Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek) - By Tina Leonard Page 0,2
see the grove from here,” he said, “and when the autumn leaves fall, you can see the creek from the kitchen windows.”
“Look at this, Sugar!” Lucy called. “This bathroom is awesome!”
Sugar followed Lucy into the bathroom. A huge claw-foot tub took up most of the free space near the window, and a long marble vanity held gold-topped glass jars for everything a woman wanted to keep handy. She could picture Jake shaving at the pedestal sink—not that he appeared to shave frequently. He had a few days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, carving his face into strong lines.
“All the bedrooms and lavatories are themed,” Jake said when they walked back into the bedroom. “Mom kept this part of the house for boarding.”
Themed for King Henry VIII? Sugar thought the room, though expansive, was somehow over-decadent and old-fashioned, and not necessarily in a good way.
“It reminds me of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” Lucy said.
Sugar jumped, embarrassed for her sister’s typically unfiltered comment.
Jake laughed. “You guessed it. All the bedrooms are decorated like movies or television-show sets. Next door is the Southfork room. Think J.R., not Miss Ellie. And the Gone with the Wind Belle Watling room is on the other side, opposite the American Gigolo room. Mom and I argued about that one for a week.”
Certainly not kid-friendly thematics throughout the house. Sugar looked at Jake. “So were you for or against the American Gigolo idea?”
His grin was for Sugar alone. “I’ll tell you when I know you better.”
Lucy and Maggie laughed, but Sugar frowned, not charmed at all by his easygoing flirtation. Well, maybe a little. But not charmed to the point that all the good ol’ boy stuff would work on her.
“Everybody’s got an angle,” Jake said, and Sugar raised a brow. “Keeping the customers entertained is Mom’s.”
Since the Cassavechia women had enough angles of their own, Sugar followed silently as he continued the tour, wondering why J.T. Bentley wasn’t wearing a wedding ring or living in his house with bedrooms apparently custom-designed for mind-blowing sex.
She would never fantasize about mind-blowing sex with him.
Jake Bentley paid a call on his mother as she finished presiding over the town council, which consisted of four people, all women, and all determined to make him the next president. Pecan Creek was short on men, and the ladies running the town had decided it would take a man to lure businesses, and therefore more men, to their spot on the map.
It was dumb, and he wasn’t interested. Mainly because he knew what they really wanted, which was to step up their own “secret” businesses, which had been booming in the past year. The four women, the Entrepreneurs of Pecan Creek, sat looking at him innocently right now, as if he weren’t on to them.
He was.
“Jake,” his mother, Vivian, said, and Jake automatically said, “No.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he told her, and the three other ladies staring at him with apprehensive smiles beamed.
Charlotte Dawson, vice president of Pecan Creek’s town council, said, “How are your new renters?” She gazed at him with interest through her spectacles. Dodie Myers, the treasurer, and Minda Hernandez, the secretary, stared at him too, eager for gossip.
He didn’t want to go into details. Sugar Cassavechia’s effect on his libido had him a bit confused. He shouldn’t have been lusting after those long, slender legs, that bouncy rack and sweetly curved ass when she’d been ragging him about the house. The legs especially had been delightful, and the rack, well, what red-blooded male didn’t love a great set of breasts? Jake was sideswiped by a wave of heat and had to force himself to focus on the four pairs of bright eyes watching him as if he were a renowned magician.
Sugar would be a perfect foil for his plan. He had every intention of putting her name in the hat for president of Pecan Creek’s town council, once she’d been here a bit longer.
Say, maybe in about three weeks.
That would give him time to launch her on the Four E’s, pitting her squarely against his mother, of course, but he could back Sugar up. He was pretty certain Sugar could hold her own. She was determined, forthright, opinionated—everything Vivian would hate in a younger woman, and just what Pecan Creek really needed.
If they wanted to bring in men, they needed man magnets—babes who didn’t mind living two hours from the nearest city—hot babes like Lucy Cassavechia. Where Sugar was passion under wraps—at least that was