MISS MANAGEMENT by Traci Highland, Romantic Comedy, 215 pp., $9.99 (paperback) $2.99 (Kindle)
Title: MISS MANAGEMENT
Author: Traci Highland
Publisher: Cheshire Lane Press
Pages: 215
Genre: Romantic Comedy
hope for references, and she’s going to run out of money…. fast.Yeah, sure, it may be her fault for punching her boss, but the jerk totally had it coming.Nobody listens to her until she reaches her boiling point, and by
then, well, she’ll admit that there’s no stopping Mr. Fist To The Face.Now her years of hard work as a speech therapist are about to go down
the drain unless she can find some way to salvage her career. So when
her Aunt Elise calls to say that she has a job for her, it’s not like
she can say no, even if the job is up in the wilds of Vermont.Between stuffed moose, sloppy dogs and sexy men, Vermont proves to be
a lot more interesting than she expected. But when she uncovers a
scheme that would put her new employers’ livelihood in jeopardy, more
than just hydrangea bushes are about to get squashed.
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little Victorian painted white with blue shutters and a red door, looks like a
gingerbread house about to collapse.
Sure, it’s clean or whatever.But
it’s old and sinking on one side.She
invited me for lunch after I got back from the bank yesterday, and after a
night spent drinking beer and trolling through online job postings, and then
spending the morning drinking coffee and trolling through more job listings,
the invitation to drive on out into the Berkshires and have an excuse to see
the sun is actually kind of nice.The
Berkshires is about as far as I can drive at any given time, given, well,
anyway.It’s nice to get out.
door. “What the hell is that in the driveway?I didn’t recognize it.”
truck?I thought you liked to drive
pick-ups.”
Elise.”She furrows her brow.“It was on the news, remember?I sort of accidentally ran over a
mailbox.And some hedges.And an arbor.”
right?Now I remember.”
mistresses.”My husband of the time had
many.But I had been friends with
Shawna. “I hit some black ice.”
I told them about the black ice, as I recall.
lesbian, you know.With that truck.”
block?Lovely couple.Hazel drives a truck and—“
and ushers me inside.The house is a
tea-party nightmare.Shelves filled with
teapots and chubby figurines pucker up at the flowered wallpaper in the
hallway.The rug of the adjacent living
room is the color of cotton candy and I swear my stomach growls every time I
see it.
inspirational sayings out of the way as I hang up my coat on the coat rack.
back to the kitchen, causing the house to shudder and clink in alarm.“You’re in luck, I just made some chicken
salad.”
table with a sigh.
crooked?I thought for sure that
tightening the hinges would do the trick.”
middle of the table and glares.Sealing
her lips with some sort of judgmental superglue, she waits.
I go over to the sink and wash my hands.
She’s got this thing about germs.
Betty and I used to mess with her when we came over, going over to the
sink and putting our hands together so that she would wash one of my hands and
I would wash one of hers and then we’d wait to see if Elise would notice that
we each still had one dirty hand.
convinced that we were supposed to be born with some kind of twin-specific
super-power, but really the only thing we were consistently good at was making
our baby sister Piper laugh so hard that milk would shoot out of her nose.
Aunt Elise didn’t find to be particularly endearing.
the loaf of bread out of the breadbox, I say, “All right, so what kind of job
are we talking about?And please don’t
mention the one in the woodchuck town.”
woodchucks?”
have anything against woodchucks, I don’t can’t work in a town that worships
vermin, that’s all.”
Romany’s name in vain.”
wrestler that Aunt Elise has a crush on.
One night when I was over doing some repair work for her I heard her
swearing at the television set.And I
mean full-on swearing.Aunt Elise never
swears, at least not that I’ve ever heard.
As I walked into the guest bedroom to make sure she was okay, I realized
that she not only was watching television in her guest bedroom, which was odd,
but that the walls of the bedroom were covered in posters of one very muscled
wrestler wearing not-so-many articles of clothing.It was like an homage to all that was
masculine and spandexy.
us, I feel obligated to tease her about her crush and her shrine to the
glory that is Romany Halls.Me?I don’t so much dig the guys with eye makeup
thing.But Elise, well, Elise seemed to
like them big, oiled up, and wearing nothing more than colorful
underwear.
salad.
actually.Very nice.Her name is Eve and she needs help with Mansfield.”
Cancer?”
and everyone who shows up to check on Mansfield
apparently refuses to treat him.”
better equipped than her house.”
to a clinic.He must be in pretty bad
shape.”
college.She comes down sometimes, and
I’ve met her grandson a few times.
Lovely boy.But I haven’t met Mansfield.”
going on?”I really need a job.
she mentioned that she has a guest cottage you can stay in when you come.I guess she has a lot of land.”
her I would go?”
me to tell you when you were overstepping some boundaries? Consider them
overstepped.”
sandwich, her eyes demanding from over the top of her bread.
taking my time in savoring the flavors of Aunt Elise’s chicken salad, just to
make her sweat for a bit.I close my
eyes, exaggerating the chew.
are no less stern as she wipes the side of her mouth with a hot pink napkin.
This is a paid job, right?”
away like those others.”
usually make house-calls.I’d imagine
that the other folks just tried to convince your friend to take Mansfield
to a proper rehab facility.”
before you even get there.”
and that’s not always at home.”
together, Mags.I’ve known her for years
and years. Trust me, if she’s determined that the best place for him to be is
at home with her, then she’s right.
Period.”
there?”
great job for you.You’ll see.”
