Betty Jean & Me: The Package by Rachel Cord

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Betty Jean & Me: The Package
A Teen and Young Adult mystery novella
Available now for a special pre-order price of 99¢
at
Amazon​

15-year-old best friends Betty Jean and Rachel are in the midst of discovering new levels of their friendship when someone tries breaking into the house and drops them straight into danger and mystery. Based on the teen diary of professional investigator Rachel Cord.

~*~​

I’ve known professional investigator Rachel Cord for nearly 20 years ever since she walked into my office one day and told me a story then asked me to publish it and it became the first in the Rachel Cord Confidential Investigations series. As she drops in and out of my life at her whim, I’m never surprised—just appreciative—when she shows up or makes contact. She’s never said why she picked me to write her stories, but I’m glad she did, and I’m always hoping she’ll tell me another case or two she and her Confidential Investigations team completed and allow me to write about it.

Recently, Rachel got in touch saying she’d written a novella based on an incident she’d found in her teen diary she hadn’t looked at in several decades and plans to publish as an ebook in November. “I was inspired by the Elodie mysteries Moreau and you wrote,” she said. “So I dug out my old diary wanting to remember bits of my past and this is what I came up with.”

The Teen and Young Adult mystery novella, Betty Jean & Me: The Package, will be published Nov. 15, and is available now for a special pre-order price of 99¢ at Amazon ($2.99 after Nov. 15). It’s a taut mystery filled with juvenile angst and longing.

I wish Rachel well, good luck, and all that stuff with this new endeavor of hers, but I still want another Confidential Investigations tale to tell. Maybe next year.

 

[BoyBleu]

An excerpt from
Betty Jean & Me: The Package
Special pre-order price 99¢
at
Amazon
($2.99 after Nov. 15)





Chapter One​

Puberty SUCKS! So UNFAIR! Fickled! God must HATE women. DAMN! DAMN!! DAMN!!!

I’d opened my diary randomly and found an entry from more than a year ago. Like most of them it was short and cryptic to bring back a memory and not to satisfy someone else’s prurient curiosity—like my dorky brother’s if he ever got hold of it.

Boy, was I angry back then. Finally got my period. Just turned 14 for God’s sake. Thought something was wrong with me. Last in my class. Shit. Every girl I knew had had hers at least a year earlier. That’s me though. First with tits. Last on the rag.

I flipped back to the first page of my diary and the single word SHOWERS!!—written large in caps and underlined—caught my eye.

Seventh grade. First time dressing out for gym and communal showers. A bunch of shy—I was anyway—twelve-year-olds not looking directly at anyone, yet stealing glimpses to see who had pubic hair—from peach fuzz to thatch so thick it looked like an alfalfa field ready to cut. Even now, remembering that first sneaked peek at Laura Meyer’s thick blond bush could make me want—“Tell Laura I . . .”

Enough of that already. Take a breath. Breathe. Breathe. Long breaths. In. Out. In. Out.

And checking out everyone to see who had tits. Half the girls still had nothing; some just buds while others were a bit more advanced with two or three filling an A-cup—maybe a B if they were lucky or had several sheets of Kleenex to stuff in their bra. Then there was me. Jesus. Twelve years old and I had tits adult women envied. Never did find out who taped that picture of a Holstein on my gym locker door.

 

[BoyBleu]

An excerpt from
Betty Jean & Me: The Package
Special pre-order price 99¢
at
Amazon
($2.99 after Nov. 15)​

I quickly turned to the last page.

I smiled and sighed. The last entry was only a sketch. Barely a week old. I hadn’t written anything since. Didn’t know what to write. Wasn’t sure what my feelings were or how to express them.

​

Quivering at the memory, I heated up and felt my heartbeat quicken.

It had been a typically warm, late summer, Iowa afternoon down at the fishing hole where Deckers Branch met Jeffers Creek. Sitting in the shade of huge cottonwood trees, lines in the water, wondering if the catfish were going to bite or not.
Having no luck we reeled in our lines and I was coerced into skinny-dipping. “Not chicken, are you? Bawk, bawk, bawk, b-a-a-a-w-k!”

I remembered the cool water taking my breath away and tingling all over, swimming and splashing and floating with my breasts bobbing like a Mae West, just enjoying that lazy afternoon. Then hands caressed my back and I turned to see barely inches away those beautiful, luscious lips. I closed my eyes, felt arms fold around me pulling me closer, our breasts pressing together and then those lips touching mine, kissing, tasting, a seeking tongue slipping past my teeth that I suckled softly.

As the memory engrossed me, my insides felt hollow and a hot ache between my legs demanded attention. I lay back on my bed staring at the drawing in my diary and remembering the taste of those lips; my other hand slipping inside my jeans, my breath thready as I softly whispered, “Betty Jean. Betty Jean. Betty—”

 

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Dec. 20th through Dec. 27 on Sale at Amazon
99 Cents
Free on Kindle Unlimited

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