a four-wheeler, which was easily recognizable as Ben’s—and as she stopped walking, Ben stood up behind it. He must have been bent over at first, checking something on the machine.

  Just the sight of him cheered her up and, before she could talk herself out of it, she looked both ways and then crossed the street to say hello to him.

  * * *

  Ben couldn’t think of a more welcome sight after a long, mostly sleepless night than Laney smiling at him. Except maybe a smiling Laney crossing the street to talk to him.

  “Hey, you escaped for a while,” he said, noticing the other guys moved away to give them a semblance of privacy, though it wasn’t actually privacy since they made sure they were still in earshot.

  “I’m doing errands for Rosie.” She looked at his ATV. “I was worried about you last night. It sounded like you were going so fast in the woods. But Drew told me later that everybody was okay and that you were with the other guys from the fire department.”

  She’d worried about him. For some reason, that made him incredibly happy. “I never go faster than I should be. But I’m sorry you were worried.”

  “Were the people in the accident okay?”

  He shrugged. “I hope so. It made the news this morning and it sounded like she was expected to make a full recovery.”

  “If you call the hospital, do they tell you how they’re doing? Since they started as your patients, it seems like something you’d be allowed to do.”

  “No, I don’t call.” He wasn’t sure he could explain it to her. “It’s a little different here, but I spent most of my career in the city. There are so many calls. So many accidents and overdoses and injuries. I treat them the best I can and then turn them over to the doctors. My job ends there and I have to let them go. I think if I tried to do more, I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it.”

  Her brow furrowed for a moment. “I guess I can understand that. But I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “Always.” But he knocked on the wooden frame of the door behind him, just in case.

  She looked at the machine again. “Josh told me the ATV trails closed when it snows and they switch over to snowmobile season. Do you have a rescue snowmobile, too?”

  “No, I don’t. I mean, there is such a thing, and they make a sled that can be towed behind them. But I can ride my four-wheeler on the trails because they groom the snow, so it’s packed down hard.”

  “You’re the exception to the rules, then.”

  “Whenever I can get away with it.” That made her laugh, and his day got even better. He loved her laugh all the time, but he loved it even more when he was the one who brought it out. “So what kind of errands do you have to run?”

  “I met Nola for lunch, but now I have to go to the market. Fran’s going to be happy because everybody found out I was going and it’s not a short list.”

  “Want some company?” The words popped out before he really gave them any thought, but it didn’t sound like a bad idea to him.

  “I...don’t know. Aren’t you working?”

  “It’s kind of a weird situation because, technically, I’m always working. They call, I go. When there are no calls, I just wander around looking for things to do. So—fair warning, I guess—but I could have to abandon you in the potato chip aisle at a moment’s notice.”

  She made a thoughtful face for a moment, and then shrugged. “If you’re going to be abandoned, what better place than the potato chip aisle?”

  “I could grab a few things myself, since I haven’t been shopping in a while. I’m down to a few microwave meals with questionable expiration dates and a bottle of ketchup.”

  “Shopping isn’t as much fun alone.” She smiled, but then gave him a skeptical look. “Unless this is some scam you first responders do where you fill up your cart, but then a call comes in and you have to abandon me. But I’m a nice lady, so I’ll get your groceries and even deliver them for you.”

  He laughed hard enough so the other guys stopped pretending they weren’t watching and frowned at him. “No, I’m not trying to scam groceries out of you. If I have to leave, Fran puts my basket aside, except for cold items. Those she puts in a bag in the walk-in, so when I get back there, I can pick up shopping where I left off.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a nice town.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “So you like it here?”

  She nodded. “I do. I mean, there are a lot of things I’m used to that Whitford doesn’t have, which is challenging. There’s no takeout, for one thing. And from what I understand, going to a movie theater is literally a road trip.”

  “That’s true. Although, there’s kind of takeout. If you called in an order to the diner, they’d probably find someone going out by the lodge who’d drop it off. You might have to reheat it by the time it gets there, but technically you could have food delivered right to your camper.”

  She laughed again, and then turned toward the market. “So how are we doing to do this? I have Andy’s truck, which is already parked in the parking lot there.”

  “Little harder to parallel park than your Camaro, is it?” He nudged her with his elbow when she blushed.

