BM Excerpt

Okay, so Carlotta Wren’s life hasn’t turned out as she’d planned. She didn’t plan for her parents to skip bail for a white collar crime, leaving her to raise her younger brother. She didn’t plan on having the silver spoon ripped out of her mouth and forgoing college to work retail. She didn’t plan on her blueblood fiancé dumping her like last year’s designer bag. And she didn’t plan for, ten years later, to still be single (with no prospects), working at Neiman Marcus, with no idea where her fugitive parents are. But she’s coping, sort of. Until…

…her former fiancé’s wife (a good customer) is murdered, fingering Carlotta.

Suddenly Carlotta realizes that she has to bag a murderer to keep her own well-dressed body from being next on the list!

    “Does this make my ass look big?”
    Carlotta Wren stood in the dressing room of Neiman Marcus in the Lenox Mall in Atlanta, Georgia, her arms full of designer bathing suits that Angela Ashford, one of her least favorite customers, wanted to try on. They weren’t even halfway through the selections and already Carlotta wanted to murder the woman.
    She dutifully glanced at Angela’s surgically sculpted glutes molded by a tiny patch of metallic blue fabric. “No, your, um, ass looks…great.”
    Angela tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and pouted at her rear reflection in the three-way mirror. “You think?”
    Carlotta’s mouth watered to say, “Way better than it looked in high school,” but bit her tongue. It was part of the game, after all—Angela played the role of poor little rich girl with a confidence problem, and Carlotta played the stroking, sympathetic friend. Both of them deserved an Oscar.
    Angela turned around and methodically rearranged her newly acquired breasts in the bikini top that barely covered her nipples. Then she slipped her narrow feet into the silver high-heeled sandals sitting nearby and performed a three-quarter turn to peruse her long, slender figure from all angles. Carlotta tried not to compare her own full curves to the woman’s lean lines and come up wanting. Ditto for Angela’s perfect, Clorox smile and her own gap-toothed grin.
    She was not jealous of Angela Ashford.
    “This suit is a definite maybe,” Angela announced.
    Carlotta managed not to roll her eyes—the sixth “definite maybe” so far. “I have to warn you that the trim on that suit won’t hold up to chlorine.”
    Angela made a face. “Good grief, I don’t actually swim in our new pool—I don’t even know how to swim. I just want to look amazing.”
    Carlotta bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Do you want to choose from the ones you’ve set aside so far, or do you want to try on the rest of these?”
    Angela looked irritated. “I’ll try on the rest.” Then she smiled, meanly. “And I’ll be needing several new spring outfits. With shoes, of course. Peter told me to treat myself to anything I wanted since he just got a huge bonus and our wedding anniversary is coming up. He’s so generous.”
    Carlotta busied herself removing the next bathing suit from its hanger, trying not to react. Peter, as in Angela’s husband, as in Carlotta’s former fiancé. Just like every time Angela came in for a shopping binge, Carlotta reminded herself that her relationship with Peter Ashford had ended over a decade ago. To be precise, one week after her father had skipped bail on his indictment for investment fraud and he and her mother had gone on the run. The local media had had a field day.

