All He Ever Desired (The Kowalskis) Read online

Fran rambled on about how the Northern Star Lodge had been so pretty when Frank and Sarah Kowalski had run the place, and how heartbreaking it had been to see the toll the crappy economy had on it. And on Josh, who’d tried to shoulder the burden without dragging his siblings into it.

  “It was a mistake,” Fran said. “But people learn from their mistakes. Josh has, and Nick will, too.”

  She thanked Fran and carried her bag out to the car. Because she wanted to savor the secret candy bar, she had to drive slowly and even take a little detour to avoid pulling into her driveway before it was gone. Once she’d licked her fingers clean and folded up the wrapper to shove in her pocket, she parked and went inside.

  Nick was sitting on the couch, looking as miserable as she’d seen him in a long time. He wasn’t crying, but she could see it was taking some effort on his part not to.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom. I really am.”

  She dumped the bag in the kitchen and went to sit next to him. “I know you are.”

  “I just get mad at, like, stupid stuff. Dad or my teacher or...whatever.”

  “Me,” she supplied for him, patting his knee.

  “Sometimes. Anyway, I just get mad and I break stuff.”

  “How much stuff?” It hadn’t even occurred to her until now he might have vandalized more of their neighbors. “Am I going to have other people banging on my door accusing you of breaking their stuff?”

  He shook his head. “There are lots of trails in the woods behind the lodge and I like to walk there, so I haven’t done it anywhere else. I promise.”

  “We need to find another way to channel that anger. Maybe some hard labor will help.”

  “He’s not going to go easy on me, is he?”

  “Ryan?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he has you splitting cordwood every day until you can’t lift your arms. He’ll be fair, though. And you have the punishment coming.”

  “I know. I just want you to know I’m sorry. Everybody in town’s going to know, so I embarrassed you.”

  “I don’t really give a damn what everybody in town thinks. What’s important to me is that you don’t ever do something like this again, and that you do the right thing now. And you’re going to, so we’ll get through this.”

  “Okay.” He mumbled something that might have been “I love you.”

  “I love you, kid. You’re still not getting your iPod back, though.”

  Chapter Five

  On Monday afternoon, Rose Davis watched the teenage boy chug the lemonade she’d given him and smiled. Their vandal turning out to be Lauren Carpenter’s son was an interesting twist in her plan to see all the Kowalski kids and her own Katie happily married before she got too old to enjoy grandchildren, biological or otherwise.

  Sean was happily married, of course, but his wife owned a thriving landscaping business, so Rosie wasn’t too sure she’d be in a hurry to have kids. Plus, they lived in New Hampshire. Mitch and Paige would be married soon, but they were avoiding answering any questions about starting a family. Once she’d heard Paige was going to rent out her trailer and look for a house, Rose had hoped they’d move into the lodge, but Mitch was adamant that he and Paige wanted their own space.

  Now Lauren had been thrown back into Ryan’s life. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened right before Ryan had left Whitford to start his job in Mass, but she’d had her suspicions for a while that he’d cared more for Lauren than he let on. He’d gotten over her, of course. Fallen in love, gotten married, fallen out of love. But Rose didn’t think it was a coincidence that it was Lauren’s son who got busted shooting at the windows. Cupid had a master plan.

  “You want some more?” she asked Nick when he’d drained his glass. She wasn’t surprised he was thirsty. It was still early enough in the school year to be hot and the school had no air-conditioning.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sit down and get your homework done.” She refilled the glass and set it in front of him. “The guys are waiting for you. But don’t rush. Do it right.”

  “I did most of it in study hall.”

  She snorted. “I raised a daughter of my own and five others. You think I haven’t heard that before?”

  The tips of his ears turned pink, but he started pulling stuff out of his backpack and got to work. Once he was scribbling on a math worksheet, she took the pitcher of lemonade and some paper cups into the backyard.

  Ryan saw her first, and she smiled when he scowled and shook his head. She wasn’t supposed to care if Dill and Matt dehydrated while putting up the scaffolding? They might draw their paychecks from Kowalski Custom Builders, but they were temporarily living under Rose’s roof.

  “I told you not to spoil them,” he hissed when she got close enough to set the pitcher on a sawhorse.

  “It’s not a triple-layer chocolate fudge cake. It’s lemonade.”

  “Do you have a triple-layer chocolate fudge cake?”

  She laughed and poured four cups of lemonade. “No. I have apple crisp for dessert, though. And yes, I’m sharing it with Dill and Matt.”

  “And me?”

  “Yes, and you. I might even give some to Nick.”

  That brought his scowl back full force. Not that it bothered her any. “He’s going home for supper.”

  “So I’ll wrap some up some for him to take home. And his mom, too.”

  “By all means, let’s punish the little vandal with baked goods.”

  Time to do a little fishing. “I hear you were hell-bent on getting cash until you realized he’s Lauren’s son. Then you decided he could work off the debt.”

  He paused with a cup halfway to his mouth. “Who told you that?”

