Once he’d run out of reasons to keep her all to himself in the restaurant, they went back out into the late-afternoon sun.
“Do you have any idea of which store you want to start with?”
It took him a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about, then he laughed. Christmas shopping.
She gave him a suspicious look. “You said we were going to look for Rose’s gift today.”
And he didn’t want to confess it had been the first, admittedly ridiculous, reason to accompany him he thought she’d go for. “I’m too full to shop now.”
“I know what you mean. This may have been a late lunch, but I won’t eat again until breakfast tomorrow.”
“What do you say we blow off shopping and cruise around on the bike?”
When she told him that sounded like a great idea, he turned toward the Harley so she wouldn’t see him grinning like a love-struck teenager. He rarely took women out on the bike—as in almost never. His own opportunities to ride it were few and far between, and he used the time to think things through and clear his head.
He liked having Paige on the back, though. She was comfortable enough that she didn’t have a stranglehold on him, and he could enjoy the feel of her thighs pressing against his and her hand at his hips.
Mitch took a different route out of the city and cruised the back roads, pointing out interesting bits of scenery here and there. The bike was a bit loud and, with their helmets on, talking was difficult, so mostly he just burned up the miles and enjoyed the feel of her behind him.
It took over an hour to reach one of his favorite spots in the area. It wasn’t much more than a wide spot in the shoulder, but he pulled the bike in and parked it near the tree line. Bracing his feet, he waited while she put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself and climbed off, then he leaned the bike onto its stand.
“Where are we?” Paige hung her helmet on the sissy bar and pushed at the wisps of hair escaping from her braid.
“Just wait.” After hanging his helmet from the handlebar, he led her to a narrow path in the trees and reached out his hand. “It’s a little steep.”
With Paige’s hand in his, he walked along the short trail and a mild slope down to the river. A huge slab of rock extended out over a brook and he stepped on it, tugging her along with him.
“A little steep, huh?” Paige asked, amusement in her voice.
“I just wanted to hold your hand.”
She didn’t pull away, which made him ridiculously happy. Instead she looked around, so he did the same, taking in the way the fading sun shone through the trees and hit the water in splotches of gold. There was just enough current in the water that it gurgled through the rocks, and birds chirped from the cover of full summer foliage.
“It’s beautiful.” Paige didn’t whisper, but her voice was soft and low, as if she didn’t want to disturb their surroundings. “I bet you bring all the girls here.”
“Nope.” He’d never brought a woman there before, though he wasn’t sure why. And he wasn’t sure why he’d brought Paige. “I don’t come here very often. Maybe that’s what keeps it special. I came the day after my dad’s funeral, though. Laid on this rock and looked up at the sky for a while.”
She squeezed his hand. “It seems like a nice place to be alone with your thoughts.”
It was an even better place to be alone with her, though he didn’t say that out loud. There was a fine line between flirting and getting mushy, and it was bad enough his mind had even gone there. He wasn’t about to share it.
“It’s peaceful,” was all he said, but he was in trouble.
Standing in a place that he was emotionally grounded to, holding hands with a woman he was painfully attracted to, was liable to blow the foundation out from under the wall he’d built between himself and serious. He liked that wall. It kept romantic entanglements from creeping in and getting a choke hold on him when his guard was down.
What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her here?
Then she looked up at him and smiled and every logical thought in his head blew apart, leaving nothing but a driving need to know what her lips felt like against his.
Her smile dimmed a little as her expression turned to uncertainty. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because he seemed to have no self-control where she was concerned. “I was thinking about kissing you.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “You don’t look very happy about the idea.”
“Not sure how you’d take it. Doesn’t seem very fair to just spring it on you when we’re in the middle of nowhere and you have no way to get home but me.”
“And they say chivalry’s dead.”
When Paige turned her attention back to the brook, but didn’t pull her hand away from his, Mitch felt a rush of frustration. Did she want to be kissed or not? Her words certainly gave him no clues. The way she’d turned back to the water implied she wasn’t interested, but then why was she holding his hand?
“Why do you want to kiss me?”
Her voice was so low he almost didn’t hear her. He did, of course, but he wasn’t sure what to tell her. “I don’t know. Beautiful spot, beautiful day, beautiful woman. Seems like the thing to do.”
As soon as she pulled her hand away and turned back toward the banking, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. “Seems like the thing to do is start heading back. I’ve got a lot of paperwork waiting for me at home.”
Mitch caught her before she stepped off the rock, taking her arm and spinning her back to face him. “I want to kiss you because it’s the only damn thing I can think about. Every time I see you, I think about kissing you. Every time somebody says your name, I think about kissing you. Every single night when my head hits the pillow and I close my eyes, I think about kissing you.”
She kissed him. Bracing her hands against his shoulders, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his. After a second of surprise, Mitch slid his hands around her waist and took control of the kiss. He’d been waiting for this moment too long to settle for a tentative peck.
