Sugar's Twice as Sweet: Sugar, Georgia: Book 1 (30 page)

Jelly-Lou took the phone. “We’ve got this covered.”

Josephina hugged each grannie and then turned to Hattie one last time. “I’m going to go get your grandson and bring him home.”

“I expected you might.”

“And we’re going to be living in sin for a while,” Josephina clarified. She wasn’t sure if Brett was ready for forever, but she would take him twenty-four hours at a time until she could get him to consider twenty-five without breaking out in a sweat.

Hattie raised up on her toes and took Josephina’s face in her hands, looking her square in the eye. “Brett was right, mud bath or not, you’re good people, Joie.”

“The mud bath’s staying.”

“So is poker night,” Hattie announced, and with a smack to Joie’s tush added, “You better get going if you hope to catch him. He’s flying out of Atlanta in two hours.”

With a hug, Josephina headed inside the house. Grabbing the keys off Kenny’s head and the pair of red spiky do-me pumps, Josephina started for Ulysses. She was halfway to the car when Rooster, looking a little overwhelmed by all of the estrogen in the air, hollered. “Hey, aren’t we going to finish the gate for your pen?”

“You got hogs?” Hattie asked.

“No hogs. But I did order a goat, a llama, and a couple of geese,” Josephina said, smiling. “And, Rooster, you’ll have to finish it on your own. I’m about to go balls-to-the-wall.”

It was official. Brett was an idiot. A little over twenty miles outside of Sugar and he already regretted leaving. Regretted the way he’d handled things, regretted sneaking out before the event, regretted not finishing the inn. Mostly he regretted leaving Joie.

Actually, the farther he got from Sugar, they harder it was to breathe. Which was why, when he drove by Bubba’s Boar House, advertising fresh farm-raised bacon, he pulled over and had a man-to-man talk—with himself.

So when he headed back toward Sugar, turned onto the Brett McGraw Highway, and saw Ulysses stalled on the side of the road, hood up, Brett had to smile.

What he saw next had his heart clenching. Sticking out from under that hood was a world-class ass and the sexiest pair of legs Brett had ever seen. Long and lean and bare from the thigh down, the only thing on them was a pair of red pointy pumps.

Brett pulled alongside the car, and even before he rolled down the window he could hear Joie cussing.

Letting his truck idle, Brett leaned out the window. “There a problem, ma’am?”

He heard her gasp, then she slowly turned around to face him—and man, was she beautiful. Her hair was in braids, she had car grease just about everywhere, and cheesy pretzel crumbs covering the front of her shirt. The only thing city about this girl was her shoes.

God, he loved her shoes.

With jumper cables hanging limp in her hand, she nodded. “I seem to have lost a part back on the highway and now it won’t work.”

Brett slid out of the truck and shut the door. He closed the distance until he stood right in front of her. “I know the feeling.”

“You do?” she asked, her eyes assessing him in a way that made him want to be the man that she needed, the one she deserved.

“Yeah.”

“What did you lose?”

“Everything.” The minute he said the word, he knew it was true. She was everything to him. He loved golf, his town, his family, but the one thing he couldn’t live without was the woman standing in front of him. The woman who, if she gave him a chance, he’d spend the rest of his life making happy.

“Aw, shit,” Brett barked, tugging off his Stetson and pacing to his truck, only to slap his hat against his thigh on the return trip. “Aw, shit! I did it again.” His boots kicked up dust as he walked his line, back and forth. “I came back here to tell you that I screwed up. Screwed up the best thing that has ever happened to me and I’m not even done apologizing and I already messed everything up.”

Those heels, the red ones with the pointy toes, tapped on the asphalt.

“God damnit, Joie, here’s the thing,” he said, gripping his hat and spinning around. “I’m in love with you. And I bought you a fucking pig.”

Now it was her turn to stop. Her eyes filled with tears and her hand trembled slightly as she clutched her chest. “You bought me a pig?”

