Cooking Up Trouble – an excerpt

I’ve been hiding deep in the writing cave only coming out to prepare my latest work in progress for a contest and take an online workshop.  I thought I’d come up for air to give you a preview of this latest novel, Cooking up Trouble.

It’s a contemporary romance set in Milton Lake, North Carolina. The painting you see in the header of this page was my inspiration. It’s an old poster of Fest of Fun in Fort Mill, South Carolina.  I thought I’d post an excerpt.

Cooking Up Trouble/Chapter 1

Alice Buchanan pounded the steering wheel of her decrepit Toyota with tightly clinched fists as she crept down the narrow winding road into the town of Milton Lake, North Carolina at the lightning speed of twenty-five miles an hour. She hate slow. Spring could last only weeks this far south, but the drivers were slower than molasses in January.

“Lady, could you at least do the speed limit?” Alice grumbled.

It wasn’t New York. After three years working in the restaurant business in the Big Apple, Alice had to come home, broke and unemployed. She f*ing hated it.

The bright morning sun only made her lack-of-caffeine induced headache worse. Without her typical skinny double-shot vanilla latte, it was all just too damned redneck. She needed coffee, real coffee, not that cheap decaf crap Aunt Mae bought.

She stared longingly at Bad Dawg Coffee as she drove slowly by, her hands itching to turn in and stop. Her friend, Stephanie worked there, but Alice fought the urge to stop. It was a five dollar cup of coffee but ate into the little bit of money Alice had for gas. God, she needed a job. She hated being broke almost as much as she hated being idle.

Alice didn’t do idle well. It forced her to reevaluate her decisions. It made her dwell on the spectacular fit she’d thrown in the kitchen of the last job she’d had. It made her remember the looks on the diner’s faces when she’d stomped out of Rosemary’s, knives in hand. Michael Trent, the owner, had fired her for threatening the head chef with said knives.

The bastard deserved it after smacking her ass in front of the rest of the staff. In the six months she’d been there, he’d bullied her about her cooking and took any opportunity to grab her boobs or her butt.

It was damned illegal, but if she turned him in, she’d be blackballed from the industry. Shit like that happened in restaurant kitchens. Of course going postal was just as career limiting. At least Rosemary’s Restaurant was pressing charges.

Alice pulled the car into Bea’s Bridal Boutique. Lord, help her. The large window touted fluffy white dresses and bright colored bridesmaid dresses looking like prom queen rejects. The place was old, but well known. Any bride within a thirty-mile radius of Milton got their bridal gowns at Bea’s. The place was an institution. It was the last place in Milton she wanted to be.

Her older brother, Adam, was engaged to Cynthia Wright, the one person in high school Alice had most hated. The one who had made her life hell within the halls of Milton High School. The very same person who nicknamed her Alice in Blubber land.

She was being punished.

 Let me know what you think.

— Amy