Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek) - By Tina Leonard Page 0,80
please.”
Sugar stared at Jake, astonished. Her sister winked at him. “‘Spare no expense’ are brave words, spoken to a woman.”
“Scare me,” Jake said, sounding like a man who wasn’t too worried about it. “Mom spent a fortune on those rooms, in her quest for artistic interest. Please stay true to the spirit of bigger than life and overdone.”
“And gaudy?” Lucy asked.
“I leave that up to you. Try to have your paint colors to me in a couple of days.”
“This is going to be fun!” Lucy gave Jake a sisterly poke in the arm and went off to join Bobby.
Sugar looked at him. “You get a few hero points for that.”
He shrugged. “Who wants to sleep in a room where a dead guy breathed his last? I’m pretty sure croaking in someone’s house when you haven’t been introduced doesn’t meet PC standards of Southern manners.” Jake considered this. “I saw plenty of dead bodies in the military. Trust me, Lucy needs a fresh start.”
Sugar tried to reconcile this Jake with the Jake who had blocked her business. “I’m trying very hard to not fall for you.”
“I know,” Jake said cheerfully. “Come on, ladies, I’ll take you to my place. We’ll have a couple of sips of cheer out on the patio and stare at the stars shining on the pool. And you, young lady,” he said to Paris, who jumped to put her paws on Jake’s chest when he thumped himself there, “are never to open the door to strangers again.”
Paris licked Jake’s face. Sugar thought about sleeping in her room upstairs, decided she wasn’t brave enough for that. Besides which, Jake was warm and sexy, and all she wanted to do was be with him, anyway.
But the thing was, there was no Cat-and-Evert moment in the future for them. Not that Sugar was looking for marriage—no way—but a serious relationship, definitely.
She thought about Jake not being honest with her, about the billboard and the advertising and lots of other things. But he was considerate too. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that Lucy’s room was going to have to be cleaned, and he’d taken care of that and more.
He made love to her so smoothly, so sexily.
She wanted him, but she’d been lied to before.
“You have a guest room?”
“Sure,” he said. Then he grinned, lady-killer to the max. “Whatever the lady wants, the lady gets.”
Chapter Twenty
Jake accepted that he had made a huge mess of everything concerning Sugar. She was sleeping down the hall in the guest room and had been for the last week. Sugar hadn’t said so much as a hello to him unless he said it to her first. If the blue Oldsmobile hadn’t been parked in the garage at night, he wouldn’t have known she was there, except for faint traces of perfume in the air.
It was time to put the Christmas decorations up in Pecan Creek now. He knew very well that the dead body—a Mr. Tommy Grimes from Galveston who’d had an itch to meet the purveyor of pecans who told such lusty tales on her blog—had probably killed any desire the Hot Nuts had to renew their lease on the family home.
Sugar didn’t want to go home. Neither did Maggie or Lucy, according to Lassiter and Bobby. They were living in sin, according to Vivian, all of them, but only Jake knew that he wasn’t living anywhere close to the sin he’d like to be living with Sugar.
Because he was the king of Schmuckville.
He kind of hoped Sugar staying here meant that they could hit some kind of do-over button on their friendship, but that didn’t seem likely at this point. He couldn’t blame Sugar for being upset. He’d left her a note in the kitchen, telling her to stay in his house as long as she wanted, until she was comfortable going back home.
She did return home during the day to cook and package her product. But she didn’t spend the night. Finding the body had been too much even for a tough baby like Sugar.
He got a text, saw that it was from Lucy.
Paint color: Robin’s egg blue.
Jake smiled. Texted back: You got it.
He didn’t know what Lucy was planning, but if she wanted blue, then robin’s egg blue would be on her porch from Bert’s Paint Store tomorrow.
It’d be a change from the hot, sultry reds of the Belle Watling room and the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas room.
Sugar hurried into the kitchen, followed by Paris, her ever-present shadow.