“I know, a real man would have brought a ring, but when I saw Bubba’s Boar House and found out he had a new litter of piglets…”

As if on cue, a shrill squeal erupted from inside the cab.

“You bought me a pig!” Before he could respond, Joie flung herself into his arms. She was halfway up his body, her legs circling his waist, by the time his hands came around her.

And right there, on the Brett McGraw Highway, with a pig in the cab and cheesy pretzels sticking to his shirt, he kissed Joie. And when she kissed him back, Brett knew he was one lucky son of a bitch.

By the time they eased apart, Joie was sitting on the hood of his truck, wearing his hat, and they were both breathing heavy. But at least he was breathing, which beat the hell out of what he’d been doing this past week.

“I love you so much, Joie. When I’m with you I want to be the kind of man my dad was.”

“Funny, when I’m with you I just want to be me. And that’s never happened before,” she whispered. “That’s why I had to find you.”

Brett felt his heart stumble. “You came to find me?”

She burst out laughing. “Why else do you think I’d be in the middle of the highway in heels and shorts?”

“I don’t know, because I am one lucky SOB.” He looked down at her shoes, resting on the grill of his truck. “And if you bring up those shoes one more time we will have to continue this conversation in the bed of my truck.”

“I was going to Atlanta to catch you before you got on your plane. To tell you that if you wanted me to, I’d come with you to the tournament,” she said, flashing those baby blues at him from beneath her lashes—and God almighty he loved this woman.

“You hate golf.”

“But I love you.” She kissed him long and slow. In response he pulled her flush against him, and melted into her, showing her in that one kiss everything that she meant to him and in return promising her every one of his twenty-four hours.

The piglet let out another squeal and Brett groaned. “So, can we not tell anybody that I proposed with a pig?”

“As long as you help me get out of these heels.”

W
ell, isn’t that a man for you,” Charlotte said, taking in Brett at the top of a very tall ladder.

“That he is. All man.”
And all mine
, Josephina thought as Brett held the new nameplate, while Cal secured it into place. The way Brett’s worn jeans pulled when he leaned forward did the most delicious things to his backside. The copper sign, which he had placed a twenty-four-hour rush on and which now hung next to Fairchild House’s historical plate, did some serious melting of her heart.

When Josephina had finally stopped worrying about proving herself a success and started thinking like the women who came before her, she realized that Fairchild House was not only an ideal getaway for city slickers, it was the perfect place for families to stay when they needed a lot of hope and a little fairy dust.

Fairchild House was part hearth and part magic, and who better to appreciate that than the children who would come from all over the state to find treatment at Sugar Medical Center’s new pediatric ward? Which was why she had converted all of the servants’ quarters into family-friendly apartments and added kid-friendly cooking courses to her lineup.

“I still can’t believe we can start construction on the new wing,” Charlotte whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “I really didn’t think we’d manage to raise all the money. And if it hadn’t been for you I don’t think we would have.”

“
Your
wing,” Josephina corrected. “And I just meshed everyone’s ideas together.”

“Well, my daddy, bless his heart, still hasn’t made an official announcement of who will be heading it,” Charlotte said with perfect southern decorum.

Brett dusted off his hands and slipped them around Josephina’s waist. “You may have meshed everyone’s ideas, but this weekend was all class and heart. It was a Josephina Harrington event, no question.”

Josephina smiled as she leaned back against him and looked out over the porch at the crowded yard.

The event was, by far, the pinnacle of Josephina’s event-planning career. Fairchild’s grounds looked beautiful. The dock twinkled with lights, every pecan and oak tree on the property had candlelit Mason jars hanging from it, and in the middle of it all was a picnic area. She’d even had her first city dwellers check in as paying guests—her parents, Rosalie, and three couples she knew in New York, including a travel writer, a hedge fund chair with a soft spot for pediatrics, and a couple looking for the perfect destination wedding.

