by Sable Sylvan
Little Red Hot Sauce
The Feminine Mesquite, Book 5
Sable Sylvan
www.sablesylvan.com
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Sable Sylvan
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Foreword
Dear readers,
You can buy all the hot sauces and sweet teas featured in this series online. You can find links to these items on www.shopsablesylvan.com . The hot sauces are by a company called Mo Hotta Mo Betta, fulfilled through Zazzle. The teas are fulfilled by a company called Adagio Teas through their website. All teas can be enjoyed hot or cold, with or without sweetener. To make a delicious iced sweet tea, make your tea hot, add as much sugar or sweetener as you want/can, and then, chill the tea in the fridge or with ice.
The Cinderella Cook-Off:
Alice and Herb’s story
Jalapeño ‘Secret Sauce’
Watermelon Sweet Tea (herbal, no caffeine)
Beauty And The BBQ:
Abigail and Clove’s story
Roasted habanero ‘Awesome Sauce’
Mint Julep Sweet Tea (chocolate mint green tea)
Spicy Beauty:
Addison and Sage’s story
Adobo chipotle ‘No Bullshizz Sauce’
Raspberry Sweet Tea (black tea)
The Matchstick Grill:
Cayenne and Basil’s story
Cayenne garlic ‘Fated Mate Sauce’
Peach Sweet Tea (black tea)
Little Red Hot Sauce:
Savina and Mace’s story
Savina habanero ‘Alpha Sauce’
Lemon Sweet Tea (black tea)
Yours truly,
Sable Sylvan
Prologue
Fourth of July
Savina ‘Sav’ Quincy looked around. This wasn’t the same backyard she’d been hanging out in last year. Last year, she’d come home from her summer job, some retail gig, and hung out in the backyard with her sisters until the stars came out, along with the mosquitos, and they’d gone inside the family’s house. The house had felt empty because their parents had left them the house when they’d retired to Florida, leaving the Quincy Sisters with their house and their old beat-up minivan.
The Quincy Sisters still had the house and the mini-van, but neither saw much use nowadays, although that’d change in the coming weeks. After all, there was a wedding coming up, with four Quincy brides marrying four Scoville grooms. All this had happened over the last year. Well, it had nearly been a year. Savina’s older sisters would all be getting married at the end of the summer in a group wedding. The wedding date was set for around the time that they’d met the Scoville Brothers in the first place.
It was such a weird story. The Quincy Sisters were of common stock, but of uncommon ambition. They had worked hard and put in the elbow grease ever since they were old enough to work, saving up for college. All four had gotten accepted to college, with Alice, the eldest sister, having graduated a little over a year ago. Abigail, the second eldest, had just graduated. Addison, the middle Quincy, would be graduating the next year from Bonimolean University, the prestigious shifter university in England, and Cayenne ‘Kai’ Quincy would be graduating the year after her, with Savina finally frikkin’ graduating a year after Cayenne. After all, Savina had only just finished up her freshman year. She still had three years left of schooling.
Alice and the other Quincy Sisters had met the Scoville Brothers at the reading of their paternal grandfather’s will. Grandpa Elijah, Elijah Quincy, had left Alice his company, The Quincy Hot Sauce Co. It was a hot sauce company he’d started after coming home from World War II, where he’d been captured by the Nazis and sent to a POW camp. In the camp, he’d met a young Norwegian nobleman who had run off to fight evil, like a knight of old or one of his Viking ancestors. That Norwegian’s name was Morten Scoville. He was a man with more than just a fortune to his name. He was a polar bear shifter, a man who could turn into a polar bear at will. That wasn’t much of an advantage when one was surrounded by Nazi wolves, bears, and others who could turn into animals at will, but it certainly leveled the playing field.
What the heck could a Texan who had never left his state, much less his country, before shipping off to Europe, and an old money polar bear shifter have in common? Well, they both liked the same things: spicy meat and spicier women. They traded recipes and tales that were spicy and delicious, and after the war, the two had lost contact…but Morten had kept tabs on Elijah. He’d learned that Elijah had started a hot sauce company and suspected that Elijah had stolen the recipes that Morten had given him during the war. Morten didn’t need the money from the company. After all, his family’s spice empire was worth billions. It was about the principle of the thing.
Morten sent his grandsons to Fallowedirt, Texas, to the reading of Elijah’s will, to have his grandsons confront the Quincy heir and retrieve ‘his’ recipes. Morten asserted that he had come up with the very recipes that Elijah used to make his sauces and demanded reparations. Of course, the billionaire alpha of the Scoville Polar Clan was in no need of the money. It was about the principle of the thing.
However, Morten hadn’t ended up with the recipes. He’d ended up with four curvy granddaughter-in-laws, as the eldest four Scoville Brothers all found their matches among the Quincy Sisters, matching up from oldest to youngest.
