Sugar's Twice as Sweet: Sugar, Georgia: Book 1 (28 page)

“Boo, come.” But Boo was already out the door. He fluctuated between exaggerated wagging and growling, as if unsure of how to greet the visitor. Josephina knew exactly how he felt. Which was why she had to shut the door, before she wagged herself right into his arms.

“Please, just give me a minute,” Brett said, his voice pleading, his eyes red from lack of sleep.

“One minute.” Josephina crossed her arms over her chest, hoping to cover up her
F
AIRIES
D
O
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B
ETTER
shirt and the hard-to-miss proof that he still turned her on. The man had lied to her, publicly humiliated her, and yet her body still ached to be connected to his. Pathetic.

“Darleen and I used to have a thing, never serious, just sex.”

Humiliation, raw and potent, scorched up her throat at the casual way the words spilled off his tongue. Would he one day talk about what they had shared so casually? Her heart told her no, that the connection between them had been special—magical. Then again, Wilson had claimed to love her.

“But I haven’t been with her in months,” he said, as though that made everything better. “There hasn’t been anyone in a while, except for you.”

“I don’t care about Darleen.”

The tension around Brett’s mouth relaxed a little at her announcement. Not wanting to give him false hope that they could come back from this, Josephina patted her thigh and called for Boo to come inside. He positioned himself stubbornly at Brett’s boots.

Feet together, chest puffed out, Boo snorted his opinion. He didn’t want Brett to leave. Problem was, neither did Josephina, but she knew the longer she held out hope, the longer it would hurt.

“Okay,” Brett paused, as if finally able to breathe. “About the loan—”

“You don’t get it, Brett.” Josephina took a breath of her own, willing herself to make it through this with her pride intact. “The string—it broke. And no amount of talking, or apologizing, or time can fix that,” she explained, her heart breaking with every word. “So, please go. I can’t do this again.”

Josephina called for Boo one last time, and when he didn’t respond, other than to lick Brett’s ankle and whimper, she stepped back inside, and any pretense that she could hold it together crumbled. The clicking of the door was so resolute, so final, that it knocked all the air out of her body.

Afraid she’d collapse, Josephina leaned against the door and let her head fall back, praying for the strength to walk away.

“We’re going to have our talk, Joie.” Brett’s voice came through the door, followed by his boots on the wood porch. They stopped right on the other side and she could practically feel his strength radiating through the wood.

When he spoke again, it was as if he was whispering in her ear. Low and heated and melting her resolve. “You know how I like to take my time when we make love?”

Take your time?
The man was the most thorough lover she’d ever had. Even thinking about how diligent he was made her thighs clench. And her heart ache.

“Well, sugar, you haven’t even begun to comprehend how long I’m willing to dig in. So you take your time. I’ll be waiting right here when you’re ready to talk.”

Josephina looked around at the sophisticated dining room, the clean lines of the foyer—it all looked wrong. This place was no longer a passion they shared. They would never sit over a meal and talk with pride about how far they’d come. There was no more joy in this for her.

Everything would forever remind her of Brett—and how much he’d hurt her.

Eight hours later, the heat had finally dropped to a balmy ninety-three. Brett’s stomach was in knots, the sun was finally setting, and he hadn’t heard a peep out of Joie. Not a one. She hadn’t even come out to check on Boo, who was sitting on the stairs next to Brett, his sad little muzzle resting on Brett’s thigh.

“Sorry you’re in the doghouse, buddy. Never meant to bring you with me, but the loyalty is appreciated.”

Boo’s eyes—just his eyes—moved up to connect with Brett’s and the poor guy let out a whimper.

“I know. She has to come out sometime.” The dog looked about as confident in Brett’s assessment as Brett felt.

 “That’s the sorriest picture I’ve ever seen,” Hattie said, hopping out of Cal’s truck, Cal right behind her.

Brett didn’t want to face his family. Not yet. He was still mad at his grandma and he didn’t want to deal with Cal’s I-told-you-so bullshit.

“If you’re here with dinner, I’m not hungry.” He was starved, but knew he wouldn’t be able to eat unless it involved sitting at Joie’s table. “And if you’re here to apologize, then you might as well go home, because she’s not taking callers and I’m first in line.”

