Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek) (20 page)

Jake sighed. “There are some reasons for that, but I agree.”

“So what’s her problem with me?”

“Well, apparently the fact that I like you.” He ran a hand down her arm. “You’re divorced. Mom thinks I’d get back together with Averie if I wasn’t blinded by you. I told her to butt out, but then she sprung the PI bit on me. It was not our best family moment.”

“What about me?”

Jake winced. “Sugar, I want you to know that I don’t care about any of this. It was none of my business. It doesn’t change the fact that I think you’re a helluva woman.”

“Jake,” Sugar said, “what about me?”

“You’re divorced, and your ex is still crazy about you,” Jake said, surrendering. He was too far in to work himself free now. “He wants your business to fail so you’ll come home with your tail between your legs and get back with him, apparently.”

Sugar’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “That’s not going to happen. I will never return to Ramon, or Florida. If this doesn’t work out, we’re on our way to live near family in Oklahoma.”

That was the last thing Jake wanted to happen. He wanted Sugar right here, in his world. “There’s some theory that you ran off your stepfather. Or that something happened to him.”

Sugar’s eyes narrowed. Jake’s chest tightened as Sugar didn’t deny it.

“And that your sister was dishonestly discharged from the military,” Jake finished on a rush of misery. “Something about a problem with an officer. That’s the whole graveyard the PI dug up.”

Sugar looked at him for a long moment.

Then she got off him, slipped into the water and splashed up on the bank.

“Sugar!”

She whistled for Paris, who jumped up with her bone and dove into the canoe. Sugar shoved off hard—she was a lot stronger than he’d given her credit for—and before he could get himself off the raft and up the bank, she was paddling smoothly through the water.

Jake shook his head. “I saw that coming,” he muttered. “I can’t say the odds on that weren’t greatly stacked against me.”

He pulled the rafts in, then sank onto his chair and opened a beer.

Wish I’d brought a case. I need divine intervention from the goddess of hops.

Sugar tore into the house, startling Lucy, who was eating popcorn on the sofa and looking at a magazine, dreaming of the day when she could afford a new pair of sandals and maybe a crossbody bag. “Sugar!” Lucy exclaimed. “You scared me half to death!”

“We’ve got to leave here,” Sugar said. “Start packing up your stuff. Find Maggie.”

“What in the world happened?” Lucy stared at her sister. “Sit down for a minute and get a grip.”

“I don’t want to get a grip.” Sugar looked wild, and Lucy’s heart dropped into her stomach. “My grip is gone.”

Lucy blinked. “Did Vivian get to you too?”

Sugar whirled to face her. “What do you mean,
too
?”

Lucy shrugged. “She gets to everyone. I just pretty much figured out a way around her. Or at least my friends did. Get a glass of wine and sit down, and we’ll burn an effigy of her together. Or I bet I can whip up a really good voodoo doll that will have her jumping around.”

Sugar looked frantic. “Lucy, we can’t stay. This is not the warm and inviting town I hoped it might be. It’s not. We’re going to have to find a new place to live.”

“I don’t know. I feel pretty welcome here.” Lucy got up to get her sister a generous glass of wine and a big gulp of the grape for herself. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”

“Oh yeah?” Sugar took a slug of the wine. Some of the color returned to her cheeks, and Lucy waved her sister to the sofa. “You too, Paris. Dogs are supposed to lower our blood pressure. Don’t share any fleas, though.”

“She has no fleas,” Sugar said absently. “The vet says she’s clean as a whistle now. No fleas, no—do not try to change the subject.”

“I won’t. What happened?”

“Vivian put a PI on us to dig up our dirty laundry.”

“Wow, she is a determined old biddy, isn’t she?” Lucy patted Paris and made kissy noises at the dog. “We don’t care what she found, do we, Paris?”

Sugar looked at her. “Lucy, Vivian knows about your dishonorable discharge. And if you think she’s going to keep that quiet, you’re not being realistic.”

“Personally, I don’t give a shit. No one knows why, do they?”