Alice had challenged Herb to a cook-off so that she could avoid going to court against him. After all, Herb was one of the Scoville heirs. He had billions at his disposal. She’d surely lose. Surprisingly, Herb accepted her challenge. They’d tied for first, so Herb had asked her on a date. He’d shown her a good time, but Alice had feelings for someone else, a bear shifter who she’d met one night at a New Year’s Eve masquerade party in New York City. She had been searching for him but had no clues to go off of. Herb had a mystery woman he was hunting, and all he had to go on was a ratty old sneaker that the curvy belle had worn to the ball, as her scent had been hidden by perfume and she’d used a fake name. It turned out that Alice and Herb had been searching for each other the whole time.
Herb proposed to Alice, but that wasn’t the end of the story. It was just the beginning of a series of fairy tale happily-ever-afters.
Herb had purchased an old mansion on the outskirts of town and renovated it, renaming it Mesquite Manor. Herb and Alice had invited everyone to the house for a housewarming party, and that’s where all eight of their siblings learned about their engagement…as well as some plans Herb and Alice had concocted on their own.
* * *
“And don’t forget our offer,” said Herbert. “The email we sent you before was serious. Elijah and Morten had one thing in common. They picked their eldest grandchildren to be in charge of the trusts for the younger siblings. That means that whether or not you get your shares of the Scov
ille or Quincy fortunes depends on following our pretty reasonable demands. We are not about to play games with anyone. At the same time, we want to ensure that there are fortunes for you to inherit, and give you the skills to manage your shares well. That’s why we’ve come up with a plan. We’ll pay off your entire college and your student loan debts…”
“…If you work for the hot sauce company while you are in college,” said Alice. “Just over breaks, of course. Your studies must come first.”
“There’s nobody we trust more with the future of this company than you lot,” said Herbert. “So don’t make us regret trusting you. After all…we are going to be a family.”
* * *
All the siblings would have to earn their part of their inheritances by working for Herb and Alice. There had been a squabble among the other siblings regarding the naming of the company, with the girls arguing it should be The Quincy-Scoville Hot Sauce Co., and the boys arguing it should be The Scoville-Quincy Hot Sauce Co. The sauce company was renamed ‘The Feminine Mesquite,’ but that’s not where Alice and Herb’s meddling ended.
* * *
“See, exactly, we can’t go a minute without fighting,” said Herbert. “That’s why…we’ve divided up the rooms ourselves.”
“We thought about putting Quincy girls in one section, Scoville polars in another,” said Alice. “But, one-half of the manor has larger rooms than the other, and we know that you would find reasons to fight over that.”
“That’s true,” admitted Basil.
“We realized that placing you all next to one another will hopefully ease the tension,” said Herbert. “That’s why we’re doing co-ed rooming arrangements, as the Americans do.”
“Excuse me?” said Mason. “You expect us to share rooms?”
“Nobody said anything about sharing rooms,” said Alice. “When we had the manor renovated, we pretty much gutted it and put it back together again. Now, each pair of rooms has two bedrooms that are the same size. Each pair is organized into a suite. Each suite has a pair of private bathrooms, with one shared room you are free to use for whatever you wish. Turn them into studies, libraries, walk in closets, it’s up to each of you…or rather, each pair of you.”
“That’s right,” said Herbert. “You’re all going to need to learn to work together. So, Alice and I, we’re going to be as hands off as we can possibly be. Come to us if there is a conflict you really can’t solve between yourselves, but otherwise…it’s time for everyone to get a grip. We want this hot sauce company to do well, and every cog in this machine must fit together, or else the entire operation will come to a grinding halt.”
“So how are we being paired off?” asked Cayenne. “Are we drawing straws?”
“We’re organizing you in pairs based on age,” said Alice. “The biggest rooms are going to the eldest. The youngest are getting the smallest rooms. That means it’s Abby and Clove, Addy and Sage, Kai and Basil, Savina and Mace. Your rooms have already been marked with your names on plaques. You’re welcome.”
* * *
That winter break, Abigail and Clove, the second eldest Quincy Sister and the future beta of the Scoville Clan, ended up rooming together. Abigail was home for the Christmas season, which she’d always spent with family, while Clove was looking to escape the hustle and bustle of Europe. Both were determined to work on their theses (as each was writing a senior thesis) in peace and quiet, but the last thing that they expected was that Abigail’s inner beauty would tame Clove’s inner beast. The two had turned out to be fated mates, the special soulmates that shifters had, and Clove had proposed to Abigail on Christmas Day. Of course, she’d accepted, and Alice had offered to share her wedding with Abigail.
Abigail wasn’t the only one who got a special Christmas gift. Herb had gifted Addison a semester at Bonimolean University, the university of her dreams, which meant she was off to England to spend a semester with Clove and the gamma of the Scoville Polars, Sage. Sage seemed to be a rock star bad boy, but it turned out that the only woman he wanted to make sweet music with was Addison. He’d known she was his fated mate from the start. His mate mark, the mark on a bear shifter’s chest that told them who they were meant to be with forever, said ‘Addison,’ for goodness sake. He’d taken things slow and played it cool to win his princess, before turning up the heat and awakening something that had been sleeping in his beauty, proposing to her after they’d gone to the Scoville Ball and finished their project on Pride and Prejudice.
