The Pleasure Principle

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“I cain’t exactly do that. It really is bad news and good news all rolled into one. See, Janie Gingrich—she’s the lady that used to rent the room above the garage before she married Trent Mulberry—had this nasty crow that got loose and took up residence in the tree just in back of the shop.”

“Is this the good news or the bad news?”

“Both, I told you. Bad news because the critter’s been living in the tree behind the shop. Only comes out when he hears my wrecker pull up. Came squawking by when I pulled in with your sports car and pooped all over the hood. I shooed her away.” He waved his rolled-up issue of Popular Mechanics. “But it was too late. She scratched the paint before I knew what had happened.”

“And that’s good news, too?”

“Sure enough. I’ll have to wait until Monday to get the paint from Austin, but good because I’d have to have the car until then anyway so’s I can take a look at that cracked engine block and look for any permanent damage. I know, I know,” Merle said when Brady started to talk, “it’s not in keeping with my twenty-four-hour guarantee, but this being Saturday and all and Sunday not counting, it’s technically only twenty-four work hours.” He eyed his nephew. “You’re not mad about the poop, are you?”

“Not if you’ve still got that room above the garage.”

Merle grinned and fished in his pocket. “It’s yours,” he declared as he handed over a slightly bent key. “It ain’t much, just a one-room with a kitchen, but it’s clean. Maria sees to that.”

“That’s good enough for me.” Brady took the key and retrieved his bag from the backseat of his Porsche.

“Mighty pretty car,” Merle said as he trailed his hand along the door. “Minus the poop, of course.”

“Yeah, it is nice.” Nice was an understatement. It was the best, like everything else in his life. Sally never would have settled for less. Even when they’d been dead broke, she would spend the last dollar to buy one gourmet cookie that lasted all of a few bites, rather than a loaf of bread to last them all week.

The dollar days had passed and he’d gone on to bring home more money, which she’d promptly spent. Always buying the best, from clothes to cars to fifty-dollar decorative handsoaps that he hadn’t been allowed to use. They’d been for show like everything else in her life. Status had meant everything, and so she’d moved on when someone with more status had come along.

Thankfully, she’d finally done what he couldn’t because of his damned conscience. She’d ended their marriage. Cut him loose. Sent him on his way so she could climb higher on the social ladder.

Or was that why she’d left?

I need a real man who can satisfy me.

He pushed aside the words as he headed up the stairs to the one-room efficiency. He wasn’t dwelling on the past. He was living for the moment. For right now. And right now involved taking a shower so he could meet his younger sister and the rest of his old buddies for a much-needed drink.

“Look out, Cadillac. Here I come.”

3

“I NEED a screaming orgasm in the worst way.”

“You and me both,” Eden told the woman who plopped down at the bar later that evening, a near empty glass in hand.

Dottie Abernathy was a regular Saturday-afternoon customer and one of the few who didn’t give a fig about Eden’s reputation.

Then again, Dottie had had her own reputation to contend with before she’d married the local fire chief and made a respectable woman of herself. Bib boobs—and Dottie had been blessed with two Double D’s—equaled an even bigger reputation, and so the woman understood what Eden had had to endure. She was in her late forties with graying red hair and a die-hard makeup habit that made the town’s only Avon lady the number-one-ranked salesperson in Texas. Dottie had a few too many gray hairs and her crow’s feet were deepening, but in her prime she’d stirred her fair share of gossip.

“I know why I need one,” Dottie said, taking the very last sip of her drink. The woman was referring to the outrageously named beverage, while Eden had an entirely different orgasm on her mind. “James is at home planted in front of the TV and I’m here alone. But what’s your excuse?”

Withdrawal. That’s what had stirred Eden’s hormones into a frenzy the moment she’d spotted Brady Weston. Sure, he was handsome and sexy, but he was still just a man. A walking Y chromosome. Nothing to get all excited about, unless the woman getting excited had been so busy the past six months working and worrying over the future and Jake Marlboro and what new stunt the slimeball was going to come up with to screw up her business that she’d completely neglected her personal life.

No wonder she’d been hot and bothered since walking into the Pink Cadillac after dropping Brady off at Merle’s. She was deprived. Desperate. Due.

Yep, she was definitely due for a good, quality orgasm.

Not that she’d ever had anything close to a screaming one. Sure, she’d whimpered. She’d sighed. She’d even moaned a time or two. But no man had ever made her scream. Despite the rumors circulating around the small town.

