Gimme Some Sugar

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “What did she grow?”

  “Huh?” Carly blinked, and the images of her grandmother’s garden faded as Jackson reached for the bags in her hand.

  “Your grandmother. What did she grow in her garden?” The edges of Jackson’s callused fingers brushed hers, streaking heat to the base of her spine, and she let go of the handles even though she didn’t want to.

  “Oh, um. Some flowers—Echinacea, cornflowers, star lilies. Mostly herbs and vegetables though. We ate just about everything that came out of that garden, like it or not.”

  Jackson flagged down a young girl with a blond ponytail and coltish, long legs on the cusp of adolescence. “Hey, Sadie. Can you bring these into the house and put them in Aunt Cath’s freezer for me? Thanks, sweetheart.” He chucked the girl’s chin, which brought out a giggle, and he waved to her before turning his attention back to Carly. “Got something you might want to check out.”

  Carly’s brow drew inward. “Okay.” She waited while Jackson situated the cooler next to a bucket full of cheerily colored soda cans, but he didn’t elaborate. It figured he was going to make her work for it. Broad shoulders notwithstanding, he could be downright frustrating. Finally, she let her straightforward nature have its way with her vocal cords. “What is it?”

  “You’re a total go-getter, aren’t you? Always want to be doing something,” Jackson said, and in spite of his laid-back smile, she flushed.

  “Sorry.” Being one of the only women in a male-dominated family and an even more male-dominated career, Carly’s tenacity was programmed into her DNA. While her take-no-prisoners attitude earned her more respect than heartache in the kitchen, it tended to bite her in the ass in the one on one arena.

  “You really should stop doing that.” Jackson straightened, and his eyes glinted in the ambient light flickering out from the candles.

  “I said I was sorry,” she grumbled, pinkening further. Okay, so she was a little brash. Did he have to keep pointing it out like that?

  “I meant you should stop apologizing, not that I don’t like how you are.” He gestured toward the far side of the yard, to a thicket on the opposite side of the area from the men playing horseshoes. “My mother plants a lot of vegetables herself. Her garden’s just behind that cluster of crepe myrtles, if you want to have a look. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  Carly blinked. “Oh. Sure.”

  Jackson guided her around the crowd on the outskirts of the vast yard until they’d reached a dirt path winding through a thick cluster of trees covered in purple and white blooms. The woody branches hung so low over the path that Jackson had to duck significantly to get by a few of them, and after a handful of steps, they were completely shielded from the view of the crowd.

  “How come the garden is so far away from the house?” Carly asked, tipping her head at the clearing about thirty feet in front of them. The cool, musky scent of crepe myrtle blooms filled her nose, making her almost dizzy with their sweetness.

  “My mother’s flower beds are mostly in the yard, close to the house. She swears that this”—he paused to point at the waning daylight poking through at the end of the short trail—“had the best soil for growing, though, so she put the big garden out here. Personally, I think it was because she needed a little refuge every now and then from raising four crazy children.”

  Carly grinned. Boy could her mother relate to that. She was convinced that at least some of those times her mama retreated to do laundry in the quiet of the basement, there wasn’t a whole lot that needed washing. “How about your dad?” she asked, curiosity growing. “Did he hide out here, too?”

  Jackson stopped short on the path so suddenly that Carly had to change course to avoid crashing into him. She stumbled, and her balance threatened to take a vacation before Jackson reached out and wrapped his fingers around the bare skin of her upper arms.

  “I don’t have a father.”

  The monotone of his voice caught her completely by surprise, and she stared at him, eyes wide. “Oh, God. Did he pass away? I’m so sorry—”

  “No.” The word escaped through Jackson’s teeth, his jaw cranked shut.

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  Exasperation flickered over Jackson’s features, but his tone remained hollow. “What’s not to understand? I don’t have a father.”

  Deep in her gut, Carly felt an old ache prickle to life on an even older memory, one that was so faded around the edges that it was barely more than a snapshot in her mind. “But everyone has a father.”

