I Want Candy Read Online Free PDF

attention to the thread of the story, but he thought it had something to do with a real estate open house gone horribly wrong. Candy and Cheri had left Bigler after high school and never looked back. They went to college, started careers, and eventually made it big in the Florida real estate bubble. They lost it all in the crash, and both had come crawling back home, Cheri first, and a few weeks later, Candy.
    From what Turner could tell, Cheri was well on her way to rebuilding her life—she’d taken over the reins of the Bugle when her grandfather retired, then got engaged to J.J. For Candy, however, the transition hadn’t been so smooth. In fact, it seemed she was barely keeping it together.
    But she could laugh at herself, and her lightheartedness was contagious. Turner found himself smiling as they wrapped up their story.
    “And everything was made worse by how flippin’ hot it was that day,” Cheri said. “Do you remember? Without the air-conditioning, it had to have been over a hundred and ten in that house.”
    “Oh, damn, at least!” Candy said. “I swear I was so hot I could’ve grilled a panini between my thighs, right there in the master suite.”
    The women busted out into guffaws, and J.J. chimed in. Turner laughed, too, but in the back of his mind all he could think was that he was damn jealous of that sandwich. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d fantasized about the friendly confines between those long and luscious thighs, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
    As subtly as he could, Turner spent a moment simply appreciating everything about Candy Carmichael. She glowed in the firelight, her skin golden, her blue eyes flashing as she laughed, all that thick blond hair curled tighter by the humidity, those gorgeous legs crossed at the knee. She was at least five foot ten. He’d heard her described as “statuesque” over the years, but he’d always thought that word suited a woman with sharper edges, the kind of woman who fell just short of being flat-out feminine. Okay, so she was tall, but Turner always thought Candy was too soft, too curvy, too pretty for a word like that.
    He’d always seen her as juicy. Ripe. A succulent blond sex bomb.
    Turner shook his head at his own idiocy, damn glad Reggie wasn’t there to witness his drooling over Candy Carmichael, all these years down the line. After the fiasco of his junior year in high school, his big brother hadn’t hesitated to set Turner straight. He’d taken Turner outside to the backyard, pointed for him to sit on the fence rail, and said simply, “Let it go, little bro. That girl’s daddy would skin your black ass just as soon as he’d give you the time of day. Ain’t no tail worth that kind of grief.”
    Neither of them had to point out the irony of Reggie’s advice. Their own parents hadn’t taken an easy road—his mother was black and their daddy white—but the boys learned early that in backwoods North Carolina, the rules got a whole lot stickier the other way around.
    Things were different now, of course. The country had a biracial president. Turner and Candy were adults, not kids. And that bastard Jonesy Carmichael had died many years before, taking his bigoted ways with him to the grave.
    But, Turner wondered, were things different enough ? This was still the western boonies of North Carolina, after all, and as the county’s first black sheriff, he knew he had no room for error. His only option was to play everything perfectly straight, all day, every day. Even if he were ready for a woman in his life, Candy Carmichael wouldn’t be the smartest choice he could make. She would only bring complications. Trouble.
    Suddenly, she turned his way and her smile softened. She must have felt his gaze on her body, because he didn’t miss the flash of embarrassment in her pretty blue eyes. J.J. had been right—this was going to be awkward. Unless Turner addressed the situation head-on and talked to Candy about that