Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek) (14 page)

“Like Maggie cares,” Lucy shot back.

“I think she does,” Vivian said. “I think your mother also seems to want to join the book club and a few other select circles in town.”

“How do you know?” Lucy asked, curious. “Are you the head witch with final say-so on all the circles?”

Vivian’s lip curled. “You might say that.”

Lucy edged toward the door. “You’re a mean old woman. I don’t give a damn what you do to me. But if you upset my mother, you horrible old crow, I’ll tell your son that you’re a stinky, bossy, meddling old bitch and that he needs to put you in a home. I swear I will.”

Vivian stared at her. “You filthy-mouthed slut.”

Lucy shrugged. “Back at ya. Nice chatting with you, Mrs. Bentley, but I have to run.”

“Leave the bike,” Vivian said.

Lucy laughed. “You know what your problem is? You think you’ve got power because you’ve cowed everybody in this one-horse town. You have no power over me.”

Vivian smiled. Her lips thinned, and the smile never reached her eyes. “Oh, I think I do. Either you quit working for Charlotte, or you’ll be out of the house in a flash, you and your tawdry sister and your smoking mother.”

Lucy blinked. “You can’t throw us out. We have a lease until Christmas. We shouldn’t have signed it, mind you, but Jake rooked us into it—”

“That is my family home,” Vivian said. “And I don’t need a trio of trollops skanking the place up.”

“We paid cash for four months up front.”

“This is September. There’ll be no renewal. Christmas isn’t that far off.”

She was backed into a corner for sure. Sugar’s business couldn’t just be picked up and plunked down anywhere. Where else would they find free pecans? Jake didn’t charge them for gathering them. He said he didn’t care what they did because he wasn’t going to pay to have them picked up. And Maggie was happy for the first time in years, maybe, in the House of Sex.

She had no choice. “Is this because of me or Charlotte? Who are you trying to hurt here?”

“Neither. Charlotte’s ding-dong covers will sell without you; don’t be a twit. And you will blow out of town as fast as you blew in, and no one will remember you were even here. Don’t get all self-important.”

“Where do you expect me to work?” Lucy demanded.

“I don’t care. As long as it’s not for Charlotte.”

Lucy shook her head. “And you call yourself a friend. Some
friendly
competition.”

“Good-bye, Miss Cassavechia.”

Lucy went out the door, letting it slam behind her. She left the bike—wouldn’t have touched the hunk of junk now—and went to give her notice to Charlotte Dawson.

It felt like she was being dragged to a teacher whom she liked very much and had let down by cheating.

“She got to you, didn’t she?” Charlotte demanded when Lucy went inside the house to give notice. She handed Lucy a tissue. “Stop crying. This is not my first rodeo with Vivian Bentley. How did she know you were working for me?”

“I think,” Lucy said, trying hard not to sniffle and not sure why this old woman had penetrated her armor of worldliness, “because she has an evil eye and probably a spy camera in your basement.”

Charlotte led her to a sofa and forced her to sit. “It’s because she can’t stand that I have a successful business and she doesn’t. She started something up once. Potholders. Nobody wants old lady potholders. She refuses to sell anything that is a bit risqué. But people like risqué sometimes. It’s fun, as long as it’s not dirty. Folks just want to be happy and amused.”

“She’ll kick us out of her silly old sex mansion if I don’t quit. I can’t do that to Maggie and Sugar. They love that place.”

Charlotte nodded. “It’s okay. This is not your battle. I was hoping Vivian wouldn’t find out for a while longer, but I underestimated her spying.”

“Never do that again,” Lucy said. “She’s intense.”

“I know.” Charlotte looked around, came to a conclusion. “Tell you what. Since this is your last day, how about if I take a day off, and we fire up the Viking? I could teach you a couple of secret recipes, which Vivian Bentley would give her last real eyetooth to have.”

Lucy wiped her eyes with the tissue. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes, I do. I am more than happy to share a few secrets with you, because you’ve been a good employee, Lucy Cassavechia. All I ask is that occasionally, you make one of my recipes and bring it to a town gathering, just to smite my neighbor.”