“I’m here to take you home before Jackson hauls you in for soliciting on a lady’s stoop,” Cal explained.

“And what the hell do you think I’m soliciting?”

“According to the papers, sex,” Hattie said.

“Did you have to bring her?” Brett pointed to his grandmother, who was now pacing the porch and peering through the windows.

“She was with me when Spenser called. Since you haven’t bothered to answer your phone all day and Spenser only gave me ten minutes to drag you home before she called Jackson to arrest your dumb ass, I decided to head straight over,” Cal said. “So why don’t you come home and let Joie cool off?”

“She told me that she doesn’t want to talk about it. That it’s too late. Not that I blame her.”

“She didn’t change it none,” Hattie said, her face pressed to the salon’s window. She sounded perplexed and out-and-out astonished.

“Not yet. But she will.” Brett grabbed Hattie by the arm and dragged her off the porch. If Joie was hesitant before, there was no way she would come out with spiky gray hair and judgment plastered to her windows.

Hattie dug her feet in and Brett felt anger boiling up. If he didn’t get to see Joie, then there was no way to make this right. No way he’d win her back.

 “Did one of you ever stop to think that maybe this was what Letty wanted? That Joie came here to finish building the dream
she
had shared with Letty?”

“Letty would never want this.” Hattie waved a hand at the inn.

“Really?” Brett said, surprising himself with how harshly the question came out. “Because I saw the sketches and plans, and half of those were Letty’s, including the salon. She wanted to pamper her guests, give them a place to recharge.”

“Post-soil-spoil,” Hattie whispered, recognition setting in. Taking his face between her crinkled hands, her voice wobbled as she said, “Oh, Brett, I was so scared that she was going to ruin what Letty had worked so hard to build. When she started talking fancy people’s getaways and mud tubs, we got scared, all of us. I didn’t even think—”

“Yeah, well, this town should have had more faith in her, Grandma,” Brett said, including himself in that equation. “Because as far as I can tell she was the only one thinking about Letty.”

“I did that girl wrong, and it breaks my heart that I wound up hurting her. And you.”

“Mine, too, Grandma.” Because the damage went so much deeper than anyone realized and Brett didn’t know how to fix it, didn’t know how to make Joie’s world okay again.

“But she waltzed in here with her big-city ideas and we didn’t know her from a Democrat. She isn’t our people.”

“I wanted her to be
my
people.” Brett patted his chest. “Do you get that? She thinks golf is boring. She doesn’t take my crap. She makes me want to stay in Sugar, put down roots, be a better man. The kind of man Dad was.”

Saying you believe in someone and actually believing in them are two separate things.

“Christ.” Brett’s lungs stopped working.

Cal had been right. Time and again she’d given him the chance to be the kind of man she needed, but instead of giving her the same consideration, he’d tried to manipulate the situation, control it so she wouldn’t fail—and in turn leave. Leave Sugar. Leave Georgia. Leave him.

Too bad that he’d turned out to be just like all the other a-holes in her life. A selfish liar.

“So you finally figured it out,” Cal said, clapping him on the back, a smug-as-shit grin widening across his face.

“Yeah.” Brett leaned down to give Boo one final pat.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough to let her find her happiness.”

A week later, a pounding came from right outside Josephina’s window. She shot up, taking the blankets with her and sending Boo flying to the ground. He landed with a thump, his big doggie eyes glazed over and confused. She knew how he felt. The sun was barely even peeking over the mountains, a strange person in a prison-yard-orange track suit and a trucker’s cap was levitating outside her second-story window and, according to the bedside clock, she had achieved less than two hours of sleep.

Another sound shot through the air. This time it sounded like a gun going off.

“Not this time, Annie Oakley!” Josephina said, pulling on a pair of sweats.

Try as they might, she wasn’t leaving town. Well, at least not until her mom arrived on Saturday with Rosalie in tow to help pack up Josephina and her dreams for the move back to Manhattan.

