Four Weddings and a Swamp Boat Tour - Erin Nicholas Page 0,2
to her.
So this was where Mitch Landry lived.
Her heart kicked against her ribs as she thought about the guy she was here to see. Then she laughed lightly. She wasn’t just here to see him. She wasn’t stopping by for tea. She was hoping to freaking live with him for the next few weeks.
She definitely should have called ahead.
But now that she was finally here, looking at his house, the truck in the driveway, the work boots on the front step, she realized Dee Asher might actually think this was a great idea.
Mitch had spent less than thirty-six hours in Appleby, Iowa, but he’d won the town over. He’d saved their big Apple Festival. Single-handedly. He’d also charmed everyone he met. He was good-looking, friendly, able to fix anything, and, seemingly, thought Paige was amazing.
The living a thousand miles away in Louisiana was certainly a checkmark in the “con” column, but Dee wanted Paige married and settled down. She might be willing to overlook the fact that the guy who had finally gotten Paige to put her toothbrush in his bathroom would take her baby girl so far from home.
Paige rolled her eyes. Actually, Dee might appreciate that too. Paige was a huge pain in Dee’s ass.
“Okay, this is it,” she said to the cats. She pivoted to look into the back seat where Calvin, Eddie, and Tiny Tim were sleeping.
Initially, the other three had agreed with Fred on her Worst Cat Mom of the Year nomination, but they’d given up yelling about it two hundred miles back or so.
It had been a long trip.
Paige turned back to study Mitch’s house. Her heart knocked against her ribs again, and she blew out a breath.
He said he’s crazy about you. You were planning to be here in another three weeks for the wedding anyway.
She had agreed to be his plus one for his cousin’s wedding to one of Paige’s friends, Tori.
Tori, Paige’s now ex-veterinarian, was an Iowa girl who had fallen for a Louisiana boy and moved her life to the bayou. Mitch had tagged along with Tori and her fiancé, Josh, last summer on the trip to fetch a bunch of animals Tori couldn’t leave behind. Paige and Mitch had met over the back end of an alpaca when Paige had stopped by to say hello.
There had been instant sparks, and Mitch hadn’t needed to sleep on the couch in the den at Tori’s mom’s house that night.
It had been the perfect fling. He’d been hot and funny and charming and had done things to her body that she feared had ruined her for other men. Then he’d been gone the next morning by six a.m. No awkward breakfast conversation, no learning how she liked her coffee, no chance of running into her mother and getting hopes up about wedding dress shopping.
“Tori wouldn’t be friends with a guy who hacks people up with a chainsaw,” she told Bernie.
Bernie finally meowed in return.
Paige nodded. “You’re right. I definitely wasn’t worried about any murderous tendencies when we were having the hottest sex of my life.”
Fred yowled.
“Hey, I don’t need your judgment,” she told the cat. “He’s also been texting. So he hasn’t forgotten about me. Or written me off entirely. Hell, he mentioned moving to Iowa to see what this might turn into.”
Her stomach flipped at that. She wasn’t sure if it was a good flip or a bad flip, though. When he’d showed up in Appleby two weeks after Christmas, again with Tori and Josh, Paige had been shocked by how happy she was to see him. And how intense their chemistry was the second time around.
Then he’d mentioned that he wouldn’t mind relocating to Iowa, and it had freaked her out. She did not want a serious relationship, and a guy leaving his family and job just to “see what could happen” had seemed like a kind of major commitment.
And now, here she was, about to knock on his door and ask if she could stay for the next three weeks. Or three months.
He was so going to take this the wrong way.
“Reason number five that this is a bad idea,” she told the cats. “Mitch Landry is going to think I want to be his girlfriend.”
Bernie meowed again. So did Calvin. As if they agreed with her.
Dammit.
“The way my luck goes, he’ll be proposing by Wednesday,” she told Fred, who had climbed into her lap to look out her window at the house too.