Rumors. That summed up Eden’s life to a T, at least from the tenth grade up. She was one great big rumor. Her past. Her present. Her future.

Rumor had it that she’d slept with the entire football team her sophomore year, and that she was presently sleeping with every elk over at the ledge, including Homer Jackson who, everyone in their right mind knew, preferred bulls to heifers any old day. As for the future? She would probably sleep her way through the city council, or maybe boff every police officer on the ten-man force.

Rumor. That’s all it was, with the exception of one really cute elk Eden had met last New Year’s Eve at the annual holiday party. They’d dated a few times and slept together once, and that had been the end of it. He’d been a horse trainer for one of the nearby ranches, and once breaking season had ended, he’d left for New Mexico and another ranch.

She’d moaned with him. Not so much because the sex had been great. Looking back, she could objectively qualify it as so-so. But she’d been coming off a long dry spell after her last fling nearly four years ago at a bartending convention in Austin, and even so-so had been an occasion for moaning.

But a bonafide scream? Not this girl. Not with any of the handful of men she’d actually slept with, much less the hundreds that filled her make-believe résumé since Jake Marlboro had lied about her and made her the scarlet woman of Cadillac, Texas.

“Eden?” Dottie waved her empty glass. “Are you still with me?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I guess I zoned out for a little while. It’s been so hot out.” She turned and twisted the air-conditioning knob a few notches cooler.

“You’re telling me. Hit me again.”

Eden had nothing against a woman quenching her thirst, but she wasn’t in the habit of contributing to the delinquency of friends. Particularly when she sensed an underlying motivation propelling Dottie toward a second drink.

“Haven’t you reached your one orgasm limit?”

Dottie Abernathy let out a pitiful sigh. “Usually, but I’m feeling very neglected today.” She stared down at her empty glass. “Not that I really need the calories. Jerry’s sure to run the other way if I pack on a beer belly.”

Eden winked. “That’s a screaming orgasm belly, and I can’t imagine Jerry doing such a thing. He loves you.”

“He loves me from February through July. It’s August.” At Eden’s blank look, she added, “Preseason. I’ve dropped to number two on his priority list.” She sighed. “At least it’s not number three. I don’t drop that far until October when deer season opens. Right now, I’m going head-to-head with the Dallas Cowboys.” She eyes the bowl of honey-roasted cashews sitting on the counter behind Eden. “What about those? Those are healthier than an orgasm, right?”

“Definitely the good kind of fat,” Eden told her as she grabbed the bowl and placed it in front of Dottie. “And I won’t have to drive you home.”

“Men,” Dottie said around a mouthful of nuts. “I’ll never understand them.”

“Amen.” Eden popped a cashew into her own mouth. She’d tried understanding them. When Jake Marlboro had taken the treasured gift of her virginity and turned it into a sleazy strip show, she’d tried to see the entire event through his eyes. Had she done something to make him think she was sleezy? Had she come on too strong? Too soon? Had she been deserving of his nasty rumors?

Hell, no. That’s what she’d finally decided, after a lot of soul searching and years of heartache. The fine, up-standing citizens of Cadillac could see what they wanted to see—namely that Jake was a wealthy, enterprising member of the community and she was little better than a cow pattie stuck to the bottom of his boot.

As if she cared.

She’d stopped caring a long time ago about other people’s perceptions—make that misperceptions—when she’d finally come to terms with the fact that her first true love was nothing more than a lying, conceited, egotistical jerk.

Then and now.

Her gaze swept the nearly empty bar. Empty when she’d always been packed at this time of afternoon. Even Mitchell Wineberg who gathered with his cronies for Saturday-afternoon dominoes wasn’t in his usual corner. He was over at the VFW, thanks to Jake who’d donated a twenty-seven-inch color TV to the rec room that put her small nineteen-inch black-and-white to shame. Who wanted to watch Pat Sajak and Vanna White in black and white when they could see that wheel spin in vivid technicolor? Not a one of them would give the Pink Cadillac a second glance thanks to Jake’s latest contribution. If Eden wouldn’t sell out, Jake would force her out by making the Pink Cadillac obsolete when it came to fun and entertainment.

Or so he thought.

She wasn’t going down without a fight. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but it would be something foolproof. She wasn’t selling the Pink Cadillac, no matter how much money he offered her.

Eden told herself that for the umpteenth time and turned her attention to Dottie and the bowl of cashews.

