What It Takes

By Shannon Stacey

New York Times–Bestselling Author: She has a whole summer in Maine to kick off her new single life—and the last thing she wants is a husband . . .

Laney Caswell is looking for a change. A decade’s worth of less-than-happy matrimony behind her, she wants peace—movies, books, and, best of all, a new job at the Northern Star Lodge in Whitford, Maine. Spending the summer living in a camper is her chance to rediscover what makes her happy, and a perfect transition to her new life.

Being a paramedic in Whitford is nothing like Ben Rivers’s city life, but when Josh Kowalski offers him the job, the lure of his hometown is too much to resist. Also too much to resist: Laney Caswell. Ben always thought he’d have a wife and kids, a happy family like the Kowalskis have all built, but he never made time in his life. Now he’s found a woman who draws him like no other and helps him dream again—and the last thing she wants is a husband.

When the annual Kowalski family camping trip is moved to the Northern Star, both Ben and Laney are surrounded by the kind of happiness they’ve always wanted but never had. It just might be theirs—if they can put aside the past and reach for it together.

“One of those stories that you don’t want to put down.” —Night Owl Reviews

“I’m madly in love with the Kowalskis!” —New York Times–bestselling author Nalini Singh

One-click with confidence. This title is part of the CarinaPress Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781488022685

Shannon Stacey

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shannon Stacey lives with her husband and two sons in New England, where her two favorite activities are writing stories of happily ever after and off-roading with her friends and family. You can contact Shannon through her website, www.shannonstacey.com, as well as sign up for her newsletter.

Book preview

Chapter One

Nothing good ever came of a half-assed plan.

Ben Rivers stood with his arms folded across his chest, staring down at the mangled four-wheeler lying on its side about twenty feet down a pucker brush-covered hill. Though a half-assed plan was still better than no plan, he had to admit.

The handlebars are going left and the wheels are going right, he pointed out.

Matt Barnett—who was with the Maine state warden service—and Josh Kowalski both shrugged, but it was Josh who spoke. Yeah, you’ll have to figure out how to compensate for that.

Me? Who decided I was going down there?

I’m running the winch, Josh said, pointing to his ATV with its spool of heavy-duty winch cable bolted on the front.

And I’m in charge of the investigation, Matt said, so I can’t risk breaking my paperwork hand.

Ben snorted. And I’m the paramedic, so I should probably stay up here and be ready to patch up whichever of you idiots draws the short straw.

Hey, I’ve had first aid training, Matt protested.

They laughed because they all knew Matt was a guy you’d definitely want around in a crisis, but his first aid training didn’t exactly match up to Ben’s years of being a paramedic in the city. That was why Drew Miller—Whitford’s police chief—and Josh, both of whom Ben had known his entire life, had called and offered him a job back in his hometown. Now that their part of the state had become a vacation destination for ATV and side-by-side enthusiasts, they needed somebody who could ride a four-wheeler, knew the area like only a native son would, and could offer advanced medical care while victims were slowly carted out of the woods to a waiting ambulance or helicopter. Ben had fit the bill and his phone had rung at a time he was staring down the barrel of burnout and looking to make a change.

If Matt wasn’t here we could just push it off the tree it’s hung up on and let it roll the rest of the way down the hill into the pond, Josh said.

We’d never get the equipment we’d need for extraction down there, Ben said.

That’s between the owner and his insurance company.

We’re not pushing it into the pond, Matt said firmly. "Do you want the lecture on water contamination, wildlife impact and EPA fines or can we just go with because I said so?"

Josh groaned. Hell no, I don’t want a lecture. And you know I was kidding, but since you won’t let us do it the easy way, we’ll watch you do it the hard way.

Matt looked at Ben. Rock, paper, scissors?

I saved the rider. You save the machine.

The game warden snorted. Saved the rider? You cleaned the scrape on his elbow and gave him a Band-Aid.

Hey, infected wounds are no joke. He managed to say wound with a straight face, but it wasn’t easy.

