Nell stopped in the middle of gathering several dirty crystal plates and eyed him. “You mean to tell me you finally turned over a new leaf?”
“Not exactly.” He gave her a wink as he shrugged off his jacket. “I stopped wearing the damned things.”
“Just to get out of picking them up, I’m sure.” Nell shook her head and proceeded loading her arms with dirty cake plates.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re blushing, Nell Ranger.” Jack tugged his bow tie loose and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Nonsense.” She deposited the plates on a nearby tray. “I gave up blushing the day I went to work for your momma. Why, if I had a nickel for every time you or your brother said something outlandish, I’d be a rich woman.”
“Rich, huh?” He slid his arms around her bountiful waist and gave her a hug. “I’ve always wanted to find myself a sugar mama.” He kissed her cheek before she shooed him.
“Just never you mind trying to help. I’ve got Myrtle and the girls coming over to get this place in order just as soon as they take off their Sunday best.”
“I’d be glad to help.”
“And drive those old biddies to distraction with all those winks and smiles when I need to get some work done? No, thank you. You just take yourself off to bed right this very second. I declare, after roaring in here barely a half hour before the ceremony, you must be dead tired.”
Amen. Which could explain why he’d done something so foolish as to challenge Paige Cassidy to kiss him. No matter how good she’d smelled.
His nostrils flared at the last thought. Her scent, all apples and cinnamon and warm woman, clung to him and he fought back a wave of need.
Yep, exhaustion made a man do foolish things, and Jack should know. After his wife had passed away, he’d spent the next six months barely eating or sleeping. He’d drank his way through those days, only to open his eyes one morning just outside of Vegas and find himself married for the second time to a woman he’d known for barely two hours.
Never again.
He was getting some shut-eye and forgetting all about Paige, how sweet she probably tasted and how he really, really wanted to find out first-hand.
At least for tonight.
Challenging Little Miss Uppity Up had been the most fun Jack had had in a helluva long time. Judging from the desire burning in her gaze for those few stunned moments before she’d summoned her anger, she was just as intrigued at the prospect of playing a little game of liplock with him. Just as turned on.
For the time being, of course. Paige had made it very clear that she didn’t like him. That, alone, made her the perfect woman to help him sate the lust eating him up from the inside out. A lust she felt as intensely as he did. He’d been with enough women to make him somewhat of an expert and he could spot a hungry woman at twenty paces. Paige needed some relief as much as he did. Not to mention, she didn’t have any romantic notions about him. He’d given up romance years ago when he’d watched the preacher throw the first handful of dirt onto his first wife’s casket. His only wife.
I don’t even like you.
Yep, she was perfect, all right, which meant that come tomorrow, Jack intended to pay her a visit and see what he could do to get Paige Cassidy to accept his challenge. Soon. Jack had never been long on patience.
He could only hope Paige was just as impatient. Otherwise, it was going to be a heck of a long stay in Inspiration.
“I HAVE TO HAVE THEM,” Paige told the young man sitting at the desk opposite hers. “Now.”
He leaned back in his chair, his ankles crossed, his feet encased in a pair of orange flip-flops that matched the orange flowers in his Hawaiian print shorts. Wally, Deb’s former copy boy, might have been laying out at the beach rather than sitting in the small office that housed Inspiration’s only newspaper, the Inspiration In Touch.
Paige wiped the sweat from her forehead. It felt as hot as a day at the beach. Hotter thanks to the lack of windows and the lifeless air conditioner in the far corner.
“Would you just hold your horses?” Wally took a long sip on the straw sticking out of his glass of iced tea before shifting his attention back to the magazine open on his lap. “What’s the big hurry?”
“I’ve got an SAT meeting in a half hour and an hour’s worth of work to do before then. I need to see the notes on your article so that I can write the copy before I go.”
“Do it later. It’s the beginning of the week. The issue doesn’t go out until Friday.”
“And I’ve got a week’s worth of work budgeted until then. We’ll never get the paper out on time if we leave everything until the last minute. There’s work to do.”
“You work. I’m on strike on the grounds of unbearable working conditions.” Surprise lit his eyes as he glanced up at her. “Hey, did you know a woman gave birth to a fifty pound baby boy last week in Gentryville, Kentucky?”
“You actually believe what you read in those tabloids?”
“I do,” said the fiftyish woman sitting at a nearby desk. Dolores Guiness knew everything about everybody and was only too glad to spill every juicy detail each week in her Around the Town section, also known as The Gossip Column. “Not everything, mind you. But those trashy things do print decent articles on occasion. Like that presidential wannabe and the floozy a few years back. Then there was all the hoopla about Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, some of which was garbage, but a lot of it panned out.”
“But a fifty pound baby?” Paige looked at the woman in disbelief.
“It could happen. Myrtle Simpcox’s niece over in Stafford knew this woman who had a neighbor who actually gave birth to twins that weighed twenty-five pounds each. Put ‘em together and bam, you’ve got your fifty pound birth.”
“See?” Wally shot her an I-told-you-so look.
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea to put too much faith in The Tattler. Now a real newspaper—” she tapped the copy on her desk. “That’s a different story. Real papers report real news. They have a responsibility to readers.” She eyed Wally. “Responsibility? Do you remember that concept?”
He gave her an exasperated look. “So what are you trying to say?”
“That you have a responsibility not only to our readers, but to Deb. She left you in charge because she trusted you.”
“She left me to roast in this hell. I can’t think in the heat. Give me air conditioning and I’m a super reporter. Until then, I’m struggling to keep my body temperature at a decent level. Want some raspberry tea? Jenny from the diner brought it over.”
“She still have the hots for you?”
“Unfortunately.” He shook his head. “By the way, you’re making my life miserable.”
Said misery had resulted from Deb’s infamous column—Deb’s Fun Fact for the Week—which Paige had inherited a few months ago when Deb had traded in her wild single woman status in favor of her upcoming marital bliss. The fun fact was a line or two of savvy love advice for the single women of Inspiration, such as “Sweeten Up Your Sweetie with Sweet Rolls” or “Light his Fire with Lingerie.” Since Wally was one of the few bachelors in town, the single females of Inspiration had targeted him as the perfect candidate to test out the weekly fun fact. The tea was courtesy of last week’s ‘Tickle his Fancy with Iced Tea.’
“You should be thanking me.”
“For robbing me of my privacy? For destroying my peace and quiet? For creating a town full of stalking sex-starved women?”
“On behalf of the women in town, I resent that. Privacy is overrated. Now hand