Full of It - Softcover

French, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765313774 ISBN 13: 9780765313775

Verlag: TOR, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Lauren Peterson has a brand new life, but no idea what to do with it.

After calling off her engagement, she's single for the first time in years and ready to take on the world. Instead, she discovers that starting over isn't all it's cracked up to be.

When a spinster aunt she barely remembers bequeaths her a house in Portland, Oregon, Lauren intends to fix it up and flip it for a tidy profit. However, her big mouth (which is always a step ahead of her brain) has other ideas, and before she knows it, she's moving in.

As Lauren takes on the task of making the house into home, she discovers plenty of surprises and colorful neighbors to shake things up. From faulty wiring and a new sinkhole in the living room, to the salty curmudgeon next door, Lauren's new life is heading in unexpected directions. Her friends and family think she's making a grave mistake, but for the first time ever, it might not be Lauren's mouth, but her heart that will finally come out ahead.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Wendy French was raised in Vancouver, Canada, where she was certain her parents unwittingly cursed her writing career with a happy and stable childhood. In an effort to overcome her unfortunate beginnings, she sought artistic torment at the University of Victoria, but despair eluded her. Hoping for worse luck south of the border, she moved to Oregon, but happiness continued to stalk her, day and night. Finally, she conceded defeat, abandoned her quest for misery, and began writing humorous women's fiction. She is the author of sMothering, Going Coastal, and After the Rice.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

 

I have a big mouth.

 

This doesn’t mean that my face should grace the pages of Guinness, eyes bulging wildly as I strain to stretch my lips around thirty-one asparagus spears or the splintered end of a two-by-four.

 

It doesn’t mean I have thick, juicy lips, or a wide grin, packed with an enamel army of pristine white teeth.

 

My big mouth isn’t a physical characteristic, it’s a character flaw.

 

It’s my very own San Andreas fault, geographically positioned an equal distance from both my pointy chin and pointier nose. It may not tremble, and it may not crack, but it is always on the brink of doing major damage to myself and the people around me.

 

I’ve cursed it and been cursed for it since day one, but that’s never stopped me from saying things without thinking, and throughout my twenty-six years, my tendency to blurt has continually landed me on the wrong side of a spanking, a cold shoulder, and everything in between.

 

“You forgot,” Rachel groaned.

 

I’d just returned to our shared desk after running a lunch hour gauntlet that included U.S. Bank, Walgreens, Hollywood Video, and a high-speed pursuit of sustenance at a McDonald’s drive-through.

 

“I can’t believe you forgot,” she said, then flipped her thick blonde braid over her shoulder, trained her striking blue eyes on me, and begged, “Please tell me you didn’t forget.”

 

“The coffee?” I asked, dropping my knapsack beneath the desk and slipping out of my navy peacoat. “No,” I assured her, “I didn’t forget.”

 

“Thank god,” she grinned, exposing the slightly overlapping tooth most men in the office found strangely intoxicating. This I knew because a traitor to their team—a surly claims adjuster called Keith—had told me about “the list.” My best friend, Rachel (and her snaggletooth), had ranked number one until Sue Parsons in Accounting got a boob job and suddenly shot from seventeen to the top spot.

 

And me? I didn’t know if I was even on the list and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether it would be more humiliating to be a hit or a miss.

 

What if Randy Johnson, the creepy little troll in Claims, wanted to have sex with me?

 

Even worse: what if he didn’t?

 

“So, where is it?” Rachel asked, peering over my shoulder at the swirling mass of paperwork covering my desk. I needed a proper filing system, though a shredder sounded much more appetizing.

 

“I didn’t get any,” I told her, shuddering at the sight of the Johnson file. That one could wait.

 

Indefinitely.

 

“What?” Rachel asked, and I looked up to see the crease of a worry line marring her otherwise flawless forehead. “But you just said—”

 

“That I didn’t forget, Rach. The fact is, I didn’t have time.”

 

“No time, huh?” She leaned toward me and sniffed. “Is that a chickenesque McScent you’re wearing?”

 

I averted my gaze and murmured, “McPossibly.”

 

“Lauren.” Her tone was as stern as my ninth grade P.E. teacher’s, and I half expected her to demand I do laps of the building.

 

“Okay,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Yes, I grabbed lunch.”

 

“That’s not lunch, it’s toxic waste,” she said, making no effort to hide her disdain.

 

“Yup, with a side of fries.”

 

She grumbled about caffeine deprivation and I waited for the high-speed technology of my PC to join me in the present moment. I absently stared at the handleless ceramic mug I’d cleverly converted into a desktop pen corral, jam-packed with ballpoints, pencils, and even a pair of scissors. While my computer grunted and beeped its way back to life, I daydreamed about storming the office supply market with a new product line guaranteed to buy me early retirement: Office Transformers.

 

As usual, in mere seconds, the idea shifted away from the bright glow of brilliance to the shadowed caves of stupidity.

 

Ingenious, Lauren. Surely you are the only person on the planet with a broken mug full of pens.

 

Stick to Insurance, at least it’s a paycheck.

 

“I was going to have a mocha latte,” Rachel said, pointing at the wide, clear surface of her half of the desk. “Right here.” She paused for a moment. “With cinnamon.” She rested her delicately rounded chin in her perfect palms and stared despondently at the shriveled spider fern on my desk.

 

For crying out loud, it was coffee, not a heart transplant.

 

“Put it toward your student loan,” I told her, typing my password.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Or your Visa bill.” I shrugged, frowning as the system rejected me. I hit the Caps Lock button and gave it another go, this time successfully.

 

Rachel asked, “Are you referring to the four bucks that you—”

 

“Saved on your behalf?” I finished for her, then turned to meet a surprisingly angry gaze. What was her problem? “Hey, four bucks a pop adds up and—”

 

She raised a hand to stop me. “Lauren, I don’t think you should be getting into my money situation.” She continued to glare at me, for no apparent reason.

 

“Lack of money situation, you mean,” I said, wiggling in my chair. I could tell that someone had “borrowed” it in my absence, sabotaging all of my ergonomic efforts. I immediately began lifting levers and turning dials to tweak it back into my ideal setting, muttering under my breath.

 

“The mouth,” Rachel murmured, as she tucked a small stack of papers into a yellow folder and deposited it in her out-box, which was as full as my in.

 

“What?” I asked, finally settling comfortably in my chair and sipping borderline icy orange spice tea from a chipped Oregon Museum of Science and Industry mug.

 

“Your mouth,” she repeated, lightly glossed lips pursed in disapproval.

 

“What?” I asked again, totally lost. “I didn’t say anything.”

 

Did I?

 

I replayed the conversation in my head, looking for objectionable lowlights. There were none that I could recall.

 

While I was mulling over her sour mood, a couple of adjusters came through the front door on their return from lunch and gave us their usual cursory nods.

 

“Assholes,” I muttered.

 

“Sorry?” the shorter guy asked, as he straightened his tie.

 

“Oh, nothing,” I stammered. “I was just talking to myself.”

 

“Okay,” he said, skeptically....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TOR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765313774
• ISBN 13: 9780765313775
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 258
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland