by Avery Flynn
Want and duty played a tug of war inside Logan, but like always, the Martin genes ran roughshod over everything else, and he walked Miranda to his office door.
As soon as he opened it, the chatter in the lobby ceased and everyone turned to face them. Word of who was in his office had obviously gotten out. The town gossips had arrived en masse, like squirrels at a newly stocked bird feeder.
Miranda pulled herself up to her full height and angled her chin higher, putting her almost eye-to-eye with him at six feet. “Thank you for taking the time to see me.”
Damn, the woman made his left eye twitch, but he had to give her a sliver of respect for not cringing in front of Salvation’s Most Vicious Coffee Klatch. “Sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted.”
“It’s not a problem.” She turned the full wattage of her blue eyes on him, and his chest tightened. “You know us Sweets—we always find a way.”
With that, she strutted across the lobby, her high heels clicking against the marble, and he stared after her, feeling like a man who’d forgotten his own name.
Chapter Three
There were few things in Salvation that Miranda ever missed, but The Kitchen Sink was one of them. Part-coffee shop, part-diner, part-chocolate heaven, it had been around for as long as she could remember. So had Ruby Sue Jepson, sitting behind the cash register by the front door, sucking down gallons of sweet tea loaded with enough sugar to give a dentist the vapors.
Miranda had just crossed over the Food is Love welcome mat when the early dinner crowd fell silent. Heads swiveled and the invisible hammer of judgment nailed her right between the eyes. A tingling sensation swept up her body, bringing the fire of humiliation with it until her cheeks burned.
Looked like the gossip of her arrival back in town had hit Main Street.
“I’ll be damned. Miranda Sweet, is it you or is my glaucoma acting up again?” Ruby Sue sat her glass down on the Formica countertop with a clank. “You always did know how to make an entrance. Who do you think you are, the Queen of England?”
The tension ebbed out of Miranda’s shoulders at the sound of Ruby Sue’s pack-a-day roughened voice. “Stick to what you know. Isn’t that what you always said?”
The very definition of elderly petite, Ruby Sue slid gingerly off the stool and shuffled around the counter. Her bony but deceptively strong arms locked around Miranda’s waist and squeezed. The Sweets had few allies in Salvation, but Ruby Sue headed up the pack. And for the first time since Miranda had crossed the train tracks, Salvation felt like home.
The tips of Ruby Sue’s tight, white curls tickled Miranda’s nose and she wondered, not for the first time in her life, how a woman that smoked as much as Ruby Sue did always smelled like chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven.
“I heard that crazy old uncle of yours left you and your sisters the brewery.” Blunt and brassy, Ruby Sue hadn’t changed a bit. “What’s left of it after the old bat let it slide downhill.”
“It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, Ruby Sue.” The words were serious, but it took effort to fight the upward curl her lips wanted to make.
“When in the world have I ever been nice? Anyway, Julian Sweet tried to talk me into serving pot brownies. If that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is.”
Miranda couldn’t help but laugh. “It would probably increase food sales.”
“That is exactly what Julian said.” Ruby Sue shook her head and led Miranda over to an empty stool at the counter. “Bring me two teas, Ellen.”
The waitress at the other end of the counter nodded her head and grabbed two glasses from the drying rack before disappearing into the back. Many older women in Salvation protected their biscuit recipes with the devotion of a Knight Templar standing guard over the Holy Grail. Ruby Sue couldn’t care less about biscuits. For her, it was always about sweet tea and pecan pie.
“Where are those sisters of yours hiding? I know it ain’t at the brewery.”
“What makes you say that? They could be armpit-deep in hops and malt.”
Ruby Sue snorted. “Natalie may have her nose in a book about beer, but I’d bet my sweet tea recipe that she’s never set foot in that brewery. As for Olivia, the last I saw of her was her boobs hanging half out of an itty bitty excuse of a swimsuit on a Sports Illustrated cover a few years back.”
