Saying it out loud made him wonder silently what a relationship was. Enjoying time together? Check. Great sex? A giant red check. Talking about books they both loved and about people they both knew and about their lives? Check. And, whenever they were apart, looking forward to when they’d be together again?
That was the one he was worried about. He found himself thinking about Paige during the day a little too often for comfort. He’d hear something funny and want to tell her. Or see something cool and want to take a picture to share it with her. He thought she was beautiful with messy hair and no makeup, and he didn’t give a damn if she’d just had onions on her burger when he moved in for a kiss.
If some guy told him he felt like that, Mitch would tell the poor sap there was no doubt he was in a relationship.
All Mitch could do was keep in mind there was going to come a time in the very near future when Paige wouldn’t be there to share funny stories with or talk books with. No more cheeseburger-with-onions kisses.
“Geez, you got it that bad?” Ryan was staring at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Hell, no. I was thinking about all the crap we have left to do at the lodge.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Screw you.” Mitch straddled his machine, ready to get moving again, but he couldn’t resist a parting shot at the brother who loved to push his buttons. “Have you run into Lauren Carpenter around town?”
Ryan’s expression hardened, but he didn’t say anything. He flipped Mitch the bird, then fired up his ATV with a roar. Chunks of dirt and a few rocks flew up as Ryan spun his wheels taking off, and then Mitch was chasing him up the trail.
They rode as hard as the tight and windy trails allowed until Mitch was sweating and already feeling the pull across his shoulders. As they neared the far edge of Kowalski land, where it abutted Ed Grandmaison’s property, he wondered if they’d have time to load up the wheelers and drive all the way around to the neighboring town—on the other side of Grandmaison—to the real trail system.
Even as he jerked the bars to avoid a rock big enough to stop the ATV in its tracks, the smallest germ of an idea for rejuvenating the Northern Star Lodge planted itself in his mind.
*
Paige was dragging. Badly. With an embarrassingly small amount of stage makeup, she could probably win an Oscar for playing a zombie.
That’s what happened when a sweet, smoking-hot man snuck out of your bed somewhere around midnight and your alarm went off at precisely four-thirty. You felt like you got hit by a freight train, but you were grinning on impact.
Folding herself into her tiny bathtub, hoping to soak as many of her body parts as she could fit in the foamy, hot water, Paige gave herself a good scrubbing before she sighed and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t be seeing Mitch tonight. His brother Ryan was back in town and they had a lot to get done. And maybe, like her, he needed to catch up on some sleep.
Just when she’d relaxed to the point she was afraid she’d fall asleep in the bath—though, thankfully, there wasn’t room to drown—her cell phone rang. It was on the edge of the sink, which she could reach from the tub, and Hailey’s name was flashing on the screen.
After a few seconds of hesitation, she answered the call. “Hello?”
“Every night this week?”
She didn’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out what she meant by that. “It’s only Wednesday night, so we’re only halfway through the week.”
“Is he there now?”
Paige smiled. “You tell me.”
There were a few seconds of stubborn silence, and then Hailey laughed. “Okay, so I know he’s not. Ryan’s in town and when Andy Miller stopped in at the hardware store, he told Dozer that Mitch and Josh were glad to see him, because it meant Rose would cook a real dinner and that they’d be going over plans after they ate.”
“So why did you ask?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he’d ditched his brothers to sneak over and see you.”
Since the tub didn’t hold enough water with her in it to keep itself hot long, Paige pulled the plug and stood. With her free hand she grabbed a towel and started blotting herself dry. “He doesn’t sneak. You make us sound like teenagers.”
“You’re going at it like teenagers,” Hailey retorted, and Paige wondered if there was maybe a little jealousy there.
“I’m going at it like I haven’t had sex in two years. As for Mitch, I think he just really likes sex. A lot. And he’s very good at it.”
“I wonder if it runs in the family,” Hailey said. “Ryan and Josh are still single.”
“I think if you had any chemistry at all with them, you would have wondered that before now.”
“True. So when are you going to see him again? Do you have to wait until Ryan goes back to Mass?”
“I don’t know.” They hadn’t discussed it at all. She only knew he wasn’t coming tonight because he’d mentioned Ryan being home and what they’d be doing that evening. “I guess if he comes around again, that’s when I’ll see him.”