Mike slapped him on the shoulder. “You leave your balls in your other jeans or what? We go any slower and we’ll have to draw straws to see which one of us gets roasted and eaten first because we sure as hell won’t ever make it back to town in time for supper.”
“And what happens to Beth and my kid if I wrap myself around a tree?” He tossed his helmet onto his seat. Watched it bounce off. “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“Alone? She’ll be lucky if she’s had a moment’s peace with everybody checking on her all the time. Lisa said you wanted to write out a schedule of who was calling her when.”
“I don’t have a will. I should have done that before I left.” When his brother laughed at him, Kevin resisted the urge to punch him in the mouth. “Yeah, wanting to make sure my kid’s taken care of if I die’s all kinds of funny.”
“Who’s dying?” Pop joined in the conversation.
Joe was right on his heels. “Me, if we don’t pick up the pace.”
“Kev’s afraid he’s going to hit a tree,” Mike said, “and we’ll abandon Beth and the baby and leave them to fend for themselves in squalor on the streets.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Hit a tree?” Joe snorted. “You may as well, ’cause at the rate you’re going, the kid’s going to be in middle school before we get back anyway.”
“Screw you. I’m not going that slow. And you—” He pointed at Mike. “You’ve got four kids at home. You shouldn’t be tearing up the trails, either.”
“Unlike you, I guess, I try to have fun when I can. Don’t make me beat that old dead could get hit by a bus horse.”
“Lot better chance of hitting a tree than getting hit by a bus,” he muttered. “Gonna go take a leak.”
Maybe it was easier for Mike, he fumed while watering a nearby tree. If something happened to Mike, Lisa would be smothered by all the support she’d get from the family. Beth had nobody. Without Kevin, she’d be alone.
Not that he believed for a second the Kowalskis would turn away from her. But she was proud and used to going it alone. Since it was like pulling teeth to get her to accept help from him, he couldn’t see her turning to his family for aid. Paulie would watch out for her, but it wasn’t the same. She’d probably get on a bus back to Florida and that would be that. He owed it to her, the baby and his family to get home in one piece.
“When are you and Keri gonna add to the family tree?” Mike was asking Joe when Kevin rejoined the group.
“Working on it. A lot. As often as I can talk her into trying.”
Since his moderate pace was causing his manhood to be called into question, Kevin felt justified in saying, “Only took me once, big brother.”
“Bragging about the fact you can’t even use a rubber the right way? Sounds like you.”
“Not my fault they don’t make one that can hold me.”
“All right,” Leo said. “Let’s hit the trail before you boys start giving each other noogies and Indian burns.”
When they geared up and pulled back onto the trail, he wasn’t surprised when Joe pulled out of line to cut in front of him. Pop stayed behind him, though, so he wouldn’t be alone when his brothers and Evan left him in their snow dust.
To hell with it. He hit the throttle hard, hoping the loud braaaap of the engine would snap him out of his funk. As he ate up the distance between him and Joe, he tried to force all thoughts of Beth out of his mind.
And the fuzzy, tiny black-and-white alien with the steady heartbeat and the cute bump of a nose that had totally stolen his breath. And his heart.
Joe started pulling away again and Kevin gave it some more throttle. After all, he didn’t want his kid sitting around the family gatherings listening to the story of the trip Daddy rode like a girl.
Chapter Thirteen
Two Kevin-free days down, two to go.
Beth sighed and tossed the parenting magazine she hadn’t really been reading onto the coffee table. It was pathetic, really, how out of sorts she was without Kevin across the hall.
She should be enjoying the alone time—enjoying a few days free of his overwhelming energy. Instead, the third floor felt so empty she was afraid her voice would echo if she got so lonely she started talking to herself. And she was worried about him.
When he’d left, it had taken every ounce of her willpower not to throw her arms around his neck and beg him not to go. The only thing that stopped her was knowing he would have stayed. If he thought for a minute his being gone might cause her anxiety, he would have watched the guys leave without him, just for her. And that was just the kind of codependency she was trying to avoid.
She’d spent an hour on the phone with her mom. They’d planned to fly up, but her father had caught some kind of lingering crud on the cruise and the last thing they wanted to do was expose her and the baby to his germs. So she’d emailed them a picture of her belly and her father had emailed back a picture of her mother, crying and laughing at the same time.