Sweet but Sexy Boxed Set Page 32

  Jake looked her over, his mouth twisted in distaste. “Can’t say I blame you. But you’re welcome to use my washer and dryer if you want. Gramps had new units put in before giving me the house.” He grinned. “Being the only child of an only child has several perks.”

  Sharon couldn’t imagine living a life where things were just handed to you. Her mother had never given her anything without a stipulation. Even if she’d wanted something as small as a snack after school, she’d had to mop the kitchen floor, or clean the bathroom, or wash their car—when her mother hadn’t left it with one of the many title loan places that were even now a blot on the Tennessee landscape. Since Legend hadn’t had one, Candy had dealt with loan sharks from Pigeon Forge to Knoxville and had almost lost her car twice because the money she’d expected to make in those weeks hadn’t been forthcoming. That started happening more and more often as Candy’s age and lifestyle started to show on her. And it explained why her mother now drove a car that was indistinguishable as far as make and model, not to mention age. The only thing Sharon could surmise was she’d traded sexual favors to a guy who owned a junk yard, and the man had welded together something that ran while it smoked from the tailpipe like a fire-breathing dragon.

  School supplies like paper, pencils, or spiral notebooks were considered luxuries and upped the level of cleaning to windows, or shampooing the carpet with the rented unit from the Piggly Wiggly, or scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors on her hands and knees. If she dared to ask for anything as grand as a new outfit, Sharon would have had to clean the entire house, pull all the weeds from a yard that was predominantly weeds, and usually the reward was withheld because she hadn’t done the assigned job good enough. Of course they’d both known she had, but to argue would result in a beating that would leave stripes on her butt and legs for weeks.

  Anger shook Sharon as each memory resurfaced, but she made herself take slow breaths to work through it. It was no wonder her mother’s house had gone completely to pot. She hadn’t been there as slave labor. And damned if she was going to allow Candy to pull her back into that degrading place again.

  “No, but thanks. These go straight to the trash as soon as I get back to my room.”

  Jake nodded and headed to his car. “I’ll pick you up in about an hour, if that works for you.”

  She almost told him she’d meet him, just so it wouldn’t seem like a date, but she didn’t want to seem petty considering he was handing her the biggest gift anyone had ever given her…after Ms. Addie, of course. A job, a break from the mess her mother had made of her life, and her dignity. “Make it an hour and a half. I will need to scrub for a long time to get this ick off me!”

  Chapter Seven

  Jake spent the next hour back at his house cleaning himself up. He’d barely touched anything in Candy Crane’s house, but just being in there had made him feel creepy, so he understood Sharon’s need to scrub off all the filth she’d acquired before his arrival at that house. Still, he was determined not to think about her standing in a shower, naked, running her hands all over herself while rivers of water streamed down her body.

  No! He absolutely would not think about that.

  He washed quickly, ignoring that certain parts of his anatomy had already reacted to that thing he wasn’t going to think about, enjoying the strategically placed showerheads spraying water down from the shower’s ceiling and from two levels on each of the three tiled walls. The large modern facility with its frosted glass door was just one of the many upgrades his grandfather had installed before handing the lake house over to him, and he felt like a total brat. But who was he to complain over being so loved?

  He never took the blessings in his life for granted. And he knew he had many. To be raised by adoring parents who’d been strict, but fair. To have always had a very nice roof over his head and nutritious food available to eat were not things everyone had. The education he’d gotten had taken hard work and dedication on his part, but the reputations and connections of both his parents and grandparents had allowed him to pick and choose what it was he wanted to do with his life, and they’d supported him and helped him in attaining those goals.

  There would never be any excuses available for him to claim, so failure was not an option. It wasn’t even a consideration. His thoughts turned back to Sharon. He had failed with her. At least so far. True, he was taking her to dinner, but only because he’d convinced her he wasn’t interested in anything other than food. And she’d seemed to warm up to him a little. That was good. One small step in the right direction.

  Apparently his offer of a better job than her current one of taking care of that filthy woman was a good move. The problem was he didn’t know what his next one should be. Or even if there should be a next one.

  He liked her. Or maybe it was lust pure and simple since she was an extremely fine-looking woman. Downright beautiful in fact, with her rich cinnamon-blond streaked hair framing smooth creamy skin. And her eyes…so wide and blue and earnest… arrested him every time she looked his way. And her figure! Holy smoke! When had women gone back to having a figure? The plastic world of unnaturally large globelike breasts on boyishly slim, no-hipped bodies was what he’d gotten used to, but Sharon was a natural beauty with actual meat on her bones. Her breasts were large, yes, but if they were surgically enhanced, he wanted to take out stock in that physician’s business. She was proportionately exquisite with her small waist and the flare of hips that gave her the old-fashioned figure like the woman painted on the side of the B-17 bomber his great-grandfather flew back in 1942 during World War II.

  Jake had always loved the faded black and white picture of the man he’d never met, standing at the nose of that fighter airplane. It sat on his mother’s grand piano right next to a current picture of him. He took after his great-grandfather in looks, build, and if the sassy grin on Garret Parker Sr.’s face at the time the photo had been taken was any indication, they shared a sense of humor, too.

