chapter Six
Three days later after he’d kissed Sugar, Jake went to see Sugar. He had business to discuss with her, but mostly, he wanted to see her again. Something about her made him smile, and he wasn’t sure why.
Maybe it was the sass.
Parking his truck, he spied Sugar walking Paris in the pecan grove. He waved at Sugar. “Hello, ladies!”
She shifted the basket she carried and waved back. Paris galloped toward him, wearing a doggie smile and a new leather collar.
“Hey, girl.” He ruffled Paris’s fur and smiled at Sugar as she approached. “She’s putting on weight.”
“The vet says she’s gained five pounds. She has all her shots now, and has been checked for heartworms. Miraculously, she’s worm-free. She just needs TLC.” She petted the big, soft dog, who gazed up at her with liquid chocolate eyes. “To what do we owe the honor of your presence?”
“Can’t a guy come see his four favorite ladies without needing a reason?”
Sugar shrugged. “Three of us don’t trust you. Paris is nice to everyone.”
“Tell her, Paris. I’m harmless.”
The dog gazed up at both of them with adoration. “You’ve interrupted our walk. You’ll have to follow along if you decide to get on with the nature of your visit.” She began walking back into the grove with her basket full of pecans. After a moment’s indecision, Paris followed her.
“Story of my life,” Jake said. “All the ladies love me and leave me.”
“No pity points will be donated here,” Sugar said over her shoulder.
Jake strode to catch up. “What if I told you I came by just to see you?”
“I’d urge you to not waste my time.”
Jake laughed. “All right. I want to talk to you about Maggie.”
Sugar stopped, turned to look at him. It felt really fine to have her full attention on him. Jake was conscious of a heady desire to make her smile, just so he could bask in it.
Pretty selfish of him, but there it was.
“What about Maggie?” Sugar demanded.
He took a deep breath. “Vivian has decided that Maggie can be the town mayor for the Christmas parade.”
Sugar blinked. “Just for the parade?”
“It’s an honorary position. Newcomer-of-the-year kind of honorary stuff, I think.”
Sugar put a hand on her hip. “Cut to the chase, Jake. What does Vivian really want?”
Jake sighed. “While I admit your caution does you credit, this time there’s no hook in Vivian’s offer.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” Jake held up his palms in a gesture of search me. “I think Vivian just had a change of heart.”
Sugar started walking again. “Whatever.”
He laughed and followed. “You sound like Lucy.”
“Look, Jake.” Sugar wheeled on him. “Whatever story Vivian’s talking with you is just to stay on your good side. But your mother is not a friendly person, and I don’t believe for one moment that your mother is doing something nice for mine out of the blue.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you. This time, Vivian seemed anxious to make amends.”
Sugar shrugged and walked away.
He caught up with her easily, eager to press his point. “Sugar, listen, PC needs a mayor. Maggie will be awesome.”
“Okay,” Sugar said. “I’ll tell Maggie. See if she’s still up for it.”
“Thanks.” He had the sense Sugar wasn’t doing cartwheels for joy. “But I’m feeling some reservation from you. I could be wrong, but I’m not usually.”
Paris launched herself off the pier, leaping into the water with an exuberant splash. Sugar watched her dog swim for a minute. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’re pitching for Maggie to keep me quiet about your secret living, or because you kissed me, or because you’re genuinely a nice guy trying to help the new girls fit into the town shark tank.”
“Can’t it be all three?” Jake grinned, devil-may-care to the max.
Sugar sank onto the wooden pier with her basket, the pier he’d installed himself with the help of his three buddies. He was pretty proud of the pier. Hours had been put into honing the wood, sanding it to keep it from splintering into little barefoot feet, then weatherproofing it. Sugar looked nice on his pier, her long legs tanned and lean, topped by wrinkled khaki shorts that fit her butt like shorts should fit a woman. She had a blue spaghetti strap top on that made his eyes pop from the effort of not staring at the curves of bosoms rising above the lacy vee of the ribbed cotton. A tiny gold chain circled her collarbone. She wore no makeup, her hair yanked up in a careless, saucy ponytail.
“It could be all three,” Sugar said, “but it’s not. My guess is you’re determined to rope Maggie in to annoy Vivian. If Vivian’s festering about my mother, she’s less likely to focus on you. Which makes you not a nice guy, in my book.”
He sat down next to her, letting his legs dangle over the pier as she was. Paris made it to the bank, got out, shook herself off, then dove off the pier again. “Look, I dig Maggie. It’s that simple. There is no other motive. Although doing it to atone for any guilt I might be feeling about kissing you was a colorful guess. I never feel guilty about kissing a woman.”
