Mitch had been doing that since he’d been a little boy.

Linda led Mitch through the house to the kitchen at the back. The entire house was decorated with an apple theme. The sofa had throw pillows with apples stitched on them and a red-and-white blanket draped over the back. The rocking chair near the window had an apple-patterned cushion. The mantel over the fireplace was decorated with a variety of ceramic apples. The entire room looked like a picture postcard.

The rest of the house was similarly decorated. The dining room table had a red runner down the center with a bowl full apples as a centerpiece. The kitchen even had a set of fat-apple canisters on the counter and a large red apple rug covering the wooden floor.

Mitch took it all in as he followed Linda to the basement door and down the steps. The house was a wonderful, old, two story that was well kept, and it was a damned shame this family hadn’t been able to be here enjoying it all because their furnace had conked out. He was happy to be here to help.

He wasn’t, actually, the Landry most people called for help with things. Leo, his grandfather, or Sawyer, his oldest cousin, were most often the go-tos. There were plenty of others who were always around and willing to help out, of course, and if Leo or Sawyer couldn’t be found, Josh, Owen, Ellie, Cora, Maddie, Kennedy… just about any of the others could be. Mitch was the one the Landrys then called. He was in the background. The supporter. The one who had their backs. Quietly. He could always be counted on and his family knew that. He just wasn’t in the town’s spotlight. Or anyone’s spotlight.

Being a Landry, it was pretty easy to play the wallflower, actually. The Landry clan was loud and boisterous and loved to one-up one another. They laughed and teased and loved and joked loud and often, and it was easy to just sit back and be there without adding to the noise.

“Right in here.” Linda led him into the room that held the furnace, water heater, and what looked like box upon box of Christmas decorations.

“Great.” He moved to the furnace and set the tools down.

“Do you need anything?” Linda asked.

Mitch could tell she was feeling a little guilty about him being here. There was no way he would have been able to let anyone go cold if there was anything he could do about it, but she didn’t know him and didn’t know that about him. Paige had already turned down Linda’s dinner invitation, which was fine; he’d much rather spend his non-furnace-fixing time with Paige, but he also knew the dinner invite had been about repaying him somehow.

He guessed Linda would try to give him money at some point. Which he would, of course, turn down. But she needed to feel she wasn’t putting him out entirely.

“I could use somebody to hold the light, actually,” he said, pulling the big work light that Max had included with the tools. That wasn’t completely true. He could have found a way to set it up on boxes or something, but having Linda hold it and move it for him would be helpful.

Her face brightened. “Oh, of course.” She took the light from him and plugged it into an outlet a few feet away.

“And you can entertain me while I work,” he told her with a grin as he shrugged out of the coat and tossed it over a box labeled front yard blow ups.

He hadn’t noticed blow-up decorations in the front yard so clearly they’d been deflated. Which was too bad. He wanted to get this furnace going again so this family could get back to this house and blow those things up.

“Like singing or something?” she asked with a smile.

“That would work. Do you know any Taylor Swift?”

“You like Taylor Swift?” Linda asked, her smile growing.

“Well, and now you know one of my deepest secrets,” he said. “So I’m going to have to do a really good job on this furnace so you don’t spread that around.”

She laughed. “I do know Taylor Swift, by the way. My oldest daughter is a fan. But you do not want me to sing.”

“Okay, then something else,” he said. “How about town stories.”

“Stories about Appleby?” Linda asked. “Oh, I can do that for days.”

He chuckled. “I figured.” He met her gaze. “I’m from a small town too. I know how that goes.”

“And you’re interested in our little town?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Seems like a good place.” He was supposedly engaged to another woman so he couldn’t seem too interested in a certain citizen of this town, but he could hope that Linda knew Paige or at least about Paige. For some reason, he had the feeling that Paige didn’t let a lot of people close. Of course, she’d spent her life here so people surely knew things about her.

“It’s a very good place,” Linda said with an affectionate smile.

People in Autre definitely got a similar look on their faces when asked about their little town.

He crouched next to the furnace and started pulling tools out of Max’s toolbox. “So why a festival in January instead of a holiday festival at Christmastime? Or in the fall when it’s warmer?” he asked with a grin, opening the access door on the furnace.

Linda moved in, shining the light over his shoulder on what he was doing.

“Oh, in the fall we have football,” she said with a grin. “And Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. People are happy and full of excitement for all of that. But January,” she said, shaking her head, “is a long, cold, dark month here in Iowa. We need something to look forward to.”

Mitch located the problem in the furnace easily enough and set to work fixing it. “What all happens at the festival?”

“Oh goodness,” Linda said.

He could hear the smile in her voice even from behind him.

“It’s all about our apples. We have booths with lots of treats. Pies and cobblers and crisps and cookies and cider.”

Mitch chuckled. “I’m not sure I’ve ever fully appreciated all you can do with apples.”

“You should certainly stick around. We’ll make you love apples. We also have ice skating and sledding and a snowman-building contest and karaoke and sleigh rides and even a snowball fight.”

“An organized snowball fight?” Mitch asked. “That sounds interesting. Nobody worried about kids getting hurt, huh?”

She laughed. “It’s adults doing the fighting.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “No way.”

She nodded. “Yep. It gets wild. It happens in the town square. It’s kind of like paintball. Each team has a different color snowball—watercolor paints work great—and they have to wear white sweatpants and sweatshirts so you can see the colors show up. That’s how you know who wins.”

Mitch knew his eyes were wide. “That sounds awesome.”

Linda nodded. “It’s a lot of fun. There are rules and referees, of course.”

He was nodding, thinking about his cousins and friends. They would have a blast with a colored-snowball fight. Or any snowball fight. It was really too bad a snowball would last about a minute in Louisiana.

Maybe he’d just have to haul them all along next year to Iowa…

He quickly shut that down and turned his attention back to Linda’s furnace. Paige hadn’t even wanted to hear how he hadn’t been with another woman in six months. She definitely wouldn’t want to hear about him planning to come back next winter. And bringing a bunch of his relatives with him. She clearly was up to her neck in relatives as it was.