Slightly Off Balance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Layered Lies

  About the Author

  Slightly

  OFF BALANCE

  Romantic Mystery

  Standalone Novel

  KAYLIE HUNTER

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, businesses, incidents, etc., are the imagination of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or otherwise is coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 by Kaylie Hunter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the author except when utilized in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Melody Simmons

  Books by Kaylie Hunter:

  STANDALONE NOVELS:

  Slightly Off Balance

  KELSEY’S BURDEN SERIES:

  LAYERED LIES

  PAST HAUNTS

  FRIENDS AND FOES

  BLOOD AND TEARS

  LOVE AND RAGE

  Note to readers: Slightly Off Balance is lighter and less intense than Kelsey’s Burden series. I wrote the majority of the book while writing books four and five of Kelsey’s Burden—when I needed a break from the dark side. I hope everyone enjoys it, but don’t worry, I haven’t gone soft.

  The next two books in the line up will echo the same beat of the original series.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Layered Lies

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  They say when you’re having a near-death experience, your entire life flashes through your mind. Well, the twenty-six years I’ve spent on this planet must not have been that exciting, because the only thing I was thinking about was—Why the hell did I wear my pastel, polka-dot, cotton granny-panties today?

  “You outdid yourself this time, Sullivan,” I muttered to myself as I released one of my hands from the death-grip-hold on the outer rail to attempt tucking my skirt back between my legs.

  “Quit moving,” a male voice ordered from below.

  The voice, a lot closer than the last time I was ordered to stay still, startled me enough to cause me to re-grip the metal bar.

  I tipped my head back, looking down at Rod as he climbed the Ferris wheel in his volunteer fireman getup.

  “I said—quit moving,” he grinned, looking up at me.

  Of all the people they could send to save me—did it have to be Rod Thurman?

  From his sun-kissed hair to the tips of his toes, the man was smokin’. His only rival for female attention was his twin brother, Reel. Of course, in a town the size of a penny, Rod and Reel pretty much cornered the bachelor market.

  I know—Rod and Reel? It was their father’s fault. Their birth certificates read Rodney and Ryan, but in Pine Valley, once you were graced with a nickname it stuck like dried cement. Their father, Everett, had told his first wife he was going on a fishing trip with the guys. The result of that trip was Loretta Hines getting knocked up—thus the town joke became the birth of his boys: Rod and Reel. With Everett being the town drunk, I was betting a lot of alcohol was involved when the joke originated.

  From below me, Rod flashed his pearly whites my way. His bulging muscles flexed as he pulled himself up another few feet.

  Ugh, I mentally sighed. Why did I have to come to the carnival tonight? Why did I get on this stupid Ferris wheel? “Lord, hear my prayers. Just end it now,” I whispered.

  “What was that?” Rod asked.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  I looked past him at all the spectators on the ground. Everyone above the age of eight held a cell phone, recording my humiliation and waiting for my shoelace to tear so they could replay my fifty-foot plunge. This was more embarrassing than the time I fell face first into the wishing fountain in the courtyard.

  “You know, most people would look scared as hell if they were hanging upside down from a Ferris wheel with only a shoelace keeping them from falling. But you look just plain frustrated,” Rod laughed, now only a few feet away.

  “Double knotting my shoelaces was to ensure that I never embarrassed myself again like when I fell down the stadium bleachers at the home basketball game. I’m wishing this time I’d have just fallen and gotten it over with.”

  “Falling isn’t an option. I’d get my ass kicked if anything happened to you,” he said, climbing another section. “Besides, the town will find someone else to laugh at in a few days.”

  “Oh really? You going to convince all those people down there to delete their videos of my big ass in polka-dot granny panties?”

  “I hope they post the videos. I could look at that ass all day long, polka dots or not,” he chuckled.

  Rod moved under the crossbar beneath me, and now his face was inches away from mine. His smile was so bright, I would have looked away if it weren’t for the humor dancing in his bright blue eyes. Rod was generally known as a happy guy, always finding the humor in any situation and spreading that happy-go-lucky attitude like a virus to anyone within a few feet of him.

  He moved his harness clip to the side rail I was holding and then stepped up another foot so his chest was inches from my nose. I felt him strapping a harness belt around my waist and cinching it tight. As he moved over to clip the harness to the side bar, I leaned with him, inhaling his cologne.

  “Are you smelling me?” he chuckled.

  “There’s nothing else to do up here,” I shrugged.

