Free Family Treed by Pauline Baird Jones

Introduction
    â€œ F amily Treed ” is 1.5 in my Big Uneasy series. This short story is my amuse bouche, because it is a taste, a quick bite for my readers, a chance to check in on Nell and Alex (from Relatively Risky ) .
    Nell’s not sure why the mob wants to have dinner with her. She is sure she wants a cop at her side.
    Alex wouldn’t let Nell dine with the mob without him, despite much unease from his many siblings.
    But when Nell’s newly found relatives start making threatening noises, Nell wonders if she’s putting Alex’s life in danger.
    Can they survive dinner with the killing cousins?
    This short story is about 13,000 words or 31 printed pages.
    When I started “Family Treed,” I was determined to keep it a short story. The plot, the characters fought back, throwing complications at me like knives and bullets. I dodged. I ducked. And when they weren’t looking, I trimmed out everything trying to turn it into a novel. And while I trimmed, I watched Top Chef. When they were asked to create an amuse bouche , I had an aha moment.
    That’s what “Family Treed”was supposed to be. And an amuse bouche was it is. It’s a peek, a tiny taste of the challenges still facing Nell as she tries to come to terms with what has bubbled up out of the past. Secrets only stay secret if one person knows the secret. And once they start to spread, well, crap happens.
    There will be more adventures for Nell and Alex and yes, there will be upcoming adventures for Alex’s many siblings. When one “meets” a family like the Baker’s, it would be crazy not invite them in to play. So I hope you’ll stay tuned for more installments in The Big Uneasy.
    While you’re waiting for the next novel in the series, I hope you’ll browse through my back list. In addition to Relatively Risky: The Big Uneasy 1 , I have some more romantic suspense cluttering up my back list. There’s my Lonesome Lawmen andmy humorous romantic suspense ( Do Wah Diddy Die, Mystery Stories, and The Spy Who Kissed Me.) I also plan to re-release my lone gothic, A Dangerous Dance , by the end of the 2014. For now, it is only available in audio and used print editions.
    If you don’t mind expanding your reading horizons to the stars and beyond, then I hope you’ll check out my science fiction romance and my science fiction/steampunk romance series, Project Enterprise. The series began with The Key, then continues with: Girl Gone Nova, Tangled in Time (novella/steampunkish), Steamrolled (steampunk/science fiction romance), and Kicking Ashe. There is also a short story collection called Project Enterprise: The Short Stories. The series is also available in audio.
    And last, but hardly least, is my time travel novel to World War II: Out of Time. Most authors have a book that is THE book they had to write no matter what. Out of Time is that book for me. For more information about all my novels, www.paulinebjones.com .

1
    Family Treed
    I t was a dark and stormy night.
    A shot hadn’t rung out.
    Yet.
    She was having dinner with the mob.
    Nell Whitby didn’t want to have dinner with Aleksi Afoniki and his creepy nephew, Dimitri. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them. Miss Manners had been no help with an invite minus an RSVP. So here she was. About to drive into the den of the Russian Wolf and his, um, evil cub.
    The invite had been directed to her and her best friend, Sarah, but Nell hadn’t told her. Hadn’t planned to tell Alex either. You didn’t spit into the wind or expose your friends to the mob, even if one of the friends was a big tough cop.
    Nell stole a peek at the big tough cop. Alex Baker had been showing up, off and mostly on, since her world spun off its axis into weird mob-relatives-ness. Even though the on times had gotten more frequent, there was a part of Nell that expected him to bolt at some point. He was a cop, the son of a cop, the