“He called it a problem with an officer. So no, it’s not known that you practically took the guy out who tried to—”

“Anyway, I don’t care if the whole world knows,” Lucy said. “I shouldn’t have been cowed at the time the thing blew up. I should have screamed from the rooftops what really happened.” She shrugged. “I know I embarrassed you, Sugar, but the fact is, I can’t worry about that. I didn’t like that creep, and I sure wasn’t looking for him to try to force himself on me, off base or not.”

Sugar took a deep breath. “I wanted a fresh start for us. This is not it.”

“What’d the old bat dig up on Maggie?”

“Nothing. Her problem with Maggie seems to be jealousy.”

“Like we didn’t know that from day one.” Lucy laughed. “Who would you rather be, happy-go-lucky Maggie or unhappy Vivian?”

Sugar shook her head. “I want more for Maggie than a vicious woman who’s gunning for her.”

Lucy shrugged. “Let Maggie decide. Frankly, I don’t think she’s going to give a damn. She’s got Lassiter, and to be real direct, I think she’s moved in with him. Which is kind of funny, if you think about it, because Maggie was always real hard on us about not living in sin, giving away the milk for free, not letting a man—”

“Just about everything Maggie ever told me was helpful,” Sugar said. “If she wants to make a new life with that big rancher cowboy grandfather, I vote yes.”

“Okay, then,” Lucy said, trying to soothe her sister. “So what do we care about old Viv? The worst has come out. So we’ll never make the social register of Pecan Creek. Do we really give a flip?”

Sugar shook her head. Drank some wine. Shook her head again.

“What else was there?”

“Nothing,” Sugar said. “That was about it.”

Lucy felt pretty certain her sister was holding back on her. It was typical of Sugar to try to protect her. “Sugar, when Vivian talked to me, she did everything but threaten to feed Maggie to the wolves. She threatened my job, told me she was going to take Maggie’s mayorship.” Lucy shook her head. “Which is stupid, because Maggie will be a wonderful mayor. Sometimes Vivian hurts Pecan Creek more than she helps it, in my opinion.”

Sugar nodded. “Jake is nothing like her.”

Lucy leaned back and picked her magazine back up. “See? Everything is fine. Even Paris is happy here, aren’t you, girl? The vet says you’re a princess now.” She kissed the dog on the nose, and Paris put an adoring paw on her leg. “Spoiled rotten. You can be one of the Shady Ladies of Pecan Creek with us. But if Vivian thinks I’m going to wear a hair shirt, she’s going to find out that hair shirts are not my fashion aesthetic. You wear the fur, and I’ll wear the short skirts, Paris. I say if we’ve got it, we ought to flaunt the hell out of it.”

Sugar got up and walked around the room, staring at the artifacts Vivian had staged the house with. Lucy watched her sister, troubled. “Sugar, why did Jake tell you all this, anyway?”

“I think he didn’t want me to be broadsided by his mother. There were other little details, like the fact that Kel saw us sunbathing topless when he was on our roof one day, and—”

Lucy shook her head. “Had to have been a shock to his tiny-brained system. Where’s Jake now?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

Lucy nodded. There were lots of things her sister didn’t talk about—and Jake was going to have to learn that if he really wanted Sugar, he was going to have to muzzle his busybody mother.

She looked at the cute, spiky red shoes and red patent crossbody bag she’d love for Christmas. Vivian would probably pee her bunched-up drawers if Lucy walked into church wearing those.

Lucy smiled, then put the magazine down.

It was time to go to work.

Chapter Fourteen

Minda’s huge downstairs basement had been newly graced with giant spools of chicken wire. Lucy looked at Charlotte, Minda and Dodie, not sure how such a thing fit into their business models. “Are we going to start selling chickens with our boobs, oils and dingle doilies?”

The ladies smiled at her.

“It’s time to start our parade float,” Charlotte said. “Christmas is just around the corner. We don’t have any time to waste.”

“Not if we want to win,” Minda said, “and we do want to win.”

