*
Mitch leaned the bike through the corner, letting it eat up the miles as the roar of the engine soothed his thoughts. He’d been cruising for an hour with no destination in mind. Just taking turns as the mood struck.
Time to head home, though. Since he wasn’t seeing Paige tonight, he’d spend some time going over the plans for the lodge some more. Grandmaison was willing to let them run across the corner of his property as long as he got to oversee the where and the how much.
If he got enough of the legwork done, there was a possibility the lodge could start taking in a steady stream of summer customers as early as May, when the trails officially opened. If they had a good winter and the snowmobilers loosened their wallets, it would be enough to get the lodge back into fighting shape, financially.
But thinking too much about the lodge made him think about the possibility they’d be selling it, and that wasn’t a topic for a summer Harley ride. Neither was Paige, who’d sounded odd in the message that had so casually canceled their evening together.
He twisted the throttle, forcing himself to concentrate on the road instead of the people who were mucking up his life. Nothing but him and the bike and the wind rushing past.
And the police car he didn’t see in time.
He found a safe place to pull over—his days of outrunning cops long past—and leaned the bike over onto its stand so he could dig out his wallet. Please don’t be Bob Durgin. Please don’t be Bob Durgin.
In the bike’s mirror, Mitch watched Bob Durgin get out of the cruiser and use his gun belt to hitch his pants up. Great. He wondered how much a ticket for eight miles per hour over the speed limit plus everything he’d ever done wrong during his childhood would cost him.
“You in a hurry?”
“No, sir.” He sat on the bike so he wouldn’t tower over the old cop too much. “I was enjoying the weather and got a little carried away.”
“You Kowalskis have always gotten a little carried away.”
This wasn’t Mitch’s first traffic stop. He knew it was best to be polite to the cop, who was just doing his job, and neither offer lame excuses nor get belligerent. But Durgin was too much. “We got carried away sometimes when we were young and stupid. Most kids do. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and take shit from you because you lost control of the new cruiser and rolled it into a ball. I’m not a kid anymore and I’m not going to be spoken to like one. Write me the damn ticket and get on with your life.”
For a second he thought old Bob was going to have a stroke right there on the side of the road, and wouldn’t that be a hell of a story to add to the Kowalski legacy in Whitford?
Durgin’s face burned. “If you’d been my kids, you’d have all learned some manners and respect, but no, Sarah had to go and choose that jerk Kowalski and have a whole freakin’ herd of pains in my ass.”
It took a few seconds for the cop’s words to make sense to him, and then it took all his composure to keep his mouth from hanging open. Bob Durgin hated them all because he’d wanted to marry their mother?
Mitch wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Durgin’s face turned an even brighter shade of red. “Forget it. Slow down or you’ll spend the night in a cell.”
He was back in the cruiser and down the road before Mitch even had the sense to shove his wallet back into his pocket. That was unexpected. As he fired up the bike and pulled out onto the road at a much more reasonable pace, he couldn’t help shaking his head. Whitford was one seriously messed-up place.
When he got back to the lodge, he found Josh in the great room with all the papers for the proposed ATV connector trail spread out on the coffee table. Mitch noticed right off that his brother was in a good mood and that the can on the end of the table was a soda and not a beer.
“Did you know Bob Durgin wanted to marry Mom and he’s still pissed off she chose Dad?”
Josh looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, then shook his head. “No, but it explains a lot. How’d you find that out?”
“He yelled it at me on the side of the road before he got embarrassed and left without giving me a ticket.” Mitch went into the kitchen for a soda, then joined Josh on the couch. “You trying to figure something out or you just looking at it?”
“Mostly I’m just looking at it.” Josh slid the papers around, then leaned back against the sofa. “I should have kept fighting for this after Dad said it couldn’t be done.”
“A lot of people don’t fight for something they don’t want.”