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    Working Hard For The Money
    Working Hard For The Money
    Working Hard For The Money
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Working Hard For The Money

    By Pat Tucker

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    About this ebook

    E Quickies-sometimes you need satisfaction fast:
    Author Pat Tucker gets the job done and delivers with three shorts in Working Hard For The Money.
    They’re working hard for the money because they have little options when it comes to surviving these challenging economic times. In Elbow Grease, Pamela Brown is up to her ears in debt until she hatches a Hail Mary of a plan that quickly turns her and jock strap wearing maids into the hottest ticket in their exclusive gated community. Then in Trigger Happy when men can’t control their excitement and pull the trigger too fast they turn to therapists who know just what to do. These ladies are not hookers, but they’re paid to have sex with men. After all, how else will men who suffer from sexual dysfunction learn how to please a woman? But sometimes even professional sex surrogates get caught up while on the clock. And in Sinning in Sin City, three friends take a weekend break in Vegas, only to learn that the handy man has all the right tools. In these three short stories, author Pat Tucker delivers

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPat Tucker
    Release dateJul 11, 2011
    ISBN9780972385046
    Working Hard For The Money
    Author

    Pat Tucker

    By day, Pat Tucker works as a radio news director in Houston, Texas. By night, she is a talented writer with a knack for telling page-turning stories. She is the author of more than twenty books, including, Somebody Has to Pay, The Cocktail Club, Sideline Scandals, Party Girl, Daddy’s Maybe, and Football Widows, as well as the coauthor with Earl Sewell of Loyalty Among Friends and A Social Affair. She has also participated in three anthologies, including New York Times bestselling author Zane’s Caramel Flava. A graduate of San Jose State University, Pat is a member of the National and Houston Association of Black Journalists and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. She is married with two children.

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      Book preview

      Working Hard For The Money - Pat Tucker

      Workin’ Hard For The Money

      Pat Tucker

      Published by Rekcut Publishing at Smashwords

      © Copyright 2011 by Pat Tucker

      Discover other titles by Pat Tucker

      Executive Suite

      Outside My Door

      Daddy By Default

      The Night I Fell In Love

      Also check out these great titles by P.L. Wilson

      The Holy Hustler

      Sweetwater Sinners, The Sequel to The Holy Hustler

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

      ISBN 13: 978-0-972 3850-4-6

      This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locals are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

      Elbow Grease

      By

      Pat Tucker

      Pamela, you have a call on line two, said the voice over the office intercom.

      Pamela Brown cradled the receiver in the crook of her neck between her shoulder and her head as she quickly scribbled onto a notepad. She was trying to keep up with the person on the phone who was spewing information at a rapid pace.

      Pamela, line two, the voice said again.

      Pamela sighed. Couldn’t the receptionist take a message? She was already up to her ears in phone calls and none of them had been pleasant.

      Can I get you to hold a minute? she asked the caller.

      But the caller kept talking.

      Ma’am, Pamela used her I mean business voice and finally got the babbling woman to pause.

      I need you to hold for one minute please, Pamela said.

      Before the woman could say another word, Pamela quickly pressed a button, putting the current caller on hold, then pressed line two, to grab the new waiting call.

      Hello?

      Is this Pamela Denise Brown? a voice asked.

      This is, said Pamela.

      Pamela, my name is Norman Weston and I’m calling from National World Network Financial Bank, and I need to inform you that this phone call is an attempt to collect a debt, any information you-

      Whoa! Hold on a minute! Mister, um, Norman or whatever your name is, Pamela yelled.

      Suddenly she looked around the office and cowered down into her cubical as she quickly lowered her voice.

      I am at work! I don’t appreciate you calling me while I’m on my job!

      Mrs. Brown, any information I obtain during this phone call will be used in an attempt to pay off your outstanding debt, the man yelled back.

      Look, I have asked you before not to call me on my job! If I lose my job because of these calls you really won’t get a dime, now do not call my job again!

      Pamela tried her best to keep her voice down, but it was hard. The calls were becoming more frequent, and regardless of how upset they made her, or how much she stressed that she couldn’t have bill collectors calling her at work, still they called.

      When she looked down at her phone and noticed the red light from line one fade, she realized her previous caller had hung up, and that pissed her off even more.

      Mrs. Brown, this debt is your responsibility and we will call you at home, at work, or even on your cell phone, if that’s what it takes to get you to pay your bill!

      I don’t give a damn what you say, if you call me at work again, I’m going to file a complaint against you! Stop calling me at work! Pamela yelled louder than she intended. Thank God she worked in a loud, bustling, and busy newsroom, where, with so much going on, only a few nosey die-hards would be listening in on her conversation.

      Are you still an Associate Producer at Channel 55?

      I need to go, don’t call me at work anymore! Pamela warned before slamming the receiver back onto the base. She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and released a rugged breath. This was getting out of control and she knew she had to do something fast. But she didn’t know what to do.

      It wasn’t that Pamela was irresponsible, not by a long shot. But she had gotten herself into a bind two years ago when her ailing mother needed a heart operation and didn’t have insurance. Unfortunately her mother suffered a stroke during the surgery and never fully recovered. Pamela used all of her saving plus money from a settlement to make sure her mother’s last days were some of her best. But Pamela’s efforts had left her deep in debt, near foreclosure, and desperate for a miracle.

      By the time her day was over at 7-o-clock, Pamela was physically and emotionally wiped out. She wanted nothing more than to go home, swallow a bottle of wine and fall into bed. As she pulled up to the gates that led to her memorial lake home, she wondered how much longer she’d be able to hold everything together.

      Pamela was two months behind on her car payment, at least six of the eight credit cards she had were maxed out, and the mortgage hadn’t been paid in months. She was strapped for cash and she lived each day on the very edged of fear.

      Ms. Brown, Nelson the security guard at the gate greeted.

      As the iron rod gate slowly eased open, Pamela smiled up at the older man. She would miss his friendly face once the Sherriff’s deputies came and escorted her off the premises. Once she was rejected from the loan modification program a second time, she stopped paying the mortgage and decided to wait it out.

      She was sick and tired of living in fear. She was tired of bill collectors who threatened her with jail, wage garnishments, and whatever else they thought would put the fear of God in her heart and force her to try and squeeze blood from a turnip.

      How are you Nelson? Pamela smiled and did a three finger wave as she drove into what she once considered her paradise right here on earth. With its massive water fountain that greeted visitors at the manned-gate, and its exquisitely landscaped lawns, coming home to the exclusive memorial lakes gated community was once a symbol of immense pride for her.

      But now, every time she sat and waited for those massive gates to open, she felt like more and more of an outsider. Thoughts of being dragged out kicking and screaming seemed to dominate her mind more regularly. And each time she rounded the corner and pulled into her cul-de sac, she wondered if this would be the day she’d find her belongings out on the front lawn.

      Pulling up today, she saw a few cars and a pick-up truck in her parking space.

      Blake and those loser friends of his, Pamela hissed.

      If she had told her 25 year old son and his worthless entourage once, she’d told them a million times not to park in her spot. Now she had to park on the street and trek up the long winding walkway to her own damn house. After the day she’d had, the last thing she wanted to do was come home to a house smelling like sweaty sneakers and stale beer. It seemed like her son and his friends had no other goals in life but to spend hours upon hours sharpening their skills on Madden or Super Street Fighter IV.

      It was enough to piss her off even more than the bill collectors who called as if she had money growing on the tree in the back yard. When she agreed to let him crash at her

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