Charmed and Dangerous by Toni McGee Causey Read Free Book Online Page A

edging onto the main street through town as the car’s engine surged and paused, surged and paused, surged and paused, all while billowing more black, acrid, eye-watering smoke than normal. The engine’s surging worsened as she sputtered through the red light and turned toward the bank, and all Bobbie Faye could think about was how on earth she was going to get the tiara to whoever the hell was holding Roy if she didn’t have a way to drive there? Lake Charles wasn’t exactly big on cabs, especially ones who’d drive her around for free.
    She couldn’t pull Nina off guard duty or else she wouldn’t have a single thing left to come home to, Lori Ann’s car had been repossessed last month given that she’d drunk up all the car payments, Ce Ce’s car was in the shop, and the last guy Bobbie Faye had dated had decided that life would be much calmer in war-torn Iraq and so had sold all his worldly goods, including a perfectly usable go-cart. Which, at this point, would have been a step up for Bobbie Faye, but noooooooo, he had a sudden desire to help people in a combat zone. He’d said he now understood their need, after having dated Bobbie Faye. His leaving the country couldn’t possibly have been because she’d come home early from work and found him at her own trailer, comatose next to a prepubescent hussy he’d picked up and, in a drunken stupor, brought to Bobbie Faye’s trailer instead of his own. She wondered if his hair had grown back in yet from where she’d shaved him bald in his sleep, or if he’d ever been able to remove the dye she’d used to paint “Little Dick” on his forehead.
    The car lurched toward the bank, clanging into the parking lot of the re-purposed former Texaco station. BobbieFaye gripped the steering wheel, swearing every curse word she knew under her breath and making up a few new ones as something loud popped under the hood and black smoke poured out in earnest, as if all the previous smoke had been amateur tryouts and this was now the pros.
    Then the car died. Deader’n hell.
    Four feet away from an actual parking spot, with not even the grace to coast the rest of the way in, and she was blocking the bank entrance. She put the car in neutral, got out, and pushed with every single cell she had to get the car into the spot, then saw too late that it was in crooked and blocked another spot. At that point, she kicked the door. Which fell off.
    “You goddamned
fucking
pile of crap!”
    There was an audible gasp behind her from the three nuns and four other customers clustered in front of the bank. Bobbie Faye straightened up, tugged at her tight SHUCK ME, SUCK ME T-shirt, which was riding up her ample boobs, grabbed her soggy purse, and joined the line forming at the bank entrance as if everything was perfectly normal. She pretended not to notice when everyone edged slightly away from her.
    Besides the three nuns, the other four customers were comprised of two geeky twenty-something boys spastically air drumming to music beating through their headphones, a weathered older man in a welder’s cap, and a skinny man hunched into a permanent question mark. She bit her lip to keep from trying to push her way past them to be the first in line; several more customers arrived and lined up loosely around her, everyone having that casual competitive air of wanting to be the first in line but not wanting to appear to be the kind of person who’d push a nun out of the way.

Three
    Warning: Bobbie Faye crossing
    —homemade sign placed by Bobbie Faye’s neighbors
    When the bank opened, the nuns were first inside; this being a heavily Catholic town, Bobbie Faye suspected the likelihood of lightning bolt revenge made everyone walk slowly behind them. This didn’t stop everyone from cutting in front of each other, putting Bobbie Faye farther back in line than she’d begun. On any normal day, she’d have drop-kicked anyone who was being an ass, but Roy had stressed
subtle
and so by God, she was