LITMIR.BIZ

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      An hour later, Scarlet’s fan was clearing the air, and I was boxing up Cade’s signs that had spilled all over the floor in the loft. Sugar had volunteered to help, but she was working at the Tool Shed that night, and I honestly didn’t think it was fair to ask her to stay. No one would tip a waitress whose hair smelled like skunk. She was better off staying away.

      The buzzer sounded at the front door, and I looked down to see Mateo enter the store. He looked tired and frazzled. If I wasn’t mistaken, the scent of skunk got stronger the closer he got.

      “I thought you’d be up here,” he said as he came up the stairs.

      “You haven’t showered yet, have you?”

      He shook his head. “Nope.”

      I backed up. “Don’t you think you should?”

      “I lost my sense of smell almost an hour ago. It doesn’t really bother me anymore.”

      “Too bad all of us aren’t so blessed.”

      “Are you saying that I stink, Charli Rae?”

      “You’ve smelled better.”

      He stalked me, and I put the table between us. “We haven’t reached that place in our relationship where I can embrace the type of stink you’re emitting.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get past that odor—even if my own child wore it. Which was a sure sign of me not being ready for parenthood.

      Mateo stopped. “I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it if you smelled like Liza Twaine did this morning.”

      I laughed. “At least we’re on the same page. Would you like to use our outdoor shower?”

      “That’s why I’m here. It’s either that or my office, and I’d rather not go there. I’ve received enough ribbing over the radio to last through the rest of my career.”

      I grinned. “Daddy called and said he’d heard it over the scanner.”

      Mateo groaned as we headed downstairs. I grabbed the tomato sauce before we went out the back of the store. All the businesses on Main Street had backyards butting up to the Brazos River. The Barn had a privacy fence on two sides, so the yard was only semiprivate. We used the shower fairly often after kayaking, but I never stripped down naked when I used it despite the small wooded enclosure surrounding it. Mateo, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid to get down to his birthday suit.

      I handed him the first jar of tomato sauce, and he dumped it over his head and worked it into his hair.

      “You wouldn’t look half bad as a ginger.”

      Mateo peeked with one eye. “You want me to dye my hair red?”

      “I didn’t say that…”

      “Dios mio, you’re a fickle woman.” He continued to scrub his head with his eyes closed and held his hand out for another bottle of sauce.

      “Excuse me? Did you just call me fickle?”

      Mateo’s lips were pressed together in a firm line. With his palm open and his fingers arched, his arm bounce on top of the wooden shower wall, punctuating his impatience for the next bottle. The jar opened with a pop, and I poured it over his head and waited in silence for him to respond.

      He didn’t. Possibly the wisest decision he could have made. I took pity on him and decided he’d had a bad enough day without me compounding it. After all, the man now smelled like a skunk bathing in tomato sauce.

      “That’s not working,” I said.

      “I’m well aware of that,” he ground out. “Have you used it before?”

      “No.”

      Mateo glanced up at me, his face and arms tinged orange. “I thought you knew what you were talking about.”

      “They say to bathe in tomato sauce.”

      His hands stopped scrubbing and dropped to his sides. “Who’s they?”

      “Everyone.”

      Mateo closed his eyes and sighed heavily before asking in a controlled voice, “Could you Google how to get rid of skunk scent?”

      I looked it up on my phone. “Oops.”

      Mateo froze. “What do you mean ‘oops?’”

      “It says that tomato sauce doesn’t work. It just turns your hair and skin orange.”

      He shoved his head under the spray of water and began rinsing his body without looking at me. The only sign of his irritation was the force he used to scrub his head. I needed to find the right recipe—fast.

      Chapter 3

      The Tool Shed Tavern should have been packed. Instead it was uncharacteristically empty. Granted it was a Wednesday night, but what the heck else was there to do in Hazel Rock, especially when Joe and Leila held an extra-long happy hour for hump day? My daddy didn’t work most Wednesdays, so I usually opened and closed the bookstore. Today, however the store had closed so early, and I’d been stuck dealing with cleanup instead of customers all day. A little downtime with Scarlet was well deserved.

      Sugar walked up with margaritas and put them on the table in front of us. “This day started out as a stink bomb and is going to end the same way.”

      “It couldn’t be any worse than this morning,” I said.

      “Oh yeah? Look who’s sitting at the bar…with her paws on Dean.”

      Scarlet and I turned and looked at who had Sugar’s flowing blond tresses all knotted up.

      The woman sitting next to Sugar’s boyfriend could have been Sugar’s twin, or older sister. She had the natural beauty of a California Barbie and the pleasant smile to match. Unlike Sugar, however, Maddie MacAlister had perfect teeth. But it was the imperfection in Sugar’s smile that made her beautiful. Plus, she had an angelic personality—that disappeared when Maddie rubbed her chest on Dean’s arm.

      “That does it,” Sugar exclaimed. “I don’t care if she’s the mother of his child! I am tired of trying to help that woman. I’ve invited her to events, I’ve tried to be a friend to her, but she’s got no desire to be my friend. She wants Dean back. That’s her number one goal. That woman has pushed me too far, and I am not going to tolerate her moving in on my man like that.” Sugar stormed off with her tray under her arm and the angry swagger of a woman scorned.

      Woman scorned.

      I thought about Nathan Daniels’s book and the conversation in the Barn with the mystery moms that morning.

      “Sugar is not Candy and Maddie is not a victim,” Scarlet assured me, as if reading my mind.

      “The similarities are beginning to freak me out,” I said. I watched as Sugar and Maddie squared off, their expressions anything but friendly, while Dean hunkered down lower into his beer.

      “He should put a stop to that,” Cade Calloway said as he walked up to our table. The mayor was one of the best-looking men in town—next to Mateo, of course—and at his height, he was hard to ignore. But I wasn’t taking my eyes off the trio who looked like they were in the middle of a love triangle.

      Dean didn’t want any part of the argument brewing between the two women. Maddie was his ex-wife, and Sugar was his girlfriend. No matter what he did, he would lose.

      I looked up at Cade. “You better go over there.”

      Cade’s hazel eyes turned toward me, and he grimaced. “This day is just going to keep getting worse and worse, isn’t it?”

      I nodded. There was no reason to argue a moot point. I got up and followed Cade just in case he needed my support.

      “Sugar McWilliams, you got no right to interrupt my conversation with Dean. Do your job and bring me another drink.”

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