Carmen Jenner - Welcome to Sugartown

I’d given Elijah a smug smile and he’d shoved his sunnies back into place and sped off in front of me, copying my fishtail manoeuvre to a tee. I was so not having that, and I’d let him know by overtaking him at every possible turn. Of course, we’d been speeding and we’d overshot the turn-off by about ten km, but it had been so nice just to drive and play that I couldn’t have cared less.

An almighty crack of thunder had made me glance up at the storm clouds overhead, at which point I’d decided I didn’t want to get caught in the rain and I’d let Elijah zoom past me, only to turn around and head in the other direction when he thought he had me beat. It had been a good five minutes before I’d seen him slip in behind me again and maintain a steady speed. When we’d reached the river, or as close to the river as the road would take us, I’d walked him through the rocky, overgrown trail and down the steep sloping bank. From the obscurity of the trees, I pointed out “Big Gay Bob” and hightailed it out of there, before my dad or the dragon could see me.

“You’re not gonna stay?” Elijah had said.

“Nope.” I’d called over my shoulder.

“What if I get lost?”

I’d turned and walked backwards without any fear of falling or making a complete dork out of myself. I knew that terrain like the back of my hand. When I was younger the bikers would drag their kids along to those bonfires. I knew every twist, turn and protruding rock of that path. “Then you’ll have a really long trek back to your bike.”

My reply had been rewarded with a flash of dimple. For a moment I’d forgotten just how dangerous Ole’ Melty Eyed Dimples was. “Thanks for the ride, Ana No Last Name.”

“Welcome to Sugartown, Elijah Cade.”

Now, as I lie in bed, I can’t stop thinking about him. I wanted to stop thinking about him, needed desperately to stop thinking about him if I was going to be any use at work tomorrow, but instead I found myself tiptoeing through the house, grabbing the keys to the shop and scurrying out into the rain in my singlet top and boy shorts to make pies in the industrial-sized kitchen until the sun came up.

And that’s exactly where Holly found me at 9 am, with my head resting on the flour-covered bench and twenty Triple Chocolate Melted Fudge pies surrounding me.

Holly casts suspicious eyes around the room and arcs her waxed-to-perfection brows. “Rough night?”

“The roughest.”

“Well, considering there’s not some tattooed motorcycle god half naked in this kitchen, I’ll take it as a sign your date didn’t go well.”

“Pfff, he’s hardly a motorcycle god. Bespa” —yes, I named my bike, don’t judge me— “ran rings around that little tricycle of his. And it wasn’t a date.”

“You sound like your dad.” Holly rolls her heavily made-up eyes and dips her equally manicured finger into the pie that I’d taste tested early this morning, “Mmmm, delicious. Wait, did you change the recipe for your surprise pie?”

“No. This is something different.” I rise and stretch out all the aches and pains of spending the night in the kitchen, but not before I see her brow arch and a knowing smile slip across her lips. I busy myself wiping flour from the bench with a nearby rag.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Cleaning.”

“No I mean whatcha doing?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I feign innocence but she sees right through it. I am so busted.

“What’s it called, Ana?”

“I haven’t named it yet.” I work real hard at scrubbing the imaginary stain on the bench.

Holly lets out a gasp. It’s so loud, it has me jumping up on the chair, thinking she’s seen a bluetongue lizard in the kitchen, “You sneaky little slutsky! You totally made him a pie!”

“I did not make him a pie!”

“You dirty whore!” she shrieks as she picks up a nearby broom and starts prodding my butt with the handle.

I swat at her with my floury dishrag. “Would you cut it out?”

“Oh Elijah, won’t you try my pie? I made it just for you,” she taunts in a high-pitched, girly tone that sounds absolutely nothing like me. “What’s that, you wanna stick your fingers in my deliciously silky, warm pie?”

I’m so focused on Holly’s taunting and the wickedly jabby broom handle currently tenderising my rump that I don’t hear the bell signal a customer. And this is how Elijah finds us as he stares through the serving window: me in my underwear, covered head to toe in chocolate and flour, standing on the chair I’d slept on and having my arse poked by a very dead best friend—or at least, she will be, once I get him to leave. For a minute we are frozen, all three of us just gawking at one another.

“Mornin’.” Elijah grins. And there they are, both dimples popping out to say hello. And it’s not even ten am yet. The snide bastard makes no attempt to hide the fact he’s ogling me from head to toe.

