Kill the Competition

by Stephanie Bond

Overview

A frothy, funny page-turner!

"Stephanie Bond is in her usual rare form, and that form is utterly delightful. KILL THE COMPETITION is an excellent, fast-paced, sexy story. -AOL Romance Fiction Forum

There's only one sure way to get to the top: Kill the competition.

Four women who carpool to their jobs in midtown Atlanta learn that competition can be murder, y'all!

"With a fast pace that moves the story along and smart snappy dialog between the characters, Ms Bond has penned another fascinating read that will leave her readers wanting more from this talented and imaginative author." -A Romance Review

"Ms. Bond's talent for creating characters is superb, and you feel like you know them personally. Her narrative is so descriptive that I smelled the exhaust fumes along the Georgia 400 and I-85 to downtown Atlanta." -AOL Romance Fiction Forum

"Whatever book you want, you will probably find it in KILL THE COMPETITION. Laughter, suspense, passion, and female bonding all combine in this realistically complex and sometimes whacky book. Ms. Bond has created magic, and she pulls more than one rabbit out of the hat to surprise her readers." -Academic Planet

"DO read this novel." -Publishers Weekly

Want to kill a few hours with a fun book? Read KILL THE COMPETITION!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989912730
Publisher:	Stephanie Bond, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/15/2014
Series:	A Humorous Romantic Mystery
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Bond was five years deep into a corporate career in computer programming and pursuing an MBA at night when an instructor remarked she had a flair for writing and suggested she submit material to academic journals. But Stephanie was more interested in writing fiction-more specifically, romance and mystery novels. After writing in her spare time for two years, she sold her first manuscript, a romantic comedy, to Harlequin Books. After selling ten additional projects to two publishers, she left her corporate job to write fiction full-time. To-date, Stephanie has more than sixty published novels to her name, including the popular BODY MOVERS humorous mystery series. For more information, visit www.stephaniebond.com.

Read an Excerpt

Kill the Competition

Chapter One

Belinda Hennessey opened the shower door and leaned out, hair dripping, her soapy ear piqued for the voice of the predominant man in her life -- although granted, the fact that she'd never even met the guy was a tad on the pathetic side.

From the clock radio on the crowded vanity, a sexy, Southern-bred accent reeled into the room over the whir of helicopter blades. "Traffic is jammin' up on I-85 south-bound below the I-285 junction due to a three-car accident in the rightmost lane. Southbound Peachtree Industrial and Buford Highway are feelin' the effect, so my advice is to hop over to Georgia 400 while it's still a speed limit ride, which won't be for long." He whistled low. "If you're comin' into Atlanta from the northeast this mornin', I hope you're not runnin' late. I'm Talkin' Tom Trainer for the MIXX 100 FM traffic report."

Oh, that voice. Belinda shivered, then glanced at the time and swore softly. She yanked a towel around her, made wet tracks to the bedroom, and let the ho-hum carpet soak up most of the water dripping down her legs. With one hand she ran the towel over the rest of her while flipping through hangers in her closet. Her shoulder muscles still twinged from an "iron arms" session in the gym -- a degrading experience she had allowed herself to be talked into in lieu of lunch a couple of days ago. According to a fitness report on the radio, now that she had entered her thirties, she was losing muscle mass at an alarming rate.

Yes indeed, it was a fine time to be single again.

When her fingers touched a knee-length gray jersey dress, she pulled out the garment and tossed it onto the unmade bed. An indignant yowl sounded from beneath the leopard print comforter, and Downey's black head appeared.

"Sorry," Belinda offered. "I'm running late."

Downey blinked. The feline's morning disposition reminded her of the man who'd given her the cat, her ex, Vince Whittaker. She hesitated to refer to Vince as her ex-husband, since their marriage had lasted a mere six hours. Downey was the best thing to come out of that train wreck, despite her current slit-eyed disdain.

"I know -- I shouldn't be late on my first day driving the car pool."

The shower was her downfall. This town house was the first place she'd ever lived in that had an adequate hot water heater, so she leaned under the spray every morning until her skin was just short of a good scald. The indulgence was heavenly, but the trade-off was hell.

With the agility of a hurdler, she leapt into underwear, panty hose, dress, jacket, and pumps, then gave her unremarkable auburn hair a one-minute blast from a blow dryer. A touch of translucent powder, mascara, and lip-stick would have to pass for makeup; her cheeks were still pink enough from the shower to skip the blush. There wasn't time to make the bed, although she knew she'd be plagued with thoughts of dropping dead before the day ended and her mother's tsk, tsk when her parents came to gather her personal effects. "I knew this move to Atlanta so soon after the you-know-what was too much for her, Franklin." (Her mother refused to make direct references to the reneged wedding.) "Look, she didn't even make her bed -- I heard on the Today show that untidiness is a sure sign of depression."

Little did her mother know, she didn't have time to indulge in a good cathartic bout of depression. Her new job was consuming every waking hour, and for that, she was eternally grateful ... because the urge to wallow was so close to the surface. Especially today. Since opening her eyes to stare at the white fluted globe covering the light-bulb in her bedroom ceiling (over the past two months she'd grown to hate that globe), she hadn't been able to shake the sense of impending doom. The last time she'd felt this out of sorts had been on her wedding day.

Yilk.

She dropped an earring twice, poked it in as she jogged down the stairs to the foyer, then dashed into the kitchen to grab an instant breakfast drink from the fridge. Her briefcase sat open on the table, surrounded by accounting spreadsheets. She shoved the papers inside and slammed down the lid, catching her thumb and bruising the nail.

Gritting back a foul word, she checked Downey's water, knuckled the cat's regal pouting head, and managed to slide behind the wheel of her clover green Honda Civic just after 6:30 A.M., only five minutes late. But getting started a measly five minutes late in the Atlanta commute could mean the difference between arriving in time to prepare for her 8:30 A.M. meeting, and tearing into the meeting already in progress with murmured apologies to her scowling boss, Margo. And "tardy" wasn't the opinion she wanted the woman to take into her first performance evaluation, which was mere days away. She'd worked long hours for the Archer Furniture Company in the hopes of getting a raise that would put her on the same earning level of her previous financial position in Cincinnati.

She thought of the sliding balance in her savings account and sighed. Everything in Atlanta was more expensive than it was in Cincinnati. Carpooling was only one of the cost-saving measures she'd adopted since her impromptu move. If she could've gotten a refund on a gently worn wedding gown, she would own a couch ...

Kill the Competition. Copyright © by Stephanie Bond. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.