“You’re right. Natalie’s in California, and Olivia’s in Missouri. They’ll get here as soon as they can, but they’re tied up with work, and I told them I wanted to try this on my own.” Miranda didn’t blame them a bit for not rushing home. Most of Salvation had looked down on the Sweet triplets since the day they were born in the backseat of their parents’ sedan in the Shop and Sip’s parking lot. Once they’d left for college—or in Olivia’s case, Harbor City’s catwalks—none of them had ever wanted to come back.
The waitress put two tall glasses of whiskey-colored tea on the counter in front of her and Ruby Sue. Condensation dripped down the sides. Part of Ruby Sue’s tea recipe—and the only part that was public knowledge—was serving ice-cold tea in warm glasses.
Miranda picked up the glass emblazoned with a picture of a kitchen sink. Heat from the glass seeped into her fingers. She took a big gulp that left her gasping for air and almost gave her senses whiplash. The frigid tea was enough to make her teeth chatter, but damn it tasted good.
“You know people are worried you’ll set fire to the brewery and collect the insurance money,” Ruby Sue deadpanned.
The pronouncement of her presumed criminal intent constricted her throat and sent the mouthful of tea down the wrong pipe. The resulting coughing fit had her lungs bouncing off her ribcage like a toddler in a bounce house. Her eyes watered, either from the oxygen depletion or Ruby Sue’s palm whacking her on the back. The woman was old, but she still had fight in her. Finally, a thin thread of air found its way into her desperate lungs. Slowly regaining her equilibrium, Miranda eased her greedy gulps of air until her breathing returned to its normal pre-shock rhythm.
“I am not going to commit insurance fraud.” The words scraped against her raw throat as well as her tweaked ego.
“Well, you can’t blame ‘em for wondering. It’s not like you ever showed any interest in the brewery before.” Ruby Sue ripped open five sugar packets and dumped them in her tea. “Plus your grandma did go all firebug on the DMV when they wouldn’t renew her license.”
“She was never charged.” Miranda dabbed ineffectively at the brown wet spot soaking through her favorite white shirt. “The building had faulty wiring.”
“Mmm hmmm.” Ruby Sue shrugged her shoulders.
The old familiar weight of being a Sweet in Salvation weighed down Miranda’s shoulders, and she bit back a nasty comeback just in time. Ruby Sue was just being her normal, blunt self. If anyone in this closed-minded little town was in her corner, it was the feisty old lady with the sugar addiction.
Miranda’s attempt to eliminate the tea stain had only served to spread a damp spot across her chest. She needed to go rinse the shirt before it was ruined. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick, but I promise, I’m not going to hurt the brewery.” She grabbed her briefcase and jacket from the next stool, then stood up. “I’m going to make it better than it ever has been.”
Mind focused on what her next move should be for financing the brewery’s turnaround—maybe it was time to put out an SOS to her sisters—Miranda paid little attention to the handful of customers filtering into the private dining room next to the bathroom. But instead of the numbers coming together clearly in her head, all she kept seeing was Logan Martin. The asshole looked even better than he had in high school, and that was saying something. Not that she cared about his muscular arms or his square jaw or the way his butt had looked in his perfectly tailored suit pants.
The restroom door had barely swung shut before Miranda looped her briefcase and jacket onto the counter,
engaged the sink’s small stopper, stripped off her white shirt, and held it under the tap while the basin filled with water.
The tea had soaked through to her ivory lace demi bra, too, but there was no way she was taking that off in a public women’s restroom. She could live with a stained bra. It’s not like she’d shown anyone the results of her lingerie shopping addiction lately, or would any time soon.
The creaking of the door’s well-worn hinges caught her attention, and she jerked up her gaze.
That’s when she spotted the white urinal reflected in the mirror above the sink.
Her heart thundered in her ears, and her cheeks burned.
Oh. Shit.
Focused only on escape from the men’s bathroom, she whirled around and slammed right into an immovable object in the hot-blooded form of Logan Martin.
