Praise for the Bottom Dollar Series
BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR (#1)
“In a first novel that is guaranteed to please Fannie Flagg and Bailey White fans, Gillespie introduces the Bottom Dollar Girls with a flair for timing and a cheeky southern turn of phrase… Brace for a wild ride chock-full of Southern wit and down-home advice from a clutch of quirky characters you will hope to see again soon.”
– Booklist
“Use your very last bottom dollar, if you have to. Just BUY THIS BOOK. You will laugh yourself sick and love every minute of it.”
– Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queen
“A winner of a first novel, filled with Southern-style zingers and funny folks.”
– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The characters are the kind of steel magnolias who would make Scarlett O’Hara envious.”
– The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Laugh out loud... this perfect summer read [will] find permanent beach-house residence.”
– Richmond Times-Dispatch
A DOLLAR SHORT (#2)
“Those plain-speaking, cheeky Bottom Dollar gals (Bet Your Bottom Dollar) return with more rollicking adventures in Cayboo Creek, South Carolina…Never a dull moment…this fast-paced screamer of a romance begs a giggle, if not a guffaw.”
– Booklist
“Laugh-out-loud antics as...Gillespie continues her entertaining Bottom Dollar Girls series…Certain to please women’s fiction fans of all ages.”
– Romantic Times (Top Pick)
“As tart and delectable as lemon meringue pie...a pure delight.”
– Jennifer Weiner, Author of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes
“A fine romp of a book, well-written and thoroughly entertaining.”
– The Winston-Salem Journal
“A Dollar Short is meant to entertain, and it does. It takes talent to sustain this level of comic writing for over 300 pages. Gillespie keeps the ball in the air, spinning madly, until the end.”
– The Boston Globe
DOLLAR DAZE (#3)
“Each character is lovingly crafted in Gillespie’s hilarious, heartwarming, and often irreverent look at senior living in small-town America. The third book in the Bottom Dollar Girls series (Bet Your Bottom Dollar; A Dollar Short) can also be enjoyed as a stand-alone.”
– Booklist (starred review)
“Hilarious and endearing...Gillespie’s humorous style will have readers hooting out loud, and her cheeky characters will have them coming back for more!”
– Janean Nusz, The Road to Romance
“Readers will be chuckling over crazy man-getting antics, sighing at the complexity of life, love and matrimony and maybe even shedding a tear over the heartbreak and tragedy. This novel is charismatic and replete with poignancy.”
– Romantic Times
Books by Karin Gillespie
The Bottom Dollar Series
BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR (#1)
A DOLLAR SHORT (#2)
DOLLAR DAZE (#3)
The Southern Girls Series
GIRL MEETS CLASS (#1)
(September 2015)
Copyright
DOLLAR DAZE
The Bottom Dollar Series
Part of the Henery Press Chick Lit Collection
Second Edition
Digital epub edition | May 2015
Henery Press
www.henerypress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Copyright © 2014 by Karin Gillespie
Cover design by Stephanie Chontos
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Related subjects include: book club recommendations, women’s friendship and sisterhood, chick lit romantic comedy, chick lit books, funny romance, Southern humor, women’s fiction, Southern fiction.
ISBN-13: 978-1-941962-56-5
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To Julie Cannon.
Missing you every day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks so much to the superlative team at Henry Press for giving this series new life. So happy to be a member of the Hen House! Particular thanks goes to Kendel Lynn and Art C. Molinares who are always accessible, cheerful and kind.
One
If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
~ Comment overheard under the hair dryer
at the Dazzling Do’s
It was the night of the annual Sweetheart Dance in Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, and the cinder-block walls of the high school gymnasium were festooned with foil hearts and crepe-paper cupids. Frank Sinatra crooned “Fly Me to the Moon” on the oversized boom box while a crush of couples clung to each other on a makeshift dance floor beneath the basketball hoop.
Mavis Loomis, who was manning the punch bowl, clucked her tongue as she saw her friend Attalee Gaines seductively grinding her bony hips for the benefit of her white-haired date, Dooley Prichard.
“Someone needs to take a fire hose to those two,” whispered Birdie Murdock, who was selling baked goods next to Mavis.
Mavis shook her head in dismay. “I’m surprised either of them have any spark left. Attalee’s on the downhill slide of eighty, and Dooley can’t be far behind.”
“Oh, he’s a far younger man,” Birdie said. “Attalee was bragging about it the other day, saying she’d snagged herself a seventy-eight-year-old stud.”
“Leave it to Attalee,” Mavis said.
“All that wooing and cooing,” Birdie said, waving a funeral home fan in front of her flushed face. “I’m glad my dating days are done.”
Mavis knew she was expected to agree with her old friend. Both she and Birdie were widows and their respective husbands had been dead for over ten years. Since then, Mavis’s love life had been as lively as a wet firecracker. She knew Birdie’s hadn’t been much perkier.
“Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have a beau,” Mavis said as she swayed to the music. “Seems everyone’s part of a couple these days. Look at Reeky and Jerry.”
