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She swatted his hand away. “Since when?” Because Jace didn’t do home visits. And he didn’t stick around one place long enough to be a resident of anywhere.
“Since yesterday.” He cupped the bill of his hat and pulled it lower on his head. “Let me guess, you’re here as the official Sugar welcoming committee. Where’s my pie?”
“What pie?”
“Pie? Something in a covered dish? You know, all those neighborly things people are supposed to do when someone comes to town.” He looked at her empty hands, and then without a word his eyes dropped to her skirt and there went the other dimple—and her good parts. “Unless, there’s something I can do for you, Charlie?”
The way he said her name in that low, husky timbre, almost whispering it while flattening the vowels, reminded her of a different time, a time when she naively thought he’d meant it. But she wasn’t that wide-eyed woman anymore. She knew what he was offering, and what he wasn’t capable of giving.
After all, once upon a time she’d been married to him. Yup, Charlotte Holden had fallen in love with and married the town’s biggest hothead and bad boy. Not that anybody except the two of them knew, since it had ended as fast and it had begun. But those three weeks as Ms. Jace McGraw had been the most amazing of her life—and what had followed had nearly broken her.
“Yes,” she said. “You need to leave.” Because wasn’t that what he did best?
The briefest frown flashed across his face, and he grabbed some kind of wrench doohickey and busied himself with tinkering under the hood. “Wish I could, but it seems like my services are needed in Sugar for a bit.”
Charlotte didn’t know what hurt more—that he wanted to leave as much as she wanted him gone, which was ridiculous since him being here, during the most important time in her career, was a disaster waiting to happen—or that after all the time she’d prayed that he’d come back to Sugar, he finally had. Only it wasn’t for her.
“That doesn’t work for me,” she said.
“Well, this isn’t about you. Now is it.” He wasn’t even looking at her but tightening some bolt inside the engine. Which was a good thing since she was pretty sure her eyes went glassy at his comment, because at one time he’d made her believe that everything he did was for her. Including walking away from her. “Can you hand me that wrench over there?”
Was he kidding? “No, it’s all greasy and I don’t want to get dirty.”
He looked at her over his shoulder and cracked a small smile. “Too bad, I always preferred you a little dirty.”
She felt herself flush because she knew he wasn’t just talking about rumpling her up.
“Well, I’ve changed. And I need to go. So if you could just point me in the direction of my keys.”
He ran a hand down his face. “About that. Seems someone chewed off your valve stems. So it wasn’t as easy as patching a hole.”
“Chewed them off?” Was her mother really that desperate to marry her off?
“See here.” Jace walked over to her car and squatted down. She did her best not to notice the way his jeans cupped his backside—tried and failed. He filled out a pair of Levi’s like nobody’s business. “Teeth marks. Looks like you got yourself a raccoon or possum problem.”
Seemed she had lots of pest problems these days. “So can you just throw some new tires on it and I can be gone?”
“You don’t need new tires; what you need are new valve stems.” And wasn’t that just like a man, telling her what she needed. “Which for your sporty, two-door tiara on wheels is a special order. Imagine that.”
“So what you’re telling me is that I’m stuck here. With you. And my car won’t be ready until—”
“Best-case scenario. End of the week.”
She let out a completely undignified huff and resisted the urge to stomp her feet. She’d begged the universe for a way out of dinner, and apparently whoever was in charge of granting wishes had chosen today to listen.
She looked at her phone, considered calling Ben, and then realized she could handle only one man from her past at a time. Plus, he was on a date with the new nurse from radiology, which meant Charlotte was stranded. Something must have shown on her face because Jace set the tool down and stepped closer—so close he was all up in her personal space, which did crazy things to her emotional space.
“I can take you home.” He looked at her buttons and back into her eyes. “Or I can take you across the street to the Saddle Rack and buy you a drink.”
Then he did something he hadn’t done in over four years—he cupped his palms around her hips and drew her to him—and damn it if she didn’t shuffle closer.
“Why would I let you buy me a drink?” she asked quietly, although her brain kicked off a hundred and one reasons on its own. The first being that was how their relationship had begun in the first place.
Charlotte had been a stressed-out resident in Atlanta, lonely and so homesick it hurt, when she’d walked into a bar and saw a friendly face. Jace had bought her a drink, and another, and before she knew it, he had sweet-talked her into his bed, then down to the justice of the peace.
“Because I think you could use a shot of something strong right now,” he said. “And we need to talk.”
“You lost the right to tell me what I need a long time ago. As for that talk you want, you’re about four years too late.”
“Not according to the great state of Georgia,” he said and her stomach dropped. “Since legally we’re still married.”
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
A Preview of A TASTE OF SUGAR
Fall in Love with Forever Romance
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Marina Chappie
Excerpt from A Taste of Sugar Copyright © 2015 by Marina Chappie
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner
Photography by Claudio Marinesco
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-2867-7
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