“Yeah. Let me get you that caulking and the guns. I was just about to hang the We’ll Be Right Back sign on the door myself so I can go get some lunch. After cleaning all morning, the yogurt I brought in for lunch isn’t going to cut it.”
“I was going to stop at the diner for a burger when I left here. Why don’t you let me buy you one?” The words rolled casually off his tongue, but his stomach knotted up. Did he mean it as a date? Would she take it that way? But, really, they were going to the same place, so it was a friendly and gentlemanly offer to make.
“Okay. Sure.” She found an empty box and loaded it with the caulking guns and tubes, but he insisted on carrying it to the register.
He put it on his card instead of the lodge’s account because he was always on the lookout for ways to save the family money. Mitch had it in his head they shouldn’t put personal funds into the place because it needed to sink or swim on its own, without them throwing good money after bad. Ryan felt that they should do what they had to do to get the lodge back in shape and then worry about turning a profit. But he wasn’t the oldest.
“I’m going to hang the sign and lock up after you leave,” she told him. “But I want to try to wash up a little, so I’ll be a few minutes.”
“I’ll get us a table.”
He barely noticed the bell ringing on his way out. After dumping the box in the bed of his truck, he drove down the street to the diner’s lot and then sat in the truck for a few minutes, getting his bearings.
So he was going to have lunch with Lauren. They were friends. They were both hungry. It was no big deal. And really there was nowhere else to eat but the diner, which, unfortunately, his sister-in-law owned. Rose would know he was there with Lauren before their food was even cooked, and God only knew what she’d make of it.
Since there was nothing he could do about that, he got out of his truck and went inside, where Paige greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. “You want to sit at the counter?”
“Um, actually I’m going to take a table. Lauren’s joining me.”
He had to give her credit. She almost managed to hide the curiosity he knew the simple statement had triggered. “Okay. Setup for two, coming right up.”
There weren’t really any private tables at the diner, but he chose one in the back and listened to Paige make small talk about the wedding while she laid out the place mats and silverware.
“I was going to hire a caterer, but Rosie told me Fran’s talked to practically everybody on the guest list and turned it into a potluck dinner. Does that sound tacky? I mean, it’s a wedding reception, even if it is in the backyard.”
“Nobody will think it’s tacky. That’s the way it’s usually done around here, and most people would think you were crazy if you paid strangers to cook you food your neighbors will gladly bring.”
“And Steph already has her iPod loaded up with playlists so she can play DJ. She’s been emailing me lists and, I swear, that girl has every song ever recorded on that thing.”
Ryan grinned. His cousin’s daughter loved her music and her iPod. He didn’t get to see her a lot, but he never saw her without it. “More money saved.”
“And Gavin’s mom is going to be our photographer.” Gavin was her second-shift cook and he loved to experiment on the locals.
“Spend all that money you saved on alcohol and yours will forever be considered the wedding of the century in Whitford.”
She laughed and slapped his shoulder with the menu. “You know Fran is ordering enough champagne to turn the entire U.S. Navy into drunken sailors.”
As fascinating as he found wedding planning, or pretended to at least, Ryan kept looking out the window, waiting for Lauren to come into sight. He tried not to be obvious, but he must have failed, because Paige chuckled.
“First-date jitters?”
“It’s not a date.” He said it firmly, so she couldn’t misunderstand. “I stopped by the hardware store and she was on her way to lunch and I was, too, so I offered to buy her a burger.”
“Whatever you say.” She winked at him before she walked away.
“It’s not a date,” he muttered again, even though nobody would hear him.
*
It’s not a date, Lauren told herself as she walked down the main street toward the diner. Dates were planned far enough in advance for a woman to shave her legs and pick out something nice to wear. They weren’t so impromptu that she had to show up in jeans with her hair in a ponytail.
What this was was two friends bumping into each other at lunchtime and deciding to have lunch. And, since all the Kowalski guys were a touch old-fashioned, he’d offered to pay. Simple. And not a date.
He’d found a table in the back, away from the counter, which was filling up with lunch regulars, and he smiled when she slid into the booth across from him. “You missed a little bit of dust, right on the side of your nose.”
She wiped at it and he nodded to let her know it was gone. “Dad uses the cheapest paper towels he can buy. I washed my face, but that brown paper just smeared everything around.”