The tiny space was filled with hoodies and coats, a couple pairs of boots on the floor, and a shovel—he assumed for the snow outside, which, he couldn’t deny, made him grin. He’d never spent time in a place that got regular snow and that was going to be fun.

The door had barely closed behind him when he heard Paige open the office door.

“Good heavens!” her mother said. “I was starting to get worried.”

“I’m fine. I was looking for some… files… and got to rearranging and had the desk in front of the door,” Paige said.

“You look flushed. Are you feeling okay?” her mom asked.

Mitch grinned. She did look flushed. But she was feeling just fine. Well, horny, he’d bet. But not sick.

“I’m fine,” Paige said, sounding exasperated. “What are you doing here?”

“Why aren’t you doing your class?” Mrs. Asher asked.

“Because I had something to take care of in here.”

Again, Mitch grinned.

“Shouldn’t you take care of your business things and files and rearranging between classes?” her mother asked. “You don’t have that many classes to start with.”

Mitch could hear Paige’s sigh even through the closed closet door.

“Mom, I’m handling my business just fine.”

“But if you have to pay someone else to lead a class, then it’s less money—”

“Mom, it’s fine!” Paige snapped. “What are you doing here?”

Now Mitch heard her mother’s sigh. The dramatic sighing was genetic. Yeah, he could understand that too. He also had very passionate women in his family.

“Your sister said that you had a headache last night and couldn’t come over and help the kids with their projects. So I brought you some medicine.”

There was a long pause. So long that Mitch thought maybe they’d moved out of the office into the outer lobby and he just couldn’t hear them talking any long.

But a moment later, Paige said, “You mean, you came over here to find out why I wouldn’t go help Amanda’s kids with their festival projects because you don’t believe I had a headache. But you passive-aggressively brought me medicine to pretend to be concerned.”

Mitch could have sworn she was talking through gritted teeth.

“Paige, I would never do that,” Mrs. Asher said. “I was concerned. You rarely have headaches.”

“That’s true,” Paige said. “Because I’m very good at taking care of my body, and if I do have a pain or ache, I have many ways of taking care of it.”

“Oils and herbs,” her mother said.

Mitch could practically hear the eye roll that accompanied that comment.

“Yes,” Paige said. “Oils and herbs. And trigger-point work. And meditation. And rest. None of which I could have at Amanda’s house.”

“Well, I brought you this in case none of that worked.”

“You know I’m not going to use this,” Paige told her.

“You don’t have to admit it. I won’t ask. But you have it just in case you need it. It’s your own little secret.”

“If I did use ibuprofen secretly, don’t you think that I would be able to get it myself?” Paige asked.

“Where would you get it? You wouldn’t want anyone in town to know that you were using a real medicine.”

“First, the things I use to deal with aches and pains are just as real as this,” Paige said. “And secondly, I’m not trying to say that ibuprofen doesn’t work, Mother. I don’t judge people who use it. If I needed it and wanted to use it, I’d go buy it at the store.”

“You wouldn’t,” her mother said. “You want people to believe that what you do is the best choice.”

“It’s the best choice for me.”

“So you wouldn’t go buy ibuprofen at the store.”

“Because I don’t use ibuprofen. Not because I’m trying to trick people into thinking that what I do works when really I’m using over-the-counter painkillers secretly.”

Mitch had to squeeze his hand into a fist to keep from bursting through the door and interrupting. Paige’s mother was annoying her and he wanted to intervene.

Which was absolutely ridiculous. He barely knew her, and he sincerely doubted that she needed his help. Plus it was her mother. That was not the right first impression to make. Probably.

It was possibly because her mother was meddling and he knew a lot about that. Meddling in the Landry family was like game night in other families. Something they all got together to do on a regular basis.

“How’s your head today?” Paige’s mother asked.

“Fine.”

“So you could help your niece and nephew with their projects tonight?”

“No. I have plans tonight.”

“Doing what?”

“Mom, we’ve talked about this. You don’t need to know every single thing I do.”

“So it’s a boy.”

“I’m twenty-two. I don’t date boys.”

“But it is a date?”

“No, it’s not a date.”

Mitch grinned. So wild, up-all-night sex wasn’t a date in her book? He could live with that. He was hoping for some snow time though, he wouldn’t lie. Snow was a novelty to a guy born and raised in Louisiana. He’d seen it twice and it had lasted for about two hours each time. It had been years. When Tori, his cousin’s fiancé and the Iowa girl who had introduced him to Paige in the first place, had been preparing him for this trip north in January, she’d talked about boots and coats and gloves and when she’d told him that Appleby had about six inches of snow on the ground currently he’d admit that he’d felt a definite boyish rush of excitement. Maybe he could talk Paige into making a snowman or sledding or ice skating. He had no fucking idea how to ice skate, but he felt that was very winter wonderland-ish and that he might regret returning south without having at least tried.

And hot chocolate. He really wanted hot chocolate.

“But it involves a b—man?” Mrs. Asher asked.

“Mom, I said I have plans. I can’t help with an art project. That’s all you need to know.”

“I just care.”

“You’re just nosy.”

“I just think you could help your sister out once in a while.”

“I just think my sister could have figured out how to use her birth control before she had little people she needed help with.”

“Paige Elizabeth!” her mother gasped.

“You act like that’s the first time I’ve said that,” Paige said. Her tone was exasperated but also held a hint of amusement.

Mitch wished he could see her face.

“I’m always shocked when you say things like that,” her mother said, definitely sounding shocked. “I keep thinking that you’re going to get over this anti-marriage and family thing you have going on.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

She was anti-marriage and family? Mitch felt his eyebrows rise. A part of him liked that. All the women he knew back home were very pro-marriage and family. He was twenty-seven. The girls on the bayou had been trying to tie him down—or their mamas had, at least—for five years now.