Sweet but Sexy Boxed Set (35 page)

Chapter Four

Sharon closed her eyes and said a quick prayer, knowing she’d need every ounce of her strength to deal with her mother. Following yesterday’s doctor visit, her mother had insisted on going home and going to bed, and she hadn’t wanted Sharon cleaning the house while she tried to sleep.

In truth Sharon was more than happy to drop her mother at the door and drive off, but that only meant her visit would be extended another day. She
’d already decided she wasn’t staying past getting that nasty house cleaned up, which would take weeks of hard, disgusting work. It probably didn’t make her daughter of the year, but she didn’t care. Her feelings for Candy were ambivalent at best.

Sharon still could hardly believe Ms. Addie had swooped in like a Guardian Angel at the very moment her help was needed, and provided not only a temporary home but, once it was sold, funds to help Sharon start all over somewhere other than close to her mother.

She needed to see the cabin as soon as she could get in to assess its value, but in the meantime she really needed a job to support herself and her son. The reality was she was nearly destitute and though she appreciated the free roof over their heads, she’d use up a lot of their funds just getting utilities turned on or transferred into her name. Not to mention what she’d owe Mr. Matthews once she left the Lodge.

Sharon was also ashamed, and thoroughly embarrassed, that she
’d been so mean to the young doctor. It wasn’t his fault she’d taken his offer of help, with the stipulation of a dinner date, as borderline prostitution. Her mother had lived her life letting men do things for her, and
then
she’d
dated
them. Of course Candy’s dates had actually been nothing more than sex in exchange for whatever the favor or trinket had been. And if she’d been particularly lucky, she’d actually get one to marry her, and he’d be the only one spending time in her bedroom for the short duration of the marriage.

But that had been the exception where her mother was concerned, not the rule.

When she was younger, and known only as Sissy, Sharon hadn’t understood it wasn’t common for a daughter to watch her mother take a strange man into her bedroom for an hour or so, then watch him leave only to have another arrive soon after. She hadn’t known what it was her mother did, only that when her “friends” came over for “grown-up time,” Sissy was to stay in her own room and watch the little black and white TV Candy bought for her from the Goodwill store.

By the time she was fifteen she
’d spent so much time in front of the TV she’d gotten fed up and, one winter evening, decided to join her mother, and ask her to let her hang out with the adults.

It was the first time she ever saw a man
’s naked butt. It was white, and large, and hairy, and it tightened and relaxed, then tightened again each time he pushed himself forward between her mother’s spread legs. She’d been too shocked to move at first and then realized her mother was being attacked when she moaned loudly.

Fearlessly she had jumped onto the bed, hurled herself at his back and beat at his head until he reached back and flung her across the room where she bounced off the wall. Sissy had been too stunned to move, but she
’d been lifted and dragged across the smelly bed. Her T-shirt was ripped away exposing her embarrassingly large breasts. She’d tried to cover them up as the man who attacked her mother was now attacking her, trying to strip her cotton pajamas from her hips.

Her mother had screamed and hit her, though she
’d been certain that was an accident, that she must have meant to hit the man, but Candy had pushed him away, and dragged her up by her hair, and threw her out of the room, slamming the door in her face.

She
’d stood there at that closed door shaking so hard she’d nearly peed on herself as screaming and the sounds of skin smacking skin and things crashing against the wall came from the other side of the door. She’d finally found the strength to move and ran back to her room where she’d stayed until an hour or so later when Candy came looking for her, a belt in her hand.

With a black eye and a swollen, bleeding lip, Candy had crossed the room where Sharon had folded herself in—knees to chin—between her bed and the wall at the corner of the room. Her mother had pulled her up and out, away from the wall, jerked down her pajama bottoms, and forced her to lay bent over her bed so Candy could repeatedly beat her with the belt. She
’d had striped bruises across her buttocks and thighs for almost two weeks.

That night she
’d grown up.

After that Sharon hadn
’t stayed in her room when men came over. She’d gotten out of the house as quickly as possible, sometimes only coming back in the wee hours of the morning and climbing in her bedroom window when she knew for certain her mother was passed out from men or booze.

By the time she was sixteen she started hearing the whispers about her mother and certain men. The teasing at school began as well as the looks that told her she was no better than the trashy woman who
’d given her life. She’d been hurt and humiliated and had retaliated by proving all the gossips right. Yes, she
had
slept with a few boys from the football team but not half the team. And she’d actually fallen in love with one. But Kyle Sanders’ father had made it crystal clear to her that she would never have a place in their lives.