The rider had bailed when the machine started to roll, throwing himself free. He’d skinned his elbow when he hit the ground and he’d be finding new bruises for a couple of days, but he’d been lucky and Ben’s services hadn’t really been needed. Unfortunately, the information that the rider wasn’t still on the ATV when it rolled over and went off the trail and down a hill wasn’t relayed to the dispatcher right away and hadn’t been relayed to Ben at all. So he hadn’t saved anybody, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to pawn the physical labor off on one of the other guys.

In the end, both Matt and Ben ended up over the edge while Josh ran the winch. After they secured the steel cable to the frame of the ATV, they had to guide the ATV as Josh reeled the cable back in. It was slow work, and they had to constantly move to make sure they were never in a position to be swept down the hill on the odd chance the winch cable snapped.

By the time they had the four-wheeler back on the trail, Ben was sweaty and cursing himself for not leaving as soon as he’d slapped a Band-Aid on the machine’s rider. Instead, he’d hung around after Andy went back after a truck and trailer, the so-called victim riding behind him since Andy had a two-up, chatting. Then the chatting became a discussion of how to retrieve the ATV and here he was.

Now comes the hard part, Josh said, and Ben’s groan was almost drowned out by Matt’s. We have to get it two miles to the closest spot Andy can get the truck and trailer to.

We’re not driving it, that’s for sure. Matt was circling the ATV, taking pictures. He’d taken some while it was hung up on the hill, too, as well as a few of the marks on the trail leading up to the spot it rolled over.

It looked to Ben like the rider had simply caught a rut wrong and it was a straight-up accident, but that was Matt’s job.

I don’t see why we don’t leave it and let the guy who owns it worry about it, Ben said. You’d have to be one tricky son of a bitch to steal it in the condition it’s in.

Josh shook his head. Because guess who’s going to get asked to bring him back out here and then get the machine back to the road? I’m here now. And you guys are here. I’d rather do this with you than a guy who managed to roll his machine on a dirt road.

"There are ruts," Matt pointed out.

How are you planning to get it to the road? Ben asked Josh, hoping they could move the process along so there was at least the hope of having lunch in the near future.

It’s only a 500, so my machine can take the weight. We’re going to put the front wheels up on my back rack and strap the shit out of it. Then, nice and slow so I’m not doing accidental wheelies, I’m going to pull it out to the road.

Ben laughed, shaking his head. Sean and I did that once. He made me ride all the way back on the front rack of his machine to balance the weight of mine on the back.

I remember when you guys pulled in the yard. Worked, didn’t it?

Ben looked at Josh. We were young and stupid.

And now we’re older and wiser, so nobody’s riding on the front rack. It is going to take all three of us to get that front end up high enough, though.

Matt snorted. Aren’t you glad you took this job, Ben?

He laughed, but he was glad he’d taken the job offer. Sure, he was sweaty and his arms were going to be sore and he could only hope there hadn’t been poison ivy or oak on that hill, but he had no regrets.

Coming back to Whitford had been the right decision and he had a feeling things were really going to start looking up.

* * *

Laney Caswell had been looking to make big changes in her life, and almost being able to touch both walls of her new home at the same time certainly qualified as a big change.

The camper was small, but it had a bed, a tiny bathroom with a tinier shower, and outlets for her coffeemaker and charging her phone. What more did a woman starting over in her midthirties need?

Today was the first full day of her new life at the Northern Star Lodge & Campground, she thought, feeling pretty damn proud of herself. The divorce had taken forever, but the papers had been signed and it was finally final. Throw in the camper’s hot water heater being just big enough to rinse all the soap and shampoo away, and things were looking up already.

A knock on the camper door startled her, and she would have laughed out loud at herself except she knew campers weren’t exactly soundproof and she was trying to make a good impression on her new employers. After setting her coffee mug on the small square of Formica that made up her kitchen counter, she opened the door to find one of those bosses smiling up at her.

Good morning, Laney.

Good morning. Laney guessed Rose Miller—who she’d been told to call Rosie, like everybody else did—was in her very late sixties, though she wouldn’t ask, of course.