  Maybe that was what really captured him. He’d met a woman with such earnest eyes combined with a killer body, who reminded him of one of his favorite things. But it was more than her resemblance to the “pin-up gal” on his great-grandfather’s warplane. Her seriousness, her need to do the right thing in spite of the icky situation in which she’d found herself once she realized what taking care of that woman involved, her complete disregard for the attributes which, put bluntly, made her a babe, made him want to poke at her a little. Maybe a lot if she ever gave him half a chance.

  He was considered fun by his friends, and he wanted to make her one of them if she wasn’t interested in a more personal relationship, though it was certainly going to be hard to think of her as just a friend. He wanted to make her smile. Maybe get her to lighten up enough to realize the weight of the world wasn’t hers to bear. And if he was luckier than seemed to be the current case, perhaps convince her he was not a bad catch.

  The fact that Sharon hadn’t already decided that for herself was a new and confusing experience, which meant he got to pursue rather than being pursued. That in itself had him hopped-up and ready to roll up his sleeves.

  He couldn’t very well hire her then sexually harass her. Unless he hired her and acted like he wasn’t interested. Give her time to see what a great guy he was. Jake shook his head. What was he doing? If she wasn’t interested, then she just wasn’t interested. There was nothing that said she had to be attracted to him. Although he’d never experienced rejection before that didn’t mean he couldn’t handle it like a man now.

  Sure, he was new in town, but he didn’t have to attach himself to the first woman he met after relocating to Legend. Come to think of it, maybe that was just the ticket. Maybe he could date other women, check out the pond and see just how many fish were worth reeling in. Maybe even ask Sharon’s advice about this one or that one.

  He grinned, liking the idea more and more. There was the very real possibility he’d find an equally beautiful woman who wasn’t so much work. An
d if not, it would at least keep Sharon’s mind on the fact that he was with other women.

  Jake frowned. The plan had flaws, sure. In order for it to bother her at all, she had to care. Well, he’d just have to make her care. And he was going to start right after he took care of his still rock hard, hard-on. There was no way he’d entertain an evening out with her without getting that little problem out of the way.

  Chapter Eight

  Sharon stood under the shower’s spray long after scrubbing herself clean. The warm streams of clear water running down her body felt like a lover’s caress as they caught on, then fell from, her hardened nipples like miniature waterfalls. Her body had betrayed her, reacting to Jake’s attractiveness, even as her mind still struggled to reject all things male.

  She didn’t want to be anything like the woman the entire town of Legend scorned. She had stopped wanting to have anything at all to do with Candy toward the end of her senior year of high school, the day the Sanders’ patriarch made it clear her kind was too far beneath him and his to ever be considered worthy of his precious son’s attention.

  That he’d finally convinced Kyle of it had been an eye-opener, because she knew then, as now, he had been in love with her, too. He had wanted her for her body, yes, he was a teenage boy after all, but he had loved her for her. Whether they played or fought, laughed or cried, he had loved her. It was the first time in her existence she’d thought of the possibility of a different life than the one she’d been born into.

  After leaving Legend she’d found Gerald. No, she’d never loved him as deeply, but she had loved him. At least she thought so at the time. Now she wondered if it was mere need. Sharon had fought hard to build a decent life with him. Never allowing her sexual needs to take over in case her genetic makeup really did predispose her to wantonness. She had thought he’d wanted a lady for a wife. And she hadn’t really had any choice but to be a lady, as her two jobs kept her too worn out to ever make sexual advances toward him. In some ways his in-and-out, two-minute screw was as much a relief as a disappointment.

  Now she was back at square one. Experiencing attraction where she should feel nothing. She hadn’t expected to feel anything for anyone so soon after the disaster of her broken marriage. Numbness had suited her just fine since Gerald walked out. She didn’t want to experience anything, much less an attraction to a devilishly delicious doctor who had no idea that she was related to the town whore.

  No, not just related to, but the daughter of. Good grief, he’d run like the hounds of Hell were after him if he had any idea who she was. It was a mistake to take him up on his offer of employment. Sooner or later someone would recognize her, and he would have to embarrass them both when he fired her.

  What had she been thinking? Was she really so desperate to have someone else clean up the mess her mother had made of not only her home but her life?

  Well, yes.

  That was the absolute truth no matter how pitiful it made her. She couldn’t go back in that house and deal with what were quite simply the nastiest things she’d ever seen or touched. How her mother lived there was completely beyond her. But her mother had never been one to lift a finger that didn’t involve sexual satisfaction or financial gain.

  With both index fingers, Sharon pushed her nipples in and held them until they were no longer rock hard. She wouldn’t allow them or the warm center between her legs to react to the man just because he had, and was, everything any woman would want. She would work for him and allow him to clean up her mother’s house out of her paycheck, but that was it. There would never be any more thoughts about how gorgeous he was, nor that he’d been handed everything she could never possibly attain on her own.

