“Ow!”
“Well, that’s what you get. And you can tell that cheating Viola McKinney, her plan didn’t work.” Ms. Luella pulled back the fork and stabbed him again, even harder.
Cody groaned audibly and yanked the fork out of her hands. “Enough!”
“You’re telling me!” She jerked her head toward the stove. “Get a spoon and try that there in the pot.”
Cody rubbed his hand and, noting that a bruise was already forming, did as told, knowing she wouldn’t listen until she had been heard and he’d been fed. He reached for the wooden spoon and . . .
“Don’t you even think about touching my lucky spoon; you know better.” He did. Ms. Luella’d had that spoon since before he could remember and no one, not even Silas, was allowed to touch it. “Get a spoon from the drawer like a civilized person and see why you ain’t kicking me out. The Summer Sweet Spectacular cook-off is mine to win this year.”
“Hang on,” Cody said, ignoring the chili for the moment. “You think this is about the damn cook-off?” Would things in Sweet Plains ever change? “Let me get this straight, you think I fired all those men as a cover-up to get you out of my kitchen?”
“To hear you say it breaks my heart. And yes, Viola McKinney knows my stove’s been acting up.” Ms. Luella lifted the side of her apron and dabbed at the corners of her very dry eyes. “Now get out before I start crying.”
“But—”
“I said get!”
Cody shook his head, completely at a loss. “Have it your way, but this isn’t over.” He paused, hating to see her shackled to an appliance, which was probably her goal. “You sure you don’t want me to uncuff you? I won’t make you leave tonight.”
Luella threw a wet dishrag at him. Good thing his reflexes were faster than her aim.
“You’re forgetting something. The only person in this world more stubborn than you is me. And I’m winning that blue ribbon this year.” Ms. Luella pointed an accusing finger at him. “Now grab that piece of pie on the table and eat up. You’re looking a little thin for my taste. How’re you going to catch the eye of that pretty Ms. Shelby looking like a starved longhorn?”
Cody looked down at his hundred and ninety pounds of tight muscle and laughed. But he’d been dreaming about Ms. Lulu’s lemon icebox pie for nearly fifteen years. Maybe just a bite. Plus, it would give him a chance to ask a few questions.
“So, about Shelby Lynn’s son, what’s he like?”
“Just like you, only smaller. And with manners.”
Cody realized he was standing with a plate in his hand and took a seat. “I think he already hates me.”
Ms. Luella’s gray eyes softened. “He’s a sweet boy. Confused and scared and wondering if you’ll like him. If he’ll like you. Had a hard time of it in his short life. And so has his mama, so you’d better be nice to her or you’ll answer to me.”
“I keep telling you, Lulu, you won’t be here long enough for anyone to answer to.”
Not wanting to hear anything else about how
hard
Shelby had had it while she was keeping his son from him, Cody grabbed the fork that Ms. Luella had stabbed him with, and tucked into the piece of pie she’d laid out. This didn’t mean a truce—he would get her out of there—but he might as well enjoy the pie first.
He stuck the first bite in and paused, closing his eyes to savor the moment. The tangy lemon bit at his tongue while the creamy confection melted in his mouth and the faint hint of . . . what the hell?
Swallowing down the need to gag, Cody ran to the sink and spit out the entire contents of his mouth and every bit of saliva that remained. Coughing and hacking he bit out, “What the hell is in that?”
“Soap.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re going to blackmail a Tucker, and you want me”—Gina sat forward on the edge of her intimidatingly ergonomic seat and swung her arm around to encompass the mahogany, the Ivy League diploma, the leather-bound tomes, and all that was Regina Echols, Attorney at Law—“to help you?”
Shelby, on the other hand, hadn’t stopped pacing since she’d entered Gina’s office. She knew what she was asking her friend, but she didn’t see any other solution. Not one that ended up with Jake getting what he deserved.
“Will you stop saying blackmail? I am merely exploiting his weakness for my gain.”
“Blackmail.” Gina managed to grab a dictionary from the top shelf, and flip to the precise page without even pausing. “To force or coerce a person into a particular action or statement.” Although she spoke in a monotone, her words somehow still seemed to drip with sarcasm.
Shelby stopped pacing, finally looking her friend in the eye. “You make it sound so . . . illegal.”
