“I’ll tell him you said that.”
She meant it, even if it was for Liz’s sake and not Darren’s. Liz loved him, so what was good for him was good for her.
“I have to run,” Liz said. “Call me if anything comes of Mitch liking that woman, okay? I hate being all the way on the other side of the country sometimes.”
Not as much as Rose hated it. She’d much rather have all her chickens in New England. Sean was in New Hampshire and Ryan in Massachusetts, with Mitch only here temporarily, but at least she got regular visits from them. “I’ll call you if there’s anything juicy to report. Try to get some rest, okay?”
Rose left the television muted after the call ended, lost in thought. Liz had fallen head over heels for the young artist who’d called himself a sculptor because he was convinced rich people wanted pieces of scrap metal welded together to make “art.” And when he’d decided to go out West, where he felt people were more appreciative of his kind of art, Liz went with him, despite her family’s objections. Or maybe to spite them. The question was whether or not she still loved him or if she was too proud to come home.
Liz was like a daughter to Rose. While her own daughter was off running with the boys, Liz had baked cookies with Rose and learned to knit and let Rose put her hair up in rag rollers. Under the sweet curls and feminine ruffles, though, Liz was a Kowalski through and through. She’d strained against Rose’s maternal leash until she broke free.
Six kids—one of her own and five of her heart—and only one was happily married. Sean and Emma might have only six months under their belts, but Rose knew the real thing when she saw it, and they had it. Sadly, she’d never believed Ryan’s marriage would last and she’d been right.
Maybe she’d been going about this Paige thing all wrong. She’d been so focused on protecting Paige’s heart from Mitch she hadn’t realized Mitch might be losing his to her. If Josh thought his brother was interested enough in a woman to mention it to Sean, maybe Rose had been missing the signs while hanging out in her room with the fictional FBI team.
Maybe she had an opportunity to improve her record to 2–6.
*
Mitch managed a mere thirty-six hours. After leaving Paige’s bed Friday night, he made it through all of Saturday and Saturday night, but Sunday morning found him parking the pickup in front of the Trailside Diner.
There were a few full tables, but nobody at the counter, so he pulled up a stool and waited for Paige to notice him. A couple minutes later, the door from the kitchen swung open and she backed into the dining area carrying a bus pan full of cleaning supplies. She set it on the edge of the counter, then scanned her customers to see if they needed anything.
She must have caught sight of him through the corner of her eye, because she turned to him and smiled. “Didn’t expect to see you on a Sunday morning. How does Rose feel about you skipping out on her pancakes?”
“Rosie’s been sleeping in lately,” he said, then wondered if he’d said it too harshly when he saw the concern on her face.
“That doesn’t sound like Rose. Is she okay? She’s not sick or anything, is she?”
“The only thing wrong with that woman is a stubborn streak that borders on downright unreasonable.”
“Oh,” Paige said in a drawn-out way, as if a lightbulb had gone off in her head. “I heard something about that. She’s not making you breakfast because you hired Andy Miller.”
He gave her a sharp look. “You know about her problem with Andy?”
“Everybody knows she has a problem with him. But I don’t know what it is.”
“Nobody does.”
“That seems odd. For an incident to trigger a decades-long grudge, you’d think it would have been bad enough so half the town would know.”
He had to agree with her on that one, but he didn’t say so out loud, because he didn’t want her speculating any further. In his experience, the only thing that caused that kind of deep, secret animosity between a woman and a man was sex. He didn’t want to think about Rosie and Andy and sex. She was like a mother to him and he didn’t want to believe even for a second she’d cheated on her husband. He wouldn’t believe it.
“How’s Josh handling her being on strike?” Paige asked, dragging his mind back from those unpleasant thoughts.
He shrugged. “We’re grown men. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Out of clean laundry yet?”
He grinned. “Almost.”
“Are you going to fire Andy?”
“No. I’m going to do a few loads of laundry and then head to the grocery store and stock up on more microwavable dinners.”
Paige frowned, fiddling with the sugar packets. “You won’t fire Rose, will you?”