Side Hustle: A Small Town Romantic Comedy (Jobs From Hell Book 4) Read online

  “Uh-huh.”

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I knew you wouldn’t get it. I’m outta here.”

  She spun and stalked off. I wouldn’t have been a card-carrying male if I hadn’t noticed the way her ass looked in those light leggings as she walked away. She was annoying, but even I could admit—at least in my head—the girl was crazy pretty. Which was exactly what got me in trouble back in high school, but tonight was not the night to rehash those memories.

  Hazel let out a grunt and a curse as she tripped over something in the dark. I sighed, knowing I couldn’t let her walk back down without helping her, whether I hated her guts or not. I had a flashlight in my pocket, and no, I wasn’t happy to see her.

  “Hazel, wait.” I jogged down after her, clicking on the light and trying to shine it in front of her feet.

  Sticks, pine needles, dirt, and something shiny reflected back to me in the pool of light. Hazel stopped walking and turned in a circle.

  “Did you trip over something?” I asked, catching up to her.

  “It’s here,” she said in some kind of creepy whisper that made me think of Bigfoot hunters.

  “What’s here?” I whispered back, turning in my own circle and only seeing a huge outcropping of rocks.

  Hazel grunted and I turned around to see her trying to roll a boulder that probably weighed more than her.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Shut up and help me. There’s a party going on behind these rocks and I want in on it.”

  I screwed up my face. Hazel did always seek out the loudest and most obnoxious parties, but why would there be a party behind a pile of rocks? And why was I even considering helping her? I had far bigger problems on my hands. Namely, my life and its utter lack of direction.

  She got the one boulder moved a few inches, and she let out a little cheer for herself. Jesus. She’d be here all night if I didn’t help. I put the flashlight down on the ground, making sure it shined in our general direction, and got to work moving the rocks out of the way. Why and what for, I had no idea.

  Ten minutes later I’d had enough of being a gentleman. I straightened up and brushed my hands off to tell Hazel I was out of here. And that’s when the beam from the flashlight hit whatever was behind this wall of rocks.

  “Um, Hazel?” I called absentmindedly.

  Was I dreaming? Maybe I’d hit my head and this was all a concussed fog? Or maybe my crisis of identity had caused a hallucination?

  Hazel ran over to my side and followed my finger, which was pointing silently at the shiny stuff. She gasped and jumped in the air. “We did it! We found the party!”

  I shook my head from side to side slowly, completely stunned. Thanks to my nemesis, Hazel, I’d finally found the push I needed to move my life in a positive direction.

  “Not a party, Hazel. We found gold.”

  2

  Hazel

  “Do you need another go at it, honey?” Mrs. Trudowski’s thin voice broke through my thoughts, making me nearly jump out of my skin.

  She had her arm over her head, her liver-spotted hand holding the floral material away from her armpit to give me access. The poor dear couldn’t see well enough to shave anymore. Thankfully, there was only one lonely hair growing out of her armpit. I’d seen some bushes when it came to sniffing a few of the men. I wasn’t naming names—ahem, Clyde the tow truck driver—but some of the guys needed to YouTube manscaping videos in this town.

  You see, I’d been blessed with a golden sniffer. Where some children have talents in sports, cooking, or memorizing facts, I excelled when it came to my nose. I could smell something—or someone—from a mile away. I could discern the smell of burnt toast from burnt roast. If I’d been born a German shepherd, I would have been hired by the police to find all the secret stashes of drugs. As it was, I’d finally found my calling as a human.

  Professional sniffer at the Fragrance & Aroma Reformulation Testing facility.

  F.A.R.T.

  Yup. I sniffed armpits for a deodorant company looking to make a batch of products as diverse in scents as the Bath & Body Works candle display. The thing no one considered, outside of scientists and sniffers like me, was that scents changed when applied to people’s skin. Their unique pheromones, skin bacteria, and even the foods they ate changed the overriding scent, making each scent unique to the person. My job was to make sure that each new scent created by the scientists would actually smell similar no matter whose skin it was applied to.

