Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek) - By Tina Leonard Page 0,21
assuage her curiosity.
“Come in and have some tea.”
“I don’t think so.” Lucy looked at the thin, athletic woman wrapped in a lemon-yellow dress accentuated with white tennis shoes, suitable for walking quickly, as she’d noticed Charlotte did. “You have an ulterior motive. I stay away from people with ulterior motives.”
“You have ulterior motives too. Don’t judge.” Charlotte opened her screen door, ushering Lucy inside.
“Old lady, I can take you easily, so don’t even think about trying anything.”
Ignoring her comment, she indicated that Lucy should seat herself on a prim white divan in her parlor. “In case you don’t remember, my name is Charlotte Dawson. And you are Lucy Cassavechia. From Florida.”
“Wow. You can remember stuff. That’s cool.” Lucy looked around. “This house looks like something out of an old black-and-white film. Very quaint.”
Charlotte gazed at her warily as she positioned herself two sofa cushions away. “Sarcasm is not a trait a Southern lady wants on her resume.”
“Excuse me if I don’t have my calling cards printed up.” Lucy leaned back on the white sofa and blew a huge pink bubble, snapping it back in with a sucking sound. “My social graces may be lacking, but as I recall, you came to me. So, lack of cotillion class and all that, what’s an old biddy like you want with someone like me?”
Charlotte stood. “Come into my kitchen. We’ll talk over a cup of tea.”
“That’s all right. I don’t need the full tour of Miss Manners’s retirement home. Just tell me what you want, I’ll see if it’s anything I want to help with—which I doubt—and then we’ll both forget this conversation ever took place.”
Charlotte smiled, her bright gaze unblinking behind her glasses. “As I mentioned before, I require absolute discretion.”
“I doubt anyone would believe I paid you a social call, Mrs. Dawson. Don’t you think it rather stretches credulity?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “I think you and I have more in common than you might believe.”
“That would make us very strange bedfellows. I don’t make a habit of doing strange bedfellows, so let’s not stretch the common connection.”
Charlotte smiled. “My, someone has youngest-child syndrome, don’t they? Never mind, come into the kitchen. Listen to my proposition, and then we’ll see if we have a common bond worth acknowledging.”
“Whatever,” Lucy said, following her into a large kitchen. It was spacious, sunny and well laid out, with gleaming white counters and a badass Viking stove and cooktop. “I know something about kitchens,” Lucy said. “You scrimped on updating the counters and went for max burn on the cooking efficiency. This baby’s big enough to reenact Hansel and Gretel.”
Charlotte looked at her. “Tell you what. You don’t push me, I won’t push you, and neither one of us will end up a Grimm’s fairy tale footnote. Deal?”
“I guess,” Lucy said, “although I reserve the right to change my mind if you try anything funny.”
“As I mentioned,” Charlotte said, undeterred, “I am in need of an assistant.”
Lucy looked at the Viking, admiring it. “Does it involve that sucker? My sister would kill for that thing, although Vivian’s kitchen is not bad.”
Charlotte sniffed. “As I told you the other day, my pie has Vivian’s beat, as does my kitchen.”
“Competitive,” Lucy said. “I like that.”
“It’s a friendly competition.” She seated herself on a toile-covered kitchen stool, and Lucy did likewise. They stared at each other like combatants over the clean white countertop. “I run my own business out of my house. I have more orders than I can process, so I need a capable, discreet person to help with the preparation and shipping.”
“I can do prep and ship,” Lucy said. She didn’t mention Sugar’s online business—Sugar had said she thought it was best if no one knew exactly what they were cooking up yet, at least not until they’d perfected it. For now, they were operating under the guise of ladies looking for a place to roost for a while, and that was what Sugar and Maggie told everyone—except Jake. Jake knew about hotterthanhellnuts.com, but he’d advised Sugar to lie low about spreading the word until her business was ready.
Maybe she could learn something from old Charlotte after all, something that could help her sister and mother run their business, and crack into the tight-ass social register in Pecan Creek. It didn’t matter to her, but it did matter to her family, even if they pretended it didn’t. “I suppose you bake pies and send them to unlucky recipients?”