    Having been just a few weeks shy of eighteen, Carlotta wasn’t a child, but she’d led a rather charmed and sheltered life up to that point. Suddenly faced with raising her nine-year-old brother Wesley and with no extended family to rely upon, she had clung to her boyfriend Peter. Too tightly, apparently, because after the headlines had exploded, he had explained (over the telephone) that their lives had grown too far apart—he was in college at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and she still had to finish her last semester of high school in Atlanta. Translation: Your name is tainted and I don’t want to be associated with your family scandal.
    With maturity and hindsight, she had come to understand why Peter had bowed out when he did, but at the time, the rejection of the man she had loved for most of her teenage years, the man who had taken her virginity, had been akin to having her heart surgically removed.
    “I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable when I talk about Peter,” Angela said as she yanked the tie to the bikini top, baring her rigid boobs. She kicked the two hundred dollar scrap of Lycra across the floor of the dressing room.
    “N-no,” Carlotta said, scrambling to rescue her merchandise. She straightened, then handed Angela a one-piece suit and gave a little laugh. “Why should it?”
    Angela stepped out of the minuscule bikini bottoms and stood nude before Carlotta for a few seconds before stretching the next swimsuit over her tight bod.
    “Because, well, you know, the whole pretend engagement you two had when we were in high school,” Angela said, preening in the mirror.
    The Cartier engagement ring was proof that it had been more than a “pretend” engagement, but Carlotta wet her lips and forced a casual note into her voice. “That was a lifetime ago. We were…kids.”
    “That’s what he says,” Angela offered cheerfully. “And that if the two of you had actually married”—she laughed at the improbability—“that it never would have lasted.”
    Carlotta’s heart twisted, but she managed a smile. “Then everything worked out for the best, didn’t it?”
    In the mirror, Angela leveled her feline gaze on Carlotta. “I suppose so.”
    Carlotta steered the conversation back to clothes and, thankfully, Angela was distracted by the appearance of the “perfect” bikini (two of them) and the armfuls of designer dresses and pant suits that Carlotta pulled from every couture department. A phone call to the shoe department on the lower floor brought Michael Lane to the dressing room pushing a hand truck laden with colorful boxes of Pucci and Gucci, Don Ciccillo and Donald J. Pliner. “Here’s everything we have in size seven narrow.”
    “Thanks—you’re a dear.”
    He gave her a wry smile. “How are you holding up?”
    Carlotta scowled toward the closed door of the dressing room. “I’m ready to strangle her.”
    “Down, girl. Double A is one of your best customers.”
    Carlotta smirked at Michael’s use of her nickname for Angela. “I got an eyeful of her latest upgrade–let’s just say she’s no longer a double-A in the bra department.”
    He clucked. “Hey, what do you expect? The competition is tough in Angela Ashford’s social stratum.”
    In Angela Ashford’s social stratum. Michael didn’t realize that he was talking about an arena that Carlotta herself had been destined for prior to having her life jerked out from under her. Michael wasn’t a native of Atlanta, and she didn’t go out of her way to tell friends and coworkers her entire sordid family history. In fact, she usually lied. She’d gotten quite good at it….lying, pretending.
    “I suppose you’re right,” Carlotta conceded. “But, Christ, she always makes me feel like such a peon. And she’s in rare form today.”
    He looked sympathetic. “Just remember that commission is the best revenge.”
    Carlotta laughed ruefully and waved goodbye as she wheeled the shoes toward the dressing room. Angela Ashford could afford to shop at any boutique in Atlanta or, like her own mother used to do, call the store and have a personal shopper select items and bring them to her home for her approval. Or simply seek the assistance of another clerk at Neiman’s. But the woman seemed to take great pleasure in shopping under Carlotta’s care, which, Carlotta realized, was a thinly veiled excuse for Angela to flaunt her successful life with Peter. It stung, but in truth, Carlotta needed the commission to pay the seemingly unlimited number of bills that she and Wesley, now nineteen years old, generated.
    At the thought of her brother, a bittersweet pang struck her—Wesley had never fully recovered from their parents’ abandonment and had suffered more than his share of emotional problems. When he was younger, those problems had manifested into behavioral issues in school, exacerbated by the fact that his I.Q. was higher than that of most of his instructors, especially in math. Despite his intellect, Wesley had barely graduated high school last year, and now as a directionless adult, his problems manifested into compulsive behavior—more specifically, gambling.