Now that you’ve spent your first night in the camper, I thought I’d stop by and see if everything went okay, or if there were any problems.

It was awkward standing above the woman, so Laney stepped down onto the metal step and then the ground. After separating the two door panels, she closed the screen door and then folded the exterior door all the way back. There was a small hook bolted to the side of the camper that would hold it open. The camper had been closed up for a while and every little bit of fresh air would help.

I didn’t have any problems, she said. Everything seems to work fine, the bed is comfortable and my coffeemaker went off at the time I set it to. Thank you for the welcome basket, by the way. The muffins were amazing, and the banana bread was the best I’ve ever had.

You’re welcome. Rosie smiled. And you can’t ask for much more than a comfortable bed and fresh coffee in the morning. Andy’s off doing some chores and I thought maybe you’d like to take a walk with me and see a little more of the place.

Of course. This was going to be her home until fall, and she was looking forward to exploring it.

Your flamingo is adorable, by the way, Rosie said.

Laney looked at the silly yard ornament she’d set into the ground next to her step and smiled. The wooden flamingo was bright pink and it had a funny, painted cartoon face. It also had thin plastic wings that would whirl if the winds were strong enough. It was something neither her family nor the Ballards—including her ex-husband—would have allowed on their lawns, and Laney loved it.

Thank you. He’s definitely a cheerful guy.

They walked around the campground area of the property. There were two cabins, and a dozen sites with sewer and electric hookups, not counting hers. Her site was closer to the line of trees between the camping area and the lodge, and had a view of the new pool.

When they walked past the field behind the campsites where the campers could park their ATV trailers, Rosie waved to her husband, who was mowing with a zero turn mower. He blew her a kiss and Laney swore she heard Rosie giggle.

During her very informal interview, which had been a conference call with Rosie and Josh Kowalski, Rosie had made a joke about being a newlywed and then explained to Laney that she and Andy had only been married for a couple of years.

Just thinking about it made Laney smile. If Rose could find true love and happiness at her age, that meant there was still plenty of time for Laney. She could take her time making her life into what she wanted it to be and then maybe, in the distant future, she’d be lucky enough to find a man who would want to share it with her.

First she had to figure out what exactly she wanted her life to be, of course. And that’s why she was here, in the middle of nowhere Maine, with nothing but her clothes, a few prized possessions, and a tablet loaded up with movies her ex-husband hadn’t wanted to watch and books she’d never gotten around to reading. She was going to live simply, consume things she enjoyed and find her true self.

She felt as if she was starring in one of those movies, invariably based on bestselling books, in which women went on epic treks of self-discovery to distant and exotic lands, except in Laney’s case, she’d trekked to Maine to live in a box on wheels for a few months.

The Northern Star Lodge & Campground was her distant and exotic land. Or distant-ish, since she’d started her journey in Rhode Island. But the difference between the decade she’d spent being Mrs. Patrick Ballard in a big house in Warwick and now couldn’t be measured in miles.

Let’s go out front and I’ll tell you where we keep some of the things you might need, like extra propane tanks.

Laney had already figured out that out front meant the lodge itself and the lawn and outbuildings surrounding it, and out back meant the camping area and field. As soon as they walked through the gap in the trees, though, she saw two guys—one of them being Josh—standing next to a trailer bearing an ATV that looked a little worse for wear.

Who’s that with Josh? she asked, knowing she’d be meeting a whole lot of new people in the days to come.

That’s Ben Rivers, Rosie answered. He grew up in Whitford, but he moved away to the city years ago. Now he’s back, which makes his mama happy, let me tell you. Ben’s a good boy.

Laney bit back a laugh at the idea of the man standing across the yard being described as a good boy. He looked about her age or maybe a little older, with dark hair and a scruffy jaw. He wasn’t as tall as Josh but Laney could tell he was at least a couple inches taller than her, so he was probably five-ten or five-eleven. Very faded jeans and a navy T-shirt hugged his body, and he was wearing battered work boots.

But it wasn’t his appearance that caused Laney to be amused by the word boy. Whoever Ben was, he carried himself with the kind of confidence and authority that came from life experience and feeling secure in his place in the world.