  “Paige. I assume she heard it from Mitch, who heard it from Drew, but you never know in this town.” He shook his head and then took a long drink of lemonade, probably so he wouldn’t have to talk. “I always thought Lauren would have been better off with you than with Dean back in high school.”

  When his jaw tightened and his expression got that smoothed-over, fake look, she knew she’d dangled the right bait. She also knew when to give the line some slack. “You tell Andy, Dill and Matt to come drink this lemonade before it attracts bugs.”

  She walked back into the lodge, shifting the puzzle pieces of Ryan and Lauren around in her head. She didn’t have enough fragments to make out the whole picture yet, but she would.

  In the meantime, she had some math problems to check.

  * * *

  Ryan had just set Nick to work painting the shutters he’d taken off the back of the lodge when he heard a vehicle pulling up the drive. For a few seconds, he thought it was Lauren and his whole body tensed at the thought of seeing her again so soon. But it was too early for it to be her, so he forced himself to relax and walked around the front of the house.

  It was even worse. Standing in front of a very used minivan was Dean Carpenter. His old friend had aged well—though not as well as Ryan, if he did say so himself—but his face showed he worried too much, and his gut gave away the beer intake.

  Dean didn’t smile when he saw Ryan coming, but he didn’t really expect him to. They hadn’t been friends in a long time.

  “Lauren called me. Said my son vandalized your place.”

  “Small, stupid shit, but it added up.”

  “I’ve come to pay. I can give you half the money now and half in a couple of weeks.”

  Ryan shrugged. “His mother, the police chief and I decided he’d work off the debt. That way he’ll be less inclined to do it again.”

  “I’m his father.” There was a hard edge to Dean’s voice that made Ryan wonder if he’d have to duck a punch before the conversation was over. “I think it’s best I pay you and then he can work off the debt he owes me.”

  “I have
the work, though. He’s painting shutters right now.”

  “I don’t want to owe you.”

  That was the bottom line and Ryan didn’t see any way around hashing it all out. “Look, I know you don’t like me, but—”

  “I don’t give two shits about you one way or the other, Kowalski.”

  “You didn’t give two shits about her, either. That’s why I asked her to go with me. But she said no and that was the end of it.”

  When Dean got very still, his head slightly cocked to the side, Ryan realized he’d made a very big mistake. Lauren hadn’t told him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Forget it.” He just wanted to Dean to leave. “I’m not accepting payment. The kid’s going to sweat off his debt to me or we can get Drew Miller back out here.”

  “Don’t threaten me, asshole. What do you mean you asked Lauren to go with you? When?”

  “Right after I graduated from college. Nick was a baby. I was heading to Mass to start my new job, and I stopped at your house while you were at work and asked her to take him and come with me.”

  “You tried to steal my wife? And my kid?” Ryan could see the anger hadn’t even begun to set in yet. Dean was stunned, and a lot of years of guilt welled up in Ryan’s gut. “That’s why you never came back. It wasn’t because you forgot about me. It’s because you couldn’t face me.”

  Actually, it was because he couldn’t stand seeing Lauren struggling to raise a baby while her husband partied with the guys and drank half his income. “You treated her like crap.”

  “I wasn’t a good husband to Lauren. I was young and I was stupid.” Dean paused, shaking his head. “But she still wanted me more than she wanted you.”

  “Yeah, she chose you. End of story.”

  Red crept over Dean’s face. “But it’s not the end of the story, is it? Because here you are, making my son work for you. Getting Lauren over here.”

  “Your son is working for me because he was destroying my property and it seemed like a better option than pressing charges.”

  “Aren’t you a fucking hero.” Dean started toward the door of his truck, then stopped and turned. “I should kick your ass.”

  He wouldn’t stand there and take a beating for something he’d done a decade and a half ago. “It was a long time ago. And, like you said, she chose you.”

  “Screw you, Kowalski.”

  Dean managed to relocate half the gravel in the drive with his tires, spinning and fishtailing his way down to the road. Ryan watched him go, then scrubbed a hand through his hair. That hadn’t been fun.

  “Was that my dad?”

  Shit. Nick had come around the house, probably in time to see Dean’s minivan turning the corner. Hopefully not in time to hear any of the conversation. “Yeah. He wanted to pay me for the damages, but I told him you were working it off.”

  “Ma told him that already.”

  “I guess he just wanted to see for himself.” He couldn’t control what Dean might tell Nick later, but he certainly wasn’t going to explain what just happened. “How are those shutters going?”

  The kid couldn’t figure out how to hang the shutters on the wire hangers that Andy had made up as a makeshift drying rack, so Ryan went to help him. Then he checked on Dill and Matt. They almost had the upstairs bathroom window in place, but the lodge was old and, even though he’d paid extra for custom-ordered sizes, it needed a lot of shimming.

  Satisfied his crew was working, he went back to his own project, which was preparing to frame in a new back door off the kitchen. The old one was narrow and wooden and the new steel replacement was wider, which meant stripping away some siding and reframing the hole.

  It was tedious but easy work, leaving his mind free to wander back to his confrontation with Dean Carpenter and the burning question he couldn’t answer. Why hadn’t Lauren ever told Dean?

