Chapter Eighteen
Rob woke slowly from one of the best night’s sleep he’d had in a long time. Hannah’s body was warm along his, and he smiled against her hair.
“You’re awake,” she mumbled, and then she stretched, which put a lot more of her body in contact with a lot more of his body.
He wanted to wake up like this more often. “You did not feel that smile in your hair.”
“No, but I did hear you stop snoring.”
He winced. “Sorry. It wasn’t bad, was it?”
“Nope.” She sighed a sleepy sigh. “I’m in the mood for French toast.”
Rob thought about what he had not only in the house fridge, but in the store. He could throw that together, but it wasn’t his best dish, by any means. If she’d said scrambled eggs, he’d be right on it. “Okay, but are you in the mood for good French toast or are you willing to settle for mediocre?”
She made a sound like she was actually thinking about it. “If you have the stuff, I can make it and split the difference to decent French toast.”
He chuckled and then kissed the side of her neck. “Or we can get dressed and go to the Kitchen—Corinne’s Kitchen, I mean—and have excellent French toast, and also real maple syrup and bacon without having to wash the dishes after.”
“And magically refilling coffee cups.” She rolled to face him, and he pushed her hair back from her face. “Don’t you have to clean the bathhouses or be in the store or anything?”
Technically, yes. “No. There hasn’t been enough traffic through the campground to worry about the bathhouses. I can spot-check them later. And I’ll put a sign in the store window that I’ll be back.”
“I’m not sure your brothers would be okay with you running off for French toast.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“Yes, you do.” She smiled sweetly, looking into his eyes. “You care very much what they think and I’m pretty sure together we could throw together a reasonably edible breakfast.”
The understanding in her eyes squeezed Rob’s heart. Yes, he cared what his brothers thought. He wanted them to know they could leave everything in his hands and he would handle it. But he also had a limited amount of time to spend with the woman in his arms.
“They won’t care,” he said sincerely. “We don’t get enough Route 3 traffic stopping to worry about yet. And everybody around here knows the hours aren’t set in stone. Think of the magically refilling coffee cups, Hannah.”
“Mmm.” She snuggled deeper under the blanket. “Five more minutes here. One cup of coffee. Then you give me a half hour to run back to my camper, and then we’ll go get the good French toast. How does that sound?”
“Only five more minutes here?” He slid his hand up her side and then cupped her breast, brushing his thumb over her nipple. “That works for me, but I don’t know if you’ll be satisfied.”
As it happened, five minutes was not enough time for Hannah and it was another twenty minutes before they rolled out of bed and headed for the coffeepot. And it was a full hour before she pulled up outside of the store to pick him up.
Thankfully, the restaurant wasn’t as busy during the week, and they hit the gap between the very early morning crowd and the sleeping-in crowd. Kenzie smiled when they walked in together, her gaze bouncing between the two of them, before she nodded toward a small table in the corner.
“I know you both want coffee,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ll be right there.”
Once they were seated, Hannah leaned across the table to keep her voice low. “It’s a good thing Brian already got over the whole fraternizing-with-campers thing, because going to a small-town restaurant together is not stealthy.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“She didn’t look very surprised.”
Rob picked up the menu and gave her a sheepish grin.
“Don’t forget, she was a witness to me trying to get you into my book club the first time we met, when you were just ‘passing through.’ Also, I guess Danny comes here a lot whenever he’s staying at the campground?
I don’t even want to think about what he might have said to her. ”
“I guess we weren’t very good at being discreet.”
“No. As a matter of fact, Dave and Sheila are concerned I’m giving you special treatment.”
“To be fair, I got some pretty special treatment last night.”
Before he could respond to that, Kenzie returned to the table with two mugs of coffee. “I also started another pot brewing because I know you’ll go through it.”
Rob looked at Hannah, eyebrow raised. “Come here often?”
“I’ve come here a few times, but I think she’s talking to you.”
“You’re both overcaffeinated, to be honest.”
“That’s fair,” Rob said.
“How’s your brother doing? I haven’t seen him in a while?” Before he could tell her she needed to be more specific—even though he could guess which one she was asking about—she held up her hand with a laugh. “Danny, I mean.”
