Oh, Fudge: Hot Cakes Book Five

by Nicholas, Erin

  Prolonged foreplay sounded pretty great. Frustrating, of course. But great.

  They definitely hadn’t done it that way the first time. They’d pretty much made some stupid excuse why they both had to leave the alpaca farm at the same time—yes, they’d met at an alpaca farm—and had barely gotten through her apartment door before they’d ripped each other’s clothes off. They’d been fucking up against her door within five minutes. She hadn’t needed any foreplay. She’d been so, so ready for him.

  That had been wild. She’d never wanted a guy that much that quickly.

  In spite of the fact they’d met over the back of an alpaca.

  Her friend and veterinarian, Tori, had come back to Iowa to gather her menagerie of special-needs animals she’d been collecting to relocate them to Louisiana with her back in March. Her boyfriend, Josh, and his cousin Mitch had come along to help. It wasn’t a small feat to move cows and pigs and a passel of cats and dogs a thousand miles to a new home.

  But it wasn’t until Tori had come back to visit her parents in July—and to take another few goats and another cow back with her—that Paige had met them. She’d simply gone out to Tori’s place to say hi. She hadn’t expected to get the hottest one-night stand of her life out of it. But she’d been more than happy with how the visit had turned out.

  And now he was back. To see her. Tori didn’t need his help this time. Yes, she was taking an alpaca back to Louisiana with her, but she and Josh could handle one animal. Mitch was here to see Paige. And that made her belly flutter and her chest feel warmer than it should have.

  She shook that off. She needed to just focus. On getting Mitch out of here and up to her apartment before anyone planned a bridal shower and then getting him naked as soon as possible.

  “Okay, we’ll go out together and pretend to be talking about the heating system,” she told him.

  “Furnace,” he told her with a grin. “It’s called a furnace.”

  She swatted his arm. “Yeah. Okay. The furnace.” So he knew that she’d lost her ability to think of the word furnace. It was okay he knew that he affected her. He did. And what would hiding that get her?

  “So we’re going to talk about the work I did on your furnace?” he asked, somehow making the question sound dirty.

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  “Without any tools?” he asked, turning his empty palms up.

  She shrugged. “There might not be anyone outside anyway. But I guess we can talk about the work you’re going to do?”

  He wiggled his brows. “I definitely have a lot of thoughts about what I’m going to do to your heating system.”

  It was the drawl. It had to be. How did that cheesy teasing make her stomach flip and her want to giggle? It was the most obvious line he could have used. Any other guy probably would have said the same thing. But Mitch Landry said it and her libido started dancing to “Single Ladies.” And singing.

  NO. No, no, no.

  He was not going to put a ring on it.

  “Yeah, so…” She cleared her throat. “Say something about…”

  “Nuts?” he offered. “Or screws, maybe? I could talk about things I need to bang. Or pound. Or what a tight fit it will be.”

  She put her hand over his mouth, shaking her head, telling her libido to knock it off. “How about you make something up about a duct or something?”

  She felt him grin behind her hand. His fingers wrapped around her wrist and he pulled her hand back. But not before kissing her palm and sending tiny electric shocks to her belly.

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “Okay, great.” Her voice was breathless. Maybe even more so than when he’d had her pinned against the door. What was that?

  She didn’t want to analyze it.

  She took a breath and turned toward the door.

  “I really think it’s your blower motor,” Mitch said from behind her.

  She started to snort as she stepped out into the lobby.

  And into a small crowd of women.

  She came up short, surprised. “Uh, hi, ladies.”

  There were only three women left over from the earlier class, but the way they’d all swung toward the door and had wide eyes and expectant looks on their faces made them seem more numerous somehow.

  Paige felt Mitch stop directly behind her. Not quite bumping into her but not with any real space between them.

  Her blower motor. Uh-huh.

  “I was hoping you could take a look at my furnace too,” Linda Ritter said.

  To Mitch.

