“I think you’re too salacious for me now,” Hailey told her. “I’m not sure I can be your friend anymore.”
Katie laughed and snatched the bag away from her. Maybe a few chips wouldn’t hurt.
* * *
Rose was curled up on the couch, feeling about as content as she’d felt in a very long time. The Christmas tree lights were twinkling, the fire was crackling and Andy’s arm was warm and snug around her shoulder.
“I know you said Katie went to Hailey’s, but where’s Josh?”
That was another reason for her deep sense of contentment. “He’s taking a nap.”
Rose was fairly sure she knew why Josh wasn’t getting enough sleep at night. It was obvious in the way he and Katie had been looking at each other since yesterday morning. The very air between them felt different. And, in her mind, the fact they’d both chosen gifts for each other that honored one of the happiest days they’d ever shared together was a sign they were meant to be together.
“You may have noticed I didn’t bring you a gift Christmas Eve,” Andy said.
She had, though she’d tried not to be disappointed by it. “I wasn’t expecting a gift. Just your company.”
“I had it in my pocket, but I wanted to give it to you like this. When it’s just us.” He pulled a small, flat box out from under a throw pillow, where he must have hidden it earlier. “Merry Christmas, Rose.”
Her hands shook a little as she unwrapped the paper. That embarrassed her a little, but she was anxious about what she’d find—something he hadn’t wanted lost in the chaos of the entire family.
She lifted the lid off the box and her breath caught in her throat. “It’s…oh, good lord, I’m going to cry.”
Andy pulled his arm free so he could lift the charm bracelet out of the box and fasten it on her wrist. With tears running unchecked down her cheeks, she touched each silver charm, one by one. A pair of scissors for Katie. A tiny ball on a chain for Mitch. She supposed it was probably meant to jokingly represent the old “ball and chain,” but it looked like a miniature wrecking ball. A hammer for Ryan. A combat boot for Sean, who’d served in the army. A coffee mug for Liz, and a tiny snowmobile for Josh.
It was a perfect choice for him, she thought. She’d almost expected a little house, but the lodge didn’t represent Josh. No matter where he went, though, he would always love sledding.
“Mitch almost did me in,” Andy said. “They don’t make explosives for charm bracelets that I could find.”
“It’s perfect,” she whispered. “So very perfect.”
When he slid his finger under her chin to tip her face up, she didn’t resist. The kiss was soft and sweet, and as perfect for her as the bracelet.
“Merry Christmas, Andy.”
He put his arm up and she snuggled back against his chest again. It was a very nice way to spend the day after Christmas.
“So when are you going to let Josh and Katie know they don’t have to sneak around the place like teenagers?”
She laughed. “When I stop enjoying watching them do it.”
“Do you really think she’ll be able to keep him here?”
“I hope so.” It was a sobering question, taking a little of the shine off her mood. “Paige brought up the possibility Josh might leave and talk Katie into going with him. That worries me.”
“I don’t think she’d leave here. I don’t think she’d leave you.”
“People do unexpected things all the time. Look at me, for example. Go door-to-door and ask how many people in Whitford would believe you if you said Rosie Davis kissed Andy Miller in front of her Christmas tree.”
His chuckle rumbled against her face where it rested against his chest. “Even I can hardly believe it.”
“What I find hard to believe is that Josh would actually leave.”
“I think he’ll leave, but I think he’ll come back on his own.” He kissed the top of her head. “People have a tendency to find their way back to the ones they’re meant to be with.”
Chapter Eleven
When Josh had agreed to get up at the crack of dawn and drive down to Brookline, he hadn’t known he’d be spending half the night before in the barn with Katie. He didn’t want to get up and he certainly didn’t want to drive four and a half to five hours—one way—to play moving guy.
On a more positive note, he had Katie to keep him company on the drive. She’d certainly kept him company last night, and he had the sore muscles to prove it. The good kind of sore, though, not the aches and pains he’d have after today. Four and a half hours in the truck, a few hours of heavy lifting, and then another four and a half hours in the truck was hard on the body.
They loaded up on coffee, grabbed some muffins out of the basket and hit the road. When they got to Lauren’s house, Ryan was just pulling down and securing the back door of the rented box truck.
He shook Josh’s hand and then hugged Katie. “I appreciate you guys giving us a hand. I’ll be so glad to have this behind us. Lauren will, too, though she’s a little emotional today.”
“Where’s Mitch?” Katie asked while they waited for Lauren to do a last sweep through cabinets and closets, making sure the house was really empty. Katie would have gone in and helped her, but she got the impression it was really a walk-through to say goodbye.
“He’s coming down with something, I guess. He said he couldn’t make the drive over here, never mind to Massachusetts.”
“Sure he is,” Josh scoffed. Funny how germs had a way of attacking when there was a moving truck to unload. It was the same principle as when they were kids and Sean always seemed to have an upset stomach when it was time to wash the dishes.
“He sounded like crap on the phone.” Ryan shrugged. “Said it was a stomach thing, and I don’t think he’s playing hooky. To be honest, I don’t think Paige would let him get away with it. She and Lauren are pretty close.”
