Kill the Competition Read online

  Kill

  the

  Competition

  STEPHANIE

  BOND

  Contents

  E-book Extras:

  One: Kill the Competition Epilogue

  Two: An Interview with Stephanie Bond

  Three: Discussion Group Questions

  Chapter 1

  Belinda Hennessey opened the shower door and leaned out, hair…

  Chapter 2

  Libby’s gaze bounced around the beige interior. “Cute car.”

  Chapter 3

  The police cruiser’s blue light came on, bathing Belinda’s cheeks…

  Chapter 4

  Despite their protests, Belinda stopped to let the women disembark…

  Chapter 5

  “All I can say,” Libby sang as she swung into…

  Chapter 6

  Some men were leg men and some were breast men.

  Chapter 7

  “So, I heard the board of directors approved the acquisition,”…

  Chapter 8

  “I’ve got one,” Carole said from the backseat. ‘ “DO be…

  Chapter 9

  “Isn’t this better than the food court?” Julian asked as…

  Chapter 10

  “Except for a little sunshine slowdown in the eastbound lanes…

  Chapter 11

  By the time Belinda got back to her desk, she…

  Chapter 12

  Belinda met up with the women at the entrance to…

  Chapter 13

  Belinda opened her front door and contemplated her Saturday newspaper…

  Chapter 14

  Belinda watched with morbid curiosity as Libby opened the overnight…

  Chapter 15

  Belinda looked at the phone, then disconnected her end of…

  Chapter 16

  No one on the planet had the expertise or the…

  Chapter 17

  Belinda jerked around, sloshing Coke, and almost fell into Wade…

  Chapter 18

  Julian drove a navy blue Audi sedan with caramel-colored glove…

  Chapter 19

  Being licked awake was not unto itself such a bad…

  Chapter 20

  “Belinda,” Wade said, his voice fortified with concern. “Talk to…

  Chapter 21

  Car doors opened. A man and a woman emerged from…

  Chapter 22

  “Nice place,” Detective Salyers said, walking through the foyer. “A…

  Chapter 23

  Her mother? Perfect timing. Belinda picked up the phone and…

  Chapter 24

  “I have to know every last detail,” Libby insisted, her…

  Chapter 25

  “How do they expect us to get this ink off…

  Chapter 26

  Belinda descended the stairs to the eighth floor alone, relieved…

  Chapter 27

  Margo’s memorial service the next morning was an awkward affair,…

  Chapter 28

  In the midst of the disagreement with Libby, Rosemary, and…

  Chapter 29

  Libby walked into the ladies’ room and crossed her arms.

  Chapter 30

  Belinda didn’t make eye contact with Wade as he and…

  Chapter 31

  Her throat convulsed. “Wh-what are you doing here, Julian?”

  Chapter 32

  The details that Belinda couldn’t remember immediately after the crash,…

  Chapter 33

  “It’s a great day in Hotlanta, folks—unless you’re drivin’.

  About the Author

  Books by Stephanie Bond

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Belinda Hennessey opened the shower door and leaned out, hair dripping, her soapy ear piqued for the voice of the predominant man in her life—although granted, the fact that she’d never even met the guy was a tad on the pathetic side.

  From the clock radio on the crowded vanity, a sexy, Southern-bred accent reeled into the room over the whir of helicopter blades. “Traffic is jammin’up on I-85 southbound below the I-285 junction due to a three-car accident in the rightmost lane. Southbound Peachtree Industrial and Buford Highway are feelin’ the effect, so my advice is to hop over to Georgia 400 while it’s still a speed limit ride, which won’t be for long.” He whistled low. “If you’re comin’ into Atlanta from the northeast this mornin’, I hope you’re not runnin’ late. I’m Talkin’ Tom Trainer for the MIXX 100 FM traffic report.”

  Oh, that voice. Belinda shivered, then glanced at the time and swore softly. She yanked a towel around her, made wet tracks to the bedroom, and let the ho-hum carpet soak up most of the water dripping down her legs. With one hand she ran the towel over the rest of her while flipping through hangers in her closet. Her shoulder muscles still twinged from an “iron arms” session in the gym—a degrading experience she had allowed herself to be talked into in lieu of lunch a couple of days ago. According to a fitness report on the radio, now that she had entered her thirties, she was losing muscle mass at an alarming rate.

  Yes indeed, it was a fine time to be single again.

  When her fingers touched a knee-length gray jersey dress, she pulled out the garment and tossed it onto the unmade bed. An indignant yowl sounded from beneath the leopard print comforter, and Downey’s black head appeared.

  “Sorry,” Belinda offered. “I’m running late.”

  Downey blinked. The feline’s morning disposition reminded her of the man who’d given her the cat, her ex, Vince Whittaker. She hesitated to refer to Vince as her ex-husband, since their marriage had lasted a mere six hours. Downey was the best thing to come out of that train wreck, despite her current slit-eyed disdain.

  “I know—I shouldn’t be late on my first day driving the car pool.”