    His affinity for poker had landed him in debt to unsavory characters up to his neck—and hers. A henchman for one of the loan sharks had come to see her at the department store a few months ago, threatening bodily harm to both of them if Wesley didn’t make a payment. Inadvertently, her brother always seemed to drag her into his messes, but every time she’d considered telling him that he was of age and to hit the road, she couldn’t. She couldn’t abandon him like her parents had done, yet the knot of worry in her chest never eased. She agonized over what trouble he might get into next, and how they might stay afloat.
    Carlotta sighed. One of the worst things about living paycheck to paycheck was imagining Angela Ashford having a one-hundred-dollar lunch with her friends—many of them girls Carlotta had gone to school with and had once considered her friends—saying, “That poor Carlotta Wren, still single and working retail, can you imagine?” But if it was the price she had to pay for a hefty commission, so be it. If Angela spent true to form, the commission on this sale alone would be enough to pay this month’s mortgage and electric bill.
    Or at least last month’s.
    Carlotta opened the door to the dressing room to find Angela sitting on a bench, half-naked, drinking from a silver flask. She quickly swallowed and wiped her mouth. “Just getting a headstart on my two-martini lunch.”
    Carlotta remained silent, but knew that anyone who packed their own booze had a problem. Her mother Valerie had kept a similar flask in her purse for whenever the urge struck for a “drinkie-poo.”
    “I brought shoes,” Carlotta said brightly, wheeling in the bounty.
    Angela pushed to her feet shakily enough to tell Carlotta that she’d taken more than one “drinkie-poo” in Carlotta’s absence, but apparently it had given the woman enough energy to embark upon another spending binge that included six outfits, eight pairs of shoes, including a pair of tall, exotic boots that Carlotta coveted, plus a rather astonishing array of risqué underwear (“Peter likes me in black”). Angela even ventured into the men’s department where she chose an exquisite cashmere jacket with a crest embroidered on the lapels—Peter’s favorite brand, Carlotta recalled fondly. And the charcoal gray would look great on Peter with his fair hair and dark skin. From the size, it appeared that he had filled out a little in the shoulders.
    She hadn’t seen him in ages, only once in the mall a couple of years ago; he hadn’t known she was standing a mere ten feet from him while he ordered a double-latte from a coffee shop. She had wanted to call out his name, to smile and say how nice to run into him, that she’d seen his and Angela’s wedding announcement and photo in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Living section three years, two months and thirteen days ago and congratulations. But in the end she hadn’t wanted to force an awkward exchange, to see the pity in his gorgeous cobalt blue eyes for the way her family and lifestyle had imploded, so she’d simply watched him tip the clerk and walk away, her body straining after him.
    Brushing her hand over the fine fabric of the jacket, Carlotta ignored the vibrating cell phone in her pocket and listened while Angela told her about the lavish parties that she and Peter threw at their palatial home located in an exclusive gated subdivision within the exclusive neighborhood of Buckhead. And how with the recent addition of a pool, spa, and al fresco kitchen, they were the envy of their neighbors. And how well Peter was doing in his job at Mashburn and Tully Investments—which had once been Mashburn, Tully, and Wren. The irony of Peter working for the same firm where her father had once been a partner seemed comically cruel.
    “Did I mention that Peter was given a huge bonus this quarter?” Angela slurred as Carlotta rang up the enormous sale.
    “Yes, I believe you did mention it,” Carlotta said smoothly. The encounter was nearly over—she could afford to be nice a little while longer, even if it killed her inside.
    Angela smirked. “Of course, Peter makes all of his money legally.”
    Carlotta clenched her jaw, but decided to allow the sly reference to her father’s crime slide.
    “Whatever happened to your parents?” Angela pressed, her eyes glinting with a gossipy light.
    Carlotta wet her lips. “I really don’t know.”
    “You mean you’ve never heard from them all this time?”
    “That’s right.”
    Angela made a pitying noise in her throat. “What kind of parents could just run off and leave their kids like that?”
    Carlotta had her opinion, but decided not to respond.
    “I feel so sorry for you, Carlotta. I mean, it must have been hard for you to go from having everything you wanted to having nothing.”
    From the triumphant look in Angela’s eyes, Carlotta could tell that by “everything,” the woman meant Peter. Carlotta wanted to say that it hadn’t been easy, especially since all of her so-called friends had seemingly vanished into thin air along with her parents. She and Angela hadn’t been best buddies, but they had run in the same crowd—the crowd that had turned on her by high school graduation. Angela had gone on to Vandy, which is where Carlotta assumed the woman had hooked up with Peter. Had “poor Carlotta” been a common topic of conversation?
    “I managed just fine,” she murmured.
    Angela leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper. “That’s why I always buy things from you, Carlotta, because I figure that you need the commission. It’s my little good deed.”