  “Quit moving—” he started to say.

  Hearing the shoelace rip, I squeezed the sidebar with all my might. I kn
ew it was hopeless though. I had been stacking those extra holiday pounds on since I hit puberty and refused to go on a diet. If the harness strap wasn’t secure, I wouldn’t be able to hold my own weight. I closed my eyes as my body weight fell... three inches.

  Frozen, I mentally argued with myself to open my eyes. Because I knew the situation had gone from the most embarrassing moment of my life to—I’ll have to move to another country.

  I opened my eyes.

  Rod had wrapped his arms around my waist and was holding my weight as I remained suspended upside down. Only now, his face was nose deep in the front side of my polka-dot granny-panties. And he was laughing, which was causing all kinds of confusion to my girly parts as the vibrations of his chuckles vibrated along my more sensitive areas.

  “Shit! You have to drop me!”

  “I’m-na-gonn-doppp-yuuu,” he mumbled into my panties.

  “Quit talking! Quit laughing!”

  I looked at his harness and saw that only one of his clips was secured. I reached over and secured his second clip to the crossbar.

  Reaching up, I moved my hands between our bodies, searching for the second clip on my own harness. In the process, my hand grazed his own sensitive area, discovering he was excited, in a manly kind of way.

  “Really?” I said, forcing my hand up higher, digging around between our bodies to find the other strap.

  He tried to say something, but it just came out mumbled, and the vibrations almost made me forget what I was doing.

  “Stop talking! Until your face is out of you-know-where, just shut up!”

  He stopped talking but laughed even harder.

  My hand found the strap between his shoulder and the top of my hip. With a hard yank, the strap freed, and I secured it to the crossbar. I tried not to think about the hundreds of witnesses filming us.

  “Okay. I have the harness straps secure. You can let go now.”

  He mumbled something incoherent into my panties without releasing me. I suspected there were rules against him allowing me to decide for myself that I was safe. Taking the matter out of his hands, I apologized, “Sorry about this,” before whacking him in the you-know-where.

  Reacting as any man would, he pushed back, loosening his hold on me. I pushed with my arms as hard as I could to break his hold. My heavy thighs and ass flipped past my head, and I was instantly right side up, dropping about two feet until the tension on the harness straps stopped me.

  Several spectators screamed during my short plummet, but I was more focused on my current situation. Grabbing the crossbar above me, I pulled myself to the outside rail, dragging the harness strap with me.

  “Son-of-a-bitch. That was mean, Tweedle,” Rod grumbled from above me.

  I was somewhat relieved when he used my nickname. I looked up and grinned. Rod and I had known each other since early childhood. The only time I had ever made him truly angry, he had used my full name, drawing it out like a ticked-off parental figure: Deanna Marie Sullivan.

  I moved the harness clip from the crossbar above me to the outside rail. Wrapping my legs around the bar, I slid down, stopping at the next crossbar.

  “And where in the hell do you think you are going?”

  “I’ve had enough. It’s time for me to go home and eat Klondike bars and watch Big Bang Theory reruns.”

  “Figures. You get me all wound up and now you’re just going to leave me?” he chuckled.

  “I’m sure you can find a girl easy enough to take care of your—umm… boy troubles.”

  “As in the girl has to be easy or it will be easy to find a girl?”

  “Both. Either. I don’t care.”

  I moved my ass back from the rail, opening a gap between my lap and the bar. While balancing most of my weight on my thigh, which rested on the crossbar, I moved the safety clips below the crossbar.

  “Hey, you shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not safe. You haven’t been trained,” he said, sounding serious.

  “Try to stop me,” I said as I swung my thigh off the crossbar and slid down another five feet.

  “I mean it,” he complained. “Wait for me to take you down.”

  “And humiliate me even more? No thanks,” I said repeating the same steps and sliding again.

  He was trying to catch up, but I was already two sections ahead of him and had a good groove going. I was also highly motivated.

  For every section he moved, following regulation rules, I moved two sections. When I reached the bottom, another firefighter helped me unbuckle the harness, and I did what any semi-intelligent woman would do—I ducked behind the control booth, climbed over the three-foot railing, and ran away.

  I ran away from the spectators, the firefighters, and the police. I ran as fast as my jelly legs could carry me, sneaking out the back gate of the carnival.

  Almost wiping out as I skidded around the corner of a cinderblock building, I looked up, and a peaceful happiness spread throughout my body. Parked curbside, leaning against her rusty Subaru, was the best friend a girl could ever ask for.