Must be nice.

And then he turned his head to look at her, one eyebrow arched as if silently asking why she was staring at him. She felt her cheeks warm before his gaze shifted to Rosie beside her. He smiled, and his face lit up in a way that made Laney’s pulse quicken.

How ridiculous to feel as if she could burst into flames just seeing a man smile, and not even at her, she thought. It had been a very long time since she’d had that kind of reaction to a man and, while she was glad everything felt as if it was in good working order, she wasn’t here for that.

She was here to work so, as Rosie spoke to her, she tore her gaze away from the handsome good boy and tried to pay attention.

Chapter Two

Ben waved to Rosie Davis—no, it was Miller now, he reminded himself—but as she turned to keep walking, he couldn’t stop his gaze from returning to the woman with her. She was close to his own age, with long light brown hair that had been highlighted either naturally by the sun or very professionally from a bottle.

Probably by the sun, he thought, noticing how tan her long legs were and the color across the apples of her cheeks. She’d been spending a lot of time outside. As he watched, Rosie pointed at each of the lodge’s outbuildings, as if explaining what each was. It seemed like an odd thing for a camper to be interested in.

Who’s that? he finally asked Josh. The woman with Rosie, I mean.

Her name’s Laney. She’s going to be helping out for a while.

It’s quite the expansion you guys have done here. The campground. Cabins. A pool. Now an employee who’s not family. The lodge had been in the family for several generations, and it was Josh’s dad who’d turned it into a snowmobile lodge. They’d managed to get by for many years on the seasonal business, but when the economy tanked, they’d found a way to go year-round by hooking the town into the nearby ATV trails.

Josh nodded. It’s crazy how much business the trails have brought to town. We’ve had at least a half a dozen new businesses in the last couple of years. And since we expanded and added the campground, it’s harder to keep up. I mean, technically there are four of us, but Katie has the barbershop and she’s having a baby in three months. Rosie’s been taking care of this lodge my whole life and Andy helps with the campground, but she’s almost seventy and he’s at least that. I don’t want them working that hard.

You can’t do it alone.

Josh shook his head. Not and keep up with the club business. Since I’m the president and Andy’s the trail administrator, that takes up a good chunk of our time. It makes sense to have somebody who can help out in a general sense and focus on just the guests.

Is she from around here?

No, but she was willing to live on-site in a camper until after the long Labor Day weekend, accepted the salary we offered and Rosie liked her.

Ben suspected it was the last qualification that had sealed the deal. Rosie had been hired by Frank and Sarah Kowalski back when he was a kid and he couldn’t remember when Sarah had died, but he’d been young. Rosie had not only been taking care of the lodge for Josh’s whole life, but she’d been like a mother to him and his brothers and sister, too. Accepting help wouldn’t come easy to Rosie, so her actually liking whoever they hired was vital.

You ran a background check, right? he asked, because there had to be a reason why a woman his age would take on a job probably better suited to a college kid looking to earn a paycheck while saving money on rent over the summer.

Josh snorted. The chief of police is Andy’s son and my brother-in-law. What do you think?

I’m going to buy a whiteboard to start keeping track of that stuff. Ben shook his head. Josh was married to Andy’s stepdaughter, Katie. And Andy’s son, Drew, was married to Josh’s sister, Liz. The bottom line, though, was that anybody looking to work at the Northern Star would be thoroughly vetted.

I’m going to leave the wheeler right on the trailer, Josh said. He brought it up in the bed of his pickup, but in its current condition, he’d be better off borrowing the trailer from me.

But they had to unhook the trailer from Josh’s truck, and it was an old one. That meant lifting the hitch off the ball by hand and setting the tongue on a heavy-duty jack stand Josh grabbed from the barn. Because nothing was ever easy, it slipped—a rough edge cutting the palm of his hand—and he let loose a few choice swear words.

We probably own twenty pairs of leather work gloves between us, Josh said, brushing rusty paint flakes off his hands.

