PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
“I’m coming to get you, Polly Anna Alberton! You can’t hide from the evil Queen of Sheeba! Haaa, ha, ha, ha!”
Ducking down behind a bush, I put my hand over my mouth, trying to be quiet. Momma was so funny. She wouldn’t think of looking here. I was?—
“Ha ha! Foiled! The Queen of Sheeba’s found you!”
I screamed in delight as I got up to run, only to slip and fall in the mud. I heard a rip as I fell. Sitting back, I saw a big hole in my corduroy pants, right over the knee. Tears ran down my cheeks. Father would be so angry.
“Oh, baby. It’s ok.” Momma’s arms wrapped around me. I felt so safe and warm. I loved Momma’s hugs. “No use crying over a small rip, huh?”
“But,” I sniffled, “my new pants are dirty. And there’s a hole right here.” I pointed at my knee. “What about Father? He’s gonna be so mad.”
Momma leaned forward, stretched her fingers wide, and sunk her hand into the mud in front of us. I watched in amazement as she pressed a large muddy handprint onto her light-colored pants and giggled as she painted a line of mud down each of our cheeks and dotted our noses.
“There, now we match.” She smiled wide and squeezed me tight. She always knew what to say to make me feel better. She traced her fingers over the rip at my knee. “And this rip? Well, it’s a memory. Every mistake’s a memory. Some of my favorite times have come from mistakes. Don’t feel bad if you make a mistake, Polly. Feel bad for people who do everything perfectly the first time, because they’re missing out on the fun bits. Those are the bits that make you feel the most alive.”
CHAPTERONE
JACE
He continued to be surprised by her wit, her radiant power, her hot, wicked mouth. Her pink tongue flashed as she produced the stem from her mouth, revealing a tight knot. Smirking, she dropped the stem onto the table.
“Your turn.”
He flushed, his boxers the only thing he had left to take off. He hated losing. She wasn’t only tying cherry stems into knots; she was tying his alibi into a knot as well.
“I don’t have any truths to tell,” he rasped.
Her smile was simpering as she leaned closer. The swells of her breasts pressed against him, her eyes raking down
his body before purring into his ear.
“Drop ’em.”
American Tailby Lady Jane
Narrated by Brittney Houston
Deck shorts were a bad choice for a valet uniform. Someone must’ve complained about being too hot because three weeks ago when I showed up for my usual Sunday shift at the Green Valley Country Club, I was handed a pair of shorts and asked to change. But when your job requires you to sit on the black leather interior of a car that’s been baking in the Tennessee summer sun, it’s surface-of-the-sun hot.
Torture hot.
Peel-off-a-layer-of-skin hot.
Still, not hot enough for me to change jobs. I liked parking cars, much to my momma’s disappointment. Being relatively attractive and polite, I made good tips, and some patrons even asked for me by name. And considering that my sixteen-year-old coworkers looked barely old enough to ride a ten-speed much less drive a stick shift, I was usually asked to drive the more expensive rides.
Today I was working the morning shift, the shift I preferred, when the first golfers arrived. Spotting those first morning golf parties now rounding hole fifteen, I checked my watch, impressed. They were making good time.
“Hey, Tim,” I called out to my twenty-year-old valet manager, who was standing at the valet podium under the stone portico. “You mind staying out here while I take my break? The next brunch rush should be coming in half an hour.”
Tim spent most of his time inside the air-conditioned clubhouse and looked scared whenever anyone talked to him, despite being, in all actuality, our boss.
He jumped when I said his name, then looked down at his phone, nervously. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, Jace. Shoot, you should’ve been allowed to go an hour ago.”
“No worries, Cal needed a break more than me. I let him go cool off after leaving a layer of his skin on a leather seat earlier this morning.”