“It is. And it usually leads to hard time.” Gina snapped the dictionary shut and leaned back, kicking her feet up on the desktop and folding her hands behind her head. “I’m in.”
“Because it’s illegal?”
“No, because you’re going to take over the cook-off.”
“What? No way.” Shelby couldn’t imagine a more difficult situation. Living with Ms. Luella
and
being forced to judge her cooking against Mrs. McKinney’s. People had broken limbs to avoid this exact situation. “I have too much on my plate already. How about I volunteer a batch of my cupcakes for the auction? Plus, I heard Logan—the cook-off is your job.”
“No, my job is to make sure it gets done. Doesn’t mean I can’t delegate. I rock at delegating.” Gina scribbled something on a piece of paper and flipped it around. “Sign there,” she said, pointing to the impromptu contract, then, “It’s binding.”
“Come on, Gina. Anything else. I am so stressed out over Cody.” Shelby leaned in. “Those women will sense my weakness and swarm.”
“Then get judges. I don’t care. Just get it done. Logan offered to run the football game, but I have the pageant, dance,
and
auction to plan. And with yours truly heading the committee, every last Lady of Sweet has opted to pull out, leaving me with zero help.”
Shelby considered her options. Getting people to volunteer willingly would be hard but, without Gina, securing Jake a chance to grow up here was impossible. “Fine. Me and my cupcakes are at your disposal.”
Gina wiggled her brows. “And I am going to exploit those cupcakes for all they’re worth.” Wheeling and dealing with a prosecutor was always a bad idea.
Gina took out a fresh contract, this one a binding agreement between her and Cody, and spun it to face Shelby. It was an altered version of the previous one with handwritten notes in the margin.
“You were already going to help me,” Shelby accused.
“Yup. I’m tired of seeing the men you care about walk all over you.”
“They don’t walk all over me.”
But they had. And she had let them. Cody had left her pregnant, forcing her to raise their son alone, while Preston had invaded every aspect of her life, controlling her world to the point of cruelty. Over the years, he’d stripped her of any self-worth she had left, keeping her a prisoner in a loveless marriage because she was too scared to leave. But in the end she’d managed to get away and made a life for her and Jake here in Sweet Plains.
That’s why after her not-so-successful first encounter with Cody, Shelby had done her best to avoid him—and a heated replay of events. Until she came up with a new plan, one that would guarantee their place at the ranch and give Jake a shot at a relationship with Cody, she’d steer clear of him, even if it meant leaving for work at the hospital early.
Not that she had needed to. Cody had kept himself pretty scarce, which only added to her determination to find a solution.
Then, just before Mr. Lowell’s emergency appendectomy and after the removal of a Lego Star Wars figure from Scotty Grimmy’s nose, Shelby got an idea. One sparked from Faith’s comment that only a crazy person would be stupid enough to take on a woman defending what’s hers. Her new plan would take a lot of courage—and Gina’s help to make it possible.
“Okay, maybe they walked over me, as in past tense,” Shelby admitted, chin high. “But I’m a new woman now.”
Gina simply sat behind her desk, shaking her head, her mouth gaping open. “Ohmygod! You had sex with him!”
“I did not have,” Shelby dropped her voice, “
sex
with Cody Tucker.”
“Then why are you whispering?”
Shelby’s eyes slid shut. “Because I don’t want the entire office to think I had sex with him.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not lying.” Shelby threw Gina a stern look; too bad her flaming cheeks ruined the effect. “Fine, we may have accidentally kissed, but we did not have sex.”
“How does one
accidentally
kiss? Is that like
accidentally
getting knocked up?” Gina made a sound that translated into “bullshit.”
“No.” Shelby’s pacing increased with each word. “We were yelling, and then he said he was leaving. And I said no—”
“You said no?”
Shelby sank into the seat across from Gina. “Told you I wasn’t a pushover anymore.”
“Right, because letting the man who left you pregnant and broke get to first base within an hour of reconnecting is such a non-pushover thing to do.” Gina clutched her heart dramatically. “Thank God, you didn’t let him leave.”
“Actually, we rounded second. Now do you want me to finish or not?” Gina circled her hand for Shelby to continue. “He said, ‘Damn you, woman’ and then kissed me. And I mean
kissed
me.”