Once her mother was jailed for shoplifting and she was sent to live with Ms. Addie, her reputation was already so tarnished she couldn
’t stand the thought of people knowing she was pregnant so she’d refused to go to school. Without missing a beat Ms. Addie made arrangements that allowed her to be homeschooled for the last months of the school year. The last time she’d seen all her classmates was the time she’d entered the school to walk down the aisle and accept her diploma.

At least she
’d gotten to do that. Sharon now knew some schools didn’t allow you to keep the association with the school if you were homeschooled. But Legend High did once Ms. Addie requested it of them, probably after making a large donation to the school on Sharon’s behalf. It had simplified Sharon’s life then, as well as all the following years when she’d needed proof of her education for job applications. Making all that happen was another debt she could never repay to Ms. Addie.

The last thing Sharon had ever wanted after leaving Legend was to have her reputation follow her out of town. Because of Ms. Addie, it hadn
’t. But she was back now and Sharon feared it would all start back up…the dirty looks, the turned up noses, the whispers that stopped abruptly. Visions of her childhood bloomed and crashed around her like a bad movie she couldn’t shut off.

Most of the rumors back then, spread by the girls in her classes and even by some of the boys, were lies. In truth she
’d had sex a total of three times before Kyle, and until she’d married Gerald, she hadn’t allowed another man to touch her. She shook her head, angry all the ugliness she’d buried was coming back to haunt her. She hated being back. She hated being Candy’s daughter. But mostly she hated she was once again in a position that forced her hand. She had no choice but to stay until she was
able
to leave.

Taking a deep breath, Sharon pushed open the door. She needed to get started cleaning out the dump that her mother lived in, and she needed to get out of Legend as fast as her car would take her when that time came. For her health, for her sanity, for her soul.

Chapter Five

Jake raised his brows as he pulled in behind an old red Jeep in his little silver Ford Mustang, wondering why the neighbors hadn
’t called the Health Department. Though the neighborhood was old, most of the tiny modular homes along Flag Street had neatly kept lawns, low budget uniform landscaping, and were almost as pristine as if they lived under the dictates of a neighborhood association.

But not this small, rundown trailer park, and certainly not Candy Clark-Tipton-Clark-Peterson-Grimes-Crane
’s yard.

The spots in her yard that actually had grass, or
something
green growing, hadn’t been mowed all season as far as he could tell. The rusting chain-link fence that fronted the small yard was broken where the links should have been attached to the poles. If there had ever been any attempt at landscaping, it was so long ago there was no longer any evidence it ever existed.

After she
’d left his office the day before he’d taken the time to delve further into the thick file his grandfather had made on the woman. Apparently she’d been seen many times for a variety of diseases, most of them sexually transmitted, or an indirect result of an STD.

From oral herpes, to vaginal warts, to vaginal herpes, to the clap, the long list had continued over the past thirty years and finally had him dropping the folder in disgust. There was no excuse in his book for such self-mutilation. If the woman was determined to sleep around, she should have at least had enough sense to protect herself and the community she lived in. He
’d been so angry at the total disregard for her fellow Legendarians he’d considered calling the police and having her arrested for wanton endangerment.

But now that he saw what Sharon had been trying to tell him yesterday, up close and personal, he thought maybe he should just give her the matches she
’d requested and help her light the fire to burn the pigsty to the ground, and then have Candy-Clark-Tipton-Clark-Peterson-Grimes-Crane committed to a mental institution. Nobody in her right mind lived like this.

He slowly climbed from his Mustang, wondering if he could actually make himself go into the house. If the old, leaning, stained mattress and box spring, the chipped once white, now a scary brown toilet and the open garbage bag of rotting food and bloodied sanitary napkins was what sat outside on the side porch, he couldn
’t imagine what it was he’d find when he went inside. But a promise made was a promise made, and he wasn’t going to wimp out on his second day on the job.

The door flew open just as he was about to knock.
“Oh, thank God! You’re here!”

Jake wanted to snatch
just Sharon
up and run in an attempt to save them both. With the scarf holding back her hair, the safety goggles over her wide, desperate eyes, the protective mask over her nose and mouth, and the thick latex gloves covering her hands, she looked like an alien under attack. Before he could pull her out, she pulled him into the house.

