A stream of curse words that would have made a sailor proud was the only response, so Mitch waited until Rose hurried back with a knitting needle. “I think this one’s small enough to do it.”
“Thanks. Go downstairs and I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”
She looked as though she wanted to argue, but Mitch stood firm. There was a good chance Josh’s worst injury was going to be to his pride, but at least brothers didn’t have much dignity between them in the first place. After another stream of curses from the bathroom, she gave Mitch a sharp look and walked away.
It only took him a few seconds to pop the lock and he opened the door slowly, just in case Josh was sprawled in front of it.
He was sprawled, all right, but not in front of the door. He was naked, wet and had somehow managed to wedge his cast behind the base of the old pedestal sink as he’d fallen. A quick inspection told Mitch he was a lot more pissed than he was hurt.
It took him a few minutes, trying a few different angles, but Mitch finally managed to get him unstuck. He had to stand in the tub and bend way over to catch Josh under the arms so he could slide him back as he sat him up.
When Josh was finally free of the sink, Mitch tossed him a towel and sat on the edge of the tub to catch his breath. Josh draped the towel over his lap and leaned his head against the wall to do the same.
“You hurt at all?”
“Wrenched up a bit, especially my back.” Which sucked, because Mitch knew his back was already twisted up a bit from the crutches. “Probably feel like I got hit by a truck in the morning, but no damage to the cast or the leg and I managed not to hit my head on the tub on my way down.”
“You’ll live, then. You may never live this down, but you’ll live.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“I’d be in Paige’s bed right now if you learned to dry your feet before stepping on the tile.”
“She can thank me later.”
“Now who’s the asshole?” He stood and hauled Josh to his feet.
Once Mitch was sure his brother wasn’t going to fall over and could manage the drying and dressing process without his help, he went down the stairs and wasn’t surprised to find Rose standing at the bottom, her arms crossed. “Well?”
“He’s fine. Slipped and got his cast stuck behind the sink. Pissed him off to no end and he probably tweaked his back, but he’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want either of you running around tonight, so I guess I’ll make supper.”
Mitch thought of Paige. He could be back in town in no time and they could pick up where they’d left off. Although maybe a little distance wasn’t a bad thing, since they’d left off with him daydreaming about them playing house.
And he knew when a mother hen like Rose needed to cluck over her chicks, if only to make herself feel better.
“You’re the best, Rosie,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “No matter what the others might say.”
* * *
Even with other things to think about—like romantic dates and kisses under the fireworks—Paige’s mind kept returning to Mitch’s reaction to her showing up at the lodge.
She was getting pretty good at reading his expressions, and his expression when she got out of her car wasn’t a happy to see her look. It was a wondering what the hell she was doing there look. Then he proceeded to blow so hot and cold she felt as is she were going through menopause.
On the one hand, he’d committed to a real date. On the other, she’d seen his hesitation when she said she’d never been snowmobiling. It was the opening when most people would have offered to take her out for a ride, but that would have implied that, after he left, he might not call or text, but he’d come back and see her again.
And that’s what she needed to keep in mind—that when he said there would be no looking back, he meant it. And since she told herself she didn’t have a problem with that, she went into the Whitford General Store to pick up a few things. She was determined to cook something for dinner rather than reheating take-out from the diner.
Fran pounced on her before the bell had even stopped tinkling over her head. “Did Hailey call you yet?”
“I haven’t heard from her. Why?”
“We’re all heading to Mallory’s in a little bit. She’s leaving Drew, and after such a drawn-out process to get to this point, she wants it to be quick. We’re going to have a packing party, though I guess party’s a bad word for it.”
But Mitch was coming over and she’d made up her mind to make him dinner. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We all are, honey. But the sooner we get her packed up and out of the house, the sooner they can both start healing.”
She didn’t want to spend the evening separating his and hers into piles and then putting the hers into boxes. She’d told Mitch she’d make him dinner.
But she didn’t live her life around men anymore, she reminded herself. He was a temporary luxury, but her friends were a necessity and she wasn’t going to turn her back on one because Mitch Kowalski was willing to make time for her tonight.
“I’ll be there,” she told Fran. “Just tell me when.”
Three hours later, the Miller house was full of boxes and women and red plastic cups bearing Rose’s infamous margaritas. Mallory, pale and quiet, moved through the chaos, pointing out things that needed to be packed and showing them what would stay, which was most of it.
“My new apartment’s really small, so I can’t take a lot of it,” she said. “Plus, I think I’ll just start fresh.”
It broke Paige’s heart watching Mal pull her favorite coffee mug off the rack while leaving Drew’s, and sorting her books from his on the shelf in the living room. Maybe that’s why, when Rose stepped into the bathroom Paige was going through and handed her a drink, she took it.
“Only this one,” she warned. “I have to get up at four-thirty.”
Rosie nodded. “One might help take the edge off, though. Whether it’s because of divorce or because your husband passed away, boxing up the life you thought you’d have but didn’t to start a new one is sad business.”
“I really hoped they’d work it out.”