  “Yes,” she confessed. “Mayb
e I should ride a four-wheeler into town, pulling the little wagon behind it, like Andy does when he’s doing yard work.”

  “If you do, let me know ahead of time, so I can watch you trying to back a trailer up. But for now, I’ll walk down with you and we can get the stuff on the list. Then you can run me home and I’ll throw my groceries inside and you can drop me back off here.”

  “Okay.” She did that biting her bottom lip thing again, that meant she was anxious about something. “What if you get a call while we’re out in Andy’s truck?”

  “Then we’re going to switch places and I’ll drive back to the station and you can take my groceries to the lodge with you. I’ll pick them up there later.” He smiled. “Let me put the machine inside and then we’ll go. I can’t leave it out here.”

  “You heading out?” Sam asked, after he’d backed the ATV into its spot.

  “Yeah, I’m going to go to the market with Laney and see Fran. Maybe get some food so I don’t have to beg off my mom.”

  “That’s sad.” Sam shook his head. “Not the begging meals from mom because I would totally do that if my mom lived around here. But you’re taking her grocery shopping?”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “I sure hope the hell not. Although it would explain why you’re still single.”

  “Funny. Why are you single, smart-ass?”

  “Because my wife banged the meteorologist from our local news channel, so I divorced her and then had to move to a different state so I didn’t have to see his smiling face on my television every fucking day.”

  “Oh.” He hadn’t known Sam was divorced. The man rarely talked about himself. “That explains your irrational anger toward meteorologists, then. I thought you just really hated weather forecasts.”

  “I can look out my window if I need to know the weather.”

  “But you can’t look out your window and find out the weather for Tuesday.”

  “I can wait until Tuesday and then look out the window.”

  “Okay. Fun talk.”

  Sam laughed. “Have fun shopping. Maybe buy your girl a nice can of peas or something.”

  Ben flipped him off before walking back outside. Laney was watching the cars go by, and she smiled when he touched her arm. “You ready?”

  She nodded and they started walking toward the market. He wanted to hold her hand in the worst way, but he’d promised nothing was going to happen between them that she didn’t initiate. Maybe hand holding wasn’t the most outrageous thing, but it was intimate. It implied there was hope for a kiss. Maybe even more.

  So Ben shoved his hands in his pockets and was content to listen to her talk about the shopping list of doom, which sounded ominous. He didn’t care. The longer the list, the more time he got to spend with Laney.

  * * *

  “You didn’t say anything about carrying groceries up a flight of stairs.” When Ben turned back to scowl at her, Laney laughed. “When I asked if you wanted a hand bringing the bags in, you didn’t mention that part.”

  “I told you I live in an apartment over my parents’ garage. There aren’t too many underground garages in this part of Maine, so the stairs were implied. But I can grab them if you’d rather wait in the truck.”

  She was teasing him and he knew it, so she started up the stairs after him. Now that she was here, she wasn’t leaving without seeing where he lived. And Andy had tossed a couple of big coolers in the back of the truck for her, so the few cold items Rosie had asked for were on ice. She had a little bit of time.

  When he opened the door at the top of the stairs, he paused and then looked down at her. “I think it’s reasonably clean, but it’s kind of small, so it probably looks more cluttered than you’re used to.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I live in a camper. A camper with no bump-outs, even.”

  The apartment was cleaner than she’d expected, actually. Maybe she’d seen too many sitcoms with single men being total slobs without women to pick up after them. But Ben seemed like he kept things neat. There was the requisite couch and what looked to her like a giant television. It was probably normal, of course, but she watched everything on a tablet, so it looked huge.

  There was also a coffee table to hold the remote control for the big TV and a few books. She tilted her head to read the spines. Horror. She was surprised at first, because he’d mentioned in passing during one of their conversations that he liked reading military thrillers, but then she realized they were all by the same author. Joseph Kowalski.

  And because it was a studio apartment, she also got to see his bed. It was big—probably a king—and it had blue sheets and a taupe comforter, all of which were bunched up because Ben hadn’t made his bed.

  She wondered what he would do if she crawled between the messy sheets and asked him to join her.

  Ben closed the refrigerator door after putting his groceries away and turned, but she was having a hard time looking away from the bed. The sheets looked soft, and a ceiling fan over the bed made slow circles.