She bounced back and teetered on her heels.
Only his strong fingers wrapped around her bare upper arms saved her from falling backward. Electricity sparked across her skin, leaving nothing but jumbled nerves and half-melted objections in its wake. She thought she’d been vaccinated against his brand of hotness, but it looked like she needed a booster shot.
All her know-better-nows turned to ash under the heat of his touch, each finger burning an imprint on her skin. Her nipples pebbled, the hard points pushing against the unlined lace. Being this close to him was like sitting under a hotness heat lamp. In the desert. At high noon. The potency made her panties wet and her belly light. The last man she should want just had to be the one man she’d never been able to forget.
She should step out of his embrace. At least cross her arms to cover her exposed flesh and block out the bam-chica-bam-bam porn music playing in her head.
“Logan.” His name escaped her lips with far more breathiness than the low-down cur deserved, but damn she couldn’t help herself.
As slow as molasses in January, his lazy perusal inched its way up from her lace-covered breasts, continuing upward, across the bare expanse of her heated skin to her face. What she saw then had her rethinking her life choices. His brown eyes had darkened to black pits of want and desire, but there was more than animal lust there. And that scared her out of her mind.
She should back up. She should scream. Hell, she should be halfway down the hallway like a bat out of hell.
He zeroed in on her mouth. Her heavy, aching breasts nearly brushed against his shirt buttons.
“Miranda.” His lips were only a few scant inches above hers. Close enough that she could feel him without them even touching.
Everything south of her neck turned molten, blocking out the weak SOS her brain emitted. Miranda’s lips parted as if of their own volition, and a tiny sigh escaped her.
Water hit the tile floor and splashed against her leg. The sink!
Whipping around and out of Logan’s embrace, Miranda turned off the faucet and yanked out the sink’s stopper.
The creak of the bathroom door opening and shutting echoed in the small room. Her gut twisted. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed her suspicion.
Logan was gone.
Her fingers rubbed against her un-kissed and still-yearning lips. It was a blessing, really. He was the enemy. The one guy she could never give in to. Not again. With a white-knuckle grip, she twisted her shirt and squeezed out the water. Her hands shook as she unwound the material and dropped the sopping mess into the empty sink. What in the hell had she been thinking?
She pulled several sheets of brown paper towels from the dispenser, hard enough to shake the plastic holder on the wall, and dropped them to the floor to soak up the spill.
He was a Martin for God’s sake. And not just any Martin. The one who not two hours ago had turned her down for the loan she desperately needed. The one who’d taken her virginity and said nothing while the town whispered about how “that Sweet girl” had led him astray.
She balled up the paper towels and tossed them toward the trash. They hit the wall above the can with a hard thunk and fell into the bin.
“You’re a class A moron, Miranda Sweet.” She glared at her reflection in the mirror.
Her bottom lip shook. She stood in the men’s restroom, practically naked from the waist up and her hair going every which way. The shirt she’d meant to clean was a wadded up, water-logged ball in the sink. Yeah, par for the course for someone from her family.
Closing her eyes, she sucked in several cleaning breaths. She had to turn the brewery around, earn her corner office and get the hell out of this town before it turned her into just another crazy Sweet.
There was no way she’d be able to dry the shirt enough to wear. Luckily, she was parked only a block away. She grabbed her jacket, slipped it on, and fastened both buttons. The black blazer’s deep V showed off enough cleavage to qualify for one of her sister Olivia’s magazine covers, but it would have to do. She would just have to bust a move out the The Kitchen Sink’s front door.
Pulling open the bathroom door before she lost her nerve, Mirada hustled into the hallway.
“We can’t let her ruin this deal,” a man grumbled, his voice wafting out from inside the private dining room. “The last thing Salvation needs is to have another Sweet messing things up in this town.”
She jerked to a halt outside the partially open door.
“I say we sue,” a woman said.