  A low, needful current of energy ran between them, and Jackson dropped his gaze to where his palms wrapped around her arms, fingers firmly closed around her soft skin. By the time he lifted the glance to meet hers, his crinkly blue eyes were bottomless and utterly flat.

  “Not me.”

  Chapter Nine

  Shut up, big man. Shut up right fucking now.

  Seeing as how Jackson’s inner voice was rarely anything other than happy-go-lucky, the sudden nasty streak was a red flag that this conversation needed to stop, pronto. Christ, he’d been an idiot to open his mouth in the first place.

  “The garden’s right through here.” He dropped Carly’s arms and ducked through the last of the tree branches, mere steps away from the open air of the garden. Even though he knew it was rude, he moved ahead without waiting for her. Guilt pricked at him, palpable on his skin, but he continued to walk away.

  “Jackson, wait.”

  He took a step, and then another. No way was he going to talk about this. He didn’t care how sexy Carly’s laugh was, or how pretty she looked when he teased her into blushing. She was out of her mind if she thought he was going to go the Dr. Phil, get-in-touch-with-your-feelings, Kumbaya route over his daddy issues. Especially since the issues were nonissues. And he barely even knew her, for Pete’s sake!

  “Hey!” Her voice unloaded like a firecracker, which—given the date—would’ve been ironic enough to make Jackson laugh if he hadn’t been so stunned. Rooted to his spot, all he could do was turn halfway around and gape at her. Carly’s eyes flashed, liquid bronze and pissed off, but her words were steady and quiet.

  “Look, you don’t seem to like apologies much, so I’m not going to make any. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about your father, which is fine by me.” He didn’t see her so much as feel the heat of her as she made her way toward him on the path. When he turned to face her fully, there were only a scant couple of inches separating their bodies.

  “So this can go one of two ways. Either we can forget it and still have a good time, or you can drive me back to my car in the world’s most awkward silence. It’s up to you, but quite frankly, I’m hoping we can forget it.”

  “You are?” he blurted, too surprised by her moxie to say anything else.

  “Yes. I’d like to see your mother’s garden, and plus, I’m hungry.” Carly’s eyes flicked upward, meeting his with a no-nonsense stare. “So is that okay, or do you want to just call it a night?” Her voice lifted with just the smallest hint of gentleness, but her gaze didn’t budge.

  Good God she was hot.

  “No, I . . .” Jackson stopped and drew in a breath to clear his head. The air smelled like wildflowers, heady and fresh, although he’d bet even money that it had nothing to do with the adjacent garden. The last thing he’d been expecting was for her to get all rational about the whole thing. Weren’t women supposed to try to get you to talk about your feelings and stuff? He blew the breath out in a slow exhale.

  “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to bring up the subject, and it threw me for a bit of a loop. That still doesn’t excuse the fact that I acted like a jerk. Truce?”

  “It doesn’t seem very fair that you get to apologize when I don’t, you know.”

  He cracked a smile, testing the waters. All of this serious stuff was giving him the sweats. “Okay. I’m not sorry for being an ass.”

  She smiled right back, her full lips parting just enough to make Jackson sw
allow hard.

  “I accept your not-an-apology.”

  And even though he couldn’t believe it, that was that. Carly slipped around him on the path, her flip flops sounding out a muted snick-snick against the dirt as she headed toward the warm grass at the clearing’s edge. It only took him two strides to catch up to her, and there was just enough room for them to walk side by side, although he took up twice as much space as she did. Try as he might, there was no way he could help staring at her a little bit.

  The edges of her lips twitched upward into the faintest hint of amusement. “What?” Either her observation skills bordered on the side of freakishly good or his stare was just that obvious. He lowered his eyes, staring at the scuff marks on his Red Wings to avoid coming off like a total weirdo.

  “You’re not like most women, that’s all.”

  Ouch. What was he, channeling his inner Fabio or something? That had come out sounding like the world’s worst pickup line. Jackson opened his mouth to backpedal, but Carly was too quick on the draw.