  Sharon stepped from the shower and quickly dressed, donning a dress that hung like a potato sack until she added the loose belt. It was the latest style, something she was happy about since she knew it completely obliterated any indication she had a shapely body. If anything, because of her large breasts, it made her look slightly chubby. And that was just fine. Jake Parker wouldn’t ever bother to ask her out again after tonight. She would just be his employee for the duration of her indenture, find a buyer for the cabin Ms. Addie left her, and then she would kiss him and Legend goodbye forever. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  ****

  Candlelight, soft music, and Jake Parker in a suit were all conspiring to make her forget her commitment to look at him as only an employer. His tall frame, dark hair, and genuinely friendly manner held her transfixed through both the salad and the main course of baked salmon, steamed veggies, and a baked sweet potato.

  He’d ordered them a dessert to share as well, something she was certain she couldn’t eat, while he continued to talk about his family’s history. Rather than being bored, which is what she would have expected, she was envious he’d grown up in not only an environment of love, but one so squeaky clean she knew he would be appalled if her own history was revealed.

  Jake’s great-grandfather was a highly decorated war hero who was now interred at the National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. His grandfather, Old Doc, was retired now and living in Florida, but had been Legend’s beloved doctor for over fifty years. Jake’s father was a brain surgeon, who had radically altered a surgical procedure that was now less invasive than the previous protocol, increasing the number of successful operations and life expectancies of those afflicted. Even his mother was a scientist, and she, too, had accolades in the medical community. She’d found the gene that triggered a disease Sharon had never heard of. Apparently it was a big deal, as his mother had been given some very prestigious award and now had funding in the billions to develop the cure.

  These people all lived charmed lives. Nothing like her own. She couldn’t help but sit and wonder just what her own life would have been like if just normal people had raised her. She didn’t need all the limelight that had been a part of the lives of those who Jake came from. She would have been more than happy to have just had a mother and father who worked at a factory, who came home to each other and to her and maybe even siblings at the end of the day. She would have given anything to sit down at a meal with those people around the table, laughing and fighting, but still loving each other in spite of it all.

  “I’m talking your ears off. I can see I finally lost you.”

  Sharon shook her head. “No. Your family sounds wonderful. I wonder if you really know how lucky you are.”

  He shrugged. “Actually I do. I realize my life is about as sweet as they come.” Jake shook his head. “I had a roommate in college my freshman year. He struggled to work two jobs, maintain his grades, and still have enough money left over for fun and dates. Once I realized how hard he had it, I stopped being such a brat, throwing money away like it was water. We became and still are best friends. It was a reality check I needed, and it helped me see I needed to focus my time on those who had less than me.” His lips twisted. “I learned I was in the minority.”

  “You only realized that once you got to college?”

  Jake laughed at himself. “Yes. I guess you think everybody lives the same way you do until something or someone opens your eyes. My mom and dad never mentioned money. Ever. It was just always there to be spent on whatever. Once I learned not everyone has that, it really humbled me. In fact, for about two years I was so embarrassed to realize we were quite well to do, I pretended to be as broke as the rest of the kids I was friends with.”

  Sharon felt her lips lift. “Two years? You acted poor for two years?”

  Jake’s shrugged. “Only at college. My mom finally told me I was being ridiculous and looked like a peasant. That I could do more for people if I stopped trying to hide who I was but embraced it and actually got my hands dirty. She was right. I interned at a clinic where the median income was usually less than ten thousand a year. That was a real eye-opener. And it was the best training I could have gotten anywhere.

  “But enough about me. Tell me about your family.”

  Chapter Nine


  Jake knew he’d talked too much, but something inside of him had taken over his brain and he was seriously afraid it was Little Jake. Not that he’d ever thought of naming his penis before, but since his sex seemed to be driving his behavior at the moment, maybe naming it wasn’t out of order. Or maybe he was just thinking about it too much.

  Little Jake seemed to find it necessary to brag about Jake’s family, something Jake assured himself he never did. Yes, he did want Sharon to like him and hoped she found him attractive, but her total lack of interest had him doing something he never did, which was to use the power and influence of his family name to get a girl’s attention.

  “I have no family…to speak of.”

  Jake stared at her, knowing he looked like a total cretin now. Here he’d gone on and on, and she must have been sitting there the entire time wishing he would shut up and let her eat in peace. “I’m sorry. And here I’ve been going on and on about mine.”

  Sharon shrugged and then bit her bottom lip. “Your family sounds very nice. Mine was different. We were poor. There just isn’t much to tell.”

  Jake wanted to ask so many questions but she was making it clear she had no interest in telling him more details about herself. If he had a brain in his head, he’d concede and leave her alone. But the more she shut him out, the more he wanted in. Which meant Little Jake was still in control. Well, he was taking control back. “I’ll need you to come in at nine tomorrow, but at eight thereafter.”

  The sudden change of topic had Sharon visibly relaxing, making him realize that she’d evidently been tense before and he hadn’t noticed. “If that works for you.”

  She smiled, a brilliant, natural smile. This was new and Little Jake perked right back up, making it necessary for Jake to shift in his seat. Her bright, slightly overlapping front teeth gave her just a hint of an overbite, and he found it incredibly sexy.