Miranda huffed out a breath, sending a chunk of hair flying up. For what? Not toeing the stuffy town line? She balled her hands into fists as heat bubbled up in her belly. The bastards. She’d been in town for twenty-four hours and they were already trying to run her out on a rail.
“Can’t you do something to shut them down?” This from the first man.
More grumbles from the crowd. Miranda shuffled as close to the door as she dared, her shoulder brushing against the white doorframe.
“Look, there’s nothing to worry about.” The sound of Logan’s voice made her stomach flop, but his words turned her vision red. “She was at the bank this morning looking for a loan. The Sweet Salvation Brewery is drowning in debt. All we have to do is wait her out. A few months tops and that land is ours. We have nothing to worry about here.”
Forget eavesdropping, these assholes weren’t getting away with this. Miranda burst into the room. At least twenty people were packed in there, including Salvation’s mayor Tyrell Hawson. They filled the chairs and lined the walls. Everyone turned to gape at her.
Logan stood at the front of the room, a map of the county behind him. Several land tracts were shaded blue and surrounded a single block of white with a red X across the name Sweet Salvation Brewery. Her blood pressure ratcheted up to nuclear levels.
“Too much of a risk.” She stomped over to him and jabbed a perfectly manicured nail into his hard, muscular chest. “Wasn’t that your excuse, Logan?” Glancing around, she took in the faces of the town’s ruling elite. All this mob needed were some pitchforks and torches to finish the job. “What’s this? The annual meeting of the tar-and-feather committee?”
“Miranda.” A vein danced a fast rhythm against his temple, and he pushed her finger away from him. “This is business. The Martin Industrial Park is a smart investment for Salvation.”
She smirked. “And a Sweet never has been.”
He shrugged. “You said it, not me.”
“You’re wrong.” She glared at the crowd. “You’re all wrong. I’m going to turn that brewery around.”
“With what money?” Logan leveled an appraising gaze at her. “We both know you need it, but don’t have it.”
The truth of his words dampened the indignation burning in her belly. “Doesn’t matter.” Her plan would work. And he’d know that if he’d bothered to read the proposal she’d brought to their meeting at the bank. But if he couldn’t be bothered to learn it then, she sure wasn’t going to give him a play-by-play now. “I’ll find a way.
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br /> “I don’t think you will.” The lips she’d moments ago yearned to kiss curled into a self-satisfied smile. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go back to that brewery, take a look around, and realize what a heap it is. You’re going to start wondering—if you’re not already—why in the hell you want to tie yourself to such a money pit. Then, you’ll wake up and realize you don’t have to be. That’s when you’ll beg me to take it off your hands. And I will. For about fifty cents on the dollar.”
What she wouldn’t give to slap the smug smile off his face. Damn, it would feel so…sweet. But she knew something that had eluded her Aunt Mae, a woman who’d shaved half her cheating husband’s head bald and then burned his clothes in the front yard after finding out he had a secret family in Washington state.
Winning was the best kind of revenge.
For the prince of Salvation’s entire life, everything had always gone his way. Until now. He’d loved to take calculated risks in high school. Was he still the same? Of course he was. People didn’t change—especially not in Salvation. The man who loved to bet on a winner was about to find out what it felt like to lose big.
“Care to make a bet on that?”
Logan blinked but recovered in the next heartbeat. “Name your terms.”
“When the brewery gets back on track within three months, you take out a full page ad in the Salvation Gazette admitting you’re a shortsighted idiot who wouldn’t know a good business opportunity if it knocked the silver spoon out of your mouth.”
“Agreed.” He narrowed his eyes. “But when that doesn’t happen, and we all know it won’t, you sell me the brewery and its land according to the terms I dictate.”
The first pinpricks of unease marched up the back of her neck. There was more on the line here than just a promotion. Her sisters had entrusted their inheritance to her, the ultra-responsible eldest sister who never failed, and the brewery staff needed their jobs. She braced her shoulders and mentally wrestled her doubts back to the ground. There was no way she would fail this time.