  The shower was her downfall. This town house was the first place she’d ever lived in that had an adequate hot water heater, so she leaned under the spray every morning until her skin was just short of a good scald. The indulgence was heavenly, but the trade-off was hell.

  With the agility of a hurdler, she leapt into underwear, panty hose, dress, jacket, and pumps, then gave her unremarkable auburn hair a one-minute blast from a blow dryer. A touch of translucent powder, mascara, and lipstick would have to pass for makeup; her cheeks were still pink enough from the shower to skip the blush. There wasn’t time to make the bed, although she knew she’d be plagued with thoughts of dropping dead before the day ended and her mother’s tsk, tsk when her parents came to gather her personal effects. “I knew this move to Atlanta so soon after the you-know-what was too much for her, Franklin.” (Her mother refused to make direct references to the reneged wedding.) “Look, she didn’t even make her bed—I heard on the Today show that untidiness is a sure sign of depression.”

  Little did her mother know, she didn’t have time to indulge in a good cathartic bout of depression. Her new job was consuming every waking hour, and for that, she was eternally grateful…because the urge to wallow was so close to the surface. Especially today. Since opening her eyes to stare at the white fluted globe covering the light-bulb in her bedroom ceiling (over the past two months she’d grown to hate that globe), she hadn’t been able to shake the sense of impending doom. The last time she’d felt this out of sorts had been on her wedding day.

  Yilk.

  She dropped an earring twice, poked it in as she jogged down the stairs to the foyer, then dashed into the kitchen to grab an instant breakfast drink from the fridge. Her briefcase sat open on the table, surrounded by accounting spreadsheets. She shoved the papers inside and slammed down the lid, catching her thumb and bruising the na
il.

  Gritting back a foul word, she checked Downey’s water, knuckled the cat’s regal pouting head, and managed to slide behind the wheel of her clover green Honda Civic just after 6:30 A.M., only five minutes late. But getting started a measly five minutes late in the Atlanta commute could mean the difference between arriving in time to prepare for her 8:30 A.M. meeting, and tearing into the meeting already in progress with murmured apologies to her scowling boss, Margo. And “tardy” wasn’t the opinion she wanted the woman to take into her first performance evaluation, which was mere days away. She’d worked long hours for the Archer Furniture Company in the hopes of getting a raise that would put her on the same earning level of her previous financial position in Cincinnati.

  She thought of the sliding balance in her savings account and sighed. Everything in Atlanta was more expensive than it was in Cincinnati. Carpooling was only one of the cost-saving measures she’d adopted since her impromptu move. If she could’ve gotten a refund on a gently worn wedding gown, she would own a couch—not to mention a television that worked more often than only when it rained. But seating for one was adequate for the time being, and since it was June and perennially sunny, she’d grown accustomed to listening to the radio. Besides, one of the girls in the car pool kept everyone abreast of television shows to help pass the long-suffering ride from suburbia into the city and the reverse trek at the end of the day. Living vicariously through the amorous women on The Single Files was a safe substitute for an actual social life—Belinda prayed the show would be renewed for the next decade or so.

  As she backed out of the one-car garage in the early morning dusk, a horn blared. Her neighbor, Perry Ponytail, grinned and waved from his late model SUV in the driveway two doors down. The man’s last name was actually a long word with few vowels that started with a P, but his distinctive hairstyle—a prematurely slick-bald crown combined with a sparse six-inch ponytail—conjured up a more memorable surname. The toothy construction worker had been trying to get her to go out with him since the day she’d moved in, but so far she had managed to outmaneuver him. Even if the man had been more appealing, to say that Vince had left a bad taste in her mouth would be an understatement of gigantic proportions.

  Men were…unnecessary.

  She gave her neighbor a three-finger wave, then backed out onto the street and zipped past him before he could flag her down.

  Meadow Gate subdivision (strangely, no meadow and no gate) was a pleasing blend of tasteful vinyl-siding homes, modern synthetic stucco town houses, and cheery faux-stone-patio homes. The agreeable landscape, however, was negated by the fact that residents were forced to turn left at the mouth of the entrance onto Peachtree Parkway, a zoomily busy north-south thoroughfare, without the benefit of a traffic light.

  Stifling a groan, she chained onto the line of cars whose occupants waited for either a break in the traffic, a kind driver to yield, or the nerve to gun their way across three lanes of traffic. All of them, she knew, were cursing their real estate brokers and landlords for not warning them of this dangerous little aggravation. There seemed to be no good solution to the vehicle snarls created by the population explosion in Atlanta. Belinda herself had considered horseback before one of the women from the office had asked her last week to join their car pool.

  And while she was grateful for the chance to get to know three of her female coworkers, and for their company to make the interminable commute more bearable, driving the car pool for the first time on the day she needed to arrive early for her boss’s meeting smacked of poor planning. She blew her bangs in the air. Hormones? Nerves? Fear? Insecurity? For some reason her body was on heightened alert. Prickly, clumsy, jittery, susceptible. She stuck her throbbing thumb in her mouth and considered leaving it there for a good, comforting suck. With her life in such a state of disarray, she wasn’t feeling very grown-up these days.

