Charmed and Dangerous
Read Charmed and Dangerous Online
Authors: Toni McGee Causey
Praise for
CHARMED AND DANGEROUS
“This hyperpaced, screwball action/adventure with one unforgettable heroine and two sexy heroes is side-splittingly hilarious. Causey, a Cajun and a Louisiana native, reveals a flair for comedy in this uproarious debut novel.”
—
Library Journal
(starred review)
“There are many things to love about this book—the plot, the pacing, the dialogue . . . think
Die Hard
in the swamp. And Bobbie Faye? She’s a titanium magnolia.”
“It’s about time women had an Amazon to look up to . . . Bobbie Faye is a hurricane-force heroine who makes this novel the perfect adventure yarn.”
—
Tampa Tribune
“If you like Janet Evanovich, if you’re looking for a lot of unlikely action (when is the last time someone you know escaped a burning boat by lassoing an oil rig?), or if you’re simply having a bad day, go out and find Bobbie Faye. She’s an outrageous hoot.”
—
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Causey’s hilarious, pitch-perfect debut chronicles one day in the life of 28-year-old Bobbie Faye Sumrall.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“If you like Stephanie Plum, you’ll love Bobbie Faye Sumrall! She’s a one-woman catastrophe and absolutely hilarious.”
—Alesia Holliday,
USA Today
bestselling author of
American Idle
“Bobbie Faye is Southern, eloquent, kick-ass, highly accomplished, and just plain nuts.”
—Harley Jane Kozak, author of
Dating is Murder
“Hold on for the ride, Bobbie Faye is 100% pure adrenaline. Causey has penned a laugh-out-loud nonstop thriller.”
—Allison Brennan,
USA Today
and
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Prey, The Hunt
, and
The Kill
“Bobbie Faye is a true original and Toni McGee Causey a true talent!”
—Melissa Senate, author of
See Jane Date
and
Love You To Death
“The tears are still running down my cheeks from laughing. Oh, my. What talent. What verve. What NERVE!”
—Gayle Lynds,
New York Times
bestselling author
of
The Last Spymaster
“DO NOT miss reading [
Charmed and Dangerous
]. Oh, and remember to breathe. The action is so fast, the characters are hilarious and the laughter so rampant that you really do need to remind yourself to breathe . . . The South could rise again with this woman at the helm (unless she blows it up first).”
“Toni McGee Causey will have you laughing out loud as her insane characters take you on a ride of pure chaos. This book could only be described as a roller-coaster ride with dynamite!”
“Move over, Stephanie and Bubbles, you’ve got major competition tracking north from the Deep South . . . Bobbie Faye Sumrall is out to capture both the hearts of spunky women everywhere and the minds of men ready for a challenge.”
—
Deadly Pleasures
“This is an action comedy novel that will delight fans of the Ya Ya/Sweet Potato Queens genre. The pacing of the book will take your breath away.”
—
The Advocate
“If there’s such a thing as “screwball suspense,” Bobbie Faye is its new pinup girl. [
Charmed and Dangerous
] is so funny it should come with a warning label: “Do not attempt to eat or drink while reading this book.” A winning combination of an eccentric yet charmingly sassy heroine, a sexy yet baffled hero, slambang action, and page-turning mystery (what will Bobbie Faye destroy next?) make this the perfect book for anyone who enjoys Jennifer Crusie or Janet Evanovich.”
—India Edghill, author of
Queenmaker
and
Wisdom’s Daughter
“Bobbie Faye can get into more and funnier trouble faster than Kinsey Millhone, Stephanie Plum, and that chick who drove the bus in
Speed
combined . . . She’s the go-to poster girl for action-adventure chicklit, and even her enemies like her.”
—Rosemary Edghill, author of
Bell, Book, and Murder
and
Met by Moonlight
“An incredible ride with one very determined, sassy, cussing, Southern trailer-trash gal . . . The adventure starts in the first paragraph and does not slow until the last page. I loved this refreshing, extremely funny and sexy story and I know that everyone who reads it will agree.”
—
Romance Junkies
“This hilarious debut is an absolute must read. I couldn’t stop laughing. Bobbie Faye is fantastic and fun.”
—
BookBitch
(previously published as
Bobbie Faye’s
Very (very, very, very) Bad Day
)
Toni McGee Causey
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
NOTE:
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Charmed and Dangerous
was previously published in trade paperback under the title
Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day.
CHARMED AND DANGEROUS
Copyright © 2007 by Toni McGee Causey.