Ben frowned at the cut, carefully brushing a few paint flakes away from it. I’ve got at least three in my truck right now.

Me, too. Josh laughed. I appreciate the help.

No problem. I figure if I pop over and make myself useful enough, eventually Rosie will bake me up some of that banana bread I love. There are some things a man never forgets and Rosie’s cooking is one of them. Your wife inherit that gene from her mom?

No. Cooking is not one of Katie’s stronger skills. After taking a deep breath, Josh looked toward the break in the tree line that marked the beginning of the camping area. I guess I’ll go see what’s happening with this guy and let him know his machine’s back. For all I know, he decided to head to the hospital.

I doubt it. Ben looked at his hands. I’m going to go in and wash up, since I want to run a little soap over this. I’ll catch you later.

He was halfway to the house when he realized he was on an intercept course with Laney, who must have been done walking with Rosie. He could have hesitated or veered off toward his truck, but he’d meet the woman at some point. It might as well be now.

Ben saw the moment she saw him—the hesitation in her step—but then she smiled and kept walking until their paths converged. Hi, I’m Laney Caswell.

Ben Rivers. He started to hold out his hand, and then stopped, twisting his wrist to show her his palm. I’d shake your hand, but that trailer back there got the better of me.

Frowning, she leaned closer to look at it. That cut needs to be cleaned.

Yeah, I’ll get to it.

I know exactly what that means when a man says it. You’ll probably spit on it and wipe it on your jeans when I’m not looking.

Or slap a little PVC glue on it, he teased, unable to help himself.

Rosie had a first aid kit in the kitchen, she said. I’ll take care of it for you.

Ben could tell her he’d been on his way to the kitchen already. He could tell her he was pretty well qualified to deal with a small cut on his hand. Instead, he nodded and gestured for her to lead the way.

Wash your hands and then have a seat, she said firmly before going into the pantry.

By the time he’d done as he was told and then sat down, Laney had found an ancient plastic storage bin marked FIRST AID in big letters on a piece of masking tape. She carried it over and popped the lid. Rosie told me she’s had this box for thirty years because regular first aid kits weren’t enough for the Kowalski family.

She wasn’t lying. He held out his hand, palm up on the table, so she could look at it.

You’ve known them a long time, then?

My whole life. I ran with Josh’s brother Sean, mostly, since we’re the same age, but we all grew up together.

There’s something in this, she said before rummaging in the box for tweezers. Then she opened an alcohol wipe and cleaned the slanted tips, which he appreciated.

Probably a paint chip. The trailer’s seen better days. And before you ask, my tetanus is up to date.

When she laid her fingers across his, holding them flat, Ben felt a frisson of awareness up the back of his neck. He was aware of how soft her hands were. That her hair smelled like roses. Her eyes

Reviews for What It Takes

[n.w.moors-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This latest book in the Kowalski Family series is okay, but definitely not my favorite of the series. Ben Rivers has moved back to Whitford to act as the paramedic for the fire department, a job much needed with the burgeoning ATV activity. Laney Caswell is a recent divorcee who comes to work at the Kowalski campground. Laney wants to find herself again after ten years of marriage to a rich man who had her catering to his every whim.There's an instant attraction between the two, but Laney doesn't want to lose her independence and Ben is looking to settle down. Meanwhile, the annual Kowalski reunion is being held at the campground so we get to see the whole family again as they spend two weeks in Maine. I have to admit I wish the reunion hadn't taken up so much of the book. There wasn't enough of my favorites with so many people being involved and the romance between Laney and Ben suffered as a result. I still enjoyed the story with the 'bad word' Scrabble and the shopping list of doom, but I wish it had concentrated on Laney and Ben more.

[amdrane2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Each time a new Kowalski book comes out I jump up and do the Riverdance. Okay, not really, but you get the idea. I've never wanted to be part of a fictional family as much as I'd love to be in this family. I'm so sad that we ran out of family until the kids grow up (hint, hint). The family having the annual family vacation of doom at the lodge was fabulous. Seeing them all again as the background noise to Laney and Ben's romance was perfect. I need more! Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.