With a squeak, I drop the rag and attempt to cover myself, but in my haste the movement throws me off balance, which then causes my chair to tilt at an angle that’s not conducive to keeping me on my feet. I fall flat on my face and, to my absolute horror, while I’m down there acquainting myself with the checked lino and the dust bunnies, Elijah sidles right up to the window and starts up a conversation about our brand new pies. Like he didn’t just witness the single most humiliating moment of my life, and neither he nor Holly can see my half-naked arse sticking out from behind the island bench.

I. Am. Beyond. Mortified.

And, just when I’m thinking this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, I hear the shop door open and my dad’s gravely greeting. Big Bob enjoys mornings about as much as I do.

I quit trying to dig myself a shallow grave through the linoleum floor, shoot up from behind the safety of my counter with a very calm head and nod to each of them.

“Elijah. Bob.”

Dad’s eyes narrow and his ever-present scowl threatens to divide his forehead in half. “Ana?”

Oh crap. I know that voice. I haven’t heard that voice since I was ten-years-old and he caught Holly and I with a stolen packet of cigarettes. We hadn’t even had a chance to light up before he was pulling us out from behind the supermarket and humiliating us in front of the whole town. The look on my dad’s face now says he’s about two seconds away from picking me up by the scruff of the neck and crucifying me where I stand.

And yeah, okay, maybe from his standpoint this looks bad, but despite me being a nineteen-year-old woman, Dad’s still struggling with the fact that I’ve moved from training bras to push up bras, and thinking boys were stinky to maybe wanting to sleep with one. And since Elijah seems to be the only male within a 5 kilometre radius and he just caught his daughter half naked in the kitchen, things aren’t looking good for any of us.

He turns the full weight of his scowl on Elijah, who is still smiling like he just won the freaking lottery and a Christmas ham. “Son?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Haven’t you got a bike to fix?”

Elijah still hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but my dad’s tone brokers absolutely no argument, and what’s more, when he gets an eyeful of Bob Belle’s infamous scowl, he clears his throat.

“YES, SIR! I’LL GET RIGHT ON IT …” he yells. And why wouldn’t he yell? After all, it is what I told him.

Dad winces at the volume. Holly is laughing again, like a whacked out chimpanzee and I’m just too mortified for words. Elijah scurries back through the shop with a nod in our direction and an exclamation of, “I freaking love this town!”

“I’m. Just. Gonna. Go … now,” I mutter and exit through the back door with my tail between my legs.

Two weeks on and I still can’t forget seeing hot waitress Ana standing in her underwear. Not that I’d want to forget. In fact, that image has been on replay in my spank bank twice a day for a fortnight now. I’d give my left nut to get beneath those lacy little boy shorts. The fact that she’s still playing hard to get is pissing me off and turning me into a fucking horn dog. I don’t usually walk away from a challenge, but sometimes life throws you so much shit you’ve just gotta quit while you’re ahead.

And other times life throws you a bone, or in my case, a raging boner for the hot waitress in the pie shop across the road. If I were a smart man I’d walk away, I’d cut my losses and move on to the next hot piece of arse, and I’d be better off—hell, that waitress would be better off. But no one ever accused me of being smart. Like all men, I think with the little head more than is good for me and I can’t walk away without a taste of that girl.

And speaking of the “little head”, I’ve got a date with a slice of pie and a hot waitress who’s about to fill my spank bank fantasies for another fortnight.

I slide out from under the hood of a 1971 GTX Plymouth Road Runner. It’s the kind of car you want to drape a warm body over the hood and fuck till you’re both senseless. And, with all the bikes I’ve been workin’ on lately, it’s been nice to slide beneath a machine as beautiful as this. I’m pretty confident that I’ll have this thing purring like a kitten before the afternoon is out.

I wash up in the sink in back, scrubbing the pungent smell of grease and brake fluid from my hands. My stomach growls.

My cock twitches when I think of the way Ana smells as she leans across the table to set my pie in front of me. I always sit in the very last booth, closest to the counter. I face away from the windows so I’m looking directly into the kitchen and sit as far back in the booth as possible so she has to lean in to slide my plate in front of me. It’s kind of a dickhead move, I know, and I’m sure she knows exactly what I’m up to, but I don’t care.