She shivered at the memory. That had been one of her better escapes. One of the benefits of growing up a Sweet was being able to spot the unhinged from ten-thousand paces. “True, but I mean come on. Mateo acts like he’s still pissed he bailed Luciana and I out of jail for egging the principal’s house.”
“He did bail you two out for that,” Natalie said.
She threw up her hands in the air. “A decade ago!”
Obviously unimpressed with her dramatics, her sisters just shrugged.
Okay maybe she deserved that, but Olivia knew she could do this. She could put together a fundraiser that would knock Salvation back on their heels, raise money for a good cause and help promote the brewery—no matter what Grumps Garcia said. “I’m not a unicorn-loving flake.”
Miranda squished up her face in confusion before letting out a deep breath. “No one said you were. You’re just…free-spirited.”
“Well, I come by it naturally. I am a Sweet, after all. The last in a long line of moonshiners, cattle thieves, and ne’er-do-wells.” The words didn’t come out as confident as she’d wanted. Her conversation with Mateo had obviously torn off the scab from a wound she thought was long healed.
She and her sisters had different defense mechanisms for dealing with Salvation’s massive ’tude about the Sweets. Miranda had become a super-achiever and Natalie had compartmentalized everything, but Olivia had embraced the crazy—at least on the outside. The one who never backed down from a dare. The kid who would try anything once. The girl most likely to do…well…anything. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what life would have been like if she hadn’t been a member of one of the most despised and yet gossiped-about families in town.
“Speaking of our long and illustrious line.” Miranda turned a soft shade of pink. “I’m pregnant.”
The words sank in slowly, like a feather in quicksand.
Baby? A niece? A nephew? The idea settled, took root and filled her up, making her chest expand with love until it nearly burst. A baby!
Miranda’s grin was wide enough to show every tooth in her mouth. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything, aunties?”
Everything sped back up to normal speed and she launched herself at Miranda, wrapping her arms around her sister and hugging her close and jumping up and down. Natalie joined in a second later. Dogs three counties away had to have heard the Sweet triplets’s squeals because within a minute, half the brewery’s staff was spilling in through the doorway.
Sean elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Miranda said. “I’m pregnant.”
“Congratulations.” He gave her a quick hug. “Now that’ll give ’em something good to talk about at The Kitchen Sink.”
Ice washed through Olivia’s veins. Talk? Oh yeah, there’d be tons of talk, and everyone in town would be watching. The baby’s last name would be Martin, but Salvation had a long enough memory to still think of him or her as a Sweet.
Olivia couldn’t let this baby grow up like she and her sisters had, in a town where his or her heritage was despised.
She had to change the way Salvation looked at the Sweets, and the veterans’ center fundraiser would be the first step in that. It would show the town that the Sweets really could be a power for good. But first she had to get Mateo on board and involved for real. If she couldn’t convince him that the Sweets could help the community, then she’d never get the rest of Salvation on board and the baby growing in Miranda’s belly would pay the price. Olivia refused to let that happen.
&nbs
p; Operation Grumps Garcia would commence as soon as she moved into the cabin behind his house.
Mateo stood in his darkened second-floor bedroom, feeling like a peeping-Tom voyeur but unable to look away as he watched out the window and as light after light flickered on in the cabin behind his house. She’d arrived just before dusk and unloaded a piddling amount of stuff—a few suitcases and a three-legged cat that yowled as if its other legs were being pried off with a pair of rusty pliers. Good thing Luciana had the dog, or the mutt would have howled at his fuzzy nemesis and blown Mateo’s cover straight to hell.
The cabin was small—one bedroom, one bath, an eat-in kitchen and a living room. His dad’s wondering eye, which had ruined his marriage, had disappeared the moment his mom had served him with divorce papers and he’d moved into the guest cabin behind the main house. The old man had a thing for wanting what he couldn’t have. Now wasn’t that something father and son had in common?
Olivia moved to the large window in the bedroom and stared out. Mateo slunk back from the window far enough that he wouldn’t be seen but not so much that he couldn’t watch her. Just because he was acting like a perv didn’t mean he wanted her to think he was a perv.
She reached for the hem of her T-shirt, inching it upward over her smooth stomach. Then she dropped it as if the material had burned her, reached up and closed the curtains.
Had she seen him? Not possible, but she couldn’t have missed that a good dozen windows in the main house looked out straight at her cabin. What she couldn’t know though is that the light in her bedroom made a perfect backlight, outlining her every luscious curve against the curtains.
She lifted her T-shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor. He may only be able to see a dark shadow of her form, but he didn’t need a clearer picture to remember the way her hips flared out from her small waist or how soft her skin felt under his rough fingers. In the cabin across the yard, with its wildflowers starting to bud, she shook out her wavy hair and lowered her hands. He held his breath as he watched her black outline shimmy her form-fitting jeans over her hips and down her long legs. She still wore underwear, something frilly and lacy and minuscule no doubt; he couldn’t see it because of the curtain but he knew she wore it. He’d remember her lingerie addiction for as long as he could recall the feel of her underneath him as he slid his hard cock home inside her—forever. There was a list a country-mile long of things he’d like to forget, but the memories of fucking Olivia weren’t on it.
One of his favorites had started with a strip tease and ended with her tied to a chair. He slipped his hand under the elastic waistband of his basketball shorts and gripped his rock-hard cock, stroking slow and steady as he closed his eyes and brought the memory into clear focus.
Miami. Summer. The hotel room had a balcony that overlooked the miles of crowded beaches. He never got a single grain of sand between his toes, though; everything he wanted was in his hotel room.
Olivia sat on a thick cotton beach towel stretched out over a chair on the balcony. Her legs were splayed open, the belts from the hotel robes wound around each of her shapely calves, binding each one to a chair leg. It was the only material touching her soft skin.