eBook
Overview
The fourth fun installment in the Debutante Dropout series finds ex-debutante Andy Kendricks following a cold lead into a hot Dallas strip club.
Renegade rich girl Andy Kendricks isn't the belle of any Dallas ball—and that's just the way the debutante dropout likes it! She's got a good life and a great man: her defense attorney boyfriend, Brian Malone. Brian's such a straight arrow that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a close friend's bachelor party at a sleazy local "gentlemen's club."
So why is the groom-to-be saying that Brian left the bacchanal arm-in-arm with the hottest body in the Lone Star State? And what was that hot body doing stone-cold dead in the trunk of Brian's car? And where is Brian, anyway? The cops are looking for Andy's allegedly unfaithful/possibly homicidal beau, who hasn't been seen since the party. But Andy can't believe her upstanding lover is a murdering fool, and she's determined to prove it—though she may end up with a lot more broken than just her heart.
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062319890 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/21/2014 |
| Series: | Debutante Dropout Series , #4 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 437,659 |
| File size: | 541 KB |
About the Author
Susan McBride is the USA Today bestselling author of Blue Blood and the Debutante Dropout Mysteries that include The Good Girl's Guide to Murder, The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club, Night of the Living Deb, Too Pretty to Die, and Say Yes to the Death. She also writes the bestselling River Road Mysteries and has penned three women’s fiction titles: The Truth About Love and Lightning, Little Black Dress, and The Cougar Club. She chronicled her bout with breast cancer in the short memoir, In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After Forty. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughter.
Read an Excerpt
Night of the Living Deb
A Debutante Dropout MysteryBy Susan McBride
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2007 Susan McBrideAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060845551
Chapter One
"Lordy, Lordy, come to mama, sweet cheeks! Rub a little sweat on me! Shake that bonbon till you break it!"
I cringed at the screaming woman who stood but a foot to my right inside the packed hotel ballroom. Colored spotlights danced across the faces fixed ahead at the stage a dozen rows in front of me, where well-oiled male dancers gyrated and ripped off what little clothing they had on to start with. It was the first time I'd ever seen men in uniform with tear-away pants and jackets. Did any branch of the military actually wear G-strings? It was certainly one way to inspire shock and awe.
"Hey, sweet meat, over here! Gimme some lovin'!"
For Pete's sake.
The woman howled like a twelve-year-old at a Backstreet Boys concert, and she was old enough to be somebody's mother. No, more like somebody's grandmother, I decided, taking in the white hair upswept in the bouffant 'do and the cavernous lines that pleated her face (not to mention the Stride Rite tennis shoes).
I thought of my own mother, the ultradignified Cissy Blevins Kendricks, society maven extraordinaire, and knew she'd rather be caught dead than attend a Chippendales' show, waving dollar bills in the air to entice scantily clad male strippers over for a quick round of dirty dancing.
Though I'd pay through the nose to seesomething like that.
Heck, I'd kill to see it.
Since I, Andrea Blevins Kendricks, fruit of said dignified mother's loins, stood amongst the crazed crowd viewing the, um, scenery, I guess that made me something less than stand-up. Though I was here under duress, let me make that very clear.
As Enrique Iglesias crooned, "Let me be your hero, bay-bee," the assorted buffed bods trickled from the stage and into the throngs of berserk females, pausing only to bump and grind for tips.
"Bring it home to mama, sweet cheeks!" the liquored-up woman beside me hollered louder than Minnie Pearl yodeling "Howww-deeee!" at the Grand Ol' Opry.
I wanted to tell her to give it a rest.
But it was too late.
Sweet Cheeks was heading our way.
The sight put dear old Granny in a tizzy, and she gasped, "Oh, dear Lord, oh, dear, Lord," again and again, as if a witness to the Second Coming.
I considered sticking my fingers in my ears, until I felt a nudge, as the blonde on my left leaned over to yell, "Gird your loins, Chippie Virgin, 'cuz this one's on me."
If I hadn't already been gritting my teeth--I was dooming myself to porcelain veneers someday, wasn't I?--I would've started then.
"Thanks, but no thanks, Allie," I got out, loud enough to be heard above the music, only Allie wasn't paying the least attention. "Are you listening to me?" I tried again, but the witch (with a capital B) in the size two Seven jeans merely raised her arm higher and wagged more bills than poor old Grandma was offering.
Damn her for being so aggressive.
She was bound and determined to embarrass me.
I sunk down into the metal folding chair, hoping I'd disappear and wishing I'd refused Brian's suggestion that I go out with Allie tonight, help Allie show Eleanor--his friend Matty's fiancée--a fun night on the town, because Eleanor had only just moved to Dallas from Pittsburgh and didn't know anybody.
Well, anyone except Allie, apparently, who happened to be Brian's colleague at Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt (aka ARGH), as well as his ex-girlfriend.
Not a combination I liked any better than pickles and peanut butter.
And it made me just about as nauseous.
Like a numskull, I'd let him talk me into it, mainly because Brian was out on the town himself, at a strip club "celebrating" with Matty.
What better way to even the score while he was ogling big-breasted strippers than by ogling, well, big-breasted strippers? 'Cuz these Chippies had pecs the size of Nebraska. Not to mention other bulging parts.
"Hey, Captain G-string, over here!" Allie yelled, even getting out an ear-splitting whistle, and I shrunk lower in my seat, shooting my deadliest evil-eyed stare at Blondie and her cohort, mousy little Eleanor from Pittsburgh, who had gotten into the act, standing on her chair and gesturing like an abandoned sailor on a raft, flagging down a passing ship.
Damn them both.
Aw, hell.
I saw the rows of women parting faster than Sharon Stone's knees in Basic Instinct, and suddenly there he was: a spray-tanned and oiled hunk with black hair to his shoulders, wearing what could only be described as a black satin slingshot.
As if in slow-mo, I watched Allie slip a couple bucks into the strap of his thong, her mouth forming the words, Give it to her good.
Gulp.
Before I'd blinked, the buffed body loomed over me, dark eyes seeking mine, a slim white smile spreading across the chiseled face, and I morphed into a dishrag.
This was definitely not what I'd signed on for.
I tried to stand up, but his hand landed firmly on my breastbone and eased me back down against the metal of the chair, as Enrique's warbly croon segued into a vintage ditty by the Gap Band, "Let's whip it, baby, let's whip it right, let's whip it baby, whip it all night."
Subtle.
He squatted in front of me, grabbed my legs and threw them across his shoulders, so that I straddled him. A move that surely would be frowned upon by Miss Manners, since we hadn't even been properly introduced.
"Grab my head," he demanded in Brooklynese that didn't go at all with his striking Asian features.
Instead of issuing a protest, as a good twenty-first-century feminist would, I did as he asked, not sure of any way out of this except through it. And maybe I'd have a good story to tell my grandchildren someday besides. You want to hear about the night your meemaw had a fling with a Chippendales' dancer?
Continues...
Excerpted from Night of the Living Deb by Susan McBride Copyright © 2007 by Susan McBride. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
What People are Saying About This
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“[A] fast-paced and engrossing tale of murder and romance.”
“Susan McBride has an engaging new heroine in Andrea Kendricks.”
“Susan McBride kept me laughing all the way through this delicious romp of a mystery.”
“BLUE BLOOD is a wry, dead-on social commentary masquerading as a can’t-put-it-down mystery. Highly recommended....”