  Her gaze had slid right past Paige to the man over her shoulder.

  “Oh,” he said. “Well… yes.”

  Paige frowned and turned to face him. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “He’s a repairman, right?” Linda asked.

  “He’s just…”

  “Passing through,” Mitch supplied.

  “But you’re looking at Paige’s blower motor?” Linda asked. “How long will that take?”

  Mitch cleared his throat and Paige knew he was not thinking about her furnace. She wanted to elbow him but that would have been very obvious to their little audience here.

  “I probably won’t be available for anything else until tomorrow,” he said.

  He sounded as if he actually meant to take a look at Linda’s furnace. And Linda was fifty-something, happily married, with four kids, and was a first-grade teacher. Paige thought she actually wanted Mitch to actually look at her actual furnace.

  “Tomorrow is fine,” Linda said. “We’ve been at my mom’s for the past two days. One more night will be okay. We’d just be so grateful.”

  Paige frowned and focused on Linda. “Your furnace has been out for two days?”

  She nodded. “And with the big storm this week, Larry and Mike have been swamped with work on a couple of roofs that had tree branches come down, so they can’t get over to look at furnaces.”

  This was not good. Linda didn’t just need her furnace filters cleaned out or something. She actually needed it repaired. And now, because of her lie about who Mitch was, Linda was going to have the hopes that she’d be back in her own warm home tomorrow night.

  “Oh wow, if you’re completely without heat, I’ll stop by yet this afternoon,” Mitch said.

  Paige turned back to him again. She was going to have whiplash. She frowned at him. He just lifted a brow at her.

  Did he actually know how to fix furnaces? Huh. That hadn’t occurred to her.

  “Do you know anything about gas fireplaces?” Melanie Carter asked.

  Paige tipped her head, curious about the answer too.

  He nodded. “I could take a look.”

  Paige widened her eyes at him. He widened his eyes back at her.

  Damn, he knew about furnaces and fireplaces. That was… lucky. Or something.

  Like hot. And not in the those-were-both-ways-people-heated-their-homes way. It was sexy that he knew how to fix things. And that he was willing to go help complete strangers like that.

  “Are you in town for a few days?” Carol Lemming asked Mitch.

  He nodded. “I am. I’m passing through, meeting up with some friends in a couple of days, but heard there was a great festival here and thought I might stay for a day or two.”

  “How did you know he works on furnaces?” Melanie asked Paige.

  “Um…” Paige was distracted by the day or two thing. She’d thought this was a one-night thing again, like last time.

  She was going to have to hide him for a day or two?

  Except now he was going to be going out all over town fixing things.

  Okay, he was going to go to two houses and help a couple of people out. But now all of these ladies knew he was here, for a day or two.

  Her mom was so going to hear about this.

  She was absolutely going to have to be sure her mother thought that Mitch was just a friend of a friend who had taken a look at her blower motor.

  In a very not dirty way. />
  “The friends I’m meeting are mutual friends,” Mitch said, when Paige had failed to answer Melanie for too long. “They mentioned that she’d been having some issues here at the studio and I offered to stop by on my way through.”

  “You’re so sweet.”

  “That’s so fortunate for you, Paige.”

  “Are you single?”

  The three responses came right on top of one another, and the question about his relationship status was almost lost.

  Almost.

  “He’s engaged,” she said, before she really thought it through.

  It was a great excuse for her mother not to think Paige should spend romantic time with Mitch for the day or two—why had he not mentioned that?—he was going to be in town.

  Mitch gave a little choked sound behind her, but Paige covered it by saying brightly, “To Tori Kramer. Do you ladies know her? Veterinarian?”

  But that made Mitch choke and cough again.

  “Tori and I have been friends for a while,” Paige went on, talking quickly so that no one, including Mitch, could insert anything until she’d laid the whole story out.

