All He Ever Needed (10 page)

“It’s peaceful,” was all he said, but he was in trouble.

Standing in a place that he was emotionally grounded to, holding hands with a woman he was painfully attracted to, was liable to blow the foundation out from under the wall he’d built between himself and serious. He liked that wall. It kept romantic entanglements from creeping in and getting a choke hold on him when his guard was down.

What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her here?

Then she looked up at him and smiled and every logical thought in his head blew apart, leaving nothing but a driving need to know what her lips felt like against his.

Her smile dimmed a little as her expression turned to uncertainty. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Because he seemed to have no self-control where she was concerned. “I was thinking about kissing you.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “You don’t look very happy about the idea.”

“Not sure how you’d take it. Doesn’t seem very fair to just spring it on you when we’re in the middle of nowhere and you have no way to get home but me.”

“And they say chivalry’s dead.”

When Paige turned her attention back to the brook, but didn’t pull her hand away from his, Mitch felt a rush of frustration. Did she want to be kissed or not? Her words certainly gave him no clues. The way she’d turned back to the water implied she wasn’t interested, but then why was she holding his hand?

“Why do you want to kiss me?”

Her voice was so low he almost didn’t hear her. He did, of course, but he wasn’t sure what to tell her. “I don’t know. Beautiful spot, beautiful day, beautiful woman. Seems like the thing to do.”

As soon as she pulled her hand away and turned back toward the banking, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. “Seems like the thing to do is start heading back. I’ve got a lot of paperwork waiting for me at home.”

Mitch caught her before she stepped off the rock, taking her arm and spinning her back to face him. “I want to kiss you because it’s the only damn thing I can think about. Every time I see you, I think about kissing you. Every time somebody says your name, I think about kissing you. Every single night when my head hits the pillow and I close my eyes, I think about kissing you.”

She kissed him. Bracing her hands against his shoulders, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his. After a second of surprise, Mitch slid his hands around her waist and took control of the kiss. He’d been waiting for this moment too long to settle for a tentative peck.

Her mouth was soft and she sighed as she surrendered to him. He kept it light at first—brushing his lips across hers and holding himself to a few quick flicks of his tongue against hers—but he wanted her, dammit, and hunger got the best of him.

He devoured her, trying to get his fill of her kiss, as he pulled her hips hard against his and her hands tightened in his hair. When their breath grew ragged and he could feel her slight trembling under his hands, he knew he could have her. Right there on the rock with the sun going down and the brook gurgling around them.

He wanted to. He wanted to so badly he was afraid his balls would explode, but some sane part of his mind—the part that usually kept him out of female trouble—pulled back. It wasn’t the place. Not only because slabs of rock were a lot more uncomfortable than they were romantic, but because there was no way out after the deed was done. If things got awkward or Paige had regrets, it would be a very long ride home on the bike.

With a lot more regret than he’d anticipated, Mitch broke off the kiss and stepped back just enough to put a little space between them. Paige’s cheeks were flushed and she looked as hot and flustered as he felt.

She gave a nervous laugh. “Now that we got that out of your system, you can think about something else, instead.”

“If that was the plan, I think it backfired.” He was already thinking about kissing her again.

“Oh.” After a couple seconds of awkward silence, she waved a hand in the direction of the road. “We really should get back.”

As he followed her down the path through the trees, he wished she wouldn’t walk so damn fast. He needed another minute or two before he could straddle the Harley’s wide seat. And it was going to be a long, painful ride home.

* * *

On Friday after work, Paige stopped by Whitford Hardware to get some advice on her current home-improvement project. She’d put off dealing with her bathroom sink’s reluctant drain, but it seemed like a good way to distract herself from wondering if Mitch would stop by. He hadn’t, and the job had turned into a bigger one than she’d anticipated.

Dozer popped up like a groundhog from behind a display of garden gloves as Paige closed the door behind her. “Paige! How did your closet doors turn out?”

“I love them. They make a huge difference in how the bedroom looks.”

“And what’s your new project?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “My bathroom sink won’t drain. Well, it will, but if I put some tadpoles in the water, they’d be frogs by the time the water was gone.”

