Her car breaking down in Whitford had changed that. Changed her. It was an opportunity to start a life in a town that had welcomed a stranded stranger with open arms and, to make sure she kept that life on track, she was abstaining from men. When she was sure she was who she wanted to be and had her life the way she wanted it, she’d think about letting a man share it. For now, she wasn’t going to risk falling back into behavioral patterns she’d learned from her mother. No men.
The library was quiet when Paige stepped inside, but she knew she didn’t have long before school let out and kids started showing up, looking for a safe place to kill some time, doing homework or reading before their parents got home from work.
Hailey Genest, of gouged-leather-seats fame, was behind the circulation desk, where she always was, from ten in the morning until five o’clock Monday through Thursday, until eight o’clock on Fridays, and three hours every other Saturday afternoon. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, with her blond hair in a ponytail, looking like anything but a librarian.
Fran Benoit, with her thick gray hair pulled back in a braid, was checking out a stack of books, and she grinned when she saw Paige. “You’re too late. I grabbed all the ones with the good sex in them.”
“Guess I’ll have to settle for the ones with the good murders.” Paige wasn’t sure she could handle having Mitch Kowalski and sexy books in her life at the same time.
“Not having the first could lead to the second, you know,” Hailey said, giving Paige a pointed look. “Gotta release the tension or it builds up and then—wham—somebody’s calling nine-one-one.”
All three of them laughed while Paige unloaded her tote, lining the books up on the counter to be checked in. Hailey didn’t tend to be very subtle in her worry about Paige’s lack of a sex life. Or maybe not so much worry, as a determination to fix what she perceived as broken.
“Speaking of sex,” Fran said, “how did Mitch like your meatloaf?”
Paige shook her head. “How does speaking of sex lead to meatloaf?”
Fran snorted. “Speaking of sex leads to Mitch Kowalski.”
“That it does,” Hailey agreed, smiling that silly, nostalgic smile that was practically a universal female reaction to the man’s name being said out loud.
“I’m sure he liked the meatloaf just fine or he wouldn’t have brought Josh in for breakfast yesterday morning.”
Hailey shook her head. “Nobody cares about the meatloaf, Paige. Mitch is in town for six weeks and you could do with a little less tension. Don’t want you killing anybody.”
“So what you’re saying is that I have to have sex with Mitch to save lives?”
“Absolutely.”
Fran nodded. “Yes.”
Paige couldn’t believe either woman kept a straight face. “Nice try. Not interested.”
And she said that with a straight face, which was even harder to believe. Of course she was interested in having sex with the man. Didn’t change the fact it wasn’t going to happen.
“Besides,” she said, “nothing says he’s interested in me, either.”
Fran scooped her books off the desk and gave her a look. “Honey, if you got an innie and not an outtie between your legs, he’s interested.”
They all laughed again, until a gruff, exaggerated throat-clearing sounded from the reference section, and Hailey shushed them. “You guys are going to get me fired.”
“They can’t fire you,” Fran said. “You’re the only person in town who knows the Dewey Decimal System.”
After Fran said goodbye and despite her gloating, Paige found a nice selection of sexy romances left on the shelves. She took a couple, along with a few cozy mysteries, a political thriller and a horror that looked like it would keep her up at night. Terror was probably a healthier reason to lie awake than thinking about sex with Mitch.
As she was checking out, a couple of patrons lined up behind her, so Hailey couldn’t say anything more embarrassing than have a nice day.
The three hardcovers made her tote a little heavier than usual, so Paige stopped to rest in the cute little park with the benches, lilacs and wild roses. And rather than think about whether or not Hailey’s comments about sexual tension were exaggerated but grounded in truth, she pulled a paperback out of the bag and settled in to read for a few minutes.
* * *
Mitch wedged the pickup into a parking space on Main Street and went around to help Josh out. His brother didn’t like having to accept a shoulder to lean on, but it was a long way to the ground for a guy with a bum leg.
Once Josh had his crutches tucked into his armpits, they walked thirty or so feet down the sidewalk and Mitch held open the door to the Whitford Barber Shop.
It wasn’t a fancy name, but it wasn’t a fancy place. There were a few salons in Whitford now—places you could get a haircut and your nails buffed and your body tanned if you so desired. Maybe get a little dermabrasion, which sounded to Mitch like taking a sandblaster to your skin. He avoided salons, as a rule.
This was a barbershop. A shave and a haircut and, if she was in the mood, you could talk to Katie Davis about almost anything under the sun. But she wasn’t touching anybody’s naked feet and if you asked her about tanning, she’d tell you to go lay out on the sidewalk and roll over every fifteen minutes.
“You really look like crap,” she said in greeting, and Mitch was glad she was talking to Josh.
“Can’t wash my hair in the bathtub. I wash it in the kitchen sink, but it’s awkward because I’m tall and can only put my weight on the one leg.” He took his hat off as he spoke, revealing the mess that had inspired Mitch to talk him into a trip into town.
“In the wash chair,” she said, snapping open a clean cape. After Josh settled into the chair, she handed Mitch the crutches, draped the cape over Josh and turned on the water. “Lean back.”
