Four Weddings and a Swamp Boat Tour - Erin Nicholas Page 0,24

leaves?” Maddie asked.

“Hire someone else,” Mitch said.

“Well, maybe we’re interested in someone who can give us more of a commitment right now,” Sawyer added.

“Too bad,” Mitch told him. “You need someone now and she’s here now.”

He knew they’d give her the job. That wasn’t even really a question. They were just giving him shit.

“How long will she be here?” Josh asked.

“’Til August. As long as no one scares her off.”

“Scares her off?” Juliet repeated. “How would we do that?”

Mitch snorted. There were a number of ways a family like his—a huge number of people who had settled in one place and settled deep—could spook a commitment-phobe like Paige.

“No talking long-term or forever type stuff. No asking her for more of a commitment or any promises,” he said.

“What’s this girl’s problem?” Sawyer asked with a little frown.

“Nothing.” Mitch frowned back at him. “She wants to hang out here for a few months, get to know Louisiana, enjoy some bread pudding. Just simple, basic stuff without anyone getting ideas about her putting down roots or doing anything more serious.”

“So, she’s on vacation,” Maddie said.

“Yeah.”

“An extended vacation though,” Leo pointed out. “August is a long ways off.”

Mitch nodded. “But she’s heading to Colorado then.”

“What’s in Colorado?” Ellie asked.

“A job.” It was really best to keep this simple.

“What kind of job?” Kennedy asked. “What does she do?”

“She’s a yoga instructor.”

There was a beat of silence. Then Juliet said, “She could do that here.”

Of course, she could. Yoga was something she could do anywhere. And Autre didn’t have a yoga studio. Not that people were really demanding yoga services here. But she had a free place to stay and wouldn’t have many expenses here. She wouldn’t have to try to make millions.

Mitch shut that down immediately. See, this is what he was going to have to work on. There weren’t a lot of reasons Paige couldn’t stay.

Except that she didn’t want to.

“We can win her over,” Cora said. “You know we can. If you want us to.”

Mitch looked up at her. Her words made something knot in his gut.

“We definitely can,” Juliet said. “I came here with no intention of staying, and it took about ten minutes with you all to make me fall in love.”

Ellie looked over at her eldest grandson’s fiancée. Her expression was full of happiness and affection. Everyone knew Ellie loved Juliet and Tori, the girls who had come to the bayou for simple, temporary reasons. They were now as much a part of Ellie’s family and heart as Maddie, Cora’s granddaughter, who she’d known all of Maddie’s life, and Kennedy, Ellie’s own granddaughter.

“Yeah, but Sawyer had a lot to do with that,” Fletcher said from the next table. “Paige has only got Mitch.”

There were several head nods at that, and Mitch scowled at them all. “Fuck off.”

They all laughed.

“Well, Sawyer did have a lot to do with that,” Juliet said, squeezing the big man’s thigh.

His eyes were full of love and even a little heat when he looked at her.

“But I fell for the rest of you too. And the town and the bayou. And all the craziness.” Juliet said.

“You do not like the bayou,” Maddie told her friend with a grin.

“I like looking at it,” Juliet said.

Everyone knew that Juliet was not a fan of being in or even on the water. She put on hip-waders and a life jacket when she had to get too close to it, just in case. Just in case was Juliet’s favorite phrase. But she’d overcome some of her fears of the water in her time in Autre. Still, she was a firm-dry-land kind of girl for the most part.

“Here’s the deal,” Mitch said.

Again, all eyes were on him. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t used to it. At all.

And they were terrible listeners anyway.

“Paige is young. She’s only twenty-two. And she’s… been proposed to five times.”

Several pairs of eyes rounded at that.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Damn,” Owen said. “She must really be something.”

“She is.” Mitch couldn’t disagree there.

“And she wants to hang out with you when she could have pretty much any guy she meets?” Zeke asked.

Mitch nodded but then said, “Because I promised not to propose.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. Leo shook his head.

“Never make a promise to a woman you can’t keep,” Leo said.

“I can keep this one,” Mitch told him. “She’s said upfront she doesn’t want to get married for a very long time, if ever.”

“So why did she come clear down here from Iowa to hang out with you for seven