  “Wow,” she breathed, stopping at the edge of the garden.

  He nodded. He really did deserve to be called out on that one. “Okay, in my head that wasn’t quite so cheesy. What I meant was—”

  “Not you,” Carly laughed. “Although you’re right. It was pretty bad. I meant wow, this garden is unbelievable,” she said, scanning the large rectangular plot with awe.

  Saved by the bell peppers. Jackson swore on the spot that he would never grumble about helping his mother in the garden for the rest of his natural born life.

  “Yeah, it is really pretty, isn’t it?” Even though he’d seen the garden no less than a million times—hell, he had tilled two of the three garden beds himself just after puberty—the sight of it in full bloom always made him grin.

  Three separate rectangular beds graced the open space of the garden area, all slightly raised and surrounded by roughhewn, wood beam borders. Strips of dark grass divided the space like lush, green carpet runners, extending around the beds in neatly trimmed paths. The area was walled in on two sides by a stretch of thick boxwoods that easily reached Jackson’s chest, their imposing height softened by the variegated celadon and cream leaves of the hostas springing up from the ground like botanical fountains before them. Dense vines and open-faced blooms of gently climbing clematis snaked over the length of fence that Jackson and Dylan had put up along the long edge of the garden opposite where he and Carly stood, a Mother’s Day present from five years ago.

  “Oh, you have watermelons!” Carly leaned forward to peek at the far edge of the first bed. “We never had enough room for anything like that. And these tomatoes are gorgeous. There must be six different varieties out here,” she crowed, eyes glittering.

  “Seven. My mother got hooked on different kinds—heirlooms, stuff like that—one year when I was in high school, and just can’t seem to resist planting them. Not that I’m complaining, because I could eat fried green tomatoes all day long,” Jackson replied, starting to amble down the swath of grass separating the first two beds.

  Carly wandered after him, taking it all in. “Yeah, we always had a couple different varieties too. Nothing like this, though. God, I wish I could get my hands on a place like this for the restaurant.” She paused midstride, one foot halfway lifted off the grass. “Are those cherry tomatoes purple?”

  “Ah, black cherries. They’re my favorite, although she grows the Cherokee purples too.”

  “Now those I’ve seen before.” Carly pointed to the cage with fat, plentiful Cherokee purple heirloom tomatoes in various stages of readiness, some still celery-green, others already blooming into their color like a summer sunset. “And most of these others, too. But I have to admit, these cherry tomatoes are a bit of a mystery to me.”

  He leaned in and twisted a few of the much smaller black cherry tomatoes from their sturdy vines, the dark, miniature globes still warm from the sun. Although he’d eaten them countless times, the flavors still burst on his tongue like they’d never been there before, and he popped the tomatoes into his mouth one by one to savor the rich sweetness in each bite.

  “Do you want to try some?” He motioned toward the vines that hung on like strong, velvety fingers, dangling the jewel-like tomatoes from the leafy crowns.

  Despite the whole kid-in-a-candy-store vibe she had going on, Carly hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to impose.” She looked at the tomatoes—the whole garden, really—with a strange kind of reverence, and something rippled low in his gut, the tiny whisper that begged him to take note even though his brain insisted the whole thing was totally off the wall.

  Feed her, it said.

  “Once, maybe ten years ago, I came down the path to haul away a bunch of branches that had fallen in a nasty rain storm, and after I was done, I stopped to check on the garden. I meant to take a quick look for any damage and head back up to the house, but these little buggers just kind of called out to me, you know? Before I knew it, I’d eaten every last one of them, right off the vine.” Jackson laughed softly. He had no clue what made him think of it, but the memory unfurled in his mind like table linens fresh off the line, as if it were only hours old rather than an entire decade ago.

  Carly’s laugh was spun sugar, sweet and indulgently good. “Jackson, there have to be fifty or sixty cherry tomatoes between these two plants,” she said, as if she’d heard wrong. “You ate all of them?”