Her mouth was soft and she sighed as she surrendered to him. He kept it light at first—brushing his lips across hers and holding himself to a few quick flicks of his tongue against hers—but he wanted her, dammit, and hunger got the best of him.
He devoured her, trying to get his fill of her kiss, as he pulled her hips hard against his and her hands tightened in his hair. When their breath grew ragged and he could feel her slight trembling under his hands, he knew he could have her. Right there on the rock with the sun going down and the brook gurgling around them.
He wanted to. He wanted to so badly he was afraid his balls would explode, but some sane part of his mind—the part that usually kept him out of female trouble—pulled back. It wasn’t the place. Not only because slabs of rock were a lot more uncomfortable than they were romantic, but because there was no way out after the deed was done. If things got awkward or Paige had regrets, it would be a very long ride home on the bike.
With a lot more regret than he’d anticipated, Mitch broke off the kiss and stepped back just enough to put a little space between them. Paige’s cheeks were flushed and she looked as hot and flustered as he felt.
She gave a nervous laugh. “Now that we got that out of your system, you can think about something else, instead.”
“If that was the plan, I think it backfired.” He was already thinking about kissing her again.
“Oh.” After a couple seconds of awkward silence, she waved a hand in the direction of the road. “We really should get back.”
As he followed her down the path through the trees, he wished she wouldn’t walk so damn fast. He needed another minute or two before he could straddle the Harley’s wide seat. And it was going to be a long, painful ride home.
* * *
On Friday after work, Paige stopped by Whitford Hardware to get some advice on her current home-improvement project. She’d put off dealing with her bathroom sink
’s reluctant drain, but it seemed like a good way to distract herself from wondering if Mitch would stop by. He hadn’t, and the job had turned into a bigger one than she’d anticipated.
Dozer popped up like a groundhog from behind a display of garden gloves as Paige closed the door behind her. “Paige! How did your closet doors turn out?”
“I love them. They make a huge difference in how the bedroom looks.”
“And what’s your new project?”
She sighed, shaking her head. “My bathroom sink won’t drain. Well, it will, but if I put some tadpoles in the water, they’d be frogs by the time the water was gone.”
“Ah. You tried the chemicals?”
“Didn’t help much. The book says I need to clean out the trap, but I can’t get the connectors loose. Do you have any stuff that’ll loosen the PVC glue or something?”
Dozer shook his head. “The book says? You can’t do plumbing with a book.”
“I replaced the toilet last year by the book. Unfortunately, all the knowledge in the world won’t make me strong enough to break the pipes loose.”
“Sounds like you need a man.” She turned at the sound of Mitch’s voice just as he stepped out from behind a dividing wall covered with a variety of hand tools. Seeing him made that kiss flash through her head, and the temperature in the store seemed to spike suddenly.
Praying she was the only one who heard the innuendo lurking in Mitch’s voice, she shrugged. “Not really. Even if there’s nothing here that’ll help me loosen them, it’s just a matter of finding the right leverage.”
“It would only take me a few minutes to get your joints nice and loose.”
“So lame,” she said, as Dozer snorted. “Thanks, but I prefer to take care of it myself.”
“So you’ve said.”
She narrowed her eyes, but no response to that popped into her head. She wasn’t sure there was any response she could make. Luckily, the phone rang and Dozer excused himself to go behind the counter and answer it.
Mitch took that as an opportunity to move closer to her, and she folded her arms, as if she had any chance at all of warding him off. Nothing had worked so far. “You’re about as smooth as a horny teenager. I’m starting to think all the stories about you must be totally exaggerated.”
“You’re welcome to judge for yourself.”
“I bet,” she mumbled, feeling a little over her head in this conversation.
“In all seriousness, let me help you with the bathroom sink.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“No, you don’t.” That surprised her, but she tried not to show it. “If you don’t find anything to help here, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to get the right leverage. Or you’ll just take a saw to the pipes and put new ones in. But what will take you hours will take me a few minutes, so why not just let me help?”
Why not? Because she wasn’t stupid. She knew what he was up to—trying to prove to her that she needed a man in her life. Which she didn’t. He was developing a habit of being helpful, and Paige knew what came next. She’d get used to having him around and not doing things for herself. Then she’d start worrying she couldn’t do it alone, and then she’d start living her life around making sure she had a man to take care of her, including putting his happiness above her own.
On some level, she knew she was being ridiculous. So he’d changed a lightbulb. He was offering to fix her sink. That was a far cry from changing her entire life and everything about herself to keep a man from leaving her. But it was a slippery slope and, even though she’d seen her mother do it a thousand times growing up, Paige had found herself at the bottom of that slope more than once. The way Mitch tempted her to just slide a little bit was making her paranoid.
“I’m just trying to be neighborly,” Mitch said when her silence dragged on. “Isn’t that one of the things you love about Whitford? How we’re all neighborly and help each other?”
“Do you kiss all your neighbors?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Never mind. I already know the answer to that.”
