Page 1 of Sweet Surrender
Chapter 1
Savannah
Why life had a way of fucking you in the ass without any lube whenyou were already down on your luck, I didn’t know. But it was a question I asked myself as I rested my head against the steering wheel of my car.
The horn blared loudly in an annoying scream from where I’dsmashed into the rear of averynice, and no doubtincrediblyexpensive Bentley.
Muttering to myself, I ignored the man tapping at my window, callingout a question I had no answer to.
Was I okay?
I wasn’t hurt. But okay?
Farfrom it.
I hadn’t been okay for the last four months when my world had been flipped upside down, and it was going to take me alongtime until I resembled anything near okay again.
I cursed under my breath when he knocked a second time. Sooner orlater, I was going to have to face the music.
It would have been slightly less mortifying to step out of the car if I wasn’t covered in bean juice, courtesy of a little shit who’d run head first into me because his mother wasn’t watching him properly.
She’d been too engrossed in gossiping with her friend to keep an eye on her kid, who’d plowed straight into me as I carried a fried breakfast to an impatiently waiting customer.
I didn’t have time to think about what was happening, it was either megetting coated in the breakfast or the little sprog, and given that my boss, Harry, insisted the customer always came first, I had little choice but to take the hit.
Not only was I covered from tit to toe in beans, but the customerwho’d been eagerly awaiting his food had shouted at me as if it wasmyfault his breakfast ended up all over the floor.
As a means of an apology, I’d asked Paul, our chef atBean andGonediner, to plate him up another breakfast, knowing full well the loss would be coming out of my wages.
Wages I couldn’t afford to lose, even if it was only a few dollars.
I wish I could say that getting covered in beans was the only thingto go wrong, but from the minute my eyes opened at the ass crack of dawn, fate was against me.
First, the shower in my crappy apartment stopped working secondsafter I’d lathered my hair in shampoo. The patheticdrip, drip, dripthat came from the showerhead wasn’t enough to get the soap out, and knowing the clock was against me, I had to resort to other means.
I couldn’t be late, I depended on my jobwaytoo much. Harry was agreat boss, a fair one, but he’d made it clear that he didn’t stand for lateness.
Not having any other choice, I wrapped a towel around me andheaded to the kitchen, where I bent over the sink and used a cup to rinse my hair.
Of course, that would have been too easy, and evidently, the universehated me today.
As I was bent over the sink washing the shampoo out of my hair withfuckingfreezingcold water, my towel slipped and fell to the floor.
Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I had a blind up to stopmy neighbor from looking in, but as bad luck would have it, it broke several days before, and I didn’t have the funds to replace it.
I’d nicknamed my neighbor Pervy Pete, mainly because whenever hetried to talk to me, he would spend the entire duration with his eyes fixed on my chest while constantly running a hand over his groin.
If that wasn’t enough of a turn off, the fact that he was at least fortyyears older than me, and smelled like he hadn’t washed for at least thirty of those years definitely would have been.
I did my best to avoid Pete whenever I left my apartment, buttypically, at the very moment the towel fell, Pete was in his kitchen looking ridiculously happy at the unintentional strip show I was giving him.
To make it worse, he must have thought I was giving him the comeon, because seconds later, he pulled his grubby pants down, flashing his semi-erect cock with a manic grin on his ugly face.
Horrified, I scrambled to get my towel back up and rinse the last ofthe shampoo from my hair, doing my best to ignore the morning treat Pete was giving himself. I vowed then, that even if it meant not eating for a week, I was going to replace the blind.
Thanks to my crappy shower, and the image of Pervy Pete knockingone out, my mood was already in the gutter by the time I made it out of my apartment and to my beat-up car, only for it to not start.
I bought my Honda on the cheap from Harry two weeks ago. He wasabout to send it to the scrap yard when I begged him to sell it to me. I didn’t particularly want to spend the money on a car, but public transport to the diner wasn’t reliable, and it was too far to walk.