  “Figured you’d head this way. Nice panties,” Tansey grinned.

  “Don’t start with me. I’m in desperate need of chocolate and ice cream.”

  She opened the passenger door and pulled out a box of Klondike bars from a grocery bag sitting on the floor.

  “I really wish you were gay,” I laughed, tearing open the box as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “But then you’d still be straight,” Tansey said, getting in the driver’s side.

  “I’d convert for you.”

  “That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  “I hear you there, sister. Your predicting my escape route, ready with a getaway car and ice cream bars, is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  We both laughed as she started the Subaru and pulled away from the curb.

  “How did you end up hanging upside down on the Ferris wheel, anyway?”

  “It all happened so fast, I’m not really sure. I leaned forward to look down, and the gate swung away from the seat, with me dangling over it. As my ass rose up, I slid further down. Then I fell. I thought I was a goner, but my shoelace miraculously caught on the latch.”

  “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “How’d you know, anyway?”

  She looked over at me and sighed.

  “Just tell me. There’s another five Klondike bars in the box.”

  “They were streaming it live on Facebook. I was watching the video on my phone on the way over. I was halfway to the fairgrounds when Rod reached you. I figured you were relatively safe at that point, so I stopped at the corner store for Klondike bars.”

  “Streaming live on Facebook?” I looked inside the Klondike box on my lap. “I’m going to need more.”

  “There’s another box in the bag. I figured this qualified as an emergency.”

  “What would you have done if Rod would have dropped me and I died?”

  “I would’ve eaten both boxes in your honor, of course,” she grinned. “Then I would have hunted Rod down and murdered him.”

  I unwrapped another Klondike, passing it to her, before unwrapping a second one for myself. “To best friends,” I toasted.

  Chapter Two

  Tansey bypassed Main Street and cut through residential neighborhoods to get to my house. Being my best friend since kindergarten, she went to the spare room where she kept an assortment of clothes, including flannel pajamas. I went to my own bedroom and changed into pink pajamas with bunny rabbits plastered all over them and baby blue fuzzy slippers.

  In the kitchen, I put two Klondike bars each into oversized cereal bowls and put the rest of the ice cream in the freezer. By the time I joined Tansey in the living room, the TV was already playing one of my favorite episode of Big Bang Theory. Life was quiet and happy for all of about two minutes when someone knocked loudly on the back door.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said, looking at Tansey
.

  She just grinned. We both knew who it was, and he had a key. If we got lucky, he wouldn’t use it.

  We didn’t get lucky.

  “You can run. And you can hide. But I’ll always find you, Tweedle-Dee,” Uncle Mike called as he entered through the back door and into the kitchen.

  Since grade school, Uncle Mike had called me Tweedle-Dee. The nickname had stuck and now almost everyone called me either Tweedle-Dee or just Tweedle. My mother and Reel Thurman, Rod’s brother, were the only ones who called me Deanna.

  Tansey and I ducked to hide, but Uncle Mike just chuckled as he walked into the living room. He was still wearing his cop uniform, but his utility belt was gone, and his uniform shirt was unbuttoned, advertising the worn out Tesla T-shirt underneath, indicators that he was off the clock.

  “I brought you a couple things. Your car is in the driveway, your purse is on the table, and here—” He tossed me a package. “—your mother stopped me and told me to give you these. She also said she has to reschedule your breakfast date tomorrow.”

  I looked inside the bag and pulled out three packages of underwear—bikini-cut in dark colors, satin fabric, and four sizes too small for my ass to squeeze into. I tossed the packages to Tansey, who always appreciated my mother’s wishful thinking regarding the size of my clothes.

  “Sweet. A year’s supply of underwear,” she giggled.

  “I’m just glad I don’t have to meet her for breakfast.”

  “Like you would’ve shown up,” Uncle Mike said, rolling his eyes.

  Uncle Mike pushed me over to the center of the couch, taking the end seat and stacking his stocking feet onto the coffee table. He smiled as he snatched my bowl of ice cream.

  “What are we watching?” he asked.

  “The Big Bang Theory. It’s the episode where—”

  “Enough said,” Uncle Mike chuckled. “By the way, your mother thinks you need to go to therapy. She said having oral sex on a Ferris wheel is a sign of some kind of psychological-social-bullshit disorder.”

  “Is that what she called it? Psychological-social-bullshit?”