He didn
’t know what to look at first as the nearly empty living room was lit with a dozen candles, their sweet fragrance still overpowered by stale tobacco, urine, and something his mind remembered from his stint in corpse studies at the morgue during college. He placed his hand over his nose and mouth, nauseated by all the smells. “We need to open some windows.”

Sharon rolled her eyes and pointed to the open windows.
“Already did, Doc. Try again.”

He glanced around.
“Where is Mrs. Crane?”

Sharon pointed to the door he
’d just entered. “She left about ten minutes ago. I told her to take out the nasty trash from the kitchen. She walked out the front door with it and hasn’t come back.”

Well, that explained the trash on the porch.
“What do you want me to do?”

Sharon looked around the room, then back at him.
“We need to get the couch out of here. I think she’s peed on it for years.”

Jake grimaced. There was just so much he was willing to do for a patient and carrying a peed upon couch wasn
’t one of them. “Let’s hire somebody to do this.”

Though he couldn
’t see her mouth beneath the mask, he knew she was pressing her lips together. “She can’t be paying you enough to do this,” he went on. The woman had to see reason. This went beyond the call of duty. It was gross!

“
She isn’t paying me anything to do this. She can’t afford extra help and neither can I. It’s me or nothing, and I have to help her if I can. Unless you want to help out of the goodness of your heart, Doc, then I’d suggest you keep those soft, lily-white hands in your pockets until you can find your way back out the door.” She blew out a breath, approached the couch with a determined stride, and then tried pulling it across the stained carpet. She barely budged it.

“
Have you got more gloves? Another pair of safety glasses? Disinfectant?”

She turned back to him.
“In the kitchen. I brought more masks, too. It helps to block some of the smell.”

Jake nodded and headed in the direction he believed to be the kitchen. When he arrived, he was sickened to find he
’d made it to the right place since the countertops were almost completely covered with dishes that couldn’t have been washed for years, old yellowed newspapers were strewn all about, and an army of ants crawled up the side of a yellowed refrigerator where, sometime in history, an egg had bled down it.

Since it had legs, he assumed the kitchen table was beneath the mountain of open cereal boxes, cans that had once held vegetables or potted meats, more newspapers, more dirty dishes, and a half filled plastic gallon of congealed milk. There were other things on the table, but he couldn
’t make himself look close enough to figure out what they were.

He located Sharon
’s basket of cleaning supplies and covered his hands, eyes, and mouth in an attempt to block his person from the filth. He knew now he should have stopped before entering the house, jumped back in his car, and returned to his own side of town. But his desire to step into his grandfather’s shoes and, he had to at least admit it to himself, his desire to see Sharon again, had prompted him to pass the filth outside to step into the filth inside. Now he had no choice but to follow through and help her as best he could.

Because she intrigued him.

He wasn’t used to women blowing him off. If anything he was usually pursued by women who enjoyed his looks, position, and charm. He didn’t kid himself. He had a mirror and knew he had the equipment considered desirable in today’s dating market. He enjoyed the benefits and worked out regularly to stay in shape, but he usually ignored the gifts of his looks since he hadn’t had anything to do with creating them.

He liked women, enjoyed their presence most of the time, but he
’d always had to keep an eye out for those who wanted to be with him for all the wrong reasons. His looks and his status as a doctor were marketable assets he didn’t want to come into play in a romantic relationship. He wanted his relationships with women to be based on their interests being similar, their personalities being compatible, and, if there was any chance of a long term future together, their life goals going in the same general direction. Sure, the attraction had to be there, on both sides, but he knew looks would fade with time and the soul of the person was what really mattered.

Jake shook his head as he returned to the living room, unable to fathom a woman interesting him
enough
to make him disregard all his germ phobias. But Sharon had, and he needed to determine if his interests were as shallow as soothing the hurt feelings caused by her outright rejection of him, or if it went deeper.

He found her unscrewing the glass shade of the room
’s single ceiling light fixture while standing on the back of the couch she’d somehow moved to the center of the room. She pulled the cheap square piece of glass down, only to have dried dead bugs rain down to the floor and one very healthy roach crawl out onto her gloved hand.

She emitted a small scream, before pitching the glass to the cushion of the couch, and then she smacked her hands together several time, shivering.
“I can’t do this!”

“
I’ll pay to have it done!”

She jumped, nearly falling from her precarious perch.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were still here.”

He held out his gloved hand and she placed her gloved hand in it before she stepped down.
“I just had to gear up. But I’ll pay you if you will leave here with me right now and let me call in a professional hazmat team.” He stared at her through their two safety goggles. “I’m serious.”