Josh shrugged. “Good. Not a hundred percent yet, so I’m trying to take it easy, but it could’ve been worse. What’s under the tarps?”
Ryan looked at the two company trucks, both of which had tarps covering the beds. “Windows. I noticed the living and dining room windows are fairly new, and the ones in the guest bedrooms, but we need to do the kitchen and the family rooms.”
“I’d planned to do one a month, maybe, next summer. Pain in the ass getting the tools out and then putting them back, but updated windows would save on the fuel bill.”
Ryan wanted to point out that he got a much better deal on windows than Josh could and he should have called him, but he kept his mouth shut. Pride and stubbornness had kept Josh working himself into the ground on a shoestring budget, rather than admitting to his siblings and co-owners that the lodge was in trouble. They’d already been through all that and there was no sense in rehashing it.
“I have to go see Dozer in a few,” Josh said. “He was going to mix up the paint for the shutters this morning. Wanna take a ride?”
“It’s going to take a while to unload those windows, even with Dill and Matt helping.”
“No rush,” Josh said. “I can give you a hand.”
“I just got out of my truck. Don’t really want to get back in it now.” Mostly, he didn’t want to go to the hardware store when he’d just run into Lauren.
Dozer owned Whitford Hardware. His name was Albert Dozynski, but when he’d bought the business in the nineteen-seventies, everybody had started just calling him Dozer. He was also Lauren Carpenter’s dad.
Snorting, Ryan bit back a curse. Freaking small towns.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just remembering something I didn’t do at the office,” he lied.
“Did you hear Mitch and Paige want to get married Columbus Day weekend?”
“Isn’t that like three weeks from now?”
Josh nodded. “Not quite three weeks. And they want to get married here.”
“In less than three weeks.”
“Mitch doesn’t want to have a wedding with sledders roaming around the lodge and he doesn’t want to wait for the snow to melt in the spring. But Paige wants to have it outside, so it needs to be soon. Like three weeks soon.”
“I might not be done by then.” He was almost sure he wouldn’t be.
“I told Paige that. She said it was only going to be friends and family and, as long as there are a couple of spots to have pictures taken, she doesn’t care.”
She’d care. When the day came and there were sawhorses and power tools in the yard, she’d care. Ryan had been married once—he knew that a lot of women started out focusing on the love and family and friends, but as the big day drew near, they lost their freaking minds.
“Hopefully, whatever idiot’s been vandalizing the place is bored with us now.”
Somebody had been messing around on the property and they hadn’t caught the little jerk yet. Stupid shit, like dumping paint buckets and pounding a dozen nails into a piece of lumber, but the money added up and it was a hell of a mess to clean up. “I’ll wring his neck if I catch him.”
Josh laughed. “What if it’s a girl?”
“Then I’ll sic Rosie on her.” His mind turned back to their eldest brother’s wedding. “Has Mitch called Aunt Mary yet? And Liz?”
“He’s going to when he gets home from Miami. If they can make it, and Sean, we’ll be having a wedding.”
“I guess we’d better get to work, then.” And work was just what Ryan needed. Hard, sweaty work that left his mind and body too exhausted at the end of the day to miss having a woman in his bed.
It had been a while since he’d seriously dated, but once he was done here in Maine, it might be time to start going out again. He couldn’t be happier that Sean and Mitch had found women they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with, but thinking about the upcoming wedding made him feel restless.
He was thirty-six. He wanted a wife and maybe some kids. Living alone in a house built for a family sucked, even though he’d built it himself, but he’d been so busy running his company that he’d stopped going out at night looking for opportunities to meet a woman he might like. Time to remedy that when he got home.
Right now, though, it was time to unload some windows.
*
On Wednesday, Lauren stopped at her dad’s store on her way home from work. She kept forgetting to call and ask him to order new filters for her furnace, so she’d just drop in while she was thinking of it.
Whitford Hardware was like a second home to Lauren, with sights and sounds and smells as familiar to her as those of her parents’ home. The jumble of displays near the front of the store that changed with the seasons. The mingling scents of lemon wood-polish, mechanical oils and lawn fertilizer.
Her dad was behind the counter as usual, a stout, dark-haired man whose broad shoulders and chest made up for his lack of height. And, as usual, his face lit up when he saw her.