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Please paste your first chapter here:
having Mr. Roth dribble crackers and sing La Cucaracha.Nothing.
exaggerated swallow before the next stanza.
All right?”I grab the paper
cloth from the box and give his chin a wipe.
eyes, pushing his whole damn heart into his smile.
day, Mr. Roth.”I pick the last remnant
of saltine out of his gray stubble and throw the paper towel into the
garbage.When Mr. Roth first came to see
me, the stroke had paralyzed the left side of his face.The paralysis had diminished somewhat and
now he can do things like smile.And
sing.Sort of.
swallowing.That’s a biggie.He exhales a barely audible bar of his
favorite song and I join him.“Make it
louder for me!La cucaracha!La cucaracha!
Ya nopuede caminar…”
rises, like a phoenix, dammit.That
asshat Dr. Robbins said he’d never speak again.
And here Mr. Roth is, six months later, singing.
job.Just as we’re about to finish up
our session, Dolly pokes her head in the door. “I’m sorry, Mags, but Dr.
Robbins says you’re going to have to keep it down.”
door.”That man exists to be the pain in
my neck.You know the pain, the one you
wake up with every morning and no amount of Advil can kill?That one.
drooly face.
You’re a rock star and I’m damn proud of you.” One day I am going to
open my own clinic, so naysayers like Dr. Robbins can learn to shut the hell
up.
the clinic. So naturally, he feels that everything in the office is his, too,
like, you know, the pretty nurses and speech pathologists that he employs.
him with his jacket.Dolly clicks the
pen in her hand like it’s a hand grenade.
On off, on off, on off.
grab Mr. Roth’s gloves.“Now keep
practicing those scales we talked about and I’ll see you next week.”
says to Dolly, “She’s a saint, this one.
A regular saint.”
right but hey, it’s a work in progress.
walk over to the nurses’ station and pull up the electronic records on my next
patient. I haul on down to room number six, where Mr. Earle is waiting for me
to re-adjust his tracheal tube.
blindsided by Susie, the intern.She’s
the best kind of intern, hard-working and wicked smart, and rather pretty in a
cute, slightly disheveled kind of way.
She’s shaking as she bumps into me, wiping tears from her eyes.
lots of things wrong when you’re twenty-one.
Hormones and boozing and all that, but this looks… different.
tube, right?”She straightens her Hello
Kitty scrubs and adjusts the chunky black-rimmed glasses, making sure the
floating strands of pinkish hair stay behind her ears.
just sort of dry up.Sometimes, it’s
best just to leave it.She knows I’m
here—prodding would be rude, right?Let
her tell me when she’s ready, or not, her choice.Besides, I’m running behind.
tube back where it belongs and the second we finish and leave the room, Susie’s
face pales.
hall, blocking the path between where we stand and the nurses’ station.
her a grin that turns my stomach into a rolling pool of bile and fire. His
yellowish, crooked teeth and greasy hair make him look more like a Goodfellas
reject than a doctor.But hey, it could
just be that I’m biased because he told me once that he hired me for my boobs.
butt off to earn, but because he liked my boobs.
there.To stand up and shout and sue and
do all those noble things I would tell my sisters to do if they were in the
same situation.
divorced and needed the job.Nothing
like having to buy your cheating ex out of half of your own damn house.
sort of just resorted to sending politely worded emails, like “Please remember
to interact with the staff in a professional manner.” And “I believe we are due
for the state-mandated sexual harassment prevention course.Can I sign us up?”
grabs my hand.“Don’t let him touch me
again.”She whispers.
My vision blurs.Like actually
blurs as he walks towards us.That
creep. That stupid, sexist creep.He
touched her?She’s just a child.Mostly.
Practically.Hell, it doesn’t
matter how old she is!He’s a monster.
snakelike tongue pokes in and out of his mouth as his eyes roam over
Susie.“Susan, do you know where the
canned peaches are?I need to use them
for a videofluoroscopy this afternoon.”
He leans in closer to her and she clenches my hand as his chili taco
breath assaults us. “Maybe you can show me in the supply closet?”
in those cheesy late-night infomercials.
“No.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but I can hear her just fine.
listens, dammit.Again and again and
again I’ve asked him to stop doing this.
louder.
like I’m nothing more than a lamp.
She hisses but he doesn’t listen, he never listens.He cups her whole cheek now, grinning.
like, well, like I just punched him in the face.
in the face?
aches.
didn’t.
her mouth and a look of unadulterated panic in her eyes. My throat tightens.
the only thing that leaves my mouth in a somewhat coherent fashion.
red bump creeping across his smarmy face. “You hit me!”
ground, looks at me. Her eyes are wide and frightened like a deer’s.Her voice is flat when she says, “You punched
him.”
asses like they’re doorknobs. But you just kept grabbing and squishing it
around so I had to, had to—“
graduate of Bryn Mawr College and has a Master’s from Quinnipiac
University. She uses this education to write books, bake cakes, garden
and make homemade jams. Her children say she’s bossy, her husband says
she’s high-maintenance, but the dog thinks she’s perfect.Her latest book is the romantic comedy, Miss Management.
I agree Sandee. Have a wonderful day and week. I am going offline for a while just for the holidays and a much needed break. But please know I am thinking of you and Zane, and I pray you two have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year.
Bushels of love and hugs ❤ 🤗
Clocked her boss and got fired. I’m thinking his comeuppance will catch up to him too. Sounds like a fun read.
Have a fabulous day and week, honey. Big hug. ♥