Scarlet Fever - Hill Country 2

An Introduction to the

HillCountry Heart Series

Welcome Dear Readers,

Come with me to the Hill Country of Texas and meet three of the sexiest men imaginable.
 
They are the owners and operators of The Lost Maples Bed and Breakfast.
 

Book your room and pack your bags – romance is in the air.

 
‘Sable Hunter’

 
“
Scarlet Fever
”

By

Sable Hunter

This is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
   

“Scarlet Fever”

All rights reserved

Copyright - 2010 –
Sable Hunter
   

Thanks to Tracy for making everything work

Thanks to Frances for making everything make sense

Thanks to Jarrod for everything

Thanks to Mary for
being beautiful – on the cover and off

Thanks to Nikki for her eagle-eye and attention to the details

♥ ~
Chapter I
~ ♥

Scarlet Rose Evans had a bucket list… “100 Things I Want To Do Before I Die”.
 
She sat up in her bed, her bottom cushioned on a thick pillow, notepad on her lap, and crossed off two items on her list.
 
#57 had been a disappointment;
War and Peace
was depressing, and she didn’t want to waste any time being depressed.
 
#14, however, had made her smile; even if it had made her bottom sore.
 
Scarlet had giggled while trying to hold a hand-mirror at just the right angle so she could see the small, scarlet-red rose that now graced the top of her left hip.

If the Board of Deacons had any inkling that the Church Administrator of
 
Pine Forest’s Lutheran congregation now sported a tattoo on her butt, she would probably be churched; the Lutheran equivalent to excommunication.
 
Looking at the bright spot on her butt, Scarlet decided it was worth it.
   

Climbing from the bed, she laid her list down, and pulled off her white eyelet gown.
 
Without a single glance in the mirror, she walked naked to the shower and turned on the water.
 
Scarlet had trained herself not to look in the mirror.
 
She hated to be reminded of what other people saw when they looked at her.

Allowing time for the temperature to get bearable, she brushed her teeth.
 
Today was going to be exciting; she was about to pack up and travel to an enchanting Bed and Breakfast,
The Lost Maples
, and help her beautiful sister get ready to marry the only man she had ever loved.

After a great deal of planning, Scarlet had been able to take two weeks off from both of her full time jobs.
 
At present, she divided her days between the small town library and the offices of the local Lutheran church.
 
Luckily, the two esteemed institutions were built side by side on the only main street in town, and she could run – or her version of running – from one to the other as was necessary.
 

In addition to her ‘eight to five’ commitments at the church and the library, Scarlet kept herself busy in a half a dozen different ways.
 
One of her favorite things was making cookie mix in a jar.
 
She would take a mason jar and layer it with all of the dry ingredients necessary to make a batch of cookies.
 
Topping it with a piece of gingham and a ribbon and she had a cute gift to sell.
 
Remembering how much Annalise missed her cooking, she slipped two of each kind in a bag to take with her on the trip.
 
She also made hair clips from tooled leather and various silver charms and gemstones.
 
Scarlet did anything she could to make a little extra money.
 
Her favorite extracurricular activity was sewing.
 
Homemade clothes weren’t exactly in vogue, but Scarlet had a gift, the work she did looked as good as the best custom tailoring.
 
Her specialty was making wedding gowns for brides who longed for a beautiful dress, but just couldn’t afford the high prices that the designer boutiques charged.
 
The dress she was fashioning now was the most important one she would ever make.
 
Scarlet was sewing her sister, Annalise’s, bridal gown.
 
Years ago, Annalise had torn a photo of her dream dress out of a popular bridal magazine.
 
Now, Scarlet was doing her best to recreate it.
 
The only phase that was left to go was the final fitting, and then the sewing on of countless seed pearls.
 
The blinding job of sewing on the tiny pearls could be done after she arrived at
The Lost Maples
.
 
Nights were long, and it was always better to have something to do with her hands.
 
If she kept busy, she didn’t spend so much time thinking about her future and how short it might be.
 
Other than sewing, she took in ironing – another lost art – and she baked wedding cakes.
 
It took every dime that she could manage to rake and scrape together to buy the medicine that to kept her alive.
  

Standing in the shower, she soaped herself, fantasizing what it would be like to feel a man’s hands on her body.
 
It was an experience that she had not, as yet, been fortunate enough to have had.
 
She did dream about it, however.
 
Often.
 
Fantasy men weren’t hard to please.
 
Scarlet was very afraid that her body would not be enticing enough to satisfy a real flesh and blood man.
 
Running her own hands over her slightly heated flesh, she took inventory of her meager assets.
 
Her waist was small and her hips were all right, she supposed.
 
Glancing back at the tiny rose, she imagined a man tracing the small tattoo with his tongue.
 
The thought made her shiver.
 
Sadly, she was woefully lacking in the breast department.
 
Scarlet cupped her own breasts, imagining what a man would think of their less than generous size.
 
She shivered; not with delight, but with dread.
 
This unfortunate flaw in her body was going to make the first item on Scarlet’s bucket list more difficult to achieve.
 
Her best hope was still Alex.

Alex Stewart was her sister’s future brother-in-law.
 
And to hear Annalise tell it; he was a knight in shining armor, Prince Charming, and Casanova all rolled up into one super good-looking guy.
 
Scarlet didn’t doubt that her sister loved her fiancé Ethan with all of her heart, but Ethan’s brother, Alex, had been Annalise’s rock.
 
He had encouraged and counseled both Scarlet’s sister and his brother through their bouts of doubt and hopelessness.
 
Annalise thought Alex hung the moon.
 
And Scarlet needed someone like that – just for one night.
 

Stepping out of the shower and drying off, Scarlet dressed quickly in blue jeans and a pink lace camisole.
 
She didn’t bother with a bra, she didn’t need one.
 
For a while, she had worn a padded bra, but had determined that was sort of like false advertising.
 
Picking up her bucket list, she circled the #1 item.
 
It read:
 
‘Make Love’.
 
She knew there was no one in her small home town that she could ask to do this for her.
 
In the eyes of all the men that she had grown up with, or knew around town, she was still the awkward, sickly girl with the malformed foot.
 
It really didn’t matter that the good people at the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital had fixed her misshapen club foot seven years earlier.
 
Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder, and the men of Pine Forest would never see her as anything other than a deformed cripple.
 
Scarlet could walk fine, now, except for a slight limp.
 
One leg was still about an inch shorter than the other and most days she could keep her gait even enough that it wasn’t very noticeable.
 
But when she was tired, there was no way that she could hide it.
    

In her quest to have her one and only experience with sex, Scarlet was actually considering trying to contact a male escort service while she was in the Austin area.
 
Sunday nights had brought a television show into her living room that featured a really nice guy as a gigolo, and if she could have been certain that she would be hiring a guy like him to take her virginity, it might be all right.
 
There were no guarantees in life, Scarlet was smart enough to know that.
 
 
Paying someone to have sex with her would be a last resort.
 
In fact, the idea of giving herself to an uncaring stranger made her want to cry.
 
Losing her virginity was a milestone that Scarlet would hate to miss, so she wasn’t ruling anything out, but she was going to see how it went with Alex first.