Oh, Fudge (Hot Cakes #5) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,7

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