All He Ever Needed (Kowalski Family, #4)
Shannon Stacey
Chapter One
Mitch Kowalski was doing sixty when he blew past the Welcome to Whitford, Maine sign, and he would have grinned if grinning on a Harley at dusk in a shorty helmet wasn’t an invitation to eat his weight in bugs.
He was home again. Or he would be after he passed straight through town and nursed the bike down the long dirt drive that led to the Northern Star Lodge. As eager as he was to get there, though, he eased up on the throttle as the first lights of Main Street came into view.
It had been three years since he’d visited his hometown, but he could have navigated the road with his eyes closed. Past the post office where he’d landed his first real job, then lost it because old man Farr’s Playboy subscription was a hell of a lot more interesting than sorting electric bills. Then the Whitford General Store & Service Station, owned by Fran and Butch Benoit. Junior year, he’d taken their daughter to the prom and then taken her up against the chalkboard in an empty classroom.
Mitch downshifted and executed a lazy rolling stop at the four-way that passed for the town’s major intersection. To the left were two rows of ancient brick buildings that housed the bank and town offices and an assortment of small businesses. To the right, the police department—which had had its fill of the Kowalski boys in their youth—and the library, which had been fertile hunting grounds for a teenage boy looking to charm the smart girls out of their algebra homework.
Yeah, it was good to be home, even if everything was closed up tight for the night. The people of Whitford knew if they had business in town, they’d best get it done before the evening news.
He went straight through the intersection, but he didn’t go far before the old diner caught his eye. Or the sign did, rather, being all lit up. Last time he’d passed through, the place had been closed up tight—driven out of business by a bad economy and an owner who didn’t care enough to try to save it. But now there was a new name on the sign, a couple of cars in the parking lot and flashing red neon in the window declaring it open.
His stomach rumbled, though he felt it rather than heard it due to the loud pipes on his bike, and he pulled into the parking lot. Josh, his youngest brother, wasn’t expecting him—unless the boxes of clothes and other stuff he’d shipped ahead had arrived—and he would have already eaten anyway. Rather than go rummaging for leftovers, Mitch decided to grab a quick bite before heading on to the lodge.
The first thing he noticed when he walked through the door was the remodeled fifties decor, with a lot of red vinyl and black-and-white marble. The second thing he noticed was the woman standing behind the counter—a woman he’d never seen before, which was rare in Whitford.
Mitch put her at maybe thirty, seven years younger than him, and it looked good on her. She had a mass of brown hair twisted and clipped up into one of those messy knots that begged to be let loose. Jeans and a Trailside Diner T-shirt hugged sweet curves, and her ring finger was bare of either a gold band or a fresh tan line.
A little plastic rectangle was pinned above the very nice mound of her left breast. Name tags were a rare thing in a town where relationships were formed in playpens and cemented in the kindergarten sandbox, so it caught his attention. By the time he took a seat on a red padded stool at the counter, he could read it. Paige.
He deliberately sat with his back to the two other couples in the place in the hope they wouldn’t recognize him right off. One, because he’d rather Josh heard he was back in town from him, not the grapevine. And, two, because he was a lot more interested in maybe getting acquainted with Paige than getting reacquainted with whoever was in those booths.
“Coffee, sir?”
“Please.” Her eyes were brown, even darker than the coffee she poured into an oversize mug for him. “You’re new here.”
She gave him a look over her shoulder while setting the carafe back on the warmer. “I’ve been here every day for almost two years, but I’ve never seen you before. New’s relative, I guess.”
He plucked a menu from between the condiment rack and the napkin holder, wondering if the food choices had gotten an update, too, along with the sign and the vinyl. “I had my first taste of ice cream in that booth right over there.”
She leaned her hip against the stainless steel island the coffeemaker sat on and looked him over. “Tall, dark and handsome, with pretty blue eyes. You must be one of Josh’s brothers.”
Usually a guy didn’t like being told he had a pretty anything, but he’d learned a long time ago having pretty eyes led to having pretty girls. “I’m the oldest. Mitch.”