Читать онлайн «Stella, Get Your Man»
Автор Bartholomew Nancy
“A clever, outrageously funny caper. ”
—New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron on Stella, Get Your Gun
“I think we could’ve planned this one better. ”
Jake sighed. “Just like a woman. Always got 20/20 hindsight. ”
“This is not about 20/20 hindsight,” I said. “It’s about you letting the damned gate swing shut because you were in too much of a hurry to check behind yourself. ”
“It was wide open,” Jake protested. “We disabled it. ”
“Well, it’s shut now,” I said. “Hold on. ” I punched the accelerator.
“Stella, no!” Jake yelled. “Don’t hurt my truck!”
I heard gunfire behind us and mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor. “Brace yourself!”
Stella, Get Your Man
Nancy Bartholomew
NANCY BARTHOLOMEW
didn’t seem like the Bombshell type at first. Sure, she grew up in Philadelphia, but she was a gentle minister’s daughter. Sometimes, though, true wildness simmers just below the surface. Nancy started singing country music in biker bars before she graduated from high school. And yes, Dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl! She graduated from college with a degree in psychology and promptly moved into the inner city, where she found work dragging addicted inner-city teenagers into drug and alcohol rehabilitation. She then moved south to Atlanta and worked as the director of a substance abuse treatment program for court-ordered offenders.
When the criminal life became less of a challenge, Nancy turned to the final frontier—parenthood. This drove her to writing. Nancy lives in North Carolina, rides with the police on a regular basis, raises two hooligan teenage boys and tries to keep up with her writing, her psychotherapy practice and her garden. She hopes you’ll love her third “child,” Stella Valocchi, and thanks you from the bottom of her heart for reading this book!
For Martha,
who taught Stella how to be a true Bombshell!
Contents
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Chapter 1
It was 3:00 a. m. and freezing. I was lying next to my partner, Jake, belly deep in pig shit and trying to remind myself that repo is an art form. A good repossession requires creativity and ingenuity. Repo, like art, is not always comfortable or warm. It is messy. Artists are, by their very nature, required to suffer. I took a deep whiff of Mama Pig and knew I was truly suffering. But it wasn’t the agony that bothered me really, it was my karma. This job could ruin my karma for all time. You see, we were robbing Santa Claus.
Jake hates it when I say that, but it’s true. Okay, so it’s not exactly true, but try to tell that to any good Italian-American in Glenn Ford and see where it gets you. We were huddled up inside Santa’s pigpen, waiting for our Golden Moment, the time when the coast was clear and Jake could bring the tow truck up the driveway.
