“Lauren! How is my sunshine today?”
“I’m good, Dad.” She was about to mention the filters when her mother walked out of the back room. As fair as her husband was dark, Pat Dozynski was still a head turner. “Hi, Mom. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“CeeCee and I went to the yarn store and then she had to rush straight home to get her casserole in the oven. She dropped me off here, so I’ll ride home with your father.”
“Get anything good?” Lauren had never had the patience for knitting, but it was one of her mother’s passions.
“They had a gorgeous pink cotton on clearance. Now I just need a baby girl to knit a sweater set for.”
Lauren laughed and held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I gave you a grandson and, trust me, one is enough.”
“How is Nicky doing?” her dad asked. “It’s been quiet here without him.”
Nick worked part-time at the hardware store during the summer, though it only earned him a little spending money because her dad was old-school and felt it was the natural way of things for his grandson to help out. Lauren had certainly done her time as a teenager. Once school started, however, not only did he want his grandson to focus on his studies, but there really wasn’t much to do around the store besides gossip and make sure they kept up the stock of snow shovels.
“He had detention Monday,” Lauren said, taking her usual seat on a wooden kitchen stool. She was pretty sure there was a conspiracy not to buy it so the men would have a place to sit when they visited Dozer. “Didn’t do his homework.”
Her mother made a tsk sound and shook her head. “Boys.”
“Boys are just as capable of doing their homework as girls, Mom.”
“I never had this trouble with you.”
That was because she’d had big plans to get a full scholarship to some big, faraway college and have a fabulous career doing...something. But there had been no scholarship and no college. Instead she’d fallen in love with Dean. Then she’d accidentally gotten pregnant and, before she knew it, was married. Her dad hadn’t literally brought out the shotgun, but the Dozynskis and the Carpenters had been very emphatically pro-marriage. And she had loved Dean.
“What are you going to do about it?” her dad asked.
“I emailed the teachers Monday, and every day Nick has to write down his homework assignments and they’ll initial each one. No video games. If it happens again before midterms, he’ll lose the iPod.”
She didn’t need to tell them that was probably the most dire punishment she could administer. Besides not letting him take driver’s ed, of course.
“When are you coming over for dinner?” her mother asked.
Lauren knew she was looking for an in to give her grandson a lecture and hedged. “Soon, Mom. I’ll call you and see if there’s a good night.”
The bell over the door rang and a couple of guys walked in. She didn’t know the first man through the door. But the second one made her pulse quicken and she focused on not showing any reaction to Ryan Kowalski as he walked into the store. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to guess she was attracted to the man.
“Hey, Dozer,” Ryan said, stepping around the other man. “This is Matt Russell. He works for me and so does another guy named Dillon Brophy. They might stop in from time to time, and the plastic they use will have my name on it.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” her father said.
“Hi, Mrs. Dozynski. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, but I swear you haven’t aged a day.”
Her mother was still preening over the compliment when he turned his head and saw Lauren. How her parents didn’t feel the sizzle and pop when those blue eyes made contact with hers, she couldn’t say, but she sure as hell felt it.
“Hi, Lauren.”
So much for avoiding him. She might have guessed a builder doing renovations might spend some time at the local hardware store, but what were the chances they’d end up here at the same time? “Hi. Nice to see you again.”
“Definitely.” He smiled and she was glad she was sitting down, because her knees going weak while she was standing up surely would have attracted her mother’s attention.
“Boss, you got the list?”
Ryan turned his attention back to the guy who’d come in with him, and Lauren let out a deep breath. She might have spontaneously combusted if he’d kept looking at her like that—which was also something her mother, who had told her on numerous occasions that it was past time to find a new husband, would notice.
She wasn’t husband shopping. She wasn’t even seriously boyfriend shopping. But there was something about the way Ryan looked at her that reminded her it had been a while since she’d had a man in her life and that certain parts of her body weren’t quite as over-the-hill as she sometimes felt.