“…the Cowboys, of all teams,” the woman was saying. “I could understand if he had me going head-to-head with the Packers. Now there’s a decent football team. And cute. Why, they drafted a wide receiver with muscles out to here and a butt that begs to be pinched.”

Dottie’s comments stirred a vision of another very pinchable butt and Eden’s attention shifted back to Brady and the picture he’d made standing on the side of the road, looking so hot and sweaty and sexy and…hot.

A twinge of longing shot through Eden and she reached for a handful of cashews.

Wait a second. Longing?

No way. Not when it came to a man. If she’d learned anything in her lifetime it was that men were a dime a dozen. Sure, there were those few good ones. Her father and Reverend Talbot and old Mr. Murphy over at the grocery store who climbed his apple tree out back every afternoon so his ailing wife could have fresh fruit with her lunch. Eden wasn’t so jaded that she’d stopped believing in Mr. Right. He just wasn’t lurking anywhere in Cadillac or the surrounding six counties. But someday…

She dismissed the thought. Eden wasn’t the type to sit around dreaming about the future. She made the best of the present and the matter at hand—which, right now, was her business—and the only thing she longed for was a rush of customers. That would show Jake Marlboro that he couldn’t win at everything. While he’d certainly gotten the best of her once, it wasn’t going to happen again.

“These days, the Cowboys ain’t worth the price of a hot dog at Texas stadium. But way back when they could make me sit up and take notice. Why, I remember when Jimmy Johnson was running the team…” Dottie droned on about the good old days and the nostalgia of the past as Eden poured herself a soda.

Nostalgia. That explained her reaction to Brady Weston. It wasn’t so much that she was attracted to him now. No, she was remembering her attraction to him then.

The daydreams… All those times she’d sat in the bleachers and watched Brady throw a winning pass and fancied herself the head cheerleader and the object of his sexy all-star smile.

The fantasies… When she’d lounged on the bank of McKinney’s Lake and watched Brady swing out over the lake in his best Tarzan imitation with the rest of his buddies. The rich kids. The haves. While Eden had sat on the opposite side with the have-nots, and pretended she was his Jane.

The reality… That one hot summer day when he’d had a flat and she’d given him a lift. In the close confines of her dad’s beat-up pickup truck, with Brady so close and the heat so overwhelming, she’d come so close to living up to her reputation, sliding across the seat and kissing the devil out of Brady.

She’d wanted to, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. The feeling had been just as strong when they’d been on their “date.” Throughout the night, Eden had wished he would ask her out for real. And she’d also wished he wouldn’t be such a gentleman.

But that was in the past. Fond memories. A young girl’s crazy infatuation with the sexiest boy in high school. Those days were over and she was all grown up now, and she didn’t salivate over any man, no matter how handsome.

Besides, he wasn’t that good-looking. Gone was the clean-cut, freshly shaven golden boy who’d taken the Cadillac Texans to the state football championship not once, but twice. The years had added a hardness to his once soft brown eyes. He was older now, with tiny lines rimming his eyes and a roughness about him that came with years of hard living.

Not her type at all. Eden preferred pretty-boy Ricky Martin to the Marlboro man any day. Brady Weston was a little too different from the All-American who’d dominated her adolescent fantasies. He was too masculine, too sexy, and he was here—

Her thoughts slammed to a halt as she straightened and focused on him standing in the doorway. His gaze collided with hers and he smiled, and for five full seconds Eden actually forgot to breathe.

“Hey, Eden!” The greeting came from Brady’s sister Ellie, who came up next to him. The woman waved and steered her brother into a nearby booth.

Eden had barely forced a calm breath, much less responded when the door swung open again. A group of men and women walked in and made a bee-line for Brady and his sister.

The past pulled her back as she remembered all the lunches spent staring across the school cafeteria. She’d sat with her friends while Brady had held court amid the A-crowd in the center of the lunchroom.

There were several beer bellies now and a few pairs of fake breasts, but otherwise the group could have been plucked from the yearbook pages as they smiled and laughed and piled into several booths surrounding Brady and his sister.

“Looks like tonight’s going to be busy,” Dottie said, drawing Eden away from her musings and back to the fact of the matter—she had customers.

Her gaze shifted to Brady, to his sexy smile and the handsome picture he made sitting there in a straw Resistol, faded jeans and a white T-shirt. Gone were the designer clothes and the preoccupied look from this afternoon. He’d transformed back into the good-natured, relaxed cowboy who’d smiled at her from the side of the road that day so long ago. The same cowboy she’d stared at day after day in her English class.