  “She went to Mardi Gras last year and met J—Mitch, and they kind of fell for each other, but she came back to Iowa, and they made a deal to meet up at Mardi Gras again this year if they were still interested in one another. She was, but she also happened to be down there for her best friend’s wedding, and she went to find Jo—Mitch, she went to find Mitch again, and all the old feelings were still there and bam, they fell in love and now she’s moving down there to be with him.”

  Paige finished the actually true story about Tori—it just happened that the guy in the story was Mitch’s cousin Josh—with a bright smile. “So Mitch is just here, in Appleby, to help with my furnace because Tori told him it went out.”

  “Oh, how nice,” Melanie said. But she sounded disappointed.

  Paige frowned at that as well. Melanie was also married but had only been with her husband for a couple of years. Surely she wasn’t looking for a hookup with a hot repairman? Well, stranger things had happened.

  “It doesn’t feel cold in here,” Carol commented.

  Right. The building was warm. Which was strange if the furnace was out. “Well—”

  “It’s not out,” Mitch interjected. “Not exactly. The blower motor just isn’t working efficiently. So the furnace is on, but the air isn’t circulating as well as it should be.”

  Wait a second… the blower motor was a real thing? And here she’d been thinking that was a pretty great innuendo.

  “So you’re staying with your fiancé tonight, then?” Carol asked.

  Mitch looked down at Paige. “Well, I was thinking maybe I should stick around here and offer some help with all of the trees and roofs.”

  Paige gaped at him. “Seriously?”

  “Tori will understand,” he said dryly. Then he shrugged. “Sounds like it’s a town-wide issue. I’m not used to snow, but I know how to use a chainsaw.”

  “I bet you do,” Melanie said.

  When Paige glanced at her, Melanie’s gaze was on Mitch’s right bicep.

  Stupidly, Paige found herself moving to block Melanie’s line of sight. Not that she totally could, of course. Mitch was a big guy—something she really liked about him—but she still felt the need to insinuate herself between him and the other woman.

  “But you don’t have a winter coat,” Paige pointed out to Mitch.

  “Know anyone who would loan me one?” he asked her with a smirk that said he’d noticed her move between him and Melanie.

  “I—”

  “Coats and anything else you need,” Carol assured him. “I was going to ask you if you knew anything about electrical wiring.”

  Paige looked at her. Of course they could come up with coats and hats and gloves and anything else. Everyone in town had multiples of all of those things. Carol had three adult sons herself who probably had coats that would fit Mitch. “Why do you need help with electrical wiring?”

  “My booth for the festival has a glitch,” the woman said, lifting her shoulder.

  “But you had no idea Mitch would be here,” Paige pointed out. “What was your plan?” Carol was a friend of her mother’s. She would absolutely be reporting all of this back to Dee Asher.

  “I was going to do without the lights,” Carol told her. “Liam hooked it all up for me yesterday, but then he had to head to Dubuque for work,” she said of her son. “I hated to call him back when it all went out this morning. I just thought, since Mitch was here and was obviously so capable, that I might as well ask.”

  Mitch was already nodding. “I can definitely take a look. No problem.”

  “Well...” Carol said.

  Paige bit back a sigh. “There’s something else?”

  “It’s not just my booth. Apparently, the problem is a wider electrical issue for the whole square. None of the booths have electricity.”

  “And normally Mike and Larry would be fixing it but they’re repairing roofs,” Paige filled in, letting a tiny sigh out.

  “Mike and Larry work for the city. They’re the general repairmen,” Linda explained to Mitch. “The branches that came down were on trees in an older part of town. The houses are close together, and the four that were damaged all had older roofs.”

  “Four?” Paige interrupted. “Mike and Larry are crawling around on snowy roofs on four houses in this cold?”

  Linda nodded. “Roof holes obviously take precedence over lights on the festival booths.”

  “Well, of course,” Paige said. She hadn’t known there were people with holes in their roofs or that Larry, who was easily sixty, and Mike, who wasn’t much younger, were up on rooftops that had icicles dangling and snowy patches. “Why aren’t they hiring a roofing company?”

