It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good to the Last Death #1)(9)

“You’re disgusting,” Heather informed Jennifer as she looked on in horrified amazement.

“Thank you,” Jennifer replied with a smirk and a small curtsy. “But back to Daisy…”

Damn. I was hoping to get away without any more character assessments or advice.

“You just need to put yourself back out there and maybe date a guy with tattoos,” Jennifer suggested as she took a sip of her drink and gagged.

Pride made her drink the cup of caffeinated sugar. I laughed as I watched her power it down.

“I’ll take that under consideration,” I promised as I headed for the door.

Maybe taking a week away from my well-meaning coworkers would be a good thing.

Or maybe not.

I’d see them tonight at my birthday dinner. My birthday. My rules.

No discussing Daisy’s love life.

Good luck to me.





Chapter Three





It was too damn big. It was never going to fit. I bit down on my bottom lip and glared at the problem. The area was tight and the product was large. Would it be better to just shove it in or would easing it in work better? The last thing I needed was to tear it. That would make a holy mess and the repercussions could be painful.

I broke out in a sweat wanting to get the damn deed done before I got caught in the office when I was supposed to have gone home.

Damndamndamn.

Why in the world had I thought buying a ten-pound bag of coffee and a monster-sized box of filters was a good idea? In my defense, they were on sale and it would save the other gals from having to go to the Piggly Wiggly this week.

Unfortunately, I’d gotten stuck in Candy Vargo’s checkout line. She talked about her hammertoe in great detail for ten minutes before she rang me up. I was ready to take a hammer to my own head by the time I got out of there. While my small, beautiful Georgia town had its advantages, it also had its disadvantages… like Candy Vargo and her hammertoe and her bunions and her dental abscess and her earwax build up. Candy’s list was unending and unappetizing.

Whatever. I was back at work and had a new issue. There was no room to store the supersized stuff. Hell with it. Maybe I’d just leave it on the counter and call it a day. I was out of here.

“Coffee and filters delivered,” I announced to the empty breakroom. “Would have loved to have shoved them up your ass, Clarissa, but that wouldn’t be ladylike.”

I froze as the feeling of nervous mice skittering up my spine seized me. Gripping the edge of the worn Formica counter, I took a deep breath so I didn’t have a panic attack or scream. Had the dead idiots followed me back from the Piggly Wiggly? I knew the day was coming when the semi-transparent weirdos would join me at the office, but I was hoping it would be in the future—the far-off future, as in never.

But my ghosts never snuck up on me. So far, they really weren’t scary at all—just kind of hopeless and sad. Of course, I could simply turn around and figure out what made me feel like I was about to be pushing up daisies, so to speak, but where would the fun in that be? If it was an evil ghost wielding a machete with my name on it, I’d rather not know. I’d treat this the same way I treated scary situations as a child. If I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. Of course, that never worked, but the idea was creative.

Wait. Crap. Was Clarissa standing behind me? Pretty sure I just announced that I wanted to shove coffee supplies up her ass. When would I learn to stop talking to myself out loud? Putting my foot in my mouth and pulling it out of my butt was becoming a specialty of mine.

The breakroom shrunk to the size small enough for a flea, or at least that’s what it felt like. Fine. If my time was up, I wasn’t going to be a weenie about it. I was going to turn around and smackdown on the dead person for all I was worth. Letting my self-defense classes from the Y go unused would be a real waste in a life-or-death situation.

Of course, if it was Clarissa, I’d apologize. It would kill me deader than the freaks at my house, but my income was necessary.

Pivoting around and preparing for the worst, my eyes grew wide and I forgot how to breathe. It wasn’t my deceased buddies at all and it wasn’t my vicious supervisor. It was a man, and he was probably far more dangerous than the army of dead who’d taken a liking to me.

Why? No clue. I had no plans to stay and find out.

He walked farther into the break room and stood next to the coffee maker with an empty cup in his hand. He stared at me with as much surprise as I stared at him. His eyes immediately narrowed and he watched me as I debated my next move. The man had to be the new pretty-boy lawyer. His looks had not been exaggerated—at all.

He was the ridiculous kind of gorgeous—gray-blue eyes, messy blond hair and a rock-hard, muscular body that was evident even under his expensive suit. To me, he looked more like a surfer than a lawyer, but what did I know? His mouth was just stupid—full lips and even white teeth. And his eyelashes belonged on a damn girl. People that pretty could not be trusted. Add his profession to the equation and he was a catastrophe on two legs.

Breathe. It was simply a low-life lawyer who looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of GQ magazine. He wasn’t armed as far as I could tell. Even if he was, he certainly wasn’t going to kill me in the break room of the law firm that had just hired him.

I’d never laid eyes on him in my life, but I would swear I knew him. My insides clenched as I stared. I was torn between the desire to touch his face or run like the devil was on my heels. Running would have been smarter, but hindsight is twenty-twenty while real life is extremely near-sighted. In my case, probably blind.