He snapped the phone closed and shoved it in his pocket. “Women.”
“Give me that brownie back,” Rose snapped.
“I’m kidding. The problem isn’t the homeowner’s wife. It’s Phil. He’s too nice to be in charge.”
“You won’t really fire him, will you?” Lauren asked.
“No, and he knows it. He has trouble being firm with homeowners, but the younger guys will work themselves into the ground for him. So how you doing today?”
“Better, now that I’ve had a brownie. You should eat yours. They do wonders for the mood.”
He smiled, his blue eyes crinkling in the corners. “My mood’s already improving.”
She found herself smiling back. So was hers. “How’s Nick doing?”
“Good. Andy had him working on the stone wall that runs around the back of the property. Straightening loose stones and yanking any weeds out.” They heard footsteps running up the back steps. “Speak of the little devil.”
Nick rushed in and grabbed his backpack out of the corner. He was filthy, sweaty and his hair was standing up in about twelve different directions, but he was also smiling. “Hi, Mom. I saw your car out front. Andy said I’m done for the day.”
Lauren crumpled up her napkin and tossed it in the garbage, trying to ignore the delicious sauce simmering on the stove. She needed to use the slow cooker more often on workdays. The only time she really had to cook big meals was the weekends, but she was the only one home to eat them. Or maybe she could cook up big batches of sauce to freeze and then reheat during the week. She suspected, though, her efforts wouldn’t taste as good as Rose’s smelled.
“Thanks for the brownie,” she told Rose. Then she turned to Ryan, who’d apparently devoured his in the time it had taken her to walk to the trash can. “Good luck with your countertops.”
He smiled again, making that slow heat curl through her insides. “Thanks. I’ll see you around.”
“Probably.”
She drove home listening to Nick’s story about the snake they found curled up in the stone wall, but part of her was thinking about Ryan. The most sinful thing in that kitchen should have been the freshly baked double-fudge brownie, but the gooey chocolate had nothing on that man’s smile. Or his eyes.
“Are you listening to me, Mom?”
“Yeah. Rock wall. Snake.”
“That was like two minutes ago. I said I need more money in my lunch account.”
Oops. Time to get her mind off Ryan and back on reality where it belonged.
*
On Saturday, Ryan scored a parking spot directly in front of Whitford Hardware and gave the door an extra little jerk because he liked the way the old bell sounded when it rang. Always had.
The place looked pretty empty, but he heard paint cans being moved around on the other side of a shelf. “Hey, Dozer, I need a half-dozen tubes of caulking and a couple of guns. Some idiot can’t read a supply list and took off for the weekend without leaving me what I need. Maybe if I texted it to him, he’d pay more attention.”
The person who stepped out from behind the shelf wasn’t Dozer, though. It was Lauren. She had on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, both of which were liberally covered in dust.
“Dad’s not in today, so I’m covering for him.”
Which was fine with him. He’d never turn down a chance to see Lauren. “Is he okay? He’s not sick or anything?”
“He’s fine. My mom’s been trying to get him to slow down, so she talked him into going to an RV show today. It’s a good excuse to get some dusting done. He still gets the eye-level shelves, but you could write a book in the dust on the bottom shelves.”
“Not that it’s my business or anything, but why isn’t Nick doing it?”
“He works here during the summers. And he helps out part-time during school vacations sometimes, but he’s with his dad on the weekends and has school, which my dad thinks is more important. Mostly Nick helps shelve the deliveries and replace screens and glass panes and mix paint. Neither of them ever think to dust, and my mother’s refused to work in the store for years. She wants him to sell it and take her to Niagara Falls.”
He realized the time Nick was spending at the lodge probably took away from the time he spent at the store, but he knew Dozer had been all for it. He’d told him so last time Ryan had stopped in, after he’d apologized profusely for his grandson’s behavior. “He could probably go to New York without selling the business.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “From Niagara Falls, she wants to visit the Black Hills. And she’s always wanted to see a giant redwood tree or whatever they’re called.”
“That’s a long time to hang a We’ll Be Right Back sign on the door.”