Birdie glanced at Reeky Flynn and Jerry Sweeny in the far corner of the dance floor. The couple was fused together like Siamese twins. Reeky, the owner of the Book Nook in town, had always deflected the advances of Jerry until her cat died a couple of months ago. As a surprise, Jerry, who was a taxidermist, had Moonbeam freeze-dried and mounted, creating a lasting memento of Reeky’s fallen feline. Now Moonbeam had a prominent place on top of her piano, and Jerry was spending most evenings beside Reeky on her love seat.
“Reeky’s a young woman in her thirties.” Birdie refilled her cup with strawberry punch. “It’s a bit late for us, my dear.”
“I think we’re still pretty darn fetching for a couple of mature women,” Mavis said, smiling at her friend.
Birdie’s best feature was her head of silver hair, shiny as a new dime and styled into sleek waves around her face. At the age of sixty-two, she still sported a girlish figure, save for a slight swell of tummy that could be discerned underneath her red wool dress.
Mavis was shorter than Birdie, with close-cropped hair, the salt-and-pepper color of a schnauzer’s
. Her best points were soft brown eyes (the color of malted milk balls, her late husband Arnold use to say) and shapely calves.
“Fetching or not,” Birdie said, “I have no interest in—”
Gracie Tobias, who’d been taking tickets at the front door, darted across the slick gymnasium floor to the refreshment table.
“Did you notice Attalee’s vulgar behavior on the dance floor?” she said. “I think it’s time for a faster song.”
Mrs. Tobias, who wore a boxy black jacket with slim skirt and pearls, knelt next to the boom box. In moments, “Fly Me to the Moon” was replaced by “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love.”
“There.” Mrs. Tobias brushed her hands together. “Much better. How are things going at the punch bowl?”
“Not spiked yet... unfortunately,” Mavis said.
Mrs. Tobias laughed and helped herself to a cup of punch. “I know what you mean. I could use a bit of a toddy myself.”
Mavis tapped her foot in time to the music and looked longingly at the throngs of dancing couples. “I’d settle for a turn around the floor.”
“Maybe later,” Birdie said with a yawn. “I’m bloated from all the punch I’ve been drinking. “
“I didn’t mean with you,” Mavis said with a sigh. “Nothing personal, but I’m tired of dancing with my girlfriends at these functions. For once, I’d like to be in the arms of a man.”
“All evening long she’s been in a state,” Birdie said to Mrs. Tobias. “Going on about moons and Junes as if she were at the junior-senior prom again.”
Mrs. Tobias dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “Heavenly day! I’m grateful to be done with romance. All that groping and heavy breathing that comes with courting. In my book, there’s nothing more common. Besides, I’m sixty-three, not sweet sixteen, and much too old for such shenanigans.”
“Last month’s Good Housekeeping claimed that sixty is the new forty,” Mavis said. “Plenty of women have romances at an older age.”
“Oh really?” Birdie asked. “Name some.”
“Well, there’s...Joan Collins,” Mavis said.
“Didn’t she marry a young Swedish gold digger?” Birdie said.
“Yes, but then she divorced him and remarried and is supposedly happy as a lark with her current husband,” Mavis said. “And Barbra Streisand and Jim Brolin? A late-life romance.”
“Celebrities don’t count,” Birdie snapped. “It’s a cinch to attract a man when you have millions of dollars and can scamper off to a plastic surgeon at the first sign of a wrinkle or a bulge. Try snagging a man when all you have to offer is creaky knees and your AARP discount card. Give me an example of one ordinary older woman who is having a romance.”
“Attalee,” Mavis said.
“Oh, well, Attalee.” Birdie pursed her lips into a smirk. “She’s hardly ordinary.”
“That’s for certain,” Mrs. Tobias said with a titter.
Birdie glanced at her watch. “I hope this dance wraps up soon. I’d like to catch an episode of Murder, She Wrote.”
“I heard that was in syndication,” Mrs. Tobias said. “What channel does it come on?”
Mavis made a face. “I’m tired of sitting at home and watching old-lady television shows. I don’t know about you gals, but I’m going to go and find a fellow to dance with.”
She surrendered her punch ladle to Birdie and flounced away from the refreshment table into the semi-darkness of the gymnasium.
“Good luck, Mavis,” Mrs. Tobias called after her. To Birdie she said, “She’s not herself. Maybe I should take her to my garden club meetings. Plunging a trowel into the soil is a wonderful diversion.”
“She is behaving peculiarly,” Birdie said. She stared at the clutch of dancers on the floor. “About what Mavis was saying... Do you ever think about it?”
“Never,” Mrs. Tobias said with a resolute lift of her chin. “I was married to my late husband Harrison for thirty satisfying years, and that’s all I’ll ever need.”
“I know what you mean,” Birdie said. “My Max was the love of my life.”
“Besides,” Mrs. Tobias said, casting her eyes around the gymnasium, “it’s not as if there are any suitable men to be found around here.”
