He could hear the rising annoyance in her voice, but he couldn’t help himself. “Okay. Was our riding gear on the list?”
“Sean, really?” She stepped back so she could put her hands on her hips—phone still clutched in one—and glare at him. “Feel free to take your grown ass over there and look at the damn pile.”
Grinning, he closed the space between them and, cupping the back of her head, lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her until the tension eased from her body and she moved a hand from her hip to his.
“Sometime during the next two weeks, we’re going to sneak away. Just the two of us. There’s a spot we can get to,mostlyon legal trails, that I want you to see.”
“Mostly legal? Your brother is president of the ATV club. Your sister’s married to the police chief. You need to behave.”
Before he could respond, they heard a horn and turned to see an RV coming up the drive. It wasn’t huge, since it was only Cat and Russell and they didn’t want to tow a car, but it would be plenty of space for the three of them. The pile, he wasn’t as sure about.
“Grammy and Papa,” Johnny yelled, pointing at the RV. Then he grabbed a bag from the pile and started dragging it toward pavement.
Sean sprinted across the yard and scooped up his son, bag and all. “Not so fast, kid. Let them park.”
“I want Nana Rosie.”
“Me, too, but we have to wait until tomorrow. You’re going to sleep in your bed tonight and when you wake up, we’ll have breakfast and then go to Nana Rosie’s.”
He felt as anxious to be there as Johnny did. They hadn’t been to Maine as a family since a quick trip over during the Christmas holidays, and he was looking forward to sitting by the campfire with his family.
He’d hated the lodge growing up and had gotten out of Whitford as soon as he was of age. But when he’d gotten the call it was in trouble a few years back and then seen for himself the state it was in, he’d realized how much it really meant to him. Saving it had renewed the close bond with his siblings he’d lost, and he didn’t feel the old resentment anymore when he thought of the Northern Star. And as Johnny got older, Sean was looking forward to taking him back and watching him experience the adventures he had as a child.
Russell, Emma’s step-grandfather, walked over and they shook hands. Then the older man looked at the pile in the yard. “What did you do wrong and when’s the bonfire?”
* * *
“You’re not going out by the Northern Star tonight by any chance, are you?”
Ben glanced over at Drew Miller who, as the police chief, was often buried in paperwork. That appeared to be the case today, since there were mounds of papers on his desk and he was crankier than usual. Ben had stopped by his office to drop off some papers from Sam, which hadn’t made Drew happy as he already had enough of the stuff. And now it looked like Ben was going to get shuffled off on another errand.
To the one place he’d been avoiding for a week and a half.
There was a connection happening between him and Laney. It was that connection that had compelled him to turn back to her before he walked out of the diner, and was the reason she’d been looking at him when he turned. That quick smile and wave goodbye had felt like the most natural thing in the world to him.
But he knew Laney wasn’t looking for a connection, and the last thing he needed to do at this crossroad in his life was fall for a woman who had no idea what she was going to do—or probably where she’d even be living—come the changing of the season. So he’d stayed away from the lodge, hoping that the budding connection would fade with a little time and distance between them.
Judging by the jolt of excitement he felt at the thought of having a solid reason to head out there, he’d been wrong.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he replied, thinking Drew would saynever mindand he wouldn’t have to rely solely on his own self-control to keep him in town.
“Because you were too busy planning to sit in my office and drink my coffee all day?”
“I’ve only been here fifteen minutes. But yes, that’s my entire plan. I even wrote it in big letters on my calendar so I couldn’t fit anything else in.”
When Drew sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face, Ben felt his resolve weaken. He looked stressed and tired. “I need my dad’s signature on a few papers and they have to be original, not scanned. And Liz has classes online all evening, so Paige has Jackson, but she runs out of steam early now that she’s so pregnant. Two toddlers are a bit much, especially because Jackson doesn’t stay where she puts him anymore.”
Liz was taking some kind of business marketing course online so she could take over the website and social media for the lodge. The family had been paying the woman who handled the website for Mitch’s demolition company to do it, but the lodge’s needs—and the money being paid out—had grown with the expansion and Liz taking it over worked out best for everybody.
“I can run them over,” Ben said, relenting. He’d find Andy, get the signatures, and get out.
Maybe. It would probably be rude to leave without at least saying hello to Laney. And it had been long enough so it wouldn’t hurt to check the bolts on her Adirondack chairs and make sure none had loosened up. She might not think to do that.
“I owe you one. Liz has been trying to get a lot of her work done in advance because her family’s coming tomorrow and she doesn’t want to spend their entire vacation on her computer, so I’ve been trying to juggleallthe balls this past week.”
Ben wondered if Laney would be busy, with the extended Kowalski family showing up the next day. But knowing Rosie, they’d probably been ready for days. “I’ve got a few more things to do and I don’t want to stray too far because Dave had some kind of an appointment this afternoon, but then I’ll take a ride out there. You need them back tonight?”
“No, but by ten tomorrow morning at the latest. I can swing by the station in the morning if you’re going to be there.”