  Perry Ponytail pulled in behind her and honked cheerfully. Belinda flashed a tight smile in the rearview mirror, then locked her doors and turned up the radio, hoping for another dose of the sexy-throated traffic reporter. It was a mild case of celebrity worship, she knew, but his voice on the radio had been the first friendly sound she’d heard when she’d driven into the engorged, alien city, and she…appreciated him.

  “Whew-we, folks, forget what I said about Georgia 400 southbound! Somebody dropped a commode in the road at the Northridge exit and caused a twelve-car pileup across all lanes. No one behind this clogged-up mess is goin’ anywhere for a loooong while. This is Talkin’ Tom Trainer for the MIXX 100 FM traffic report.”

  She cringed for the unfortunate commuters trapped in the mishap, but the incident was forgotten when a sympathetic driver on the parkway stopped and allowed the entire queue of cars to merge while the northbound lanes were clear. She would’ve kissed the man full on the lips if she could have, but she settled for an enthusiastic wave of thanks before assuming her spot in the creeping line of cars that extended as far as she could see.

  Anxiety coated the inside of her stomach as she anticipated the next sixty-plus minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. She checked the security of her seat belt and planted her hands on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock, Driver’s Ed style. Visibility would be better once the sun had risen fully, but for now, a couple of seconds of distraction equaled an insurance deductible she couldn’t afford.

  She flipped on her right signal and began edging over to the rightmost lane. Perry Ponytail disappeared into the sea of hoods and headlights behind her. After counting three stoplights and verifying the name of the street, she turned into Libby Janes’s subdivision. Stalwart brick-on-basement homes, sloping yards, palladium windows, attached two-and-a-half-car garages—the kind of home she and Vince had aspired to own. They’d spent Sunday afternoons going to open houses while Vince had amassed a filing cabinet full of house plans and names of mortgage companies. Since he was saving for their down payment, she’d volunteered to foot the wedding expenses. As it turned out, chicken kiev hadn’t been the wisest investment for her nest egg. And if there was a God, Vince’s spanking-new ranch home was parked on a starving termite colony.

  Libby’s house was a two-story, taupe-colored monstrosity with an unkempt yard and lights blazing in every window. Belinda pulled into the driveway, dimmed her headlights, and lightly tapped the horn. After a minute, she cracked open her canned breakfast and yielded to the dread building in her stomach.

  Margo would expect her to have completed the valuation for the mom-and-pop furniture manufacturer being championed for acquisition, even though her boss hadn’t e-mailed the final figures she needed until 10:30 last night. If she were a suspicious person, she might suspect that Margo was setting her up to fail in front of Juneau Archer, the elusive owner who was supposed to put in an appearance at this morning’s meeting. Her boss had a reputation for being competitive—and unpredictable. Around the watercooler, people called her Manic Margo—and worse. Belinda hadn’t exactly clicked with the woman, but she was willing to accommodate the mood swings in return for that handy little paycheck every two weeks. So it wasn’t the world’s most exciting job—she still wasn’t about to fail. She really needed this starting-over thing to pan out.

  Belinda puffed out her cheeks and checked her watch. Perhaps she should knock on the door? She hadn’t yet mastered car pool protocol.

  Suddenly the front door burst open and Libby appeared, pleasingly plump in a brown stretch skirt, her bottle-blond hair a helmet of pink sponge rollers. Libby always did her hair in the car, even if she was driving. Libby’s cubicle was near Belinda’s at Archer, and she had extended the invitation to join the car pool. Belinda hadn’t formed an opinion of the woman beyond “vigorous.” If Libby were a drink, she’d be carbonated.

  A red-faced man stood behind her, in hot pursuit of an end to their conversation, shaking a piece of paper. Belinda squirmed at witnessing the domestic drama, but Libby glossed over his concerns with a smile and a peck on the cheek. Then a girl app
eared for a good-bye kiss. She was a shorter version of Libby, stuffed into preteen clothes. Libby gave the girl’s crop-top an ineffective tug, then turned and tottered toward the car, juggling purse, laptop bag, and insulated coffee mug. She opened the front passenger door and fell inside, ushering in a cloud of cologne and the jangle of enough gold jewelry to melt down into a brick.

  “Lordy, Belinda, tell me this is Friday.” Her voice trilled like a bird’s.

  “It’s, um, Monday.”

  “Good gravy, I was afraid so.”

  Chapter 2

  Libby’s gaze bounced around the beige interior. “Cute car.”

  “Thanks. I—”

  “Don’t ever have children, Belinda.” Libby sighed and rearranged herself. “They’ll turn you into an old, grouchy woman.”

  Belinda checked the rearview mirror for people, dogs, and cars, then backed out onto the street. “You’re not old, what—thirty-five?”

  “Bless you. I’m thirty-nine. And it’s not the model year, honey, it’s the mileage. I think my odometer is on the verge of rolling over.” She fanned her cleavage with one hand and sipped from her coffee mug.