“If he’s really sick, he needs to stay away from Rosie. And so does Paige. The last thing Rosie needs right now is a stomach bug.”
Once Lauren had finished saying goodbye to her house and locked the door on her way out, Ryan climbed into the truck, but Josh saw Lauren hesitate. Her eyes were a little damp as she gave her home a last look. He knew this was the final transition from her old life to her new one in Brookline. When Nick’s holiday visit with his dad was over, they’d be meeting her ex-husband halfway to pick him up—which they’d do every other weekend, too—and when they came to Whitford to visit, they’d be staying in Ryan’s room at the lodge.
Once Lauren was ready to go, Josh and Katie buckled up and he pulled his truck out behind Ryan’s. They hadn’t gone twenty miles when he heard Katie’s gentle snoring and shook his head. So much for company. He decided to leave her alone, though, because the more rested she was now, the better she’d be at keeping him awake on the drive home. He might even have her take a turn at the wheel. But for now, it looked as if it was just him, the radio and Ryan’s taillights.
Amazingly for a weekday morning, they didn’t hit too much traffic, so they pulled into Ryan’s driveway before noon. Which was good because, even though they’d stopped a couple of times along the way, a lot of coffee had been consumed and it had been a while since the last pit stop.
Once the mad rush to the bathroom was over, Josh took a look around his brother’s house. It looked a lot less like a model home and a lot more like a home home than the last time he’d been there. The living room was painted a dark, creamy-peach color and there were family photos on the walls instead of stock art. Lauren’s knickknacks were here and there, along with obvious signs of teenager debris.
It must be nice, he thought, to get to choose your home. To be able to choose the style and how many bedrooms and whether or not you let strangers sleep in them. He’d always tried to be grateful he’d always h
ad a home and a job, but sometimes, when he saw others getting to make choices like that for themselves, he wished he could make them, too.
A couple of years before his dad died, Josh had started collecting pictures of houses. He found them in ads and magazines and the real estate pages. He’d been partial to log cabins that had a lot of glass, and he’d thought when he got to buy a house someday, it would look like those. Then his dad had passed away.
Mitch, Ryan, Sean and Liz had all been there for the funeral, of course. They’d even spent a few days together as a family, with Rose fussing over them. He could remember sitting on the couch with Liz because she wanted to look through the old photo albums with him. Katie had sat on his other side, holding his hand.
Then they’d all, essentially, told him to let them know if he needed anything and gone back to their lives. A week later he tossed his folder of house photos into the woodstove.
“If you guys start unloading the truck, we’ll start unpacking stuff,” Lauren said, pulling Josh out of the self-pity pool he’d been drowning in. “I know we can’t waste any time, because it’s a long drive back for you guys. Are you sure can’t spend the night? We have plenty of room”
There was no doubt about that. It didn’t have as many bedrooms as the Northern Star, but his brother was doing all right for himself. “I have people checking in tomorrow. I can’t be away on Fridays, so we’ll hustle and get back tonight.”
He lost track of the number of trips they made from the truck to the garage. Every third or fourth trip, Lauren and Katie would appear and take a couple of boxes into the house. A few were so heavy that Ryan or Josh carried them and then they’d bring more from the truck.
Finally, just when he was considering crawling under the truck for a nap and hoping nobody noticed, Josh could see the back wall of the box truck. He grabbed one of the final boxes before they hit the few pieces of furniture Lauren hadn’t donated to Goodwill and headed back down the ramp. Ryan was between him and the garage, but he didn’t step out of the way. Instead, he decided it was a good time to make conversation.
“When did you start sleeping with Katie?”
Josh almost dropped the box, and since Lauren had written Fragile all over it in huge black letters, that probably wouldn’t be good. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not blind. Not stupid, either. It’s pretty obvious.”
It was? “What do you mean?”
“You’re treating her like a woman.”
“She is a woman, dumbass.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never treated her like one. You’ve always acted like she was one of the guys.”
Josh wasn’t sure what that meant. It’s not as if he’d spent the day handing out roses or throwing his coat over puddles. And he’d been very careful not to touch her in front of his family. At least he thought he had.
“When you got here, you opened the screen door and then stepped back to let her go first,” Ryan said.
“I have manners. You’re right—I must be having sex with her.”
“When we stopped to have a drink, you broke the seal on her bottle of water before you handed it to her instead of tossing it to her from across the room like usual.”
“Lauren has nicer knickknacks than we do and Katie can’t catch for shit.”
“You’re treating her differently than you have your entire life so, yeah, I think you’re sleeping with her.”
One of the things that had occurred to him after he lost his battle to keep his hands off Katie was how his brothers might react if they found out. Despite how he felt about Rosie, Josh had always seen Katie as his friend rather than practically a sister. But Mitch and Ryan, being older than her, might have seen her differently growing up. Mitch, the mistletoe-hanging bastard, was obviously okay with it. Ryan? It was hard to tell with him, but lying wouldn’t help his case any in the long run.
“Christmas Eve.”
Ryan didn’t look surprised. “That dress was…as an almost married man, there’s nothing I can really say about the dress.”
“Believe it or not, it was a tank top and boxer shorts that lit the fuse. The dress just blew the top off.”