Cal and his crew had worked around the clock to make sure the inn was ready for guests and, as a surprise, built a dance floor with a stage for the band, which had kicked into high gear as soon as the sun went down. And, as the mayor was about to announce, they had made enough money to fund the new wing
and
to purchase two much-needed hyperbaric chambers.

As if that weren’t enough, Brett had found a man in Savannah who specialized in antique glass. By using the leaded glass from the old broken-out windows in the servants’ quarters, he had managed to patch the chandelier to where it looked better than new. Better because Brett had insisted that one of the stems be left broken.

The way the light caught the jagged glass made it look magical, he’d whispered last night while making love to her and showing her just how magical it could be.

Francesca Harrington stared past all the décor to the pen located at the side of the house and gasped. “Is that a pig pen?”

“It’s a petting zoo.” Josephina laughed, placing a hand on her mother’s to stop the clacking of pearls, which had started the moment she’d arrived. Josephina bet that when the lamb, ducks, and two goats were delivered tomorrow, and the final coat of paint went on the mini–Fairchild House—new home to Mrs. Pearl and her opossum brood—her mother would bypass the gin and tonic she was sipping and go for straight gin. No tonic, no ice.

“The kids will love it,” Charlotte chimed in. “A perfect distraction from days at the center.”

The music slowed to a halt and the mayor made his way onstage. With The Sugar Ladies Baptist Choir taking positions behind him with their church robes swaying in time to the town anthem, he thanked the people of Sugar for pulling together and gave a heartfelt speech that brought out a hearty “Hallelujah” from the choir and made Josephina proud to call herself a resident of Sugar. Opening the envelope with the winning name, which had been selected by silent poll, the mayor chuckled, turned his gaze on Josephina, and spoke.

“Well, I’ll be. By an overwhelming show of support, the name for the new wing at the Sugar Medical Center will be the Fairchild Pediatric Ward.”

Josephina turned to Brett, his face blurring behind all her tears. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

“No, ma’am.” He cupped her face, tracing her tears with the pads of his thumbs. “This mess has you and your aunt written all over it. It started when you waltzed into town in those shoes and that Yankee pride and ended when you refused to give up. That kind of strength and determination says Fairchild through and through. And what better name to give a children’s ward than one that stands for living life balls-to-the-wall.”

“You do like my shoes.” Josephina wrapped her arms around Brett’s neck.

“I love your shoes.” He kissed her good and hard. “And I love you.”

“I love you,” she whispered back, sinking into him.

“I still say it was rigged,” Hattie snapped.

Hattie made her way to the front porch, three gray heads bobbing in unison behind her, with the poor mayor in tow. “We raised more money than those Peaches! And you’re gonna tell everybody.” Hattie pointed to Charlotte, who blanched.

“Grandma,” Cal sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t matter who raised the most. It was raised, the town is happy, and the new wing will break ground next month.”

“It matters when Darleen is claiming that the Peaches were the biggest donor.”

“Well, Darleen was responsible for a large portion of the funds,” Charlotte politely informed Hattie. “If you hadn’t forced her to hand over the check she got from the tabloids for selling that story, I wouldn’t have the money to hire the extra nursing students.”

“Yeah, well now she’s claiming that since she raised more, the Peaches get to head up this year’s Miss Peach Pageant. She’s even talking about lowering the age limit so her niece can participate.”

“The more the merrier,” Cal sighed.

“Glad you feel that way, seeing as Payton was talking about going out for it herself. Heard her gabbing to that yahoo football player with the pansy-ass tattoo down by the dock. He was particularly interested in the bathing-suit portion.”

“Like hell!” In one fluid motion, Cal was over the deck’s railing and hightailing it down toward the lake.

“Grandma, you know as well as I do that Miss Peach doesn’t have a bathing-suit portion,” Brett chided.

“How would you know?” Josephina smacked his chest lightly.

“Dated a few.” He dropped a kiss on her nose and whispered, “But it’s false advertising.”

“How’s that,” she kissed him back.

“None of those Miss Peaches are as sweet as you.”