    The scent of gin burned Carlotta’s nose like the fiery mortification that bled through her chest. Years’ worth of pent up frustration suddenly flared to life. Her hands halted in the middle of ringing up the sale. “I don’t need your pity, Angela,” she said, her voice shaking. “Or your effing money.” She gave herself ten points for the verbal filter.
    Angela’s expression grew haughty. “You don’t have to be nasty—I’m only trying to help.”
    “You’re trying to make me feel like a charity case.” And dammit, she was succeeding.
    Angela swept her hand over the pile of merchandise that cost as much as Carlotta’s car. “So you’d be willing to turn your back on this sale because of your stupid pride?”
    Carlotta hesitated—she desperately needed the commission—and in her hesitation, knew Angela had won. As she looked into the woman’s slightly unfocused but gloating eyes, comebacks whirled through Carlotta’s mind, ranging from “screw you” to “you’re right” to “you got Peter, what else do you want from me?”
    She wanted to throw something, to hit something, to push the rewind button and be seventeen again, before her life had taken such a detour. To her horror, moisture gathered in her eyes. She blinked furiously and opened her mouth. “I—”
    Her phone vibrated against her side and she pounced on the diversion. “I’m sorry, Angela, I have to take this call.” But when she withdrew the phone and glanced at the caller ID, fear bolted through her chest. Atlanta Police Department.
    Her heart lodged in her throat as images of Wesley’s mangled body ran through her mind. He’d finally gotten himself killed on that damned motorcycle of his. She stabbed the incoming call button, missed, and tried again. “Hello?”
    “Hi, Sis,” Wesley said, his voice tentative. Like at age ten when he had put sugar in their neighbor’s gas tank “just to see if it really would freeze up the engine.”
    It had.
    Her initial flood of relief that he was alive was immediately overridden with a different kind of anxiety. “What’s wrong?”
    “Why do you assume something’s wrong?”
    She glanced up to find Angela listening intently. Carlotta turned her back and walked a few steps to be—hopefully—out of earshot. “Because, Wesley, the police department came up on the caller ID.”
    “Oh.”
    “So…what happened?”
    “Okay, don’t freak out, but I kind of got arrested.”
    Carlotta felt faint. “What? You kind of got arrested, or you did get arrested?”
    She could picture him on the other end of the line, stabbing at his glasses and weighing his answer. “I did get arrested.”
    She closed her eyes and mouthed a curse.
    “I heard that.”
    Okay, minus ten points for swearing at her kid brother. She counted to three, then exhaled. “What were you arrested for?”
    “Well, it’s kind of complicated. Maybe you’d better come down here.”
    “Where is ‘here’?”
    "The jail at City Hall East.”
    Christ, what did it say for her that she knew exactly where the jail was? She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a migraine coming on. “What am I supposed to do once I get there?”
    “Uh…ask for inmate Wren?”
    She clenched her jaw and disconnected the call, then gave Angela a flat smile. “I have to go. Someone else will be happy to ring up your purchases.”
    Angela’s face reddened. “But I don’t want someone else—I want you.”
    “Don’t worry, Angela. I’m sure you’ll still get a gold star for your little good deed.” She swept by the woman, and when she passed Michael on the escalator, told him that she had an emergency and would return later if she could and would he take care of you-know-who?
    Breaking into a jog, Carlotta retrieved her purse from her locker in the employee break room, fighting tears of frustration. What had Wesley gotten himself into now? Her feet moved automatically, carrying her to her car, which was a good thing because she couldn’t consciously remember where she’d parked.
    As she careened out of the mall parking lot, she imagined Wesley’s mangled body again—only this time it was by her own hands!

BODY MOVERS was the first book featured in the NBC local talk show Atlanta & Company Borders bookclub! If you live in the Atlanta area, you can still get autographed copies of BODY MOVERS at metro area stores!

Click here to watch Stephanie on the September 27 Atlanta & Company bookclub discussion segment where Stephanie shares research props and secrets about the second BODY MOVERS book! (Warning: there are some spoiler elements in the book discussion interview, so you might want to wait to watch it until after you've read the first BODY MOVERS book.)

“I thoroughly enjoyed Body Movers and will be recommending it to my customers.”
Linda Dewberry, Whodunit? Books, Olympia, WA

"4 stars! Here's to Carlotta's future misadventures lasting a long time."
Catherine Witmer, Romantic Times Bookclub

"This is a series the reader will want to jump on in the very beginning.
It's witty, sexy and hilariously funny. "
Dawn Myers, Writers Unlimited

"The exciting start of a new series"
Jennifer Bishop, Romance Reviews Today

"Body Movers is signature Stephanie Bond, with witty dialogue, brilliant characterization, and a wonderful well-plotted storyline."
Lettetia, Contemporary Romance Writers

"I devoured this book and loved it!"
Rachael Dimond, FreshFiction.com

The edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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