Sugar looked at him. “Where is Mrs. Jake Bentley?”
“Out there looking for me, probably.” He smiled at the prospect. “She’ll find me one day.”
“No girlfriend?”
“I had one. You’ll meet her soon enough. Averie Pipkin. With an ie instead of a y. A very nice girl.” He leaned back on the dock, staring up at the cloudless sky.
“Go on. You started the story, don’t leave off the ending.”
“There’s nothing to tell. She wanted to get married.” He sighed. “She’s such a nice girl.”
Sugar lay back on the dock beside him, a foot apart, looking up at the sky he saw. “So? Nice girls finish last?”
“Probably.” He yawned. “I think I’m too lazy to get married. It’s too much commitment.”
“You own a restaurant. That’s a huge commitment.”
“Not really. I have three buddies who really keep things going. I show up infrequently to count the money, check the stock, tell everyone I’m just helping out. I don’t do much.”
“But you lie to your mother, and that’s a commitment.”
“Not true. I avoid telling Vivian about my business, because Vivian is a fixer. Vivian would snoop into my records, she’d change everything from the menu to the soap in the soap dispensers in the bathrooms, and she’d force everyone to eat every meal at Bait and Burgers.”
“There’s no bait in your restaurant. Why do you call it Bait and Burgers?”
“Kel thought of the name. I didn’t care. The other guys voted it in. We run a hamburger democracy.”
“So,” Sugar said, “getting back to Averie, ie instead of y.”
“Yeah. You’ll know her when you see her. She’s gorgeous.”
“Really.”
“Absolutely.” He smiled, wondering if he’d heard a slight edge in Sugar’s voice. “She’s about five-two, with long blonde hair to her waist. It’s straight and golden like a waterfall. Her face is enough to make a goddess weep with envy, and she’s smart.”
“You have a goddess-worthy woman at your feet and you callously turn away her offer of marriage?” She turned to look at him. “Is this wise?”
“If I hadn’t rejected her marriage proposal, I couldn’t have kissed you,” Jake pointed out.
“It was barely a kiss,” Sugar said. “More of a peck.”
“Still, no pecking allowed when a man’s wearing a wedding band.”
“True,” Sugar said, “that’s exactly why I’m divorced. My husband pecked around a lot.”
“Ouch.” Jake looked at her. “Just so you know, Vivian’s never going to allow you to advertise in the Christmas parade.”
“I figured. We’re not her vision of Pecan Creek, are we?”
“Hotterthanhellnuts.com is a bit too exotic for the quiet Pecan Creek parade.”
“And the billboard?”
“Probably not happening,” Jake said honestly. “I just don’t want to do anything that gets you ladies on the cut list in Pecan Creek. It doesn’t seem fair to your mother and sister. Maggie’s a social being; inclusion matters to her. Lucy could give a rat about people liking her, but I’m hoping in time she’ll come around.” He looked at her. “And I’m kind of hoping you like it in Pecan Creek. I think you’ll like it better here if people don’t judge you before they know you. So, scratch the billboard.”
“In your unofficial position as not-mayor. All this because the word hell is in our name? Is everybody here that cloistered?”
He smiled. “Let’s just say ladies run this town, and I don’t get in their way.”
“You hide from your mother,” Sugar said. “Is there a reason you don’t just tell her to butt out of your life?”
“Yeah. I like her in my life,” Jake said simply. “Vivian is all I’ve ever had. It was just the two of us since I was little, though she never gave up hoping Dad would come back. He never did. Mom was a single mother when it wasn’t fashionable. I keep the restaurant to myself because it’s my baby. Vivian thinks I’m either fishing or shirking life, and I’m okay with that. I take care of her because she was an amazing mother, one of the hardest working women I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t understand,” Sugar said. “If you love her so much, why don’t you just be honest with her?”
He reached over and ran a finger down her straight nose, then traced her lips, entranced by the softness. “I told you. Vivian is a fixer. I don’t want her fixing my life.”
“You really think she’ll never find out?”
He turned away from the siren’s call that was Sugar. “Too many questions for one day.”
Sugar looked back at the sky. Paris settled behind them on the dock, laying herself out to enjoy the sun. “You never told Averie about your restaurant?”
“No way. I discovered two years into the relationship that Averie was a fixer too. Now, no more questions, or I’ll make you pay.”
“I have no money, so you’d be hard-pressed to get anything out of me.”
“I’d settle for a game of pool. For every shot you make, you get to ask a question.”
