Rocky Start

Rocky Start

Author: Jennifer Crusie, Bob Mayer Listening Length: 11h 50m
Romance Read Online

Think of the movie RED. Retired covert operatives living in a small town in the Smoky Mountains. What could go wrong? From the bestselling authors of Agnes and the Hitman and the Liz Danger series. Rose Malone’s landlord and employer, Ozzie Oswald, just died, and now she has no idea if she has a job or if she and her ...

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Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

O n day three of what was shaping up to be the second worst week of my life, I was trying to glue a blank doll’s head (I’d stripped off all its paint with acetone) to a very old bottle of paregoric (a medicine made of alcohol, honey, and opium, which was sounding pretty good to me right then) when somebody rattled the front door to the secondhand shop where I worked. I thought the CLOSED sign on the front door pretty clearly communicated that we weren’t open, but this was Rocky Start. Not a lot of people obedient to signs here. I didn’t look up as I was focused on putting that head on that bottle. Something I could control.

I was standing behind the old marble-topped counter, trying to be Upbeat and Positive About Life, but it wasn’t working. I’d put Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” on the iPod because that always started the day right, but today . . . just no. So I’d switched over to Lenka’s “Trouble is a Friend” because that had an aura of plausibility. We were in big trouble, but maybe that would turn out to be a good thing . . .

No. No, it wouldn’t. My boss and landlord had died two days ago, my future was unknown which meant my daughter’s future was also unknown, and I just wasn’t in the mood to cheerfully sell junk.