The Miss Fortune Series: Undercover Bubba (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Miss Chance meets Miss Fortune Book 3) Read Free

encountered along the way.
    He fell over a clump of something unremarkable and nearly hit the ground, his hands never leaving the pockets of his robes as he stumbled forward several steps until he managed to regain a wobbly kind of balance. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a less self-protective creature in my life. I mean, who doesn’t put their hands out when they’re going to fall?
    Felonius, a.k.a., Lance P. Fenus, lifted a hand and called out to the other brother, from another mother. “Brother Todd. Wait there. We’re coming.”
    “Thank god,” Cal muttered. “I don’t think I could have watched that train wreck another minute.”
    My father grimaced. “Brother Todd doesn’t get along with nature. He much prefers to hide inside except for the daily walks we all take through the gardens. He can’t get out of those.”
    As we approached, Brother Todd smiled wearily, his wide face glistening with sweat. He swiped a sleeve of his robe over his brow and stood panting as we came near. His round cheeks were bright red from his efforts. For a moment I thought he was wearing a white skull cap. Then I realized he had a kind of reverse bowl cut thing going on. The top of his head was bald in a perfect circle, leaving a dark fringe of hair that covered his ears and curled wetly against his fat neck. A prodigious amount of dandruff speckled the shoulders of his robes. My hand twitched upward in anticipation of a handshake, but Brother Todd didn’t take his hands from his pockets so I lowered it again.
    “Hello, hello.” He grinned widely at me. “My, you’ve certainly grown into a lovely young woman, Felicity.”
    I glanced at my father, alarmed that the other man seemed to know me.
    Brother Lance, a.k.a. my father smiled. “Felly, you remember Todd Stevens? We used to work together in Indy. He sponsored me when I came to the order.”
    Ah, the guy who hated my father for sleeping with his wife. According to my father, the man had forgiven him due to his new religiosity and had offered to provide him a false identity and a place at The Order of Saint Francis Assisi on the Bayou . It probably never crossed his mind that all new brothers to the order had toilet scrubbing duty for a month.
    Who ever said revenge wasn’t sweet?
    “Of course. How are you Mr…erm…Brother Stevens?”
    “Nestled safely in God’s palm, Felicity. No better place to be.”
    “I guess Brother Mike fell out of God’s palm?” Cal asked.
    Brother Todd skimmed my sexy PI a glance. “Yes. Well. About that.” He pointed toward a winding double row of cypress trees leading from the pink brick monastery building. “I wanted to show you something. It might have to do with Brother Mike’s disappearance.”
    We followed him across the grass, hands outstretched from an instinctual response to his constant tripping and stumbling across the lawn. When we hit the flagstone path leading through the cypress trees, everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that the ordeal was over.
    Brother Todd turned to us, swiping perspiration off his wide forehead with a sleeve of his robe. “It’s just over h―” And he went down, landing on his round belly and skidding across several flat stones before grinding to a halt against the legs of a concrete bench with his thick, hairy legs exposed.
    I threw Cal a look and found him rolling his eyes. He mouthed the word “disaster” and hurried over to help the clumsy monk to his feet.
    Groaning softly, Brother Todd eschewed Cal’s offer of help and pushed himself to his knees. “Right there.” He pointed a thick digit with a ragged fingernail toward a wide hole beneath the bench. Cal crouched down and peered beneath the bench, his midnight brows arching. Reaching into the hole, he came up with a small piece of wood, examining it carefully. “It’s a religious figurine of some kind.” He handed it to me and I used a finger to brush black dirt off the tiny object’s surface. The figurine tugged a memory