  “No, I’m good, Mrs. Trudowski.” I gave her a smile and checked off the box on my clipboard. That pumpkin spice latte deodorant was consistent, but a little too much emphasis on the spice for my taste.

  She lowered her frail arm and patted me on the shoulder with a grin. “Such a dear.”

  She shuffled off in her black-red-and-white bowling shoes, and I tried to get my thoughts back on my job. I mean, I was only sniffing for two hours. If I couldn’t handle a two-hour shift, was I even an adult? True fact: your sniffing capabilities diminish significantly after two hours of work. Even sniffing the coffee beans between armpits wouldn’t work to clear my palate after a couple hours. Hence, the two-hour shifts.

  And also hence, the multiple side hustles to keep food on the table. Granny kept a roof over my head, for which I was eternally grateful, but I paid the rest of our bills. And good Lord did we go through a lot of cat food with Granny’s National Cat Protection Society. She provided a home for all the retired cats that no one wanted anymore, which was quite admirable. Unfortunately, we found out the hard way that even old cats can still get pregnant, which only padded our numbers and made for more mouths to feed. I tried to separate the boy and girl cats a few years back, but Granny wouldn’t stand for it.

  “Let them have some fun in their golden years, Hazel,” she’d said, a gleam in her eye I didn’t wish to question. Some things were better left undiscussed.

  And so, we now had cats coming out our ears. Once in high school, I’d run all the way to Rip’s house, crying that I couldn’t find Granny. Turned out she was just taking a nap and all the cats had sat on her, covering her from head to toe. Rip had been nice about it, but he’d given Granny a wide berth ever since that incident. She’d been completely covered, but her crazy had shown like a beacon.

  “You gonna sniff or what?”

  I jumped again, dropping my pen on the linoleum floor.

  Bobby, the booking officer at the prison, stood there with his mouth in a snarl and his sweaty armpit on display. I schooled my features into a pleasant smile while I silently screamed inside, leaning forward to give his armpit a sniff.

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus, the spice had left the building and the pumpkin had turned rancid. I waved him on and buried my nose in the little canister of coffee beans for a count of ten. Usually, I loved my job. Really, I did. Even with Bobby’s sweaty pits and Clyde’s nest of armpit hair. It was just today, I was distracted. Majorly. I mean, Rip and I found gold last night.

  G. O. L. D.

  Little nuggets of shiny metal that would mean zeroes in our bank accounts.

  Not that the gold was mine. I actually didn’t know whose it was. But I sure liked that phrase “finders keepers.” I’d been humming the tune to “Money, Money, Money” by Abba all morning.

  It was the strangest thing. We found it, I jumped for joy, Rip just stared at it in a trance, and then he’d covered it back up with the rocks. You’d think he’d be as jacked as I was. It was a Hell town legend that one day, after the right couple copulated in a sea cave, gold would be discovered in town again. Enough couples were having sex in the sea caves to make it happen, that much I knew. The big one by the cliffs even had a signup sheet on a clipboard next to the cave entrance. Auburn Hill citizens really wanted to find that gold! Thankfully, I personally hadn’t had to get busy in a sea cave to find the treasure. Although the idea of that with Rip was making me as sweaty under the collar as Bobby’s armpit.

  Like a good little sniffer, I kept sniffing until I got to the end of the line of volunteers, marking down my findings. The exact second the last volunteer filed out the door, I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket and texted Rip.

  Hazel: Oh my God, Rip! We have to talk! I’m dying here!

  The bubble floated there for an excruciatingly long minute before he replied.

  Rip: Fine. Meet me there in 15.

  “Meet me there in fifteen? Like minutes?” I mumbled to myself, ditching the lab coat and finding my keys in the lockers in the break room.

  Why couldn’t he use more words? Like, did he ration them? Only gave himself so many words to say in a day, so he had to be careful with how many he said at any given time or even texted? God, Rip was so weird. Why couldn’t I have found gold with someone more exciting, like Amelia? Or Lucy. Or even Bain, which wasn’t saying much because that guy was grumpy and scowly-faced all the damn time. Even the prison warden would have been more fun than Rip. Although he did smell good, I had to give him that.