“I bet it did.”
“I’m surprised Mitch didn’t tell you.” Josh shifted the box’s weight in his arms. It wasn’t light.
“Mitch knew?”
“I assume so. He knew I wanted to and he knew I was less cranky after Christmas than before it, so he probably figured it out.”
Ryan nodded. “We all knew you were going to eventually. We just didn’t know when, until I saw you with her today. I thought maybe it was Christmas Eve. Does this change anything? With the lodge, I mean?”
“Katie and the lodge are two separate things. What’s going on with me and Katie doesn’t change how I feel about the Northern Star.”
“That’s kind of messy, don’t you think?”
And it wasn’t going to get any less messy with the entire family in their business. “Yeah, it is. And this box is kind of heavy, so I think we’re done here.”
* * *
There was no way they could unpack the boxes as fast as the men unloaded, so Katie and Lauren focused on digging the essentials out of the pile. It was kind of fun, actually, like a scavenger hunt, and they worked well together. Plus she had plenty of energy since she’d napped most of the ride down, though she felt kind of bad about that. She’d have to make it up to Josh.
Maybe in the barn tomorrow night. Between the driving and the boxes, she knew they wouldn’t do anything but fall into bed—each in their own beds—when they finally got home. But by tomorrow night they’d be ready to scratch that itch again. And, surprisingly enough, the pile of older comforters Josh had snuck out of the lodge’s backup supply was comfortable enough. Maybe not as good as a bed, but better than the living room floor.
They were unpacking a box marked Under Bathroom Sink when Lauren finally broached the subject she’d been hemming and hawing around since they’d started. “So, you and Josh, huh?”
Once Lauren decided to stop beating around the bush, she really went for it, Katie thought. “Yeah. Me and Josh. That obvious?”
“You’re both relaxed, which means you probably stopped fighting the attraction. It also means that was one hell of a dress.”
Katie laughed and split the tape on the Bathroom Drawers box. It was a small box because Lauren had had a small bathroom, but looking around Ryan’s gorgeous master bathroom, she didn’t think space was going to be a problem. “Now I get why women pay too much money for bras and don’t wear jeans and sweatshirts on a date. I definitely got his attention.”
“What does Rose think of you two being a couple now? She must be so excited.”
Katie sat back on her heels, reminding herself this conversation was probably going to happen a few more times with the various family members and she couldn’t let it slice at her like emotional razor blades. “We’re more in a friends-with-benefits space right now. Not really a couple, and my mom doesn’t know.”
Lauren snorted. “Sure she doesn’t.”
“Okay, she’s pretending she doesn’t know and I’m pretending I believe that.”
“You never know what’ll happen in the future,” Lauren said, giving her a look that clearly said she didn’t believe the friends-with-benefits thing for a second. Not surprising, considering Lauren knew how Katie felt about Josh. But it seemed like everybody underestimated just how strongly Josh felt about leaving.
“How’s Nick doing?” she asked, desperate to change the subject. “With the move and you getting married and all?”
“It’s a lot of change all at once. Sometimes he’s okay and sometimes he’s not, but we’ll get through it. I think once he starts school and gets back into a routine, it’ll help. And he likes Ryan, so everything else just has
to work itself out with time.”
“Is he having a good visit with his dad?”
“Yeah. Dean’s been really reasonable about us moving down here, which makes a huge difference. I hate to give the bastard credit, but if he’d chosen to be an ass about it, I can’t imagine what that would have done to Nick.”
“Brookline’s a lot different from Whitford. That’ll be an adjustment.”
Lauren laughed. “You’re not kidding. But we’ve been to the movies and gone to the mall and tried to show him the fun side of living in a town with more than one main intersection.”
“Got a guest room?” Katie joked.
“As a matter of fact, we do. Anytime you want to come down and have a crazy shopping weekend, just say the word.”
Katie wasn’t into crazy shopping weekends, but she wouldn’t mind a trip to the city now and then, just for something to do. And, now that she thought about it, they probably had a Victoria’s Secret store in the neighborhood. She wouldn’t mind blowing some money there.
“Lauren?” Ryan peeked in. “Hey, we’re starving. You guys want pizza or Chinese?”
“Pizza,” both women said at the same time.
“I’ll call it in,” Lauren said. “We’ll probably finish up in here just in time to eat.”
A half hour later, they were gathered in the kitchen, standing at the counter and devouring pepperoni pizza right out of the box. Katie was starving, so she concentrated on eating and watched Josh and Ryan talking between bites. They were discussing business, mainly Ryan’s, so she tuned out their words and focused on their faces.
The Kowalski family resemblance was unmistakable. Nobody could doubt Josh and Ryan were brothers, and it was the same with the other three. They shared a lot of the same mannerisms, too, though she doubted they were aware of it.
“Good-looking guys, aren’t they?” Lauren asked in a low voice. “We’re very lucky women.”
Katie nodded, but then she took a huge bite of her pizza so she could avoid having to respond out loud. Lauren was very lucky, she’d give her that. Ryan loved her, was going to marry her and didn’t hide how happy he was to be starting a life with her and her son.
All He Ever Dreamed (The Kowalskis) Page 12
