The Pleasure Principle. Kimberly Raye

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      “I’M AFRAID I’VE GOT bad news and good news,” Merle, still clad in overalls and T-shirt, told him after Ellie dropped him off at the service station to check on his car later that afternoon.

      “Give me the bad news first.”

      “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.”

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