Read Plain Jane & The Hotshot for Free Online Page A

Shouldn’t take you more than thirty seconds.”
    Jo, Bonnie and Kayla were all cleaning fish on tree stumps, getting a quick lesson from Dottie. Kayla covered her eyes as Dottie scooped out the insides of her demonstration trout.
    â€œThat is so gross!” Kayla protested. “What’s next, we watch sausage being made?”
    Hazel, busy building a fire in the outside grill, laughed at Kayla’s squeamishness.
    â€œGood lands, city slicker! You think fish filet themselves? If you think this is gross, what if you were starving and had to butcher a cow?”
    â€œI’d buy a frozen entrée,” Kayla flung back, for by now she had evidently decided that Hazel was picking on her.
    â€œBetter get to it,” Stella urged Kayla. “You want our guests to go hungry? Won’t be long, there’ll be a dozen hungry firefighters descending on this place.”
    â€œYes,” Bonnie chimed in, “I’ll bet their ‘appetites’ are strong, all right.”
    â€œAll you youngsters be careful around those guys,” Hazel warned. “They’re fine young men, I don’t doubt, but they all suffer from the Hawaiian Disease.”
    Jo frowned. “What’s Hawaiian Disease?”
    â€œLackanooky,” Hazel replied, deadpan.
    Young and old, Kayla included, all six women burst out laughing.
    For a few moments, as they shared the simple pleasure of a silly joke, Jo again felt buoyed. Her misgivings about coming to the Bitterroot country receded, and she was glad she had accepted Hazel’s invitation.
    True, it wasn’t even four in the afternoon, and she felt bone-weary from their hike. However, it was a good, satisfying kind of weary. Tonight she would enjoy the deep sleep that exertion demanded. It was nice to fall asleep quickly without memories of Ned Wilson playing over and over in her mind like a videotape she couldn’t turn off.
    â€œSeriously,” Hazel qualified, crumbling bark to kindle her fire, “we dames of the ancient regime don’t mind providing you hot little numbers withsome male recreation. Not to be confused with pro- creation.”
    â€œBesides,” Dottie put in, “we like ogling the hunks, too. Old women still think like young ones.”
    â€œBut this is not a cruise,” Hazel warned. “It’s the Mountain Gals Rendezvous. Mainly you came up here to work on your confidence, not to expand your sex life.”
    Expand, Jo thought wryly. That implies I have one in the first place. Right now my cup runneth under.
    Despite her motherly warning, however, Hazel aimed a sly glance at Jo—or so it appeared to Jo.
    â€œOn the other hand,” Hazel tacked on, “ romance can bloom anywhere, even in the wild. In that case, go with the flow.”
    If she thinks Nick Kramer cares about romance, Jo thought, then Hazel definitely had a blind spot where male motives were involved. Maybe because the widow never got back into the romance game after her husband was killed in a car accident.
    Perhaps Hazel had simply forgotten, or never really learned, about predatory men like Ned Wilson. Nick Kramer, too, had “babe bagger” stamped all over his handsome, smoldering features. And she had no plans to end up as one more trophy on his crowded shelf.
    Jo had no problem with men exuding confidence, even a little aggression at times. But Nick’s manner struck her as threatening. Maybe guys who put out fires for a living sometimes believed they were therefore experts at starting them, too. No doubt he’d had plenty of practice at kindling heat.
    For a moment, without her conscious permission, the screen of her mind flashed torrid images of Nick and her, and heat stirred in her loins.
    â€œâ€¦you don’t cook it in the open flames,” Hazel was explaining when Jo refocussed. “No flames, you bake it on the coals, wrapped in a layer of green leaves.”
    â€œSqueeze some wild onion