Or so she told herself as she rode down in the elevator. It couldn’t be a simple matter of her missing the sound of his voice or his touch or the way he looked at her because that would mean she was falling for him.
There were people in the hallway when the elevator landed and it took her a second to realize it was Terry, Lisa and Keri, in the middle of a rousing debate on whether or not the elevator would hold all three of them.
Keri spotted her first. “Hey! We were just going up so we could drag you down here for dinner, but there was some question about plummeting to our deaths.”
“I don’t think you can plummet to your death in a three-story building,” Terry said. “Fall, yes. Plummet? No.”
Since she rode in the elevator several times a day, those weren’t semantics Beth cared to dwell on. “So you’re all going to dinner?”
“No, we are all going to dinner,” Keri corrected her. “A quick last hurrah before our men come home. We called ahead and Paulie held us a table. We’d go somewhere else but we heard you’re in a pretty monogamous relationship with Jasper burgers.”
The women’s laughter was comfortable and easy, and she found herself joining in. On the surface she would have thought they had nothing in common. Keri, with her blond hair and lingering big-city chic. Lisa, a short but feisty mother of four. And Terry, who had the same blue eyes and dimples as her brothers, but wasn’t quite as rowdy as the men in the family. An unlikely trio who seemed more than happy to make her their fourth.
It was nice, having Paulie and the Kowalski women in her life. She hadn’t realized how her nomadic lifestyle had robbed her of close friends until she made some. Not that they were the kind of friends she could spill her man troubles to because, if there was a his and hers column, they were definitely in Kevin’s. But it was nice, nonetheless.
They all ordered burgers with fries and Darcy brought them a pitcher of soda and frosted glasses. They talked about movies, most of which she hadn’t seen, and Mike and Lisa’s wedding cruise. Then the kids and whether or not they’d all survive a week off from school since winter break had begun that day. All the while, Beth kept sneaking glances at the clock, wishing Kevin had given her a better idea of when he’d be home.
“Look at these two,” Terry said to Lisa, waving her hand in Beth and Keri’s direction. “Watching every minute tick off the clock.”
Beth blushed, but Keri just laughed. “Damn straight. Joe and I are looking to make some babies and that’s not going to happen while he’s two hours away. I’ve got an itch and he needs to get his ass home and scratch it.”
Thankful the other woman had drawn the attention to herself, Beth took a drink, hoping her face would cool off. She had an itch, too, and it was hard sometimes to remember why she couldn’t let Kevin scratch it.
Terry shook her head. “Trust me, in a few years you’ll look forward to him being gone a few days so you can sit around in sweatpants and read. Although it’s a lot easier when your kids are old enough to leave you alone for a few minutes at a time, at least. Eventually, though, you guys will be packing their bags for them. Trust me.”
It was on the tip of Beth’s tongue to point out it was different for her because they were talking about their husbands going away for a long weekend. In her case, it was her neighbor who was away. And, of course, when the baby was older, he or she would miss him while he was gone. But it wasn’t the same.
But she couldn’t say it. One, because she wasn’t sure exactly what Kevin had told his family about the status of their relationship. And, two, because deep down she wasn’t sure it was true. She could try to tell herself anything she wanted, but the truth remained Kevin was more than her friend and neighbor. He was more, even, than the man who’d fathered her child.
She craved him, the way a dieter craved a thick slab of chocolate cake. With ice cream. And whipped cream. And maybe a drizzle of hot fudge sauce.
But like any dieter, she knew that, although chocolate cake might be delicious and sinful and make her feel so very, very good, that didn’t make it a good choice. And if there was one thing Beth had in spades, it was willpower.
No chocolate cake—or Kevin—for her.
***
Kevin rushed as much as he could without attracting the ridicule of his brothers and brother-in-law, anxious to get home to Beth. Or anxious to get home across the hall from Beth, really, since she was stubborn and wouldn’t even sleep with him. Chances of her agreeing to move in with him were pretty slim.
Because he didn’t have a garage at Jasper’s, he left his snowmobile in its enclosed trailer behind his dad’s and jumped back on the highway. Twenty minutes later he was fresh out of the shower and knocking on Beth’s door.
She was smiling when she opened it and the warmth in her eyes was all the welcome home he needed. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said back as his gaze wandered down her body. She was wearing a long pink dress with a sweater unbuttoned over it that looked new.