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.