Lucy smiled. “Anything for you, Mrs. Dawson.”

“Call me Charlotte. I think we know each other well enough to be friends, don’t you?”

“Yes, Charlotte,” Lucy said, following her new friend into the kitchen.

It was nice to have a new friend—she really dug Charlotte—but she also had an enemy now. And one thing Vivian Bentley didn’t know was that nobody messed with Lucy Cassavechia.

Not even the wicked old witch of Pecan Creek.

Chapter Ten

The start of a new week meant a new plan of action for Jake, and that plan of action was working himself out of the doghouse he knew he had to be in with Sugar. There was no way a woman appreciated being left on a first date—even if it hadn’t been a date in anyone’s mind but his.

Since he didn’t want to become a footnote to Kel’s unhappiness, Jake planned to take his own advice and fix what needed to be fixed.

He rang the doorbell, holding a bouquet of flowers hopefully appropriate to melt a woman’s heart. Lucy opened the door, eyeing his offering with a jaundiced eye guaranteed to wilt the blooms.

“What do you want?” Lucy demanded.

“To sleep with your sister. What do you think?” Jake said.

Lucy sniffed. “Tell me something I don’t know.” She started to edge the door shut. He stuck his boot toe in the doorway.

“Hang on a minute. Please.”

Lucy relinquished some of the pressure on his foot. He removed his boot, ceding ground, hoping a truce could be called. “I want to apologize to Sugar.”

“You should,” Lucy said. “You certainly should.”

“And I certainly will,” Jake said, “if you quit guarding the door like a dragon and let me in.”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “My sister isn’t really prepared for your kind of games, Jake. My guess is you’ve nursed at the adder’s bosom, and there’s probably a lot of mean in you. Sugar’s already been disappointed. Why should I let you in?”

He could see he’d made an error by not bringing something to soften up Lucifer—Lucy—with. “Lucy, I swear I have no nefarious designs on your sister.”

“Define nefarious. I don’t think it’s possible you know where the lines are drawn, Jake.” She looked at his bouquet. “Do you really think those weeds you probably dug out of a field or snatched from someone’s grave are a decent apology?”

Jake grimaced. “Do I have to show you the florist’s receipt to get past the door?”

“Let me think,” Lucy said. “Yes.”

She started to close the door, then thought better of it. Glancing over her shoulder—he guessed to make certain no one was listening—she snatched the flowers from him. “Look, Jake. I’ve decided Bentleys are poison, okay? So buzz off. Leave my sister to her nuts. She’s happy now, happier than she’s been in a few years, and she doesn’t need a guy like you whose girlfriend is still jerking him around on a chain.”

A thought occurred to him. “Lucy.”

She stopped in the act of closing the door. “What?”

“Have you talked to my mother lately?”

She hesitated, then closed the door.

“And that was a yes,” Jake said. “This is not good.”

He stood on the porch for a moment, perplexed as to his next move. How did he dislodge himself from the doghouse?

The door opened, and Jake straightened.

“Hi,” Sugar said.

“Hi!” Jake felt his face split into the world’s biggest grin. “I didn’t think, I mean, Lucy—”

“She’s protective. Thanks for the flowers. They’re beautiful. And no, I don’t need to see the receipt.”

“Good,” Jake said, “because I was kind of bluffing on that one. You don’t get a receipt at our town flower shop. It kind of works on the honor system of the owner’s memory. She rings you up on her hand-crank Monroe, and you walk out with your purchase, and everyone hopes everyone is happy.”

Sugar smiled. “You didn’t have to bring flowers. I’m not upset. I assume that’s why you brought them.”

“Well, yeah. I’m hoping for another da—I mean, another friendly outing with you,” Jake said.

Sugar looked at him. “Are you trying to date me, Jake?”

“I’m trying, but it’s not going too well,” he admitted. “For example, I’d love to take you out to dinner tonight, someplace where my knuckleheaded friends can’t find us.”

“I like your friends. They’re fun.”