“We all did, but I’m not surprised it’s over. Two people who want different things in life on the most fundamental level don’t have much of a chance, especially if one of them hasn’t been honest about it. Surprised they made it this long, actually.”
Paige took a sip of the potent drink, then set the cup on the edge of the sink so she could continue sorting Mallory’s toiletries from Drew’s. “There are some goals and dreams you can’t compromise on, I guess. Children’s a big one. You either want them or you don’t.”
“Exactly. You can compromise on where you live and whether or not a wife will travel with her husband and all that stuff, but how you feel about family’s important.”
Maybe it was the first sip of liquor, but Paige had a sneaking suspicion Rosie wasn’t talking about the Millers anymore. “But for some people, where and how they live is as important as whether or not to have kids.”
“Can be. Or maybe the man fills the hole the woman thought she was filling with work or friends or a community.”
Paige kept her gaze on the drawer she was taking nail polish bottles out of, wanting to make sure she tempered her response to Rosie, who she adored and didn’t want to offend. Maybe it was a generational thing or just the older woman’s way of thinking, but that was the kind of attitude that set Paige’s teeth on edge.
A man would make it all better.
“Maybe,” she said quietly, “the woman doesn’t have a hole to fill. Maybe she’s on solid ground and she’ll wait for a man who’s happy to share it with her.”
“Some men need a little more space to run.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be the man for me,” Paige said, following it up with a casual laugh, as if they were only talking hypotheticals.
Rosie sighed. “Maybe not. I best get back to the kitchen and guard the blender. There
’s a fine line between taking the edge off and a bunch of wasted women shoving random crap in boxes.”
Paige took another sip of the margarita, then grimaced in the mirror. She wasn’t a big fan of the drink and, damn, she’d forgotten to call Mitch.
Chapter Sixteen
Showered, shaven and packing a fresh batch of condoms in his wallet, Mitch whistled as he left his room and walked down the stairs. He had no idea where anybody was, and he didn’t care. All that mattered was knowing where he was about to be, and that was with Paige.
A knock on the kitchen door took him by surprise, since he hadn’t heard a vehicle pull up. And the occasional random guest looking for a place to crash for a night would go to the front door.
By the time Mitch got to the kitchen, Drew was already letting himself in. And to say the man looked like hell warmed over was putting it kindly. Only two things made a man look like that and Drew wasn’t sick, so Mitch knew he wouldn’t be using those condoms after all.
Drew made eye contact for a second, and Mitch could see the moisture threatening to gather before he looked down at the floor. “She’s packing right now.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, man.” He went to the fridge and took out a couple cans of beer, one of which he handed to Drew. “I really hoped you guys would work it out.”
“Maybe we could have if we ever talked about the same thing. My problem is the lying. Ten years of it. But she thinks the problem is that I care more about kids that don’t exist than I do her.”
“You driving tonight?”
“I was hoping you’d spot me a room. I don’t want to sit around and watch Mal leave me.”
Holding his open beer in one hand, Mitch reached back into the fridge with the other and grabbed a full six-pack. “Let’s go sit on the back porch and put a dent in this.”
Drew took the beer. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Go ahead. I’ve gotta make a quick call, then I’ll be out.”
“Tell Paige I said hi.”
“Hey, it could be for work.”
“Sure it is,” Drew called over his shoulder on his way out.
Paige answered on the second ring. “I was just about to call you.”
“Let me guess. You’re helping Mallory pack.”
“And I guess you’re probably helping Drew get drunk?”
“Something like that. He’ll be crashing here tonight and I’ll be drinking a lot slower than him, so don’t worry about him showing up and making a scene.”
She sighed. “This sucks.”
That it did. And it was proof, as if he needed any, that love didn’t trump two people wanting different things in life. “If there’s drinking involved in that packing, don’t drive. Call if you need to and Rosie will come get you.”
“Umm…Rosie’s here. She’s making the margaritas.”
Mitch walked to the window and, sure enough, Rosie’s car was gone. “She’s getting sneaky in her old age.”
“I won’t tell her you said that. Anyway, Fran’s not drinking, so she’ll do any driving that needs to be done. And I’m only having one anyway. Drinking or no drinking, my alarm’s going off at four-thirty tomorrow morning.”
He made her promise to call if there were any problems at Mallory’s and then ended the call before he could ask what she was doing tomorrow night. He’d been falling off his game plan lately, a key component of which was not letting a woman get too accustomed to him being around, but the suffering on his friend’s face had been a sharp reminder of the messy emotional stuff he wanted nothing to do with.
Drew was downing the last of his first beer when Mitch joined him on the porch, and he made a mental note to scrounge up some food in a little while. A few beers was one thing, but getting falling-down, puking drunk wasn’t going to help the guy feel any better.
“I keep asking myself if I would have married her if I’d known from the beginning she didn’t want kids.”
There was no going back in time, and what-ifs didn’t help anything, but Mitch popped open a beer and settled back to listen.
