Look what people are saying about the BODY MOVERS series â¦
âBond keeps the pace frantic, the plot tight and the laughs light, and supplies a cliffhanger ending thatâs a bargain at twice the price.â
âPublishers Weekly, starred review, on Body Movers: 2 Bodies for the Price of 1
âBODY MOVERS is one of the most delightful series I have read in quite some time. Stephanie Bond shows her audience what a wickedly funny mystery should be all about.â
âSuspense Romance Writers
âThis series is simply splendid. Vivid, quirky, flawed, wonderful people fill its pages and you care about what happens to them. Like the prior volume, it is replete with humour as well as action. I can hardly wait to see all these characters again.â
âHuntress Reviews
âHereâs to Carlottaâs future misadventures lasting a long time.â
âRT Book Reviews, four stars, on Body Movers
âThis is a series the reader will want to jump on in the very beginning. Itâs witty, sexy and hilariously funny.â
â Writers Unlimited
âBody Movers is signature Stephanie Bond, with witty dialogue, brilliant characterisation, and a wonderful well-plotted storyline.â âContemporary Romance Writers
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, thanks to my great editors Brenda Chin, Margaret OâNeill Marbury and Dianne Moggy for your support and for the guarantee that as of this date, the series will last for at least six books! Thanks, too, to my agent Kimberly Whalen of Trident Media Group for handling the logistics, to my critique partner, Rita Herron, for your unflagging support. Chris, my wonderfully creative husband, you continue to be my rock.
And thank you to my dear, dear first-grade teacher, Miss Alice Sue DeHart, for your cover quote. Somehow you taught first and second graders every subject in the same classroom, all day, between wiping faces and tying shoes and kissing boo-boos. You made learning fun, and books special. Miss DeHart, you are still fabulous. Thank you for being a part of my life for over thirty-five years.
Carlotta Wren bumped her cast against the door frame leading from the kitchen to the living room. âSon of a â¦â She bit back tears as pain lit up her entire left arm. Although she was lucky the fall from the balcony of the Fox Theater hadnât resulted in more serious physical injuries, the prospect of another four weeks in this clumsy cast left her frustrated and antsy.
It wasnât enough that she couldnât do her job at Neiman Marcus at a time when she desperately needed the money (short-term disability paid only partial wages). But yesterday when Peter Ashford had brought her home from the hospital, heâd shown her a ring heâd had made for herâher Cartier engagement ring, which heâd recovered from the shop where sheâd pawned it, with two more large diamonds mounted, on either side of the original stone. The past, the present and the future. He would keep it for her, heâd said, until she was ready to make a decision.
And on top of everything else, her brother, Wesley, was missing.
Wesley was supposed to have picked her up at the hospital yesterday in a taxi, and when he hadnât shown, his boss, Cooper Craft, had offered to go look for him. As of last night, Coop hadnât found Wesley, but Carlotta was hopeful that her brother would turn up this morning. Heâd come strolling into the house, whistling, with a mouse in a jar to feed his snake, Einstein, oblivious to the fact that Carlotta had barely slept last night, worrying about himâ¦.
Worrying about Wesley seemed to be her fate in life. Sheâd raised him since he was nine years old, when their parents had skipped town so their father could elude charges for investment fraud. Over the past decade, theyâd heard from their parents only through a handful of postcards ⦠until recently.
When a look-alike had stolen her identity and been murdered, Carlotta had agreed to fake her own death. The D.A. wanted to try to smoke out her parents and in exchange, theyâd offered to suspend Wesleyâs probation for hacking into the courthouse computer records. But Kelvin Lucas, the D.A. whoâd been denied the chance to prosecute her father, Randolph Wren, had reneged on his deal when her parents hadnât shown.
After Carlotta had alienated Wesley for going along with the plan.
After sheâd put her friends and coworkers through the traumatic ordeal of thinking her dead.
And after sheâd slept with Detective Jack Terry, her temporary live-in bodyguard.
What no one knew was that Carlottaâs father had shown up, in disguise, and heâd recognized her, even though she was also in disguise. She hadnât known it was him until later, when sheâd found the note heâd slipped into her pocket: âSo proud of you both. See you soon. Dadâ
The scrawled words left her conflicted. During her parentsâ long absence, Carlotta had worked up a powerful resentment. Sometimes, she even cheerfully hated them. Leaving without saying goodbye. Leaving her to finish raising Wesley when she was just a few months shy of graduating high school and barely equipped to take care of herself. Leaving no money, only a paid-for town house in a transitional section of Atlanta that was a far cry from the palatial home in Buckhead that they had lost.