Cover

Dear Reader:

In a previous life, before the time of Plum, I wrote twelve short romance novels. Red-hot screwball comedies, each and every one of them. Nine of these stories were originally published by the Loveswept line between the years 1988 and 1992. All immediately went out-of-print and could be found only at used bookstores and yard sales.

I’m excited to tell you that those nine stories are now being re-released by HarperCollins. Rocky Road is at the top of the lineup, and it’s presented here in almost original form. I’ve done only minor editing to correct some embarrassing bloopers missed the first time around.

Rocky Road is the happy story of a guy who owns a radio station, a likeable overworked woman who does the traffic report, and a dog named Bob. They all fall in love, they outsmart some bad guys, and they eat a lot of dessert. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

I was living in northern Virginia when I wrote Rocky Road and I pretty much set it in my backyard. I researched the story by visiting radio stations and riding the beltway in the WTOP traffic car with a multi-tasking lunatic who could drink coffee, drive, and give live traffic reports all at the same time.

I had a great time writing Rocky Road and I hope you enjoy reading it. And if you’re a Plum fan take special note that this was the very first Bob Dog.

JANET
EVANOVICH

The
Rocky
Road
to
Romance

Prologue

At 6:30 A.M., when Washington, D.C., was waking to another sweltering summer day, a Ledbetter Oil Company tank truck rolled off a ramp of the capital beltway, spilling five hundred gallons of highly flammable black gunk across four lanes of traffic. No one was injured, but the rush-hour commuters traveling the outer loop found themselves in hopeless gridlock surpassing even the normal snarl of morning traffic.

As operations manager of WZZZ, AM radio, Steve Crow didn’t wish bad luck on anyone, but in his eyes, thanks to Ledbetter Oil Company, this had all the makings of a superior Monday. It was now nine-thirty in the morning, and Ledbetter’s gunk was still being sanded, shoveled, and scrubbed off the beltway, trapping half of Northern Virginia in transit. The nation’s movers and shakers were sweating and swearing in their cars, and each and every one of them was tuned to WZZZ. WZZZ told the news, all the news, and nothing but the news—twenty-four hours a day. And while some detractors of AM radio felt the call letters prophetic, no one caught in Washington’s daily commuter crunch could deny the pull of WZZZ’s traffic report. Sooner or later, if you sat in traffic long enough, you tuned to WZZZ. During rush hours WZZZ kept a helicopter aloft, giving live traffic reports every fifteen minutes. The worse the traffic, the higher WZZZ climbed on the ratings charts—and today’s traffic was gloriously terrible.