“How very caveman of him.” Gina raised a brow. “Was it good?”
“It was phenomenal. Better than I remembered. I think I would have let him . . . you know . . . right there on the counter—”
Gina wiggled her fingers in a grand “big whoop” gesture. “On the counter? Wow, pretty bold for a girl who can’t say sex.”
“Sex. And it was hot.”
“Okay, caveman or not, that is hot.”
Shelby felt her body heat up at the memory and dropped her face into her hands. Up until a moment ago, she had convinced herself that it was no big deal, but now, discussing it with Gina, it seemed all
too
real. “I know. But then we started arguing, and then Jake came in.”
“So you argued before you got horizontal on the cutting board
and
after? Wow, that sounds healthy.”
Shelby shrugged. When put that way, it sounded even worse than she had originally thought. They had never argued when they were together. Who was she kidding? Cody was too restrained to even get angry, let alone argue. That side of him had been a complete surprise. And kind of a turn-on.
“You sure know how to pick ’em.” Gina, obviously bored with Shelby’s sex life, pointed to the contract. “Okay, truth time. Why do you want to change the terms of this?”
“Jake needs a dad, and it’s not like he thinks Preston’s his father.”
Shelby had waited months for Cody to come back. Preston, afraid that stress and lack of sleep would end up harming the baby, tracked him down and confronted him. He told Cody to man up and do right by Shelby. Preston came back with a black eye, split lip, and a message for Shelby: Cody never intended on marrying her, and he didn’t want a kid.
Preston had tried to convince her to name him as the father on the birth certificate and give Jake the last name of Van Warren, arguing that then Jacob could qualify for his health insurance, and they wouldn’t have to count on Cody to sign important documents. Although she gave in on the first count, Shelby had been adamant that Jake’s last name would be Tucker.
“Now that he’s met Cody,” Shelby continued, “I want Jake to get the chance to at least know him. And this just states that Cody is Jake’s biological father. Makes the relationship legal. I had hoped that he would take one look at Jake and fall in love with him like I did, then demand to be a part of his life.”
“And?”
Shelby closed her eyes, thinking back to the panicked look on his face when he’d made the connection that Jake was his. It was the same holy-shit look of shock that he’d given her that last night, before he tore out of Austin for destinations unknown.
“And I haven’t seen him all day.”
“You’ve been at work all day,” Gina challenged.
She had, but that was beside the point. “He was in the office all night, and then out of the house this morning before Ms. Luella showed up.”
“Then how do you know he’ll even be there when you get back?”
Shelby swallowed. Looked out the window, at the clock, and then at the photo of Gina’s adorable niece, Sidney, smashing a head of broccoli with a shovel. Anything to avoid looking her friend in the eye.
“Ooh, this must be good.” Gina dropped her feet to the floor and leaned toward Shelby. “Spill or find new counsel.”
Shelby sent her a threatening glare, then lifted her purse and pulled out a blue wire with a black doohickey attached to the end of it. God, this was embarrassing.
“And that would be?”
“The center coil wire to his distributor cap. Ms. Luella helped me disconnect it this morning when Cody took off on his mammoth of a horse. She promised me that all I had to do was reconnect it, and it would run like new, and he’d never know who did it.”
“And what if Cody called Mister and just got a new one?” Shelby had the decency to blush. “Let me guess, Ms. Luella
blackmailed
, excuse me, I meant to say
exploited
, Mister’s love for fried food to ensure he was temporarily out.”
“Mister does love his hushpuppies. And peach pie,” Shelby added.
“And apparently Ms. Luella.” Gina grinned and picked up one of the many legal pads from her top drawer, set it on her desk and poised her pen. She jotted down a few notes and then looked up at Shelby. “Before we start, I need to know you understand that you can’t make a man love someone, Shell. Promise me that isn’t what this is about.”
“That’s just it. I think that Cody grew up with such a skewed version of love that he doesn’t know what to do when he experiences it. Love is unpredictable and complicated and makes you feel like you’re spinning out of control. And for a man who’s terrified of losing control, it’s his worst nightmare. So he runs.”
“And you want to stop him from running?”
“Long enough to see what a great kid Jake is. Just because he didn’t want me, doesn’t mean he won’t want his son.”