  “Yeah, I don’t make my bed,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “Sometimes I do, but most mornings I don’t. It seems like the ultimate waste of time to me. Plus I don’t like them being tucked in, so if I make the bed properly, I have to toss and turn until the sheets are just the way I like them again.”

  It was surreal, she thought. Standing in Ben’s apartment, listening to him talk about how he liked his bedsheets while actually staring at his bed. And words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I was really worried about you last night.”

  “I’m sorry.” He moved closer to her. “I wanted to tell you I was leaving, but that would have seemed really conspicuous and... I didn’t want to subject you to teasing and speculation, if you know what I mean. They’re good people, but they do love trying to hook people up.”

  “I probably took care of the speculation when I jumped up out of my chair and told you to be careful even though you couldn’t hear me.” He nodded, but she noticed he shoved his hands in his pockets. And he wasn’t smiling. “So, I’m sorry if you get any teasing or anything.”

  “Don’t be. It’s nice to have somebody worry about me, even if I feel bad that you were worried.”

  “You don’t look like you’re very happy right now.”

  “I am. I just...” He sighed and took his hands out of his pockets. “After I kissed you, we decided it wasn’t a good idea. I know you don’t want to date anybody and I know why. So I told myself I couldn’t touch you or kiss you again unless you made the first move.”

  “But you do want to.”

  “Yeah, I do. I wanted to hold your hand walking to the market, too.”

  She’d wanted that, too. She’d imagined their hands brushing and then his fingers lacing through hers. But then he’d put his hands in his pockets and left them there until he held the door open for her at the market. They’d laughed the entire time they shopped, especially when he cracked a joke while she was trying to pick a ripe cucumber and Fran cleared her throat in a very obvious way. In the truck, though, he hadn’t even put his arm on the center console. He’d made sure he stayed in his own space.

  Because he was a nice guy who didn’t want to make her feel pressured.

  Without giving herself time to overthink and talk herself out of it, Laney wrapped her fingers in the front of his T-shirt and pulled him close. She had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, but cupping her other hand behind his neck helped.

  When Ben groaned against her lips, her fingers tightened in his shirt. His mouth devoured hers and she surrendered to him, letting him take control as his hand clenched her hair and his tongue moved over hers. Her knees felt weak and she was breathless by the time he broke off the kiss.

  “You sure know how to make a first move,” he said, and the fact his voice was slightly hoars
e told her he was probably feeling the same thing she was, which was an overwhelming need to move across the room to that bed.

  “It’s still a bad idea,” she said, feeling a need to make that clear. “But I can’t stop thinking about you. About this.”

  “I’ll give you whatever you want,” he said, looking her in the eye. “And only what you want.”

  “I want you. In that bed.”

  He kissed her again, harder this time. Having given herself permission to do this—to finally enjoy what she’d been denying them both—Laney moaned against his lips and pulled the hem of his T-shirt free of his pants so she could slide her hands underneath. The smooth muscles of his back tightened under her fingertips.

  She wanted to touch him. She wanted to know what he felt like and how he liked to be touched. And when he broke off the kiss and looked into her eyes, she realized she wanted to know what he looked like when he was totally sated and relaxed.

  “We should probably be quick, though, because of the groceries.” As soon as she realized she’d said the words aloud, she groaned and dropped her head to his chest. “That...is not what I meant to say.”

  She felt his chuckle like a low rumble. “There was plenty of ice in the coolers, but we can fast forward through the getting naked part if it helps.”

  Rather than say something else that might come out wrong, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it aside. It had been so long since she’d been naked for the first time with a man, and stripping quickly was like ripping off a bandage. She didn’t really have time to feel self-conscious before his hands were on her skin and she couldn’t miss the heat that flared in his eyes.

  When she climbed onto his bed, he moved with her, so she was spared the vulnerability of having him standing over her, staring at her. He was sweet, she thought, wrapping her arms around his neck. Sweet, but in an incredibly hot and sexy way.

  “Tell me what you like, Laney.”

  His words weren’t a glass of ice water in the face, exactly, but she felt some of the urgency slipping away. She wasn’t sure she even remembered how she liked to be touched anymore, and that thought didn’t really make her feel like a sexy, confident woman.