Excerpt from
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns
copyright © 2007 by Toni McGee Causey.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007003241
ISBN: 0-312-35849-0
EAN: 978-0-312-35849-5
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Griffin trade paperback edition / May 2007
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 2009
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Carl
and
Luke and Jake
Those who say a thing cannot be done need to get the hell out of the way of those who are doing it.
—bumper sticker seen in Lake Charles, Louisiana
You know how some people are born to Greatness? Well, Bobbie Faye Sumrall woke up one morning, kicked Greatness in the teeth, kneed it in the balls, took it hostage, and it’s been begging for mercy ever since.
—a former Louisiana mayor after Bobbie Faye accidentally ran her car into his office, knocking pages of fraud evidence into the street, which helped land him in Federal prison
Something wet and spongy plunked against Bobbie Faye’s face and she sprang awake, arms pinwheeling. “Damn it, Roy, you hit me with a catfish again and I’m gonna—”
Whoa
. Everything was dark in her cramped trailer. There was no catfish, no little brother Roy pretending innocence. Of course she’d been dreaming, because Roy was twenty-six now, not ten. Still a complete pain in the ass, though.
She swiped at the cold rivulets of wetness running down her face. “What was that?” she muttered to no one in particular. “And why the hell am I wet?”
“You gots a s’imming pool inside.”
Bobbie Faye squinted in the half-dark and focused on Stacey, her five-year-old niece, whose blond pigtails were haloed in the blue bug light emanating from just outside the
trailer window. Then she peered at the wet Nerf bat Stacey dropped to the floor.
Check that. A Nerf bat
floating
a good two inches above the lime green shag carpet.
“Shit!” Bobbie Faye stood, flinching as the icy water covered her ankles. “Fuck. Damn fuck fuckity shit.”
“Mamma says you shouldn’t cuss so much.”
“Yeah? Well your mamma should quit drinking, too, kid, but that ain’t likely to happen either.”
Shit. That was evil. She checked Stacey’s reaction, but her niece was preoccupied with the soggy Nerf bat again and hadn’t seemed to hear. Thank God. She didn’t mean to harm the little rug rat. And how was she supposed to remember to be nice at four-freaking
A.M.
? Who the hell would expect her to be nice anyway? Lori-freaking-Ann, that’s who. Her pill-popping, wine-swigging lush of a little sister whose plastered-on Grace Kelly smile made her look efficient and serene, even when she wobbled into a wall and fell on her ass.
Bobbie Faye never got to look serene.
Sonofabitch. And today was the day the Social Services lady was scheduled to come by. At four-thirty that afternoon. To judge whether Bobbie Faye was providing Stacey with a safe and stable home. Bobbie Faye shuddered as the icy water lapped at her ankles. Somehow, she was supposed to fix . . . whatever the hell
this
mess was . . . in time to preside at the opening ceremony of the Contraband Days Festival and get back before four-thirty to prove she could be a good foster parent while Lori Ann was pulling her court-ordered four-month drying-out stint at the Troy House.
Oh, flipping yippee.
Water splashed against her knees, and she looked down at Lori Ann’s little ankle biter stomping on the carpet as they squish-squished their way down the hall.
“Your hippos are s’imming.” Stacey laughed, pointing at the glow-in-the-dark hippos dancing across Bobbie Faye’s thin white cotton PJs. Then the monster child jumped again, hard, splashing water up to Bobbie Faye’s elbows.
“For Christ’s sake, Stacey, if you hop around one more time, I’m gonna turn you into a frog.”
Stacey giggled, but at least she stopped jumping.
Bobbie Faye stood in front of the cramped utility closet of her tiny, dark trailer and glared at the culprit: her washing machine, run amok. Water geysered from somewhere behind the vibrating piece-of-crap appliance. If she’d had a gun, she’d have shot it. Several times. Happily. She twisted knobs, pressing buttons broken so long ago, there was no telling what they had originally been meant to do.
She wanted to stomp or snarl that this was so not happening to her, but she was awake enough now to be mature in front of Stacey. She could do mature. She was twenty-eight years old, the oldest sibling and the one the other two constantly turned to when they screwed up; of course she could do mature. And solve problems. She was a paragon of problem-solving, and she slammed her fist down on the machine, hoping to dislodge whatever it was that was causing the crisis. The machine shuddered, the water gushed higher, and in that moment, seriously mature went straight to hell. Bobbie Faye hauled off and kicked the machine, then yelped and squirmed in pain because frozen toes do not take too well to sudden impact with metal.