Mom?”
Mom nodded and sniffled at the same time. “I’m just so happy for you, honey. I really am.”
Pop shrugged like he was embarrassed by all the female emotion taking place in his family room while Frank Jr. immediately saw the upside. “Tell Sam if he’s ever in the market for another car, I’ll be happy to give him the family discount.”
Annie’s cell phone pinged. It was a text from Sam.
Pick me up at the airport?
You bet, Cowboy.
So how’d you like tonight’s show?
She smiled as she punched in the letters.
Best. Dramatic. Moment. Ever.
I hope you enjoyed Sam and Annie’s story as much I enjoyed writing it! Undercover Bachelor is the first book in a new romantic comedy series, Undercover Matchmakers. Read on for a sneak peek at Chapter one of FLIRTING FOR AMATEURS, a full length novel and the next book in the series!
FLIRTING FOR AMATEURS
CHAPTER ONE
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by…
Kate Giles-Armitage looked at the flat tire in disgust. Here she was on a Wednesday night in north Florida, lost on a deserted road that could have been the backdrop to a Stephen King novel. If she wasn’t mauled by gators or lured into the surrounding woods by a sadistic looking clown, she was going to be blinded by all the frickin’ love bugs swirling in the air.
She wasn’t sure who she should blame for her current predicament: Robert Frost, Google Maps, or her seemingly never-ending need for caffeine.
Lured by a Starbucks coffee shop, a bursting bladder, and the poetic notion that the two-lane road would be a charming alternative to a hectic highway, she’d gotten of the I-95 Interstate one exit short of her destination. She’d caffeinated, peed, and rerouted her GPS, giving her the illusion that she could make it the rest of the way to Old Explorer’s Bay by nightfall. But if the past year had taught her anything, it was that she could handle this. A flat tire in the middle of nowhere? Piece of cake. That’s what Triple A was for.
She pulled her cell phone from her shorts pocket and dialed for roadside service, but the call instantly dropped. She dialed again. Same result. She shook her phone, not sure what that would do, but it made her feel better, even if just for a few seconds. Fantastic. No cell phone service.
It wasn’t enough that the humidity was hovering at ninety percent, or that Florida’s bi-yearly scourge—the dreaded love bug—was defying science and hanging on extra-long this season, now she had to change her own flat tire.
She swatted a couple of the bugs out of her hair. “Get a room, why don’t you?” she shouted at the amorous little pests.
As if mocking her, two more pairs of the tiny nymphos, entwined in perpetual coitus, flew past her nose. Yeah, yeah. The circle of life and all that jazz. The worst part was that those bugs were getting more nooky than Kate had had in the past year.
She took a deep breath. Okay. She could do this. Neil Giles-Armitage hadn’t been much of a father, but he’d made sure his only daughter could do three things: make a perfectly dry martini, understand the SMP 500, and change a flat tire.
The martini was the easiest of the three. Every night for the five years she’d been married she’d placed one in her husband’s hand as he’d walked through the front door upon coming home from work. Timothy Barrington, III, had liked his martini the same way he’d ended their marriage. Shaken, not stirred. The only one who’d been shaken, however, was her. He’d come out the other side of divorce court with every hair perfectly in place.
Reading the SMP 500 was a little harder but something she’d actually enjoyed—until she found out her parents had drained her trust fund. After that, why bother checking to see how much money she didn’t have anymore?
As for the flat tire, she’d changed one once, on her sixteenth birthday. It was the only stipulation her father had laid down before buying her the BMW.
“If you can’t change a tire you have no business driving a car, Princess.” Then he’d winked and added, “I should probably make you learn to change the oil too.”
Her mother had been horrified. “But, Neil, she’ll ruin her manicure!”
Being able to change a flat tire seemed like a good life skill, so Kate had accepted the challenge. It had taken her two hours, but she’d done it. But that