Turning, she faced Salvation’s mayor and number one Sweet family hater, Tyrell Hawson. “Thanks for the advice.”
“Just trying to be helpful.” He curled his lips back in what he probably thought of as a smile. “Maybe you can help me out now.”
She leveled a hard stare at him and raised one eyebrow. “How’s that?”
“Forget your fundraiser, go back to L.A. and take your sisters with you.” He said it all with the soft, good-natured delivery of a guy just trying to do her a solid.
His words sank in, each one slicing open the wounds from childhood. The parents who didn’t want their kids playing with those Sweet girls. The whispers. The stares. The hell of growing up a Sweet in Salvation. She’d never understood how someone could think they knew everything about her and her sisters just because of their last name.
“Why do you hate us so much?” She didn’t mean to ask, and God knew Tyrell was the last person she should have shown even the slightest bit of weakness.
He narrowed his eyes and every bit of fake good ol’ boy vanished from his round face. “Because this is a good town—an honest, God-fearing town filled with hardworking people—and we don’t need your kind around here.”
“What kind is that?” Anger flooded her veins, burning with decades of frustration. She stood up, towering over the shorter mayor and enjoying how he shrank back. “Someone like Miranda, a business genius who brought back the Sweet Salvation Brewery from the edge of disaster and saved the jobs of dozens of people in Salvation? Someone like Natalie, who could make efficiency more efficient and gave up a thriving business to grow a local company? No, it can’t be them, so it must be me. I’m just a retired model who was on the cover of a dozen magazines.”
“But those days are long gone for you, aren’t they girlie?” he snarled. “Now you’re just a porn star.”
Her heart stuttered to a stop before starting again with a frantic rush that sent her pulse pounding through her body.
He couldn’t know. There was no way. Her name hadn’t been attached to the photos her ex had posted. There’d been speculation and gossip, but no confirmation. It had been the one positive of the whole Larry shitstorm, but it sounded like her ex had gone and revealed that it was her.
Tyrell puffed up his chest and leered at her tits. “Oh yeah, the town is going crazy this afternoon about the naked pictures of you all over the internet. Some tabloid TV show broke the story today. What a slut bimbo move on your part. What did you thi
nk would happen when you took those kinds of pictures?”
That she was sharing something with the man she’d thought she loved. That he’d never break her trust by sharing the pictures. That the last thing Larry would ever do was share the photos on a revenge-porn site. Yeah, she may have been naïve, but she hadn’t done a damn thing wrong, and she sure didn’t deserve to be called a bimbo slut by a jerk like Tyrell.
“You bastard.”
His face turned six shades of red and a sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. “If anyone’s paternity should be questioned, it would be that baby your sister is carrying.”
She lifted her hand lightning fast and swung it with furious speed. Her palm cracked against the mayor’s chubby cheek, sending him reeling back.
“Now that’s a Sweet for you,” he snarled, one hand pressed to the palm print on his face.
White-hot fury zipped through Olivia and she jabbed a finger hard into his shoulder. “You ever talk about my family like that again and I will do a helluva lot worse than slapping your sorry ass.”
“A publicly expressed direct threat.” Triumph lifted his volume and his mouth curled in a smug smile, probably the most sincere one he’d ever had. “I have witnesses.”
Olivia looked up. Everyone in The Kitchen Sink was staring at her, some with mouths agape and others with I-knew-this-would-happen looks of barely restrained superiority.
Fuck. She knew better than to take the bait—but she had. Inhaling a deep breath, she turned on her heel to face the pie case and regain her bearings.
Ellen, her eyes round, pushed a white to-go bag across the counter to Olivia. “Your pie.”
If it had been anything else but Ruby Sue’s pecan pie, the temptation to say to hell with the consequences and use the bag to whack the pompous mayor over the head might have been too strong to deny. There was more on the line than just her anger though. She had to find a way to make Salvation accept her family, or her niece or nephew would be sentenced to the same sad childhood she’d had.
Still, she couldn’t deny it soothed her a little to see Hawson flinch when she grabbed the bag off the counter and took a step toward him before turning and walking out of The Kitchen Sink.
Mateo popped open a beer and carried it to the couch, where he sat down and rested his bare feet on the coffee table. The baseball game was already in the second inning on the big screen that dominated the living room, the dog was asleep under the coffee table, snoring louder than the thunderstorm earlier that day, and the Yankees had just scored.
It was as close to heaven as he usually got, but a restlessness made his toes itch. The crack of a baseball bat hitting one out of the park followed by the crowd’s cheers blasted out of his sound bar, filling the large living room up to the cathedral ceiling.
He downed the beer in a series of long gulps and padded into the kitchen for another. Too many of his buddies had come home only to get lost in a bottle, so his rule was one and done, but a couple of drinks was the only thing that numbed the fidgety need to move that had taken up residence since she’d come back.
Olivia Sweet.
He should have known he was doomed the night she’d half slid down that muddy drive in time to watch him pull her car out of the muck. She’d stood there in rain boots and yoga pants that clung to her ass for dear life and declared she wasn’t going anywhere. Since then, if she wasn’t dogging his steps, she was haunting his nights or making his bathroom smell like wildflowers and strawberries. He couldn’t shake her—real and dressed or imagined and naked.