She rolled her head to look at him again, which he appreciated. He loved looking at her, could do it for hours. “And for every shot you make?”
He grinned. “You remove an item of clothing.”
“Pretty stiff odds.” She thought for a moment. “Nothing about you interests me, so I have no more questions.”
“You sure were nosy a minute ago.”
“Just making idle conversation. Nothing to get your inner pervert on about.”
He rose on an elbow to look down at her. “Don’t chicken out just because you don’t like the odds. It’s a fair exchange. You didn’t state up front that you were something of a pool shark, anyway.”
“What if I run the table and you don’t get a shot? Not saying it’s likely, but it’s important to know the house rules up front.”
He grinned. “Then you’ll know the story of my life pretty fast, won’t you?”
“You really don’t want to talk about her, do you?” Sugar said.
“Who?”
“Averie with an ie not a y.”
He moved her red hair away from her cheek, revealing a huge, thin golden hoop hanging from her ear. He wanted to kiss her neck so badly it hurt, and suddenly, he sympathized with Kel’s unrequited attraction to Lucy.
“I don’t really care what you ask me,” he said. “I just want to get your clothes off, Sugar Cassavechia.”
She gazed at him, her eyes huge in her face, stunned by his words.
Before he realized what she was doing—her breasts moving in the ribbed cotton as she quickly rose had him poleaxed as he belatedly realized she wasn’t wearing a bra and Kel and Co. hadn’t been exaggerating her charms—Sugar shoved against him with a surge of strength that caught him off balance. He tumbled into the water with a splash.
Paris joined him, barking joyously, dogpaddling around him with delight.
He wiped the water from his eyes, looked up to see if Sugar was staring over the dock at him. But her tight butt in those wrinkled khaki shorts was already headed back through the grove with her basket, leaving him with the cold bath he probably richly deserved.
“She seriously digs me,” he told Paris.
Paris barked.
“You say not so much since she threw me back into the water? Literal dog,” he said, hauling himself out of the creek. He sat on the pier to drip, thought about those sweet lips and curved breasts. Paris got out, shaking and spraying him with water droplets.
“That woman is hotter than a Texas day,” he told Paris. “I think she’s after me.”
Paris took off running after Sugar.
Jake went to find reality.
Lucy and Maggie were in the kitchen when Sugar found them. She wanted a cold drink to cool her steaming temper, and she wanted to tell her family that their landlord was something of a rat.
Which she’d known from the beginning, darn him.
They turned around from the pan they were staring at on the stove.
“Hi, Sugar,” Lucy said, and her cautious tone stopped Sugar in her tracks.
“What’s happened?” Sugar asked.
Maggie glanced at Lucy. “Ramon called.”
“What?” Sugar sat down at the kitchen island, thinking that she had rat karma today.
“He couldn’t reach you on your cell,” Lucy said, “so he called mine.”
“My phone is in my bedroom. I don’t need it much. You’re the only people I talk to, and you’re here, so…” Sugar’s voice drifted off. “What did he want?”
“He says he wants to come see you,” Lucy said, her face a bit pale.
“No,” Sugar said. “That’s not happening. I’m sure you told him that.”
“I told him I didn’t think you ever wanted to see him again.”
Sugar sighed. “You didn’t tell him where we are, did you?”
“No,” Lucy said, “but Sugar, it won’t be that hard for some of his buddies to have the cell located. Signal trace is easy, not to mention call location data not that hard to acquire or hack, not for the guys in that division.”
Sugar shrugged, annoyed but not completely whacked out about it. “If he shows up, it’ll be a very short conversation.”
Maggie sat across from her. Lucy peered out the window. “Why is Jake walking to his truck sopping wet and holding his boots?”
“I don’t know,” Sugar said, her attention caught by Maggie’s scribbles on a piece of paper lying on the island. “Perhaps he got hot and needed to cool off.”
Lucy joined them at the island. “He doesn’t look too happy. Maybe he fell in.”
“I doubt it. They don’t take uncoordinated guys in the military. My impression is that Jake’s pretty fit.” Sugar studied Maggie’s list more closely. “This looks like hieroglyphics, but actually, you’ve been trying to remember the recipe.” She looked at her mother. “Any luck?”
“That’s the other thing we want to tell you,” Maggie said with a strained glance at Lucy, who eyed her back with sympathy. “I figured out what’s wrong with the recipe. I’ve confused the part of the recipe I do remember with a completely different recipe.”
Sugar blinked. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means,” Lucy said, her voice dry, “that we’re completely SOL with the FOB, sister dear.”