“He’s good. Writing a lot, I guess, which means we won’t see much of him.
He said you helped him break through some writer’s block, so I guess we have you to thank for the fact we’re not listening to a clacking keyboard in the middle of the night or having to field really random questions, like how long it takes the average person to take a shower. ”
“That seems like an odd thing to want to know,” Kenzie said.
“I know, but I guess something was happening in his book while one of the characters was in the shower and he needed to make sure there was enough time for the thing to happen.” He shook his head.
“He was so annoyed that none of us knew the answer, as if we timed ourselves regularly and kept notes.”
Hannah looked up from her phone. “Eight minutes is the average, apparently.”
“Eight minutes?” Rob shrugged. “Now I’m going to have to time myself to see if I’m average.”
Kenzie laughed. “We open early and I like sleep, so I’m definitely faster than average. Anyway, what are you eating today?”
They both ordered the French toast, along with the upcharge for real maple syrup rather than the store-bought stuff. When Kenzie went to pass the order to her dad and do a coffee check of her other customers, Rob leaned back in his chair and looked at Hannah over the rim of his coffee cup.
She smiled back at him and lifted her coffee to her lips.
He looked at her mouth, memories of last night flooding his mind, and he really wished something would come up to keep Brian down south for another day.
Maybe even two. Nothing bad, of course. But he’d love a little more alone time with Hannah.
“Stop looking at me like that in public,” she whispered.
When he stretched his leg out until it brushed hers, she didn’t pull away, but she gave him a look that told him he better not even think about getting more adventurous. He grinned, thinking about it.
“You’re distracting me from my coffee,” she warned.
Rob laughed and held up his hands in surrender, though he didn’t move his leg.
They chatted about nothing much while they ate their French toast, mostly arguing about which sitcoms weren’t funny enough to merit the title. Considering how often they laughed together and seemed to have similar senses of humor, they really disagreed about funny television shows.
Like every conversation he had with Hannah, he enjoyed it and didn’t want it to end.
“So do you have any regrets?” she asked, and when he looked at her—startled and confused—she barked out a laugh and shook her head. “I mean about buying the campground. Not about... Now that it’s been open a couple of months, do you regret it? Is it going better or worse than you thought it would?”
“Better,” he said instantly. “For the most part. I was afraid it would cause fights with the four of us—not arguments or just giving each other crap like usual, but the kind of fights that destroy relationships. But we’re getting along for the most part and even though Joey isn’t totally pulling his weight, it was always him and Danny and then Brian and me, so the two of us work together well enough without him. ”
“I think protecting relationships is hard when you go into business with family. The potential is always there for a big blowup.”
“Were you worried about you and Erika?”
“That was a little different. We were casual friends when we started the podcast, but our relationship grew and strengthened over time. What we have now goes a lot deeper than when we started.”
As she spoke, her eyes lost some of their sparkle and she slouched in her chair while drawing random patterns in the syrup on her plate with her fork—like a very sticky Zen garden.
Rob wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it, but he knew he’d be a jerk not to ask about one of the biggest things in her life at the moment. “Are you making any progress in your decision-making? About the podcast, I mean.”
The sigh that sounded like it came from the depths of her soul told him she hadn’t, but she shrugged. “Still working through it, I guess. It would probably be easier if I didn’t love Erika so much.”
“If you make a decision based solely on it making Erika happy, doesn’t that mean it’s not the right move for you?”
“Not necessarily.” She shrugged. “Okay, maybe, but it’s not that easy. We’re partners and we built Improbable Causes together. I can’t just turn my back on that.”
Rob nodded. He wanted to keep pushing—to argue that if she only changed the format to please Erika, then Hannah wasn’t going to be happy—but he kept his mouth shut.
He couldn’t be objective because her and her business partner going their separate ways opened the door for even the slight possibility Hannah might be willing to consider relocating.
It wouldn’t be fair of him to influence her—assuming he even could—based on what he wanted for her on top of everything else she had to consider.
Talking about her plans definitely dimmed the glow he’d woken up with, and it felt like the wrong time to have brought up a subject that would only remind him how temporary his relationship with Hannah had to be.