  “The trees should have been trimmed back before this happened,” Carol said. “That was the city’s responsibility, so the repairs are too.”

  “They’re risking Mike and Larry’s necks to save a few bucks?” Paige asked.

  Carol just shrugged.

  “The wiring won’t take long, I’m bettin’,” Mitch said, his drawl slow and easy, making Paige take a long, deep breath.

  She felt his fingers brush against her lower back and found the gesture reassuring.

  Of course, he was supposed to be engaged, so she shifted away from the touch.

  “I’ll get the furnace up and going,” Mitch said. “I’ll take a peek at the fireplace, check the wiring quick, and then go help Mike and Larry.”

  That was going to really cut into the naked time they could be having, Paige realized. But she’d not realized they were going to have days of it.

  What was she going to do with him for a couple of days anyway? Besides the obvious. But they couldn’t just have sex for forty-eight hours straight. Could they? Of course not. She had to work. For one thing. And if he was off doing other things, then it was less time they’d be together and making her mother suspicious. The Tori story was solid. Her mom knew of Tori. Paige had talked about her often enough. Dee had maybe even met Tori once when she’d been here looking at the cats.

  Yeah, this wasn’t a terrible plan.

  “Oh, you need to go do the furnace first and then help Mike and Larry,” Melanie said, waving her hand. “My fireplace can wait. It’s not our main heat source.”

  “And our lights can wait,” Carol agreed. “If you can get to it, that’s wonderful, but Mike and Larry can use the help.”

  “Okay, then,” Mitch said. “I assume Paige knows where y’all live?”

  Paige could tell the drawl affected the other women as well. Their smiles all got a little bigger when he said y’all.

  “She does, of course,” Linda said. “You can stop by any time. If you want to come around dinnertime, I’d—”

  “No,” Paige cut in on the dinner invitation. For fuck’s sake. Linda was going to, what? Adopt him as a pseudo-son? Or had she been eyeing his biceps too? Or was it the d
rawl?

  “No,” Paige said again. “Mitch will be fine. He can stop over and look at the furnace tonight and then get in touch with Mike and Larry. Then I’ll be sure he’s fed tonight.”

  “And Tori?” Melanie asked. “She’ll be okay with sharing you with us?”

  “She’s with her family tonight,” Mitch said. “I was gonna check on Paige’s furnace and then head over there, but she’ll completely understand if I hang out here and help y’all out.”

  Blatant lying for her, Paige noted. That should not be sexy. She should not condone lying. Though she had put him the position to have to. She shouldn’t have done that either. She was clearly a bad influence on a man who was turning out to be a really good guy.

  This had been a lot easier on her conscience when all she’d known about him was how good he was with his hands and mouth and… other body parts.

  “Oh, you’ll have to invite Tori over to the festival,” Carol said. “And the friends you’re meeting up with. Especially after you save the entire thing by fixing the wiring.”

  Well, that was a terrible idea.

  Tori would probably love to come. She was now a Louisiana girl, but she’d maybe missed Iowa and the snow and other wintery things her new home didn’t offer. But that would mean she’d have to pretend to be Mitch’s fiancée. How would Paige get her to do that? And then what would they do with Josh? Make him stay with Tori’s family? No. He’d be a hot, single guy in town with Tori and Mitch, and Paige’s mother would try to set her up with him. That would be more than a little awkward.

  “Tori’s mom has really missed her,” Mitch said smoothly. “As much as she’d love the festival, I’m sure, I think they want to spend every minute together that they can. I don’t want her to be even more annoyed with me for stealing her little girl to the South.”

  A slow, sexy smile accompanied his explanation—that totally fixed the problem and kept Paige from having to lie even more—and the other women visibly melted a little.

  Paige almost rolled her eyes. Except that she completely understood what they were feeling. The guy was potent. And quick on his feet. And could, apparently, fix just about anything.

  Damn, she was in trouble.