Mitch grabbed a tattered snowmobiling magazine from 2008 out of one of the chairs and sat down, but he glanced over at the wash chair as Katie worked up a thick lather of shampoo in his brother’s hair. Josh made a low moaning sound in his throat, and Mitch watched as heat in the form of a rosy blush crept up Katie’s neck. Interesting.
And not his business. He’d always thought of Katie as an almost-sister. Rose had started working at the Northern Star the year Katie was born because his mom didn’t mind if she brought the baby along in a sling. She’d practically grown up at the lodge with them.
But it didn’t look as though she thought of Josh as an almost-brother, that was for sure. And he didn’t want to know any more about it, so he stood and tossed the magazine back on the chair. “Looks like you’re going to be a while.”
Katie snorted. “I’m going to wash his hair twice, then give him a good trim. I’ll give him a nice hot towel shave, too, and maybe he’ll look human again.”
“I’m going to take a walk, then. If I’m not back when you’re done, text me.”
She nodded and Josh ignored him, so he stepped out into the sunshine and debated on a destination. He could walk down to the Whitford General Store & Service Station to say hi to Fran and Butch Benoit. Or he could walk to the bank and transfer some funds into the Northern Star Lodge’s account. Maybe take some of the weight off Josh’s shoulders.
He hadn’t built a successful business, though, by throwing good money after bad. If the lodge was really in trouble and it wasn’t going to be able to support itself in the long run, a monetary transfusion was a temporary fix. They needed a plan, and then they could work out how to pay for it.
Aimlessly walking down the sidewalk to avoid standing in one spot like an idiot, Mitch let his mind wander to the Northern Star. And to Josh. He’d changed since the last time Mitch had seen him, and not in a good way. And, while a broken leg wasn’t exactly fun, the change in his mood and general outlook on life went deeper than that. More important than helping out while Josh healed and figuring out the lodge’s finances was figuring out why his brother was turning bitter.
When he got to
the town park—the small one tucked in next to the hardware store, not the big one with the playground equipment and bandstand—he spotted Paige Sullivan sitting on a bench, and he pushed Josh to the back of his mind temporarily.
She was sitting sideways, with her feet tucked under her and one arm hooked over the back of the bench. In the other hand was a paperback, and she didn’t look up until he sat down next to her. “Mind if I join you?”
When she almost dropped her book, he felt guilty for startling her, but then she smiled. After marking her page with her library card, she tucked the book into a canvas bag on the ground next to her. It had the Whitford Public Library logo on the front and appeared to be straining at the seams.
“I only meant to sit here a minute, but it’s so nice out and I pulled out a book.” She looked at her watch. “And there goes an hour.”
“There are worse ways to spend an hour. Did you leave any books for the rest of us?”
She laughed. “I don’t have cable, so I read while everybody else is watching TV.”
“I don’t read as much as I’d like to. There are a few thriller writers I like, so I download their books to my phone and sneak pages when I can.”
“My cell phone makes calls and that’s it. I have to have internet for the diner and, since I spend most of my life there, I don’t need to carry it around with me.”
He leaned back against the bench, turning his face up to the sun. He didn’t get to sit and do nothing very often. It felt good. “Tell me how you ended up in Whitford. It’s not exactly a hot destination.”
“I already told you. Was driving through and my car broke down and I never left.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
“You didn’t already have a home and a job or any other reason to go back to where you were before the car died?”
“I had a crappy job and a crappy apartment. Obviously my car wasn’t all that hot, either.”
He turned his head to look at her, intrigued by her vague answers rather than put off by them. “Most people love to talk about themselves, you know.”
“Go for it.”
He grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think so. I want to hear your story. I already know mine.”
“We all know yours,” she said pointedly, making him snort. Wasn’t that the truth? “I was living in Vermont, but I was notified I’d been left some money in a will. They had the check but the man’s wife really wanted to meet me, so I drove to Portland.”
The man’s wife? “How did you know this guy?”
“Not that way. He was my stepfather for a while, when I was little. I barely remember him, but his wife said he talked about me a lot. I guess he tried to keep in touch with me, but my mother made it difficult and eventually he gave up and had a family of his own. She said he worried about me a lot, though, over the years.”
She looked sad, as though she was sorry to have missed out on somebody caring enough about her to worry. “So he left you some money?”
“Yeah. They had kids of their own, but he did some software thing and they were pretty well-off. So I was driving back, trying to imagine how my life would have been different if my mother hadn’t run off on Joel and what it would have been like to be his and raised in one place like his kids, when my car broke down.”
“And you used the money he left you to buy the diner?”
She nodded. “Katie happened to drive by right after I broke down. Total stranger, but she gave me a ride into town. Butch took care of my car. Fran called Rose, and then Josh drove down and picked me up. Said I could have a room at the Northern Star until my car was fixed. And then Mallory showed up the next day because she’d heard about me and didn’t want me stuck at the lodge with no way to do errands. Before my car was fixed I knew I wanted Whitford to be my home.”
