Funeral home owner and undertaker Dual Hood knows a good thing when he sees it, so when Charlie Soder applies for the job of embalmer, he snatches up the young man in a heartbeat. Charlie, fresh-faced and just out of college, also knows a good thing when he sees it, and immediately sets his sights on his new sexy boss.<br><br>It doesn’t take long for sparks to fly and romance to blossom. But Dual worries what folks in his small Mississippi town will say, and whether his family-owned business will suffer if word goes round about his new love interest. He isn’t at all certain he has the courage to do the right thing and grab love before it slips through his fingers.

The Undertaker's Secret

“Hey, Mama,” I said as I went into the kitchen.


“Did you get Mr. Hankins in the ground?” she asked in a distracted voice. “Lord, I hope the dirt don’t freeze this year. Hasn’t so far, which is a bit odd, isn’t it? Seems like Christmas time was always so cold, but this year it’s been forties and fifties every day.”


“The climate is changing all right,” she opined. “But that don’t mean we all need to start driving electric cars. We ain’t the Jetsons, you know.”


“And the only thing there’s too much of out there in that ‘atmosphere’ is our tax dollars, and I’m sure they’d just love to find ways to spend more of them. The damned fools. Now they’re going on about lightbulbs and that fella came in the other day talking about how to change out all our light bulbs for more ‘energy-efficient’ bulbs. I’ll give him some ‘energy-efficient’ bulbs all right.”


“We could save a lot of money over time,” I pointed out.


Chapter 9