  By the time I made it to the parking lot behind Hill Hotel, there were storm clouds in the distance, which didn’t bode well for my ride home. My poor little Jeep was the cutest thing that came out of the ’90s, but she didn’t have a soft top, which made winter interesting in Auburn Hill. I put my belongings in a waterproof backpack and shoved that under my seat.

  That same pulse of energy that had drawn me here last night hit my chest like a physical touch. At first I thought it had to do with the full moon. Granny had always called me Little Moon, and try as I might to disprove all the woo-woo, I couldn’t deny the spark of energy and creativity that flooded through my body each full moon. After last night’s discovery, I had no idea what it said about me that I was even more in tune
with a cave loaded with gold.

  The dirt below my shoes and the tree branches swaying all the way up to the star-studded night sky, it was all a part of me, having grown up here in Auburn Hill. I loved this land. I loved the town legend. I didn’t love that I’d discovered the gold with Rip Bennett. He could take a flying leap headfirst into Granny’s huge kitty litter box.

  “Think happy thoughts, Hazel. Think about what all that gold could do for this town,” I muttered out loud.

  And just like that, my mood cleared and meeting up with Rip wasn’t such a hardship. After all, I was pretty sure this land was all his family’s. They could do whatever they wanted with it. Being nasty to him wouldn’t help solidify his plans to share the wealth with the town.

  “Psst.”

  The whisper jolted me from my thoughts. Rip stood over to my left, a shadowy figure under a large tree branch, as skulky as he appeared on any given day.

  “Why are you hiding?” I walked over to him, looking around to see if there was some danger I was unaware of. He wore a dark, long-sleeved Henley with a pair of jeans that couldn’t hide the fact that this man worked out. I wasn’t one to drool over a man’s thighs, but damn, Rip looked like a soccer player with those quads.

  Oh man, he looks good. No! Bad Hazel! Focus on the gold!

  “Why are you making that face?” Rip looked at me with a single, thick eyebrow raised.

  Great. Now my crazy thoughts were informing my face and letting the world know I talked to myself. Often. Repeatedly. And usually it led to an internal argument.

  I smiled, hoping the blush on my cheeks hid behind the darkness surrounding us. “Nothing! So, did you look at the you-know-what again?”

  Rip’s lips tilted into a slight grin. “You mean the gold?”

  “Shh!” I put my hand on his mouth to shut him up before anyone heard us. The jolt of electricity that ran up my arm had me snatching my hand back.

  Whoa. What the hell was that?

  Rip lost the grin, probably just as disturbed by me touching him. We’d tried to avoid any touching over the years. Hell, we’d mostly ignored each other entirely by pretending the other person didn’t exist. Usually it worked. Rip had a tendency to blend into the background on purpose. I noticed him, of course, but I saw how other people just looked on by. He did it on purpose and I never understood it.

  “No one’s around, Hazel,” he said full volume. “We can talk about the gold.”

  My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “No! We need to be extremely careful. Do you know what people around here would do if they caught wind of a cave full of gold? And you do realize that Poppy has bionic ears, right?”

  Poppy was the town mail carrier with multicolored hair pushing the bounds of retirement age. She was also the town chief of gossip, with the ability to overhear conversations that was beyond the human realm. I wouldn’t put it past her to show up on this hill, claiming she heard us talking about gold and demand her fair share.

  “I highly doubt they’re bionic, but yeah, you’re right. The townsfolk would freak out about their precious legend coming true. How about we use the code word ‘honeycomb’ instead?”

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Ew. No. There’s literally no way I’d get excited about bees that buzz around and sting me. Oh, I know! How about we found a Jumanji game buried in this hill?”

  Rip ran a hand through his hair, making the dark strands lie in a mess, which only made him hotter. Stupid boys and their perfectly messed-up hair.

  “Seriously? Jumanji? I’m not invoking worldwide disaster by messing around with that. How about we found an arrowhead and wonder if it’s from some ancient tribe?”

  I pursed my lips and thought it through. “Fine. That works. Do you know for sure your family owns this property where we found the arrowhead? The, um, tribal people will want to verify that before they dig around.”

