Oh, Fudge (Hot Cakes #5) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,31

side business for the Boys of the Bayou.

Yeah, he wanted to see Paige playing with otters. Definitely. Maybe even more than he wanted to see her in short shorts. So that was… idiotic.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I do have a problem,” he said to Chase.

“Does it involve your dick?”

“N…” Then he thought about that. It was perfectly fine to include talk of Paige and his dick in the same breath. “I mean… kind of.”

“The girl,” Chase said.

Mitch huffed out a breath. He shouldn’t have been surprised Chase figured that out. “Yeah. Paige.”

“You just got there, man.”

“Sounds familiar, right?” Mitch asked. He’d been shocked by how quickly Chase had been distracted and fascinated by Bailey.

Chase sighed. “Yeah.”

Mitch could hear the grin in his voice. He’d fallen fast and hard for Bailey. In spite of telling himself—and Mitch—over and over that it made no sense. Chase and Bailey were total opposites. Total. Opposites. And Bailey had been pretty unimpressed with Chase’s charm and good looks and money. All things that Chase was used to using to get his way with women. Well, with everyone.

Add into that the fact that Bailey and Chase hadn’t even been able to execute their first kiss without almost breaking a nose and some toes, and they seemed like a total mess.

But Mitch could tell that Chase was happier than he’d ever been.

“So you’re calling for love advice,” Chase said.

Oh shit. Chase had just raised his voice slightly. That meant someone, or more than one someone, was close by. Which meant that someone, or more than one someone, was about to chime in.

“No worries, I’m here!” Mitch heard Owen Landry, one of his cousins, say.

“Where are you and Owen?” Mitch asked, praying they’d snuck down to the dock with a couple of beers to escape the chaos that was every Landry family get-together.

“Ellie’s,” Chase said.

There was a rise in noise on Chase’s end of the phone, and Mitch realized that Chase had ducked into the back room or just outside to take the call initially. And now he was back in the main room of Ellie’s bar. Where everyone would be.

“You’re a bastard,” Mitch told him.

“This will just keep me from having to repeat everything later,” Chase said with a laugh.

No one had a big enough house for them all to really spread out and chat and eat. They’d gather together for gift opening, practically sitting on top of one another, but for meals and hanging out, they’d all move over to the bar.

The building was really just an extension of Ellie’s home in many ways. Most family meals were served there, and every member of the family stopped in at the bar at some point during the day. If Ellie and Cora, her best friend and business partner, didn’t see everyone at least once a day, they got worried and sent someone to hunt the missing person down. And drag them in for some grits. Because grits were good for everything—happy, hungry, feeling sick, feeling awesome, lonely, sad, or newly in love.

“So what do you need to know?” Owen asked.

Mitch realized he was now on speakerphone. Great.

“I just…” He blew out a breath. What the hell? Owen was also madly in love. With a sassy, smart, too-good-for-him woman named Maddie. Owen might actually have some advice. “I guess I’m thinkin’ about a long-distance relationship.”

“They suck, man,” Chase said.

“You don’t even know,” Mitch told him. “You just officially got together with Bailey.”

“And I already know it’s going to suck,” Chase told him.

“But you’re gonna do it anyway?”

“Well… yeah.” Chase sounded like that was a really stupid question.

Maybe it was.

“Why’s it gotta be long distance?” Owen asked.

“Because…” Well, fuck. Because it would be crazy for one of them to move to be with the other at this point.

“If you’re doin’ things right, she’s not gonna want to live without you,” Owen said. “So start doin’ things right.”

“If I remember correctly, Maddie was ready to move back to California even after you were doing things.”

Owen laughed. “’Cause I wasn’t doin’ things right.”

“I’m not sure I want details about what you were doing wrong,” Mitch said dryly.

“Oh, nothin’ like that,” Owen said, clearly catching his meaning. “Trust me.”

“So what?” Mitch asked, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.

“I just had to figure out that living anywhere with her was better than living at all without her. It just works out.”

“So your advice is to move to Iowa to be with a woman I’ve known for like two days. Other