“Ah. You tried the chemicals?”

“Didn’t help much. The book says I need to clean out the trap, but I can’t get the connectors loose. Do you have any stuff that’ll loosen the PVC glue or something?”

Dozer shook his head. “The book says? You can’t do plumbing with a book.”

“I replaced the toilet last year by the book. Unfortunately, all the knowledge in the world won’t make me strong enough to break the pipes loose.”

“Sounds like you need a man.” She turned at the sound of Mitch’s voice just as he stepped out from behind a dividing wall covered with a variety of hand tools. Seeing him made that kiss flash through her head, and the temperature in the store seemed to spike suddenly.

Praying she was the only one who heard the innuendo lurking in Mitch’s voice, she shrugged. “Not really. Even if there’s nothing here that’ll help me loosen them, it’s just a matter of finding the right leverage.”

“It would only take me a few minutes to get your joints nice and loose.”

“So lame,” she said, as Dozer snorted. “Thanks, but I prefer to take care of it myself.”

“So you’ve said.”

She narrowed her eyes, but no response to that popped into her head. She wasn’t sure there
was
any response she could make. Luckily, the phone rang and Dozer excused himself to go behind the counter and answer it.

Mitch took that as an opportunity to move closer to her, and she folded her arms, as if she had any chance at all of warding him off. Nothing had worked so far. “You’re about as smooth as a horny teenager. I’m starting to think all the stories about you must be totally exaggerated.”

“You’re welcome to judge for yourself.”

“I bet,” she mumbled, feeling a little over her head in this conversation.

“In all seriousness, let me help you with the bathroom sink.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“No, you don’t.” That surprised her, but she tried not to show it. “If you don’t find anything to help here, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to get the right leverage. Or you’ll just take a saw to the pipes and put new ones in. But what will take you hours will take me a few minutes, so why not just let me help?”

Why not? Because she wasn’t stupid. She knew what he was up to—trying to prove to her that she needed a man in her life. Which she didn’t. He was developing a habit of being helpful, and Paige knew what came next. She’d get used to having him around and not doing things for herself. Then she’d start worrying she couldn’t do it alone, and then she’d start living her life around making sure she had a man to take care of her, including putting his happiness above her own.

On some level, she knew she was being ridiculous. So he’d changed a lightbulb. He was offering to fix her sink. That was a far cry from changing her entire life and everything about herself to keep a man from leaving her. But it was a slippery slope and, even though she’d seen her mother do it a thousand times growing up, Paige had found herself at the bottom of that slope more than once. The way Mitch tempted her to just slide
a little bit
was making her paranoid.

“I’m just trying to be neighborly,” Mitch said when her silence dragged on. “Isn’t that one of the things you love about Whitford? How we’re all neighborly and help each other?”

“Do you kiss all your neighbors?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Never mind. I already know the answer to that.”

“Just the pretty ones.” He winked, which made her roll her eyes. “I have to bring some primer back to the lodge, but I can come over early evening and take care of it. It’ll take me a half hour, tops, and I’ll behave.”

“Really?”

“Promise.”

She looked him in the eye. “You’ll behave
how
?”

“You’re supposed to leave a man some wiggle room.” Wiggle room was the last thing she wanted to give him. “Okay, fine. I’ll behave like a gentleman.”

Paige was torn. On the one hand, it really wasn’t a good idea to be alone with Mitch in her house. No matter where they were in the trailer, it was impossible to be more than a few steps from the bed, and if he kissed her again, she might be tempted to break her no-men streak. On the other hand, fixing the bathroom sink was becoming more of a job than she’d anticipated. She’d already done almost everything she could think of to get the trap free with no success. And cutting the old pipes out would not only add more time and mess, but money.

“There must be something more exciting you want to do on a Friday night,” she said.

“Not really. I was planning to come into town for supper anyway, so it’ll just be a little detour.”

“I’ll make you dinner.” Oh, bad idea. “If you’re going to fix my sink, the least I can do is feed you.”

“And we keep things even?” He laughed before she could take offense at his cynical view of the way she liked things.

“Just to be neighborly,” she told him.

“How’s five sound? I can fix the sink and then you can feed me.”