  Rip looked like he wanted to laugh, but caught himself just before he dared to express an emotion like joy. “I’m pretty sure my father owns this land, but I’ve decided to sneak into his office to see if I can find the deed.” He made a face. “If this land is his, he’s not going to share the, uh, arrowhead.”

  My heart dropped. I remembered Rip telling me back in high school that his dad was money-hungry. He’d lent money to poor Janey when she was in danger of losing her goat farm. When she couldn’t pay him back, Mr. Bennett had kicked her off the land and she’d had to move all her goats to a smaller plot of land outside of town, resorting to goat yoga to make ends meet. He hadn’t cared that her late husband had been a key member of the town for decades. All Mr. Bennett cared about was money.

  “Well, crap,” I muttered, spinning away to think better. It helped my brain cells to fire when I wasn’t looking directly at Rip. His soulful brown eyes held depths I got lost in when I wasn’t careful. “Can you talk to him and see if he’ll transfer the land to you?”

  It was a long shot, but all possibilities needed to be explored.

  Rip was already frowning when I turned back. I hated the way all the light in his eyes died out at the mention of his dad.

  “No. There’s no way he’ll give it to me. Plus, I won’t ask him for anything anyway.” His jaw clenched tight, and I wanted to smooth my hand over his face to comfort him.

  “Is he still abusive?” I whispered, my breath catching and holding. We hadn’t talked about this subject since that night so many years ago in high school. The source of all this loathing between us.

  Rip flinched and then turned away from me. “I think we also need to take some of the gold and get it tested. Anonymously. If that’s possible. It might be fool’s gold and we’re getting excited over nothing.”

  Well, that went well. He just changed the subject. I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “No. It’s real gold. I can feel it.”

  He smirked and I wanted to slap him. “As scientifically proven as that is, I think we better get an outside opinion. Let’s go get a nugget and I’ll get it tested.”

  He ducked under the branch and then held it up for me to walk under. Funny how he could make fun of me and then be kind and thoughtful in the next breath. Then again, when had anything with Rip ever made sense? I trudged behind him, keeping my gaze either on where I was stepping or the bright moon overhead. Not on his ass. Definitely not on his decidedly delicious ass.

  “Here we go. I brought a hammer in case we need it.” Rip stopped by the pile of rocks, and I inhaled fully to clear my head. So much for not looking at his ass.

  I got busy moving rocks, leaving the larger boulders for Rip to handle. He had the muscles for it, after all. NOT that I was looking.

  Rip let out a whistle and I straightened, getting a good look at the mouth of the cave. He shined his flashlight on it and hundreds of little specks flashed back at us, little threads winding through the walls. Short icicles hung down from the ceiling of the cave.

  “How can this be fool’s gold?” he whispered, tone reverent and finally quiet enough even Poppy couldn’t have heard him from three feet away.

  My heart rate accelerated just looking at the gold. I hadn’t grown up with money. In fact, I knew more about not having money than having it. I always thought I didn’t care about wealth, but now, staring at a veritable fortune in front of me, my entire body lit up with possibility. I was straight giddy for the shiny stuff.

  “Oh my God, Rip! Stellamites!” I tore my gaze away from the gold and saw him staring at me with the same look of crazed excitement in his eyes. “It’s gotta be real.”

  He nodded slowly. “Pretty sure they’re stalactites. But we have to do this right. I need to find out who owns this land and get the gold verified. You have to keep this a secret.”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I will! I love a good secret!”

  The right side of his mouth twitched.

  My smile faded. “Not that I really have anyone to tell, so it’s quite easy to keep a secret.”

  Rip reached up and tried to pry one of those icicles of gold loose from the cave ceiling. He grunted with the effort. “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged, finding it easier to talk to his back. “Well, Lucy is going to have that baby any day now. Lenora is also pregnant and working double time to get their business in order before her maternity leave. Finnie is, well, Finnie. Working a ton at her clinic. Amelia is so in love with Titus and that new B and B of hers, I only get to see her for short snippets of time.” My chest ached the more I said out loud what I’d been feeling. “I talk to my granny’s cats more than I do my Hell Raisers.”