Home > Hotshot and Hospitality (Green Valley Library, #8)

Hotshot and Hospitality (Green Valley Library, #8)
Author: Nora Everly

Hotshot and Hospitality

 

 

Green Valley Library Book #8

 

 

Nora Everly

 

 

www.smartypantsromance.com

 

 

Contents

 


Author’s Note

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Chapter 2

 

Chapter 3

 

Chapter 4

 

Chapter 5

 

Chapter 6

 

Chapter 7

 

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

 

Chapter 10

 

Chapter 11

 

Chapter 12

 

Chapter 13

 

Chapter 14

 

Chapter 15

 

Chapter 16

 

Chapter 17

 

Chapter 18

 

Chapter 19

 

Chapter 20

 

Chapter 21

 

Chapter 22

 

Chapter 23

 

Chapter 24

 

Chapter 25

 

Chapter 26

 

Chapter 27

 

Chapter 28

 

Chapter 29

 

Chapter 30

 

Chapter 31

 

Chapter 32

 

Chapter 33

 

Epilogue

 

About the Author

 

Sneak Peek: Love in a Pickle by L.B. Dunbar, Green Valley Library Book #9

 

 

Also by Nora Everly

 

Also by Smartypants Romance

 

 

Copyright

 

 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events, locales is entirely coincidental if not somewhat disturbing/concerning.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 by Smartypants Romance; All rights reserved.

 

 

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

 

 

Made in the United States of America

 

 

eBook Edition

 

 

For my dad.

Love you.

 

 

Author’s Note

 

 

Molly Cooper is a fictional character who is directly inspired by a person I have known and lived with for over twenty years.

Her hearing loss, the way she handles it, talks about it, and its cause are specifically based on this person. Therefore, it is not possible for her to entirely encompass, represent, or express everyone’s experience.

Thank you PJC for letting me borrow a little bit of your life, I love you.

 

 

Chapter 1

 

 

Molly

 

 

Tonight had been a big mistake. The hugest ever. I should have never swiped right. Swept right? Sweeped right? Fricking tequila! Sticking to my man moratorium would have been the better decision because MEN! UGH!

“Your sister is on my list,” I slurred before sucking the juice out of a wedge of lime with a pinch-faced scowl. Tequila flowed through my system, fueling my bad mood as I sat in everyone’s favorite corner booth in Genie’s Country Western Bar. With clumsy hands, I slammed the shot glass to the table and slid it across.

Green Valley, Tennessee, had been my home since birth. Located smack-dab in the middle of Small Town, USA, where everybody knew everybody and gossip was its own currency. The fact that I was drunk off my ass and all alone at Genie’s would not go unnoticed. Plus, the Tinder-date thing was a tasty nugget of information that would probably be passed all around town by morning since eyes and ears were everywhere and a few of them had managed to put two and two together when they spotted my pathetic party of one. My eyes dropped to the table and I tried to disappear into my booth. I was all dressed up with nowhere to go but back home. Instead of chatting with a date over Genie’s famous fried chicken and a beer, I had skipped dinner and gone straight to shooting tequila. I couldn’t drive home like this.

How sad was I?

“Uh-oh, the shit list?” my smirky blond waitress asked as she set a glass of water in front of me. One eyebrow rose as she fished my hearing aid out of one of the empty shot glasses lining the side of the table.

“Yep. Thank you, Willa. And don’t ask.” I swiped it from her hand and shoved it in the front pocket of my jeans. It was toast; tequila did not mix as well with tiny battery-powered devices as it did with salt and lime.

Most people in town knew about my hearing and graciously made accommodations, like making sure to keep their head up and not mumble or sitting on my right side so I could better hear them speak. But there were always a few jerks who dismissed me if I said “What?” one too many times. Or got annoyed if I couldn’t differentiate between their voice calling out to me versus the ambient sounds in a room. Occasionally I would run into a real asshole who would mock sign language at me or point at my hearing aid and tell me to “turn it up.” But it didn’t happen often anymore, at least not here in Green Valley, because my three older brothers had spent the latter part of my childhood “educating” the town jerks who now knew better. I was in a car accident when I was eight and the concussion damaged the hair cells in my cochlea and the ossicles in my middle ear. The end result was profound hearing loss on my left side, and moderate loss on the right. I could still hear some in my right ear, but without my hearing aid I had a hard time understanding what was said to me without reading lips.

Willa shrugged. “I won’t ask. But I’m here all night if you want to talk. Are you okay?”

I nodded as my eyes darted around the bar for one last search for my date. Since he was now over an hour late, it was, of course, fruitless. I had previously given up on dating but stupidly let my friends push me into one more try. Being alone was hunky-freaking-dory, and who needed men anyway? I could have just as much fun in bed all by myself as I could with any man. And bonus, I didn’t complain when I fell asleep right after.

“Yeeaaah.” I let out a huge sigh before continuing, “She said I needed to go out with someone random to get me out of my Chris phase.” I added air quotes around Chris phase—date one too many guys named Chris and it became a talking point among your friends. I waved a hand in front of my face before letting it flop to the table. “I wasted perfectly good makeup for this, and I’m not happy about it. MAC is expensive, dammit.” I pointed a finger at a trying-not-to-laugh Willa. “Your sister is lucky she lives in Knoxville or I’d be texting her to pick me up. She put me on Tinder against my will. No more dates. No more men. No more drama. I’m done for good this time,” I huffed. My drunken mood swung from a slightly disgruntled melancholy to a burst of righteous fury spiked with a healthy dose of humiliated indignation. I was pissed off and embarrassed and I wanted to go home, dang it.

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