“Sounds great. Thank you.” Dozer was still on the phone, but she hated disappearing on him. “Will you tell Dozer I said thanks, but I’m all set?”

“Sure. See you at five.”

Five wasn’t that long from now, she thought as she stepped outside. Maybe she’d cheat and run back to the diner. She could get a couple orders of the special in to-go boxes and heat them up when the sink was done. And she needed to take a shower because…no special reason. She’d worked all day and, by the time Mitch left, she might be too tired to take one so close to bedtime.

It had nothing at all to do with being alone in her house with Mitch.

Chapter Ten

“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Women tend to have disgusting traps.” Mitch laughed as he finished forcing the nasty glop from the PVC pipe into the bucket Paige had found for him. “Let me rephrase that. If a woman uses a bathroom sink on a regular basis, bad things grow in the bendy parts of the drain.”

Paige snorted. “Bendy parts? Is that a technical term?”

“Absolutely.” He forced his body back into a pretzel shape, wishing her bathroom was bigger than his closet. It took him only a few minutes to put her plumbing back together and, even with his focus on the job, he was aware of her hovering over him.

He’d tried to tell her she could go do something else, but she wasn’t one to stand back and do nothing while somebody did her a favor. She wanted to help. Unfortunately, the only way they could work on the plumbing together would be for her to lie on top of him and…whoa, that was not something he should be thinking about while he was stuck in one position on her floor, with her staring down at him.

“Can I help you with that?”

As a matter of fact, you can
, he thought before he realized she was referring to the small pile of tools he was trying to transfer from under the sink to the floor on the other side of him, which wasn’t easy from his awkward position. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

He handed the tools to her one at a time, listening as she put each one in its place in her battered metal toolbox. For some reason he liked that she had a toolbox and thought she was probably the first woman he’d known who had one. Or maybe most of the women he’d known had hidden theirs away so they could call on him for rescue. Which sounded a little jaded, even in his own head, but it was probably the truth.

“If you’re almost done, I’ll go heat up supper while you wash up,” Paige said.

“Sounds good. I just want to let this sit a few minutes and then run some water through it. Make sure there are no leaks.”

“If you need a hand with anything, just yell.”

He laughed. “We know you’ll be close enough to hear me.”

“Funny guy.”

A couple creaks of the floor told him she’d moved away, and he grinned when he heard the fridge open. It was a good thing Paige had a healthy sense of humor, since the first words he’d said once she’d let him through the door were “Guess you’re not claustrophobic.”

She’d just laughed and waved her hand in a semicircle in front of them. “There. You’ve had the grand tour without even moving.”

Except the bedroom. In a trailer the size of hers, open was definitely better, so the significance of her bedroom door being closed wasn’t lost on him. Paige didn’t want him in there and, since he’d promised to behave like a gentleman, there was no point in coming up with ways to change her mind.

After he’d finished with the sink, including washing up, Mitch stepped out of the bathroom and saw Paige putting a plate in the microwave. On the tiny piece of counter next to her were two to-go boxes, one open and one closed. “What’s the special tonight?”

“Baked stuffed chicken breasts with garlic mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. I skipped the spinach and got us both extra mashed.”

“You’re a good woman.”

“If that was true, I’d be offering you something home-cooked. Maybe an apple pie, too.”

He moved close enough to her to see over her shoulder as she put the second helping of chicken onto a plate. “Are you saying you cheated? Maybe took a little shortcut in our agreement?”

“You still have to behave like a gentleman.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I said I’d feed you.” The microwave dinged. “I’m feeding you.”

Mitch didn’t move fast enough and, when Paige took a step back to make room for the microwave door’s swing, her body smacked right up against his body. In reflex, he lifted his hand to steady her and it happened to come to rest at her waist. For a brief moment, it seemed that she relaxed against him—almost leaning on him—and then she jerked forward.

“Sorry,” she said. “Small space. Why don’t you sit at the table and I’ll bring you your plate since it’s done.”

He wasn’t sorry at all, but there was a little strain in her voice all of a sudden, so he let it be and sat down at one of the two places she’d set out. His eyes wandered, checking out the personal touches that made the claustrophobic trailer into her home. She’d hung small baskets from the curtain rods to hold pens and mail and odds and ends, rather than having them take up the very precious counter or drawer space. On the fridge were a variety of photos taken of places he recognized around town. Not high-quality photography, by any means, but they were cheery shots. In between two photos at what would have been about her eye level, he saw a scrap of pink taped to the freezer door.

“Huh,” he said. “You really do have a sticky note on your fridge that says,
Men are a luxury, not a necessity
.”

She set his plate down in front of him, then put hers in the microwave. “I told you I did.”

“Why is that saying so important to you?”

She lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “It’s a reminder not to become like my mother.”

“So…she thinks men are a necessity? And that’s bad?”

“It’s not
bad
when a woman needs a man. But it’s not good when a woman believes she’s nothing without one and will sacrifice almost anything to keep one. It was hard growing up with my mother. She needs a man in her life to be happy, so we spent most of my childhood chasing after any man who’d tell her he loved her.”

“Relationships that were doomed to begin with, because you can only not be yourself and deny your own needs for so long before you get really unhappy.”

The microwave dinged again and she joined him at the table. “Exactly. You’re a pretty smart guy, Mitch Kowalski.”

“Just a passing familiarity with doomed relationships.”

“I thought you preferred your relationships doomed. Or with a built-in expiration date, at least.”

He looked at her from across the table, which was still close enough for him to be struck yet again by how dark her eyes were, and said, “At least with a built-in expiration date, a woman doesn’t have to worry about keeping me. It’s not going to happen, so she can relax, be herself and enjoy a very temporary luxury in her life.”

* * *

Paige knew she should pick up her fork, scoop up some garlic mashed potatoes and shove them in her mouth. She couldn’t seem to move, though, with Mitch looking at her like that and with his words starting to make sense to her.

Wasn’t he the perfect guy to help her take care of those pesky-
ing
words that were pestering her—like
tingling
and
zinging
and
yearning
and, above all,
wanting
? She knew up front he’d walk away and not look back and, as he’d said, she knew she wouldn’t be keeping him. He’d be the two-legged version of a loaner car.

Before she could say anything stupid, Paige took a bite of the mashed potatoes. And then another. Once he realized she wasn’t jumping at the bait, Mitch went back to polite small talk about the town and books and how much he liked Gavin’s garlic mashed potatoes.

But his words had gotten under her skin, which was probably why Paige took a little extra care in freshening up after dinner. She was pretty sure he’d at least try for a kiss, despite his promise to be a gentleman. After all, there was nothing particularly ungentlemanly about a kiss.

Besides, that was a promise she wouldn’t mind him breaking.

When she left the bathroom, Mitch was sitting on her couch. It dwarfed the tiny living room and she probably should have gone with a love seat, but a good sofa was something she wouldn’t compromise on. She laughed when he slid his butt to the very edge of the cushion and fully extended his legs. He could actually just brush the wall the room shared with the bathroom with the tips of his sneakers.

“Northern Star Demolition probably has job trailers bigger than this one,” she said, slapping his feet down.

He grinned and pushed himself back onto the cushion. “Maybe, but this suits you. It’s warm and cozy. Plus, it probably doesn’t take long to clean.”

“On the downside, if I let more than three days’ worth of junk mail pile up, I look like a hoarder.”

She smiled when he laughed, but inside she was jittery, and in that awkward moment, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Should she sit next to him on the couch? Sit in one of the kitchen chairs?

As if he could read her mind, Mitch grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him. She was going to sit next to him, but he tugged at her while using the other hand to steer her hips until she ended up straddling his lap.

“You didn’t slap my face, so I guess I’m still okay with the whole gentleman thing,” he said in a husky voice, and it had a touch of question in it.

“Gentlemen fix ladies’ sinks and throw away their own paper plates after dinner. I think you held up your end of the bargain.”

“So you won’t throw me out if I kiss you?”

She leaned forward, bracing a hand on either side of his head. “I won’t
let
you out until you’ve kissed me.”

Mitch slid his hands up her back and nudged her forward until their mouths met. He kissed her slowly and very, very thoroughly, while he slid his hands under the back of her shirt. The feel of his hands against her bare skin was making her crazy and she wanted more.

