Oh, Fudge (Hot Cakes #5) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,18

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