Gavin called her name a few minutes after she served up the desserts, and she grabbed the hot plate of meatloaf from the window. Mitch gave her a very appreciative smile before picking up his fork.
Ignoring the zinging that smile caused—because she wasn’t zinging, dammit—she turned her back on him and started a fresh pot of coffee. Normally she wouldn’t so near to closing on a weekday night, but she didn’t have enough for one refill each should her customers be in the mood to forgo sleep in favor of caffeine and small talk.
Once the coffee was brewing, Paige pulled a clean bus pan out from under the counter and went from table to table, pulling the ketchup bottles and trying not to think about the man at the counter. She knew Mitch Kowalski had a dangerous job, and he certainly looked the part of the bad boy, in faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt hugging an upper body that screamed of physical labor.
Come to think of it, she knew a lot about the oldest Kowalski. While all the brothers were practically heralded as golden boys around town, there was a special gleam in the eyes of the female population when Mitch’s name came up. Right on the heels of the gleam came the details, and if there was one thing she knew about the man, it was that he didn’t disappoint.
Using her butt to push through the swinging doors, she took the bus pan of ketchup bottles back to the walk-in cooler. She wouldn’t refill them until the morning, but she took a minute, hoping the chill would cool her overheating face. Okay, and maybe her body.
If a seventeen-year-old Mitch could make a young woman dig her fingernails into the leather seat of her dad’s new car, just imagine what an experienced, thirtysomething Mitch could do. Not that he’d be doing anything to her, since she was abstaining, but imagining was an-ing word that couldn’t really hurt.
The strangest thing about the Mitch Kowalski stories was the lack of animosity. It didn’t seem possible a man could romance a healthy percentage of the young women in a small town without leaving a trail of jealousy and broken hearts, but it seemed to her he’d managed. Dreamy-eyed nostalgia was the legacy he’d left behind.
By five minutes of closing, the place was empty except for Mitch and an older couple lingering over their lukewarm mugs of decaf, so she went ahead and turned off the Open sign. Her part-time waitress, Ava, who usually did the closing shift, was sick, so Paige had done the whole shebang, from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and she was ready to collapse into bed.
Mitch met her at the cash register with his bill and cash. “What time’s breakfast?”
“Six a.m.” At least she managed not to groan out loud in dread of the four-thirty alarm.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Let me rephrase that. How late can I get breakfast?”
It hadn’t occurred to her she’d be seeing that much of him. It was a lot easier to resist temptation when temptation wasn’t sitting at her counter, watching her work. “Breakfast all day, but no poached eggs after eleven.”
He looked as if he was going to say more, but the couple from table six had figured out it was closing time and were on their way to the register. After giving her a smile that jump-started the forbidden zinging again, he walked out and she focused her attention on cashing out her final customers of the very long day.
When she went to twist the dead bolt on the door behind them, Mitch was at the edge of the parking lot, getting ready to pull out onto the road on what was a very big bike. The motorcycle rumbling between his legs was a black beast of a machine. While the leather saddlebags hid her view of his thighs, she couldn’t miss the way his T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders.
As he revved the engine and pulled into the street, Mitch turned his head and for a long moment they made eye contact. Then he smiled and hit the throttle, disappearing into the night.
No men. Paige flipped off the outside lights and turned away from his fading headlights. For two years she’d avoided having a man in her life. But temptation had never come in a package like Mitch Kowalski.
*
Mitch stood next to his bike with his arms crossed, his pleasure at being home eclipsed by the condition of the Northern Star Lodge.
How could things have gone so downhill in just three years? The front of the lodge—what he could see by the landscaping lights—looked, if not quite run-down, at least a little shabby. Paint on the porch peeling. Weeds growing around the bushes. One of the spindles on the stair railing was missing. He didn’t even want to imagine what the place looked like in the full light of day.