“We never have before,” Dodie added, “but this year we think we have a chance because of you.”

“Me?” Lucy blinked. “I know nothing about building a parade float.”

They smiled at her benignly, their round faces cute and doughy. Lucy felt happy just looking at them. It was like having three grandmothers all at once, which was nice, because her own grandmothers had passed away when she was young.

“We want you to ride on our float,” Charlotte said.

“Me?” Lucy repeated, thinking about everything Sugar had just told her. These sweet ladies had no idea what Vivian had dug up, and no doubt the old witch would share instantly the moment she found out about Lucy being on any float, or even being within ten feet of the parade.

Sugar wanted the sign along the highway for Hotter than Hell Nuts. The chance of Vivian not putting her foot down about that seemed remote—but Lucy riding on a PC float wasn’t going to help.

“I’m flattered, ladies, but I can’t,” Lucy said. “I’m afraid of crowds.”

They stared at her.

“That’s balderdash,” Charlotte said. “You just don’t want to get crosswise with Vivian.”

Lucy shrugged. “It’s better if I stay in the background. But I don’t mind helping you build it.”

“We want you to be our princess,” Dodie said.

“Princess of what?” Lucy looked around at the group. “We market sexual goodies.”

Minda smiled. “Princess of Pecan Creek.”

Lucy sat down at a worktable. “I’m sorry, have you all made the acquaintance of Vivian Bentley? She hates me, remember? And my family?”

“We know,” Charlotte said. “And while no one has done more for Pecan Creek than Vivian, and we absolutely bow to much of her vision for Pecan Creek, we think that the real way to bring new life to our town is younger people.” She gazed at Lucy’s cut-off shorts, short tank top and ankle tat. “We’re going for hip and happening. We can have all the Christmas parades we want, and all we’re going to lure out here is folks who want to retire. You put a different face on Pecan Creek.”

“I thought you wanted a parade mayor that would give an honest, gentle vibe to Pecan Creek,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Dodie said, “there’s comfort in that. But as far as a princess, we think we need a girl who makes guys see that we have something sexier out here than what they might expect in a small town.”

“Single men don’t come to parades,” Lucy pointed out. “Families do.”

Charlotte nodded. “We realize that. So we’re going to rent the town billboard for December and put you on it.”

They practically glowed with their idea. Lucy felt their approbation flow over her, and it felt good.

But in the back of her mind, she knew Vivian had dug up some secrets that hardly made her an unsullied princess. “My family and I are trying to lie low. Vivian plus Cassavechias equals trouble.”

“Think about it.” Minda smiled beatifically at her. “We’ve already picked out a dress for you and hired a photographer.”

Lucy shook her head. “This is not a good idea. Let me see the dress.”

They took her to a closet in the workroom, opening the double doors with a flourish. A white minidress with fringe hung inside, twinkling with occasional sequins. Sky-high white heels that any model would love made Lucy gasp.

“Like it?” Charlotte asked. “We think it’s very now.”

“Very happening,” Dodie added.

“Sexy,” Minda said, “and we know better than anyone that sex sells.”

Lucy touched the short, fringed dress. “I just think you should know that Vivian put a dick on my family. And he found that we don’t have the most princessy past.”

They looked at her.

“Neither do we,” Dodie said. “Did you murder anyone?”

“No,” Lucy said, “there are some things Cassavechias don’t stoop to.”

“Then we won’t worry about taking the speck out of your eye,” Charlotte said. “No one in Pecan Creek is pure as the driven snow. Vivian’s excitable at times. Ignore it, if you can, dear.”

Lucy smiled, looking at her friends gratefully. “I can’t wait to wear that dress and ride in the parade.”

They clapped their hands.

Then they got to work on the Christmas parade float, chattering with excitement. Lucy picked up some chicken wire and hoped she hadn’t stuck a fork in Sugar’s business. Sugar wanted the billboard, but Jake said no. Jake wanted Sugar, but he wasn’t going to go against the grain in Pecan Creek. Sugar was never going to get the billboard for her business.