Basil, the second youngest Scoville, hadn’t been at Bonimolean that semester. He’d been in Brazil, working on a special project, and came back to Texas that summer to work on setting up a restaurant for The Feminine Mesquite. Naturally, he was set up to work with Cayenne, the second youngest Quincy sister, a Southern belle who was no nonsense and knew the South and its people like the back of her hand. After all, she was pursuing a hospitality major with a focus in restaurant management and a minor in chemistry. The two had competed (well, Cayenne had tried to make it a competition) and nobody had won…until everyone won when the two finally learned to work together. They’d opened up a Brazilian-style steakhouse, with a Norwegian twist. They didn’t just have hot meat. They had hot meat swords, swords that were used to carry the meat in the Brazilian churrasco style, but the swords were wielded by waiters who were wearing little clothing…and what little clothing they wore matched the Viking longhouse decor of the restaurant, which served a mix of Brazilian, American, and Norwegian fusion cuisine. After having some celebration sex, they’d realized that they were fated mates, and Basil had proposed on the spot, which meant that they’d needed to host an engagement party for a formal presenting of her ring.
Basil gave Cayenne a ring, and Cayenne showed him a special tattoo she’d gotten to commemorate their union, as well as a painting of his grandmother, a woman who was very special to Basil. Savina didn’t know what the deal with that was, but she did know that all the Scovilles were moved…
…Including the one polar bear shifter she couldn’t frikkin stand.
Tall, toned, with blue eyes, what made Mace stand out even more than his currently lime green streaked hair was his brash attitude. He was the daredevil of the Scoville Brothers, the true bad boy. He had never given Savina the time of day, and the only thing that was worse than having to work with him at The Feminine Mesquite’s hot sauce shop was having to share a room with him.
The thing was, they weren’t actually sharing their shared room. All the other younger siblings were sharing rooms. Alice and Herb didn’t have a suite, as they had been together since the start of this crazy thing. Abigail had told Savina, in a drunken moment of weakness, that she used her shared room for amorous activities that required extra space. Addison and Sage used theirs for Sage’s music and Addy’s reading. Basil had set the room up as an art studio for Cayenne to help her relax, as her sister worked the hardest of all the Quincy Sisters and was learning to let herself slow down.
The room Mace and Savina shared was another thing entirely. Savina had arrived home before Mace and hadn’t stocked the room, but Mace flew in and started to put his things in the room without asking Savina. Savina could play that game, and with the help of Cayenne and a couple of her other sisters, she’d moved his items out of her room. Before, she would’ve been willing to share, but not now. She put her furnishings in the room, everything from her room but her bed, and by the end of the day, she’d found her items put back in her room, with Mace’s items back in his room.
The prank war had escalated. He’d replaced her hot sauce with a milder one. She had a private bottle of hot sauce she used that she kept in her area of the pantry. It was made by a competitor. Well, Mace had apparently bought a few dozen bottles of the sauce and some milder sauce that was the same color and nearly the same flavor. He’d slowly watered down her sauce with that sauce. Once Savina had started to drown her fries in a hot sauce that she previously only needed a few drops of, he had replaced the hot sauce with a super spicy ghost pe
pper sauce. When Savina next used the sauce, she was furious. Nobody wants to spend an afternoon chugging milk to make their tongue stop burning. The worst part of that was, while she was trying to get the taste of ghost peppers out of her mouth, Alice and Herb had dragged Mace into the kitchen and gave them both a scolding, taking away their driving privileges. Savina and Mace were going to have to carpool with the other siblings and could no longer use their own car to commute or run other errands.
Savina hadn’t come up with an idea for revenge yet. She could destroy his clothes, but that wasn’t clever. She could replace his apron with a smaller one, but that was harder to do than the hot sauce gag, and it wasn’t original or funny. She looked over Mace. He had to have a weakness.
Mace was standing by his brothers and talking while they roasted the meat, wearing a black shirt with a sports logo on it, jeans, and a black belt with silver spikes. He could turn into a polar bear. He was an heir to the Scoville fortune (even though he was the future clan omega). Was there anything he couldn’t solve with might or money?
Cayenne walked up to Basil and wrapped her arms around Basil. Savina got up to talk to her sister and congratulate her again about her engagement.
“Cayenne, you two are adorbs,” said Savina. “I know I’ve said it a million times, but it’s true.”
“Thanks, Sav, it means a lot,” said Cayenne.
“It means a lot to me, too,” said Basil. A spark came off of the grill pit, and Basil caught it with his fingers.
“Ouch,” said Cayenne. “You need a bandage?”
“Nah, but you should back up,” said Basil. “After all, you don’t want to have to go all the way to Dallas to get a weave if you burn off all your hair. You have such nice hair.”