That’s precisely what Mavis discovered as she wandered through the knots of partygoers at the dance. Instead of encountering an eligible man to partner with, she found legions of lone women like herself. DeEtta Jefferson sat in the shadows wearing a red satin party dress, chewing Cracker Jack and looking mournfully in the direction of the dance floor.
A posse of women from the Ladies’ League at the Rock of Ages Baptist Church were passing out buttons that said “Down with Dancing,” but Prudee Phipps, the president, betrayed herself by tapping her foot to the beat.
Jewel Turner, who was two-stepping on the fringes of the dance floor, grabbed Mavis’s arm and said over the din, “Why don’t Baptists make love standing up?”
“Why?” Mavis asked.
“‘Cause it might lead to dancing,” Jewel said. She jerked her head in the direction of the members of the Ladies’ League. “Those gals need to learn to put a little ‘fun’ in their fundamental.”
Mavis chuckled and pressed on, disturbed that someone as pretty and young as Jewel was forced to dance stag. Jewel, who was the owner of the Chat ‘N’ Chew diner, had a pile of wavy, red-gold hair that reached to her shoulders and a waist as cinched as a bud vase.
Mavis simply had to find someone to dance with. It didn’t matter who. After making such a big fuss in front of Birdie and Mrs. Tobias, she’d be too humiliated to return to the punch bowl a failure. All she needed was one single man willing to do the Carolina Shag.
Squinting through the gloom of the gymnasium, Mavis didn’t see any suitable candidates. Then, just behind her, she heard a familiar hacking cough.
The song “Be Young, Be Foolish and Be Happy” cued up and the dance floor grew packed with moving bodies.
“What do you say, Mrs. Tobias?” Birdie extended her hand. “Shall we trip the light fantastic?”
“Well, I—”
“Come on.” Birdie snapped her fingers to the beat. “It’s fun.”
“One dance,” Mrs. Tobias said. “And you’ll have to lead. I’ve never shagged before.”
The two women joined the twisting masses. Attalee, who was being flung around by a surprisingly limber Dooley, noticed her two friends and let out a hoot.
“Shake yer groove thing, y’all!” she hollered over the music.
Birdie and Mrs. Tobias launched into a stiff shag as Birdie mouthed the words to the music. Then, directly under the floating spangles of the mirrored disco ball, Mavis and her dance partner appeared.
“Good godfathers,” Birdie breathed. “Can you believe it?”
“Not in a million years.” Mrs. Tobias was struck motionless.
Mavis threw herself into an enthusiastic shag with Roy Malone. Roy, who was trailing an oxygen tank, had to stop every few seconds to cough up some phlegm.
“Bless her heart,” Mrs. Tobias murmured. “She really was desperate.”
Just as Roy was about to dip Mavis, he lost his grip on her waist, and she fell flat on her bottom.
“Roy!” Mavis shouted over the music, struggling to get up. “Are you okay?”
Roy, who was clawing at his chest, turned purple as a plum and crumpled to the floor.
“Medic!” Mavis screamed. “Please, somebody! Help!”
A half hour later, Mavis was slumped on a folding chair in the middle of the gymnasium while Birdie and Mrs. Tobias hovered over her like a pair of brooding hens. They were the only three people remaining. After Roy’s collapse, the Sweetheart Dance had lost most of its zing.
“Now, Mavis, it’s not that bad.” Birdie patted her shoulder.
A mottled-faced Mavis looked up at her friend. “Ye
s it is. I could have killed Roy. And all because of my silly vanity.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Tobias said. “You heard what the paramedics said. Roy’s going to be fine.” She cleared her throat. “Well, as fine as a man with an advanced case of emphysema can be. He just has to avoid aerobic exercise from now on.”
“Ladies.” A shiny-faced custodian poked his head into the gymnasium. “I gotta be locking up soon.”
“We were just leaving.” Mavis rose from her chair.
Birdie pinched the sleeve of Mavis’s navy-blue mackinaw coat. “I should come home with you.”
“No,” Mavis said. “I think I’ll stop by the store first. I’ve got work to do.” Mavis was the proprietor of the Bottom Dollar Emporium, a general store on Main Street.
“I could help you,” Birdie said, tying a muffler around her neck.
“I’m fine, really.” Mavis managed a faint smile.
The women emerged from the school into a night as dark and velvety as the inside of a jewel box. Mavis waved good-bye to Birdie and Mrs. Tobias and sprinted to her white Chevy Lumina. A smattering of frost had formed on her windshield, so she had to crank the engine and wait while the defroster cleared the glass. Her late husband Arnold used to keep a scraper in the glove compartment for such occasions, but Mavis had misplaced it several years back.
Frosted car windows, leaky pipes, loose floorboards. She’d coped with them all and more since heart disease had claimed Arnold two weeks shy of his fifty-third birthday. Over the years, she’d gotten handy with a wrench and Philips screwdriver, wondering sometimes if Arnold was looking down from heaven at her in astonishment. As a young bride, she’d been all thumbs when it came to tools.
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