When she pulled up her shirt, intending to take it off, he put his hand on her arm to stop her. “This is all there is. We’ll have a good time and enjoy each other’s company and then, when it’s time for me to go, I’ll just say goodbye and be gone. I won’t call. I won’t text. I won’t write.”

“That’s pretty blunt.” And just what she needed to hear.

“It’s better to be up front about it, so we both know going in what we’ll get. All the fun stuff, with none of the not-fun stuff.”

She could use some fun stuff. It had been a long time, and who better to have a fling with than a man she knew ahead of time absolutely did not want to have a real relationship with her? Once couldn’t hurt. Or two or three times. It wasn’t as if she was going to start spinning happily-ever-after fantasies around a guy who was leaving town, which meant—just as he’d said—she’d have none of the not-fun stuff.

“Just so
you
know,” she said, “once you’re gone, I won’t mope. I won’t text. I won’t sit around restaurants in twenty years reminiscing about the night we spent together.”

He let go of her arm and pulled her shirt over her head, tossing it aside. His T-shirt joined it a second later. “Then let’s do some fun stuff.”

Without her shirt in the way, his hands roamed freely over her back as he kissed her some more. She squirmed in his lap and she moaned as, even through denim, the friction sent tendrils of delicious heat curling through her body.

“That closed door’s been teasing me since I got here,” he said against her mouth.

She slid off his lap and took his hands to haul him to his feet. When he pulled her against him and she found herself plastered to his chest, she laughed and then walked backward the few steps to her bedroom door with him kissing her with each stop. She groped behind her until she found the doorknob and pushed the door open.

Then Mitch stopped. He just suddenly stopped cold and, when Paige looked up, she saw his gaze was fixed on something behind her.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” She turned in his arms, trying to figure out what he was looking at.

“Is that a twin bed?”

“Yes, it’s a twin.” He looked as if he’d never seen one before. “The room’s small. I could have a big bed that I’d only take up half of, or I could have more floor space. I chose floor space.”

“Is it big enough?”

She laughed. The bed wasn’t
that
small. “Just how much room do you need?”

He slid his hands down her naked-but-for-the-bra-strap back and then pulled her backward by the belt loop on her jeans. Her almost-naked back pressed against his totally naked chest, reminding her of one of the many things gadgets couldn’t imitate—the warm, hard length of a man’s body.

“I guess that depends on what we’re going to do,” he said against the side of her neck before nipping at it.

“Is this the part where you ask me what I like?”

“I’ll figure out what you like on my own.” He slid his hands up to cup her breasts, which she liked very much. “Don’t like to limit my options.”

He pushed the cups of her bra down and ran his thumbs over her nipples. She sucked in a breath, pressing her hips back against his.

“I think you like that.”

She did, but she liked it even more when he turned her around and bent his mouth to first one breast, then the other. Sliding her fingers into his hair, she held his head to her chest, wanting more.

When he undid her bra and slid it down over her arms, she started to unfasten her jeans, but he grabbed her wrists and held them over her head. “I’ll do that.”

He kissed her again, harder and more demanding than he’d kissed her before. Easily holding both of her wrists with one hand, he slid the other over her stomach, dipping his fingertips into the waistband.

Paige whimpered, torn between wanting him to torment her forever and wanting him inside her that very second. He wasn’t in any hurry, though, as he unbuttoned her jeans and slid the zipper down.

When he slipped his hand down the front, under the lacy pink panties she was thankfully wearing, a low moan escaped her and she moved against his fingers.

“I think you like that, too,” he said, his breath hot against her neck.

“I do.” Her words were barely more than a breath.

Mitch backed her up until her knees hit the bed and then pulled her pants and panties down as she lay back on it. In seconds, he discarded the rest of his clothes, too, and Paige’s mouth went suddenly dry. She did
not
have a gadget that would substitute for this.

She thought, when she heard the crinkle of a condom packet near the pillow, that Mitch was ready, but he wasn’t done touching her yet. He teased her mercilessly, his mouth alternating between her lips and her breasts while his hand moved between her legs.