She hadn’t wanted to leave, even promised Spenser and Charlotte that she wasn’t giving up on her dreams for Fairchild House. But after hiding out for the better part of the week, she realized that whatever magic had originally drawn her to Sugar was now buried under a pile of broken string. Strings that hurt so much, there were moments when remembering to breathe seemed too daunting.

It was one of those moments in which her mom had convinced Josephina that the best option was to come home. But she’d be damned if she’d let these old ladies get the last word.

Grabbing Letty’s shotgun off the wall, she charged down the stairs, out the front door, and stuck her barrels in the first face she saw.

“Christ!” Cal jerked up, stumbling backward over the leg of the ladder and down two steps, landing on the ground. “What are you doing?”

“I can ask you the same. And since I’m the one holding a gun, I guess you get to answer first.”

“Finishing up your house.” Cal looked at the gun but didn’t move. “I thought you were more of a blunt object kind of girl.”

“Sent my ex’s clubs to Japan last week, just in time for his big Pan Pacific Moment.” She’d even cleaned them up. Aside from the drivers that she’d used for torches they looked good as new. Durable suckers. “And what’s
she
doing up there?”

Not only were there a dozen men in steel-toed boots and professional-grade tool belts, Rooster on the roof, her girlfriends waist high in weeds, but Hattie was on top of a really high ladder, cleaning out the gutters in an orange pants suit.

“Work release.”

Josephina couldn’t help but laugh at just how that conversation went down. A laugh that died in her chest even before it could surface as she began adding up the daily rate for all the bodies currently swinging hammers. “I doubt everyone here is on work release. Even if they are, there’s no way I can afford all these people.”

What really got her heart thumping, though, was the thought that one of those tool-belt-wearing studs might be her stud. She didn’t want to see him like this, here, working on her house. Didn’t want to think about how hard it would be to watch him do what they had spent the summer doing together, knowing it would never happen again.

“He isn’t here,” Cal said softly. “He went back on tour. Played a game yesterday in Canada.”

“Oh.”
Canada?
Josephina’s heart dropped to her toes.

“As for the cost, I figure that after what my family put you through, think of it as a gift.” He sent her an apologetic look, and cautiously added, “Plus, Brett wanted to make sure your place was ready for your parents’ visit.”

“Because he didn’t think I could do it alone?”

“I couldn’t do this alone, and I’ve been building houses since I was a teenager.” He reached out his hand. “Now you going to give me the gun so I can get up? Or would you rather shoot? At this point, either decision is fine with me.”

Josephina didn’t give up the gun, but she did rest it across her legs after she sat down on the top step.

Cal dusted off his backside and, walking in the way only a McGraw man could pull off, dropped down next to her. They sat silent, watching two men tear off the rotted siding on the closest of the servants’ quarters. When finished, Josephina had imagined glass block walls, billowing gauze, and oatmeal-colored Adirondack chairs for her Hampton Suite. Now when she looked at it, she had a hard time picturing anything. Maybe because clean lines and loft décor implied couples getting away from the big city for the weekend, and Fairchild House with its fishing and hiking and welcoming landscape was almost made for families.

Letty had always said that the house came to life when Josephina visited because only children could sense the magic hidden in the walls. Magic that she was walking away from.

“I’m leaving on Saturday,” she blurted out.

She watched as Cal looked from her to the ground, before running a hand over his face. “You think that’s what Letty would want you to do?”

Tears sprang to her eyes at the familiar feeling of disappointment. “I don’t know anymore. She didn’t even mean to leave me Fairchild House. I got it on a technicality.”

“She’d tell you to suck it up and use whatever magic was being offered to get this place up and running.”

“That magic being Brett’s money and your charity?”

“Oh, my guys aren’t charity. And Brett may not always think with the right head, but when it comes to money he’s all about calculated risk and return on investment. I’m not sure about all of what’s going on between the two of you, but I can tell you that my brother would never have invested in you if he didn’t believe you’d make it.”

Josephina looked at her toes, unwilling to let him see the emotion in her eyes. She wanted so badly to believe that Brett had faith in her ability to make Fairchild House a success. “I intend to pay him back every penny.”

“Good, then add my guys to what you owe him, since I’m billing him for this mess, and prove that you are Letty’s niece by making a good life for yourself here.”