The Big Heat. Jennifer Labrecque

stare sexy, or swoon over Linc’s longer hair and devil-may-care smile. Sunny sniffed and wrapped her fingers tighter around the steering wheel. If you liked those kinds of looks in a man, that was.

      She never had. She’d always preferred more intellect than brawn. And those muscle-bound types tended to have control issues and since she liked being in control it was pretty much an oil and water situation. Plus, not long after the billboards went up she’d overheard two campaign volunteers discussing the Stone brothers. Both of them had a reputation for changing women almost as regularly as their underwear.

      Which was why it was confounding that she’d developed a thing for Cade Stone. Tall and dark with those golden eyes, that sensual, unsmiling mouth and an element of the untamed about him, he’d been a shock to her system from the first time she’d laid eyes on that offensive billboard.

      Even now, driving past the image, with Cecil launching his dirty offensive in the campaign’s eleventh hour and Sheila riding shotgun in her car, she tingled from head to toe. Heat coursed through her and left her wriggling in her car seat.

      It was nutty that she felt such an intense physical, mental, emotional response to a he-man photo…and it was every dang time she drove past. And lately she’d become so…entangled that he’d shown up, brimming with muscle and testosterone, in her dreams. She’d imagined his kisses in exquisite detail—his mouth on hers, the scrape of his sexy scruff as he slid his lips down her neck and across her collarbone, the bunching of his muscles beneath her fingertips as she grasped his broad shoulders, the feel of his hands mapping her body. And then she’d wake up, gripped by restlessness, her body humming with arousal. It was just so damn weird to be sexually fixated on someone she’d never met and most likely wouldn’t like anyway.

      It had been sheer desperation then, that drove her to take out that singles’ Web ad. If a man on a billboard could leave her hot and bothered, why not a guy on the Internet?

      Unfortunately, none of her Internet dating responses had bumped Cade Stone out of the fantasy hot seat…yet. And that was the part of the truth she’d left out for Sheila. No one else had an inkling that a simple drive-by sighting left her nipples hard and her hoo-ha wet.

      She turned right off Tolliver and half a block later bypassed the alley that housed the garage behind her house. She always opted for the on-street parking in the front.

      Rats were fond of the back alley and her rodent aversion bordered on phobic. And if the rats gnawed through the Mustang’s wiring, she’d be hard-pressed to cough up the bucks to fix it after sinking her savings into her campaign fund. She’d rather jockey for on-street parking any day.

      “You know, Sunny, I think this flyer’s not going to be a big deal,” Sheila said. “People will get it and toss it. I don’t think anyone’s going to pay a bit of attention.”

      Sunny turned left onto her street and immediately braked.

      She looked at Sheila. “I hope it’s true that there’s no such thing as bad press—” news vans sat double-parked in front of her row house, midway down the block, which also doubled as her campaign headquarters “—because they’ve definitely paid attention.”

      She squared her shoulders. She’d talk to them for a few minutes and then it would be over.

      How bad could it be?

      2

      One month later…

      “HOW ARE YOU?” Sheila asked as Sunny settled opposite her onto the familiar hard laminate seat at Melvina’s Soul Food.

      “I’m starving. How about you?” Sunny inhaled the aroma of collard greens, corn bread and candied yams, ignoring the deeper implication of whether or not she had fully recovered from the debacle following her election loss.

      Melvina’s soothed her with its juxtaposition of stark but clean concrete floors, laminate seats, bars over the windows and rich comfort food. After the last four weeks of hell—and without being a whiner, it had truly been hellacious—she was getting back on her feet, but her soul could use a healthy dose of culinary comfort.

      “I didn’t think I was hungry until I smelled the food and now…yeah,” Sheila said, leaning across the table a bit to be heard. “And I’ll let you slide now, but we’re going to talk before lunch is over.”

      Melvina’s was always noisy and today was no exception, with conversation vying with a blues Christmas CD playing over the loudspeaker—Sunny was pretty sure that was Memphis’s own Koko Taylor belting out “Have You Heard the News.” A thirty-year collection of baby Jesus ornaments adorned a Christmas tree in the middle of the small restaurant. According to Melvina, Jesus was the reason for the season and there wasn’t room on her tree for anything else except the star on top.

      Melvina herself delivered two sweet teas to the table. “Look at what the cat done drug in,” she said with a wide smile. “We sure have missed you.”

      “Not nearly as much as I’ve missed y’all.” Melvina, her son, TJ, and his wife, Charity, were old friends. She’d known them all since she’d “discovered” Melvina’s when she was a University of Memphis student along with TJ and Charity ten years ago.

      The older woman gave Sunny a bone-crushing hug—who’d have thought such a small, seemingly frail woman could hug so hard—and Sunny squeezed back.

      Melvina and Sheila exchanged greetings and Melvina crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth settling into a disapproving frown. “That was just wrong what that man did to you and wrong what them news folk did after that.”

      Sunny smiled and shrugged, determined to put it behind her. “It seems to be over now.” It wasn’t good when the flyers had been spread around town but she’d never dreamed it would explode the way it had. In one of those weird, totally unwelcome quirks of fate, the election and flyer had been picked up by the AP and Reuters and mushroomed into a gargantuan tabloid/Internet nightmare of humiliation. Sunny clad in a bikini had become the election flyer seen around the world. And she’d learned an important lesson. No one ever actually died from humiliation or harassment. She was still-living proof.

      Melvina’s lips thinned to a hard line. “TJ saw your picture on a late-night TV show.” Who in the world hadn’t would be a shorter list. Sunny, or rather her attendant flyer, had made number three on the Top Ten Stupid Things To Do When You’re Running for Public Office list. “And Charity saw some stuff on the Internet.”

      Not hard to imagine since Sunny had been the butt of innumerable jokes circulating on the blogo-sphere. She’d tried to avoid them, but couldn’t help reading each and every one. It was like watching a train wreck—the train wreck that had become her life. She’d thought after a few days of infamy it would die down. That was the way those things worked, right? Wrong. Just when it looked as if things were dying down, it flared back up. But now…four weeks and counting, it finally seemed over. Sunny considered it a minor miracle she’d managed to maintain her dignity and her temper through it all.

      “I think it’s finally over.” No one had pointed or stared at her in at least two days since she’d ventured out of her house once again. No one cheered, jeered or tried to take her picture. No more Web design contracts had cancelled on her except the one. And since she’d disconnected her home phone after changing the number three times in as many weeks, the harassing phone calls had ceased. Her cell number was only available to a select few.

      “That Meeks ought to be horse-whipped for starting all this,” Melvina declared.

      “Too good for him,” Sheila opined.

      “He’ll get his one day,” Sunny said. She wasn’t sure how or when, but he would. She was ready to get on with her life, but that included settling with Meeks. Revenge would be hers.

      Melvina glanced around and lowered her voice. “Me and TJ, we know people. You want Meeks taken care of, whatever you want, we know people.”

      “You’re a good friend, Melvina.