  * * *

  Lauren didn’t see Ryan when she stopped at the lodge to pick up Nick, which was just as well. Her nerves were shot, work had sucked and half the town had already heard her kid was a fledgling criminal.

  She had to admit she was a little disappointed, though. Under the embarrassment her son had caused her, the thought of seeing Ryan again made her feel jittery, like a schoolgirl who knew she’d see the boy she liked as they passed between classes.

  But it was Andy Miller who walked Nick out to her car and leaned against her door. She rolled down the window while her son got in the passenger side. “How’d he do, Andy?”

  “Pretty good. Ryan had him painting shutters—so, nothing too physical, but it was nothing the rest of us wanted to do.”

  “Good. The more tedious the work, the more reluctant he’ll be to get in this kind of trouble again.” She glanced sideways at Nick, but he was smart enough to keep his eyes on his hands.

  He was quiet all the way home, actually, and it worried her. Feeling guilty and being contrite, she expected, but she didn’t want him to beat himself up, either. And they didn’t dwell on things, as a rule. If there was a crime, there was punishment and they moved on.

  “My dad went to the lodge,” he said as she pulled into their driveway.

  “Today?” Why was Dean at the Northern Star?

  “Ryan said he wanted to pay for the damages, but he wouldn’t take the money.”

  Lauren didn’t think Dean had that kind of money to waste, but his son working off a debt to Ryan Kowalski probably dinged his pride. “Did you talk to him?”

  “No, he was leaving when I went around the front of the house. He peeled out, too. Gravel went everywhere.”

  So he’d left mad. “Don’t worry about your dad. You’re doing the right thing now and that’s what’s important.”

  That seemed to pep him up a little, and he told her about his day at school while they ate the stew she’d dumped in the slow cooker that morning. They’d be using that a lot, she thought, until Nick was let off the hook at the lodge.

  “Do you have homework?” she asked when he went straight to the television after dinner and turned on the game system.

  “I did it at the lodge. Rose checked it for me.”

  She didn’t think he’d lie about that since it was too easy to get caught, but she made him show it to her anyway just so he’d know she was watching. Then she went down to the basement and started another load of laundry before going back out to the car to get the book she was reading from the backseat where she’d tossed it.

  The cell phone in her pocket rang as she reached in and she almost hit her head on the roof of the car. Muttering under her breath, she pulled it out and looked at the incoming number. It was Ryan.

  She desperately hoped he hadn’t changed his mind about Nick, because she really needed new snow tires. Even if she and Dean went halves on the damages, it would be tight. “Hello?”

  “Hey, you busy?” Even if his name hadn’t come up on the caller ID, she would have recognized his voice. It was the one that made her shiver.

  “Nope.” She grabbed her book and went to sit on the front step. “What’s up?”

  “Dean stopped by today.”

  “Nick told me. Said he sprayed gravel everywhere when he left, too.” She stopped herself before apologizing for it. Dean’s behavior wasn’t her problem.

  “He wasn’t happy.”

  “He’s probably embarrassed and doesn’t want to feel like he owes you.”

  “You never told him.”

  It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, and when they did, she caught herself clenching the phone in her fingers. “You told him?”

  It shouldn’t matter. She and Dean had been divorced for eight years, but she felt guilty for not having told him at the time. She should have let him know. What Ryan had done was wrong, plain and simple, and Dean had a right to
know.

  But there was some guilt because she’d thought about Ryan—started playing the what-if game—while still married to Dean. When things were tough, she’d think about that day and imagine saying yes. She’d picture their home and the big backyard for Nick, and she’d imagine Ryan holding her in bed instead of belching and falling asleep like her husband. It was safe and harmless—just a stupid fantasy—but the fact she hadn’t told Dean made it feel worse than it was.

  “I assumed he knew, so I misunderstood what his problem was and, yeah, I told him.”

  “Did Nick hear?” It would explain why he’d been so quiet in the car.

  “I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I told him Dean was angry I wouldn’t take his money, which wasn’t totally a lie, though he was probably more angry I tried to steal his wife.”

  Hearing him say it like that, so flat out, made her cheeks hot, and she was glad he was on the other end of the phone line and couldn’t see her. “Why did you?”

  “I told you why.” His voice had softened and the timbre of it didn’t help cool her face any. “He didn’t treat you right.”

  “He was young. We both were and obviously stupid, since we never meant for me to get pregnant. He wanted to try to go to college eventually and make something of himself. Instead he got a baby and a wife and a factory job while you went off to school.”

  “And he resented me for it and, even worse, he resented you. He was a miserable son of a bitch and he took it out on you.”

  Lauren rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You’re not being totally fair. He wasn’t a bad guy, Ryan.”

  “He didn’t love you.”

  And you did? She didn’t say it out loud, because she didn’t want to know the answer. “Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  She’d like to think Ryan was wrong and that, at some point, the man she’d had a child with and married had loved her, even if it hadn’t lasted forever. “There’s no point in talking about this. But I appreciate you letting me know Dean was upset.”

  “There was a point,” he said. “Since he left, something’s been bugging me and I have to know why you never told him.”