Free Sugar's Twice as Sweet: Sugar, Georgia: Book 1 by Marina Adair

arms across her no-longer-little-girl chest. She was as single-minded as her mother had been when it came to getting what she wanted. “My two-piece is a form of self-expression, just like your tattoo.”
    “She’s got a point,” Brett said, wondering how much of his video she had seen and thinking that a teenager’s two-piece had to cover more than the woman he’d interacted with. Didn’t it?
    “Payton, did you tell your uncle that our resort is hosting Florida State’s high school football summer training program?” Cal snapped off a piece of bacon, his teeth grinding it to sawdust.
    Now Brett knew why Cal looked ready to kick someone in the nuts. He knew what Brett knew. That what she’d be expressing and what teen boys would be interpreting would be two different things. He knew because he’d been one himself. Had talked many a girl out of a teenage two-piece.
    He wondered how many daddies had wanted to kick him in the nuts when he was a teenager? How many still did?
    Shit.
    Suddenly every line, every smile, every pickup phrase he’d ever used came back to him with nauseating speed. There was no way in hell Payton was going to wear a bikini. Ever. He didn’t even think she should be allowed near a large body of water. Starting today, guy was a four-letter word.
    “I’m not wearing it to impress some boy.” Payton laughed, breezy and fake, while bending over to wrap her arms around Cal’s shoulders, hugging him from behind. “I’m wearing it for me.”
    Cal managed a provoked expression and turned his head, waiting until Payton rested her cheek on his shoulder.
    Finally, he whispered, “Great, then you can wear it in the hotel room and putter around in the bathtub.”
    “That’s so unfair.” Payton stepped back, her lips puckering out in a perfected pout. “You never let me do anything other kids my age get to do. You’re ruining my life!”
    Two seconds later she burst into tears and raced out of the kitchen.
    Cal pushed his plate back and dropped his head to the table with a thud. “How about you take her to Florida and I stay here with Hattie?”
    “Are you crazy?” Brett said, staring at the empty doorway. Payton was usually so easygoing, like him. It’s why they got along so well. “Who the hell was that? And when did she start getting—” He gestured helplessly toward his chest region.
    “Don’t say it.”
    Fine by him. He couldn’t. Boobs and his niece weren’t something that belonged in the same thought.
    “It supports my theory that the bigger the,” Cal made the same helpless gesture, “the crazier they become.” Cal looked ready to punch someone again. “I swear to God, if someone had told me my kid would come out looking like my ex-wife I would have married a cross-eyed, bucktoothed, two-by-four.”
    “Instead of a complicated socialite with the body of a porn star?”
    “God, don’t remind me.”
    “Speaking of complicated socialite.” Brett opened the bottle of hot sauce and doused his eggs. “Ran into the new neighbor yesterday. Found her stranded on the highway, so I gave her a lift.”
     “A lift, huh? And what kind of lift are we talking about?” Cal mumbled, lifting his own perfectly seasoned bite to his mouth.
    Brett ignored him.
    “Letty’s girl is here?” Before Cal could savor his forkful, Hattie waddled through the kitchen and grabbed her favorite wooden spoon. White spiky hair gelled up in quills, she wore a blue tracksuit with a yellow shirt, yellow tennis shoes, and a whole lot of attitude. He wasn’t sure if she was dressed for church or to run a marathon, but she was still ticked about his video. “Just like a Yankee. No respect for etiquette or tradition.”
    Hattie pulled out her recipe box, the one passed down from great-grandma Clover, which only made an appearance when impressing was imperative, and started flipping through the pages.
    “I need to make a covered dish of some kind for her so she doesn’t have to cook. Offer her a