“I think I would have. I probably would have assumed she’d change her mind after we’d been married awhile. And when we first got married, it’s not like having a baby was the first thing on my to-do list anyway. There’s a good chance we would have ended up in the same place we are now—we just would have taken a different road to get here.”
“Would that have been easier or harder, do you think?”
Drew considered the question, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I think being pissed off she lied to me for ten years is keeping some of the hurt at bay. I guess there’d be a lot more hurt and sadness if it had gone the other way.”
Maybe Drew couldn’t feel it yet, but Mitch could see the guy had more than his share of hurt and sadness. “I thought you had it all. Respected chief of police, beautiful wife. I thought I’d get the having-a-baby email any time.”
“You have it all,” Drew said, using a fresh beer can to point at him. “Your own business, plenty of money and you don’t have to give a crap what women want in life. You just give them what they want in bed and move the hell on before it gets complicated.”
It might be the way he lived his life, true, but the way Drew summed it up made him squirm a little.
“Look at you and Paige,” Drew continued, and Mitch was pretty sure he didn’t want to. “You’re a big man of the world and she’s a small-town girl, but neither of you are pretending you want the same shit in life. You’ll just screw each other and move on. That’s what I should have done with Mal. Screwed her and moved the hell on.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. You loved Mal.”
“I still love her.” He threw the can, and beer exploded all over the freshly painted railing. “Goddammit, I still love her.”
“I know you do.”
“I don’t want to.”
There was no magic off-switch, though, so Mitch knew the only thing Drew could do was ride it out. That’s what he’d done after his relationship with Pam ended and he thought he’d been upset. But looking at his best friend now, he had to admit he’d had a lot more anger and a lot less pain when they went their separate ways.
“Love sucks,” Drew declared, popping the top on a fresh beer.
“I’ll drink to that.” Not that he was sure he had a lot of experience with love himself, but it sure had a tendency to make people unhappy.
But Mitch didn’t hate love, or even mildly dislike it. He just wasn’t ready for it. Northern Star Demolition was his mistress and he’d already learned the hard way she left no room for a wife. Maybe someday he could take a step back from the company, but that someday was a long time off and, in the meantime, there was no sense promising a woman she’d be his everything.
Images of Paige flashed through his mind—in the diner she’d brought back to life all by herself and in the tiny trailer she’d made into her home. Like Mitch, she knew what she wanted in life and she’d dug in her feet to get it.
He knocked back some beer and stared out into the fading light. It was a good thing they both already knew they were on two different roads in life and were just enjoying a quick rest stop together. Or so he told himself.
Maybe if he had another beer, he could convince himself he still believed it.
* * *
Their chief of police’s wife suddenly moving out of their house when the town thought they were reconciling was, not surprisingly, the hot topic at the diner the next morning. Paige tried to keep her head down and her mouth shut, but her car had been spotted in the Millers’ driveway.
“How’s Mallory doing?” was the greeting of the day, and Paige recognized it for what it was. Probably twenty percent genuine concern and eighty percent conversational gambit, meant to open the door to spilling everything she knew about the poor woman. While, as the owner of a town gathering place, it was probably expected she’d feed them gossip along with cheeseburgers and fries, Mal was a friend and Paige deflected and distracted her wa
y out of feeding the rumor mill.
She’d left a little before ten the night before, about the time the serious packing was giving way to alcohol-fueled mood swings. Tears, then rantings about how all men sucked, then more tears. Paige had made her escape and fallen straight into bed, exhausted by the emotional tension of the evening.
When she went through the swinging door into the kitchen with a full bus pan of dirty dishes, Carl jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I let a stray in the back door.”
She set the bus pan on the dishwashing platform and went out into the back area. There, sitting at the tiny break table nobody ever used, was a very haggard-looking Mitch.
He looked up at her, wincing against the fluorescent lights. “I’ll pay extra for my breakfast and the six gallons of coffee I’m going to drink if I can sit back here.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Not good.”
Sympathy tugged at her heart. He’d suffered the same emotional tension she had the night before, but it must have been so much worse. Not only had he been one-on-one with Drew, but he was his best friend. “I’ll get a carafe of coffee all your own, and an orange juice. What do you want to eat?”
“Four of everything.”
“You sure you’re up to that?”
He nodded, then winced at the movement. Shaking her head, she gave Carl his order for four pancakes, four scrambled eggs, four slices of toast and four each of bacon strips and sausage links. It was his stomach.
After bringing Mitch a carafe of coffee, Paige went back out front to brew some more and check on her customers. Katie Davis had taken a seat at the counter, not looking much better than Mitch.
“Why did you let me drink so much last night?” were the first words out of her mouth.
“I barely saw you drink at all. You must have picked up the pace after I left.”
“Maybe. Everything gets a little blurry just before midnight.” She flipped through the menu she didn’t need to read, and Paige got the impression she wasn’t even seeing the words. “I remember somebody asking Mom straight out why she didn’t like Andy Miller, though.”
Paige really needed to make rounds with the coffeepot, but she pretended not to see the empty mugs perched precariously on the very edges of tables. “What did she say?”
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