“Just the pretty ones.” He winked, which made her roll her eyes. “I have to bring some primer back to the lodge, but I can come over early evening and take care of it. It’ll take me a half hour, tops, and I’ll behave.”
“Really?”
“Promise.”
She looked him in the eye. “You’ll behave how?”
“You’re supposed to leave a man some wiggle room.” Wiggle room was the last thing she wanted to give him. “Okay, fine. I’ll behave like a gentleman.”
Paige was torn. On the one hand, it really wasn’t a good idea to be alone with Mitch in her house. No matter where they were in the trailer, it was impossible to be more than a few steps from the bed, and if he kissed her again, she might be tempted to break her no-men streak. On the other hand, fixing the bathroom sink was becoming more of a job than she’d anticipated. She’d already done almost everything she could think of to get the trap free with no success. And cutting the old pipes out would not only add more time and mess, but money.
“There must be something more exciting you want to do on a Friday night,” she said.
“Not really. I was planning to come into town for supper anyway, so it’ll just be a little detour.”
“I’ll make you dinner.” Oh, bad idea. “If you’re going to fix my sink, the least I can do is feed you.”
“And we keep things even?” He laughed before she could take offense at his cynical view of the way she liked things.
“Just to be neighborly,” she told him.
“How’s five sound? I can fix the sink and then you can feed me.”
“Sounds great. Thank you.” Dozer was still on the phone, but she hated disappearing on him. “Will you tell Dozer I said thanks, but I’m all set?”
“Sure. See you at five.”
Five wasn’t that long from now, she thought as she stepped outside. Maybe she’d cheat and run back to the diner. She could get a couple orders of the special in to-go boxes and heat them up when the sink was done. And she needed to take a shower because…no special reason. She’d worked all day and, by the time Mitch left, she might be too tired to take one so close to bedtime.
It had nothing at all to do with being alone in her house with Mitch.
Chapter Ten
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Women tend to have disgusting traps.” Mitch laughed as he finished forcing the nasty glop from the PVC pipe into the bucket Paige had found for him. “Let me rephrase that. If a woman uses a bathroom sink on a regular basis, bad things grow in the bendy parts of the drain.”
Paige snorted. “Bendy parts? Is that a technical term?”
“Absolutely.” He forced his body back into a pretzel shape, wishing her bathroom was bigger than his closet. It took him only a few minutes to put her plumbing back together and, even with his focus on the job, he was aware of her hovering over him.
He’d tried to tell her she could go do something else, but she wasn’t one to stand back and do nothing while somebody did her a favor. She wanted to help. Unfortunately, the only way they could work on the plumbing together would be for her to lie on top of him and…whoa, that was not something he should be thinking about while he was stuck in one position on her floor, with her staring down at him.
“Can I help you with that?”
As a matter of fact, you can, he thought before he realized she was referring to the small pile of tools he was trying to transfer from under the sink to the floor on the other side of him, which wasn’t easy from his awkward position. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
He handed the tools to her one at a time, listening as she put each one in its place in her battered metal toolbox. For some reason he liked that she had a toolbox and thought she was probably the first woman he’d known who had one. Or maybe most of the women he’d known had hidden theirs away so they could call on him for rescue. Which sounded a littl
e jaded, even in his own head, but it was probably the truth.
“If you’re almost done, I’ll go heat up supper while you wash up,” Paige said.
“Sounds good. I just want to let this sit a few minutes and then run some water through it. Make sure there are no leaks.”
“If you need a hand with anything, just yell.”
He laughed. “We know you’ll be close enough to hear me.”
“Funny guy.”
A couple creaks of the floor told him she’d moved away, and he grinned when he heard the fridge open. It was a good thing Paige had a healthy sense of humor, since the first words he’d said once she’d let him through the door were “Guess you’re not claustrophobic.”
She’d just laughed and waved her hand in a semicircle in front of them. “There. You’ve had the grand tour without even moving.”
Except the bedroom. In a trailer the size of hers, open was definitely better, so the significance of her bedroom door being closed wasn’t lost on him. Paige didn’t want him in there and, since he’d promised to behave like a gentleman, there was no point in coming up with ways to change her mind.
After he’d finished with the sink, including washing up, Mitch stepped out of the bathroom and saw Paige putting a plate in the microwave. On the tiny piece of counter next to her were two to-go boxes, one open and one closed. “What’s the special tonight?”
“Baked stuffed chicken breasts with garlic mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. I skipped the spinach and got us both extra mashed.”
“You’re a good woman.”
“If that was true, I’d be offering you something home-cooked. Maybe an apple pie, too.”
He moved close enough to her to see over her shoulder as she put the second helping of chicken onto a plate. “Are you saying you cheated? Maybe took a little shortcut in our agreement?”
“You still have to behave like a gentleman.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“I said I’d feed you.” The microwave dinged. “I’m feeding you.”
All He Ever Needed Page 11
