Mitch almost choked on his third bite. “A wife is the last thing I need.”
Rose shook her head, sitting across from him with a sandwich of her own. “I don’t know where we went wrong with you kids.”
“What do you mean? Ryan got married. Liz has been with that meathead, Darren, for years. And Sean’s married now.”
“Ryan also got divorced and, as you so delicately pointed out, Liz is with a man we don’t like. Since you boys weren’t very good at hiding your feelings, we rarely get to see her. And Sean may be happily married now, but one out of five isn’t exactly a winning record.”
“Didn’t realize it was a sport,” he mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich.
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Not really. I hate to break it to you, Mrs. Cleaver, but not being married doesn’t mean I’m a monk.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. What about kids? How are you going to start a family if you can’t settle on one woman?”
In an unexpected—and unwelcome—flash, Paige Sullivan’s face popped into his head. Since he wasn’t looking for one woman to settle down with, he assumed his subconscious went for the one woman whose home base he most wanted to slide into.
“My job doesn’t really mesh well with settling down,” he said. “I have to travel a lot. And not just a few days or a weekend here and there. I’m talking about weeks at a time.”
“You’ll make it work for the right woman.”
“Guess I haven’t found her yet.”
He thought he had once. Pam had not only seemed like Ms. Right, but she’d come pretty damn close to being Mrs. Mitchell Kowalski. Smart, funny and sexy as hell, she’d pushed past his habit of avoiding commitment, and it was only a few months before she moved in and started turning his apartment into a home.
Unfortunately, home was mostly a place he visited between jobs, and Pam really ramped up the nagging about him being gone all the time once he put a diamond on her finger. It had been a pivotal time in building Northern Star Demolition, and he’d kept telling her he’d eventually be able to travel less. Instead, eventually, she’d let another man keep his side of the bed warm and, when Mitch found out, gave him an ultimatum. Her, or his work. Even if he hadn’t had contracts to honor and people depending on him for their paychecks, he wasn’t giving up his business, so that had been the end of that.
Since Pam, he’d gone back to doing things the way that had always gotten him the physical pleasure without the emotional pain—letting the ladies know right up front he wasn’t sticking around. A few laughs, a few orgasms and they were smiling when he kissed them goodbye.
“When you do find the right woman,” Rosie said, “bring her by and I’ll teach her how to make fried bologna sandwiches the way you like them.”
“It’s a deal,” he told her, just to end the discussion.
He wasn’t going to find the right woman anytime soon because of the simple fact he wasn’t even looking.
*
Paige usually used the quiet time between breakfast and lunch to restock condiments and help clean up out back, as well as to recover from feigning indifference to Mitch, who seemed to be making breakfast at the diner a habit. Today, however, she was playing bartender. Not because she was serving booze—not having a liquor license took care of that issue—but because she was listening to Mallory Miller’s woes.
The chief’s wife worked for a law office in the city so, with the long commute, Paige rarely saw her during the week, especially on a non-holiday Monday. Mal said she’d called in sick—as in sick of her crappy life, though she hadn’t told them that. And Paige poured them each a cup of coffee and offered a shoulder to cry on.
It wasn’t until Carl hollered out he was going on break that Mal really got into what was bothering her, most of which Paige already knew. Drew wanted children, Mallory didn’t, and they weren’t speaking to each other. And hadn’t been for a while.
“I think I should be enough for Drew,” Mal said. “That our life together should be enough. Why do the last ten years become irrelevant and worth throwing away if we don’t have kids?”
Paige, who’d been leaning against the counter, topped off their coffees and set the carafe back on the burner in a hopefully-not-too-obvious bid for more time to think. She was supposed to be listening, not being put on the spot. What the hell did she know about marriage? Not much. “Did you ask him that?”
“I’m not asking him anything.”
“You do realize you can’t fix anything if you won’t talk to each other, right?”