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

Charlie helped me get the body bag from beneath the torso. He was clearly playing a deferential role now, letting me take the lead. I got the scissors, snipped away at the jeans and the remains of a T-shirt so we could remove them. Then we removed the underwear. I put all the clothes in the hazardous waste bin. I placed the head at the top of the table.


“So we need to wash him down and get him ready for embalming,” I said into the stillness.


Dwayne Duffy had been a good-looking kid in life. Trauma to his face had messed up much of that, but with a little patience, we could get him back to some semblance of how he used to look. I used the sprayer attached to the spigot to gently wash Dwayne’s head and hair.


Charlie helped as we once more used the sprayer, this time to wash Dwayne’s body. The deceased young man was painfully thin, of slight build, more a boy than a man.


Chapter 15