1
There were five reasons why just showing up on her hot holiday fling’s doorstep was a bad idea.
“Reason number one,” she told Bernie, the black and white cat perched on the passenger seat of her car, watching the scenery go by. “I personally hate surprises. So what am I doing surprising someone like this?”
Bernie didn’t know. Or he wasn’t willing to say, your mother finally drove you officially over the edge.
Paige appreciated Bernie’s diplomacy.
Fred, the long-haired orange cat, huddled on the floor on the passenger side, absolutely not interested in the scenery outside the car, was not afraid to tell her how he felt about the whole thing, however.
As he’d been doing for the past nearly one thousand miles.
His meow was more of a pitiful wail, however, explaining that this road trip sucked, and she was the worst cat mom ever, than a helpful analysis of her thoughts and motives.
“Okay, I could have planned better,” she admitted to the unhappy feline.
Fred’s answering meow was full of blame and a reminder that her “plan” had basically consisted of throwing a few things together—including Bernie and Fred—getting in her car and heading south.
She hadn’t even plugged Autre, Louisiana, into her GPS until after she stopped for the night just outside of St. Louis. Autre was well south of Appleby, Iowa, and she’d known she had a long way to go before she had to worry too much about specific directions.
So, yeah, the this-is-really-a-bad-idea realizations hadn’t started until she’d passed New Orleans and was on her way to the bayou.
Now those thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone.
“The number two reason this is a bad idea,” she told Bernie (and Fred, though he was talking right over her), “is that I don’t even know this guy well enough to know how he feels about surprises.”
Bernie looked over at her.
“Right, he might hate them,” she agreed. “I also don’t know if he has a criminal record. Or if there are any unsolved missing person cases or murders around his general neighborhood. Or if he keeps a chainsaw in his shed.”
Fred agreed, loudly, that showing up on a potential murderer’s front step was a bad idea.
Or maybe he was just telling her that he resented…well, everything about this car trip. Again.
“Okay, that’s not true,” she told both cats. “I’m sure Mitch Landry has a chainsaw in his shed. He can fix anything. Apparently. And I’m guessing, sometimes, that means he needs a chainsaw.”
Fred wailed.
“Well, he single-handedly saved the Apple Festival last week,” she argued with the indignant animal. “He heard there was a problem with the electrical wiring in the town square, he headed over to check it out, and the next thing we knew, there were lights and music, and the apple cider and popcorn were nice and hot.”
Fred did not care about apple cider or popcorn.
“And he did tell me that he’s the general fix-it guy for his family’s businesses. So yeah, there’s a ninety-nine percent chance he has a chainsaw,” she told the cats. “And honestly, him being so capable with those big hands and all those muscles…” She looked at Bernie. “I know what you’re thinking. Cutting people up with a chainsaw would take muscles too, and I’m sure you’re right, but I can’t help that him being the superhero to the town, and the idea of him in a toolbelt, is kind of hot.”
Bernie looked back out the window. He, clearly, didn’t share her attraction to blue-collar-works-with-his-hands men.
“Oh, you barely met him,” she told the cat. “You saw him for, what, three minutes when he came to the yoga studio? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The cats both lived at her yoga studio. Though she did let them into her apartment over the studio at night if they wanted to come snuggle. And sometimes a couple of others came up too. But even she knew letting twenty-three cats hang out in her apartment was a lot.
The rest of the cats stayed downstairs in the yoga studio that doubled as a cat café and adoption center. Fred and Bernie and three other cats were hers and weren’t up for adoption, but most of the time they hung out with the others on the lower level where there was more room to roam.
The cat adoption center saved her, just barely, from being an official crazy cat lady.
In her mind anyway.
“And,” she went on, making her case to Bernie. And Fred if he’d shut the hell up for two minutes. “Mitch was so cute at the festival. He was like a little kid with the snow, and the way he played the games and tried all the apple ciders and cookies and cakes, and the way he chose the biggest caramel apple.”
She smiled, remembering him taking it all in. They didn’t get a lot of snow in Louisiana. They certainly didn’t have six inches of it hanging out around for days at a time. And watching him at the festival with all the apple foods and crafts, she would have thought they didn’t have apples in Louisiana either.
“I mean, can a guy who lights up at the sight of snow and loves caramel apples hack someone up into little pieces with a chainsaw?”
Fred yowled, and she really thought he was saying, Of course. Why not?
Paige blew out a breath and gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Her car made an awful grinding noise again as she slowed down for a stop sign. Again. She shook her head.
“That is reason number three this is a bad idea,” she told the cats. “That noise every time I use the brakes is not good and probably means we can’t just turn around and drive back home.”
Fred did not like that idea. Bernie seemed indifferent.
“Reason number four this is a bad idea,” she said, turning onto Cedar Street—Mitch’s street, according to Bud at the gas station on the edge of town. “I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.”
She’d texted her mom, friends, and two sisters I need a vacation, see you in a few weeks, I’ll call soon.
“And yeah, okay, I could tell them now,” she said when Fred proclaimed that the dumbest of all the things she’d done. Well, next to putting him in a car and driving him a thousand miles away from home. “But I also don’t want a lecture.”
He meowed loudly, and she frowned.
“A human lecture.”
But she really should tell someone she was here. Her mom and her sisters would be worried. Her friends a little too, but less so. Piper and Whitney knew that Mitch had come to town and rocked her world. They might be shocked that she’d chased him all the way to Louisiana, because Paige never chased guys anywhere at all, but they wouldn’t necessarily think it was bad.
Yeah, she’d tell them.
But not her mother. Not yet.
Though her making this impulsive trip would not be number one on Dee Asher’s list of Things Paige Has Done That I Do Not Understand.
“Nope, number one on that list would be me calling off my wedding a week before walking down the aisle,” she told Bernie. “But this trip might be number two.”
Fred meowed. It was a little softer this time. Maybe because the car was moving slower now as she looked for numbers on the houses. But there was no canned tuna to be seen, and his favorite pillow was still back in Appleby by his favorite window so, that meow was definitely still disgruntled.