“Okay, then, I’d like to go where my ex-girlfriend can’t find us.”

Sugar’s gaze leveled on him. Her eyes searched his face, probably for honesty—she seemed like the kind of woman for whom honesty mattered a whole heckuva lot—so he hoped she saw what she needed to convince her. She looked so pretty in blue jean cutoffs, her hair pulled through a visor and a white eyelet blouse with fluttery sleeves that blew a little bit in the breeze, that he had to concentrate on not staring at her.

“I’m free tonight,” she said.

He got a rush of pure adrenaline he hadn’t had since he left the military. “What time, doll? Just say the word and I’ll be here.”

“Where are you taking me?”

He thought fast. “Want to go canoeing?”

She smiled. “I would love that.”

“Then we can go whenever you want to.”

She stepped out the door. “Like now?”

Thank God he had bug spray in the truck—the skeets were going to be all over those delicious legs and those sweet— Jake nearly blacked out thinking about what the mosquitos would feast on that he probably never would. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to wear a lot of bug spray.”

“Mm. Date night,” Sugar said. “Guess that means no sex for you.”

A circuit felt like it blew in his brain. He was pretty certain he wore one of Kel’s poleaxed expressions, the kind Kel got every time he thought about Lucy. “I wasn’t aware sex was a possibility.”

Sugar shook her head. “It’s not. Sex and bug spray just doesn’t seem healthy.”

Okay, it was light banter, didn’t mean a thing, but then again, Sugar didn’t know how hot she made him. Jake walked her to his truck, thinking that a nice, cooling day in the canoe was just what he needed. But the shorts she was wearing were just short enough to practically make his heart stop. Thankfully, she had on little navy eyelet tennis shoe things instead of sandals. At least her feet would be protected from the bugs.

Yeah, focus on practical thoughts. Like that’s going to help.

Jake helped Sugar into his truck, giving her a friendly, no-strings-attached smile as he waited for her to buckle herself in, all the time thinking he’d be the luckiest man on earth if Sugar ever let him pour her sweetness all over him. Just like the song said.

I’m so much like Kel I scare myself.

But he’d never touch her, not if she didn’t want him to. Not even one accidental
was-that-my-hand-on-your-ass?
pass.

No, sir. If he was fortunate enough to get out of the doghouse, he was never again getting back in it.

“Thank you for meeting us here, Lucy.” Minda Hernandez, Dodie Myers and Charlotte Dawson smiled at her, and Lucy wondered if she’d stepped into a trap. She’d usually have her snark on, but Charlotte was here, so maybe this wasn’t a case of the town biddies deciding it was finally time to lure her to the midnight offering of Lucy Cassavechia to their specterly goddess.

Best of all, Vivian Bentley was in absentia. Lucy shifted, waiting for the elderly women who’d invited her to Minda’s house, just a couple of blocks over from Azalea Street, to get to their little white-haired agenda. This was Mimosa Street, but there were no mimosa trees growing anywhere, which seemed ominous to Lucy.

Maybe the street was named for the alcoholic beverage. Lucy wished she had a mimosa right now. Or any kind of spine-stiffener. “So what’s up, ladies? I assume I was invited here for a reason, especially since secrecy was specified on the phone by Mrs. Dawson.”

“We’re just trying to keep you off of Vivian’s naughty list,” Charlotte explained.

“Yes, we’re aware the two of you had a bit of a run-in,” sweet-faced Minda said. “We want to help.”

Dodie handed her a flowered teacup and a plate with cookies on it. Lucy accepted both warily.

“Vivian’s run us all around long enough. It’s time we stop letting her be the proverbial queen bee of this small hive.” Dodie looked satisfied with her assessment.

“Yeah, well, if you’re looking for a leader, I’m not her.” Lucy slid the cookies and tea onto the table they were grouped around. “I’m just lying low in this town until something beneficial happens.”

“Like what, dear?” Dodie asked, her gaze curious.

“I’ll know it when it happens.” She looked at Charlotte. “So what’s cooking around here?”