  “Yeah, my mother couldn’t quite believe it either. Until I walked around holding my stomach for the rest of the day, groaning like an idiot.”

  “Too much of a good thing,” she affirmed, and it wasn’t a question. “Was she mad?”

  “Nah. This garden produces way more than my ma can eat, so she ends up sharing most of it anyway. Even the neighbors get more than they can eat, so I don’t think she’d really mind if you wanted to try a handful.”

  Carly eyed the plant, running her fingers along the edges of the wiry vines. Her hands were small, but far from delicate, and a thin, white scar slashed its way across her left index finger. Jackson frowned at the faded line, wondering how she’d gotten it.

  “Okay then. But I promise not to pick the entire plant clean,” Carly said with a twist of her lips, her movements careful and deliberate as she freed a small handful of tomatoes from the vines.

  “Once you taste them, you might change your tune, but suit yourself.”

  With her left palm cupped beneath the tiny mountain of purplish-red fruit, she plucked one from the pile, rolling it between the fingers of her right hand before taking a bite.

  “Oh. Oh,” Carly mumbled, immediately popping another tomato into her mouth. “God, that’s good.” She squeezed her eyes shut, as though she was trying to commit the flavors to memory. The tiny crease in her forehead that usually rested just between her brows smoothed out, and she released a barely-there sigh that Jackson was sure she hadn’t been aware of. Of course he heard it loud and clear, and it shot through him with swift intention. Destination: the center of his lap.

  Shit. Shitcrapshit! How was he supposed to manage a casual conversation with her now that he had the anatomical equivalent of the goddamn Empire State Building in his pants? Jackson winced and adjusted his jeans, thankful that—for the moment at least—Carly’s eyes were still closed. He shifted behind her on the premise of picking a few more cherry tomatoes, fervently praying for a thought that would distract him from the sensual thrill on her face.

  “These are unbelievable,” Carly murmured, still chewing. “I must’ve hit twenty different farmer’s markets when I planned the menu at La Dolce Vita. I can’t believe I’ve never seen them before. They must be pretty unusual. Either that or difficult to grow.”

  Crap! She was turning around to look at him, and he needed to lose this hard-on, quick. Jackson hauled in a breath and sent one last down, boy message to his metaphorical junkyard dog. Food, food. Right! Get her to focus on the food.

  “So, uh, how would you prepare them? You know, if you were g
oing to put them in a dish.”

  The distraction worked. Carly’s eyes went soft, and she looked dreamily at the two remaining tomatoes in her hand. “Well, they’re kind of sweet, so I’d want something to offset that, but not overwhelm it. They’re complex enough to stand up to arugula in a salad, with some grilled balsamic chicken for the protein. Then I’d add some cucumber to cool it down and make it taste like summer, a little simple vinaigrette to keep it fresh and let the flavors sing, and I’d have myself a dinner salad. Simple, but still hearty. Just like the tomatoes.”

  Mercifully, the distraction went both ways, and most of the I want that sensation migrated from Jackson’s pants to his stomach. “Wow. I’m not usually a salad guy, but that sounds pretty good. You just made that up after eating them once, huh?”

  Jackson had only eaten these tomatoes out of hand, and while putting them in a salad made sense, the way she’d connected all the flavors to make the pieces form a whole just blew his mind. Not to mention leaving him hungry.

  “Well, I’d have to find the tomatoes first, but it’s promising that your mother can grow them locally. I might be able to get a line on them from one of the growers in Riverside. Their farmer’s market is pretty big. Of course, then I’d have to play with everything to make sure it worked.”

  Carly popped the last two tomatoes in her mouth before continuing. “But it’d be fun. The flavors are great. Perfect for the season.” Her stomach sounded off with an echoing rumble as if to agree, and the ensuing laugh that spilled out of her made Jackson close the distance between them as if his feet were on auto-pilot.

  “Are you hungry?” Looked like his arousal wasn’t going to let go of him quite yet. In the back of his mind, Jackson knew that this should matter. But everywhere else, it simply didn’t.