He looked back up at the sky. “Funny, all that adds up to the main reason I stay away so much.”
“It’s a great town.”
“You wouldn’t think it was so great if everybody remembered and talked about everything you’d ever done wrong in your life.”
“At least you’ve always had a place to call home. It took me a while, but Whitford is that place for me now.”
He didn’t call anyplace home for long. Hometown, yes. But home, no, and he liked it that way. “Where are you from? You don’t sound like you’ve always lived in Vermont, but I can’t quite pin down your accent.”
“That’s because I don’t have an accent. I have a whole smashup of accents. I was born in Nevada, but we left there before I was a year old and we were never in one place long. My mother’s a bit nomadic, I guess.”
“You keep calling her ‘my mother.’ Never Mom or Ma.”
“I guess I call her Mom when I talk to her. Her name’s Donna, but I can’t quite bring myself to use it.”
“Not close?”
“We’re…not not close. But she’s always been more wrapped up in her own life, so I don’t hear from her a lot.”
Mitch liked to think if his mom was still alive, he’d talk to her as often as he could. As it was, he never went more than a few weeks without talking to Rosie or his aunt Mary on the phone.
His cell phone chimed and he checked it to find a text from Josh. Done.
He didn’t want his brother to be done. He wanted to sit in the sunshine with Paige and get her to tell him more about her. Like why she didn’t date, as far as the good citizens of Whitford could see. And they saw pretty much everything.
“I have to go,” he said reluctantly. “I left Josh at the barbershop, and Katie’s either done with him or she gave up and threw him out.”
“He was looking a little ragged around the edges when you brought him in for breakfast yesterday.”
“Definitely overdue for a trim.” He stood. “I’ll see you later.”
“Enjoy the weather.”
He was halfway across the park when he turned back—intending to ask her if she wanted to do something, like maybe take a ride on the bike with him—but Paige already had her nose buried back in her book. She wasn’t even watching him walk away, which didn’t bode well for her wanting to spend a little alone time with him after dark.
He walked back to the barbershop, wondering who else around town he could spend a little time with during his not-quite-a-vacation. But nobody on his mental list really piqued his interest. Nobody but Paige Sullivan.
* * *
The nice thing about living in a mobile home not much bigger than two pickup trucks parked bumper-to-bumper was the fact it didn’t take long to clean. The previous owner had updated the bathroom, and Paige had replaced the linoleum and carpet before she moved in. She loved being barefooted too much to walk on flooring as old as she was.
The kitchen and the bedroom were a little on the shabby side, but every month she tried to set aside enough money to make a small improvement. This month it was replacing the ancient lauan closet door in her bedroom with a white louver bifold that brightened up that corner of the room.
She opened and closed it a few times, proud of how well it came out and how smoothly it moved in the runner, and then she flipped on the vacuum to clean up the small mess she’d made. The old door was already outside, leaned up against the skirting, and she’d have to remember to ask Carl if he’d mind throwing it in his truck and disposing of it after his next shift.
The comforting drone of the vacuum lulled her mind into roaming free and she wasn’t surprised when it roamed right to Mitch Kowalski. She’d been thinking about him almost constantly since he’d sat down next to her on the park bench yesterday.
Mostly she wondered if he was just being nice or if he was actually interested in her. And then, no matter how hard she tried not to, she’d imagine what it would have been like if he’d put his arm around her and kissed her right there in the park in the broad daylight.
That definitely would have given the town something to talk about. Not that they neede
d much prodding to talk about Mitch, but Paige had never done anything—besides reopening the diner—that put her on the gossip hot sheet.
From what she’d heard, Mitch had an apartment in New York City, but he rarely stayed there. He traveled from job to job, either staying in hotels or renting a furnished apartment if he’d be there a few months.
That probably explained how he’d avoided any heavy relationships so far. He wasn’t in one place long enough for things to get serious. Sort of like her mother, except Donna Sullivan was usually running toward what she thought would be love and not away from it.
She wondered how it worked for Mitch. Did he stay on the run so love couldn’t catch him? Or was love simply unable to pin him down? It was like a chicken-versus-the-egg question for his love life.
Laughing at herself, Paige yanked the cord out of the wall and wound it around the vacuum. Maybe he traveled because his job demanded it. Period. And she had better things to do than ponder the state of Mitch Kowalski’s love life.
Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and she rolled her eyes when she saw the name on the caller ID screen. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. How are you?”
“Good. How about you?”
Wait for it… “I’ve been better.”
And, as expected, her mother launched into a litany of complaints revealing her growing doubt about her current relationship. Corey was five years younger than Donna, a fact which had thrilled her mom at first, but was quickly becoming a source of insecurity. “I swear, he would have forgotten the anniversary of our first date if I hadn’t put it on Facebook.”
Paige put her phone on speakerphone and very quietly spread some work out on the table in front of her, careful to make sympathetic noises at the appropriate times. Pulling what she thought of as the “Gavin’s Specials” tally sheet out of the pile, she scanned through the numbers.
All He Ever Needed Page 4
