Twisty Tortoise Tussles by Ann Charles

Author:Ann Charles [Charles, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Jackrabbit Junction Mystery Series
Publisher: Ann Charles
Published: 2022-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

* * *

Friday, Feb 1st

Ronnie stood at Grady’s kitchen sink, staring blankly out the window into his backyard.

She wasn’t really seeing the large old barrel cactus that had been here since he and Elizabeth had bought the house, or the tall ocotillo reaching for the sky behind it, or the needle-covered cholla and prickly pear sharing the same small cacti garden. The flagstone walkway and thorny shrubs lining parts of it were a blur, too, same as the leafless desert willow back near the detached garage with last year’s dried bean pods still shivering in the morning breeze. The carved stone bench under the green limbs of the paloverde tree and the spinning kinetic metal wind wheels weren’t reeling her in either.

Nope.

Since she’d woken up this morning alone in Grady’s bed, her mind was locked onto one thing and one thing only—Lyle’s latest fuck-job of her life.

Because of her rotten choice when it came to picking a husband years and years ago, she was now a wanted woman.

Oh, the irony. For so long, back when Lyle would disappear for days on end, sometimes weeks, she longed for someone to want her. Really want her. Not for her ability to host a party for well-to-dos. Not for her knowledge of how to perfectly set a table. Not for her fake blond hair or her fake eyelashes. To want her, the real her.

Now she was wanted in all senses of the word. Ruby wanted her to help with bookkeeping. Butch wanted her to take on Kate’s old duties. Claire and Mac wanted her to continue working at The Shaft after they bought it. Grady wanted her in his bed every night. And all sorts of strangers wanted her dead—or at least close to it. Or whatever it would take to hurt Lyle for screwing them over. A toe. A pinky finger. An ear. Maybe even her whole head before it was all said and done.

The thought of what was waiting outside of these walls every day had her wanting to burrow under Grady’s bed, but she couldn’t keep living like this. Scurrying through her days and nights like a lizard running from one hiding spot to the next was no good in the long run. She was turning thirty-six in a few days. She needed to get her shit together, put her past behind her, and figure out what she wanted for the rest of her life. Or at least for the next few years.

Blinking away her worries and wonders, she finished her cup of coffee and rinsed the mug in the sink. On a high note, it turned out that the anonymous text she’d received while in the grocery store was from some poor sucker who was given a wrong number at a bar by a girl he thought he’d impressed on the dance floor. Grady told Ronnie last night that the guy had nearly swallowed his tongue when a sheriff from Arizona called back to ask what in the hell he meant with that text.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.