The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop (Cadillac, Texas #3)(2)

Stella checked her reflection in the mirror while she waited on her first customer of the day. Thank God, only her droopy eyes gave away the fact that she’d slept very little in tangled-up, sweaty sheets after a long night of sex in a motel up in Durant, Oklahoma. If someone could look into her face and see both the happiness and the fear, she’d be in big trouble.

If anyone did notice her tired eyes, she’d pass it off as allergies. She would never, ever admit that she’d only slept a few hours between the time she’d gotten off work the day before and that morning when the alarm went off. Not even to her two best friends and business partners, Charlotte and Piper. She pulled her naturally curly red hair up into a messy ponytail and tied a bright purple scarf around it, hoping that Charlotte and Piper would fuss at her for not fixing her hair and not notice her baggy eyes.

“Hey, are you the only one here?” The bell above the door dinged when Trixie Matthews pushed her way inside. “Ahhh, cool air. We’re in for a scorching-hot summer. I love what y’all did with this old building, Stella. It’s light and airy and I feel like I’m in an uptown salon every time I walk in here. I know I’ve said it before, but I wish more businesses would refurbish the old part of town.”

Stella waved her over to a chair. “Maybe they will, but this is just a beauty shop. Salon sounds like a big-city place. It takes time to rebuild a town when it’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a pod of boiled okra. I was just thinking the same thing about this summer.”

Picking up a cape and shaking the wrinkles out, Stella went on, “We’re due a long, lazy old summer, but it will pass fast and then it’ll be time for the jubilee. Tomorrow is the official first day of the season and the weatherman says that today it’s going to reach the three-digit mark for the first time this year.” She motioned Trixie into the chair. “Have a seat and we’ll get you all fixed up. Cut and highlight, right? So what’s going on with you and your doctor fellow? Have y’all set a date yet? Oh, and speaking of the jubilee, how’s the jalape?o pepper crop coming along?”

Trixie had to hop to get settled into the chair. She pulled off a baseball hat and set her light-brown hair free. She’d always reminded Stella of Ashley Judd in size and looks, but maybe with a few more pounds on her curvy body. “We’re taking it slow. Besides, I don’t have time to plan my own wedding what with all these other ones going on in town. And Cathy keeps those peppers watered every day. I think she might tell them bedtime stories and that’s the secret as to how they get so hot. She might be reading them those erotic romance books that she reads all the time. I read one, and believe me, if she’s reading those to the pepper plants, they’ll be plenty hot this year.”

Stella whipped a black cape around Trixie’s shoulders. “You’ll be the prettiest bride Cadillac has ever seen when you do decide to get married again. And I wouldn’t doubt anything that Cathy does to make those peppers hot. Daddy says they’re the best in the whole world.”

“That is so sweet, but darlin’, I had that big wedding thing once. I don’t want it again. A trip to the courthouse is more down my alley. I hear that you’re on the way to the altar, too. The gossip is hotter than the peppers this morning up at Clawdy’s.”

Stella’s heart stopped and all the color left her face. The purple scarf didn’t even put color into her ashen cheeks.

Trixie reached out from under the cape and touched her arm. “Hey, you look like you saw a ghost. I was just teasing.”

After a couple of good solid thumps, Stella’s heart went back to pumping and high color filled her cheeks. She’d been so careful the past six months, mostly because she didn’t want to jinx something that was so perfect and yet so wrong.

“Why would you think such a thing?” Stella whispered.

“It was the gossip from the breakfast crew at Clawdy’s this morning. They said that Nancy put you on the prayer list last night.”

“I’m not sick. And what does that have to do with marriage?” Stella gasped.

“Maybe you are lovesick.” Trixie laughed.

“I can’t imagine why she’d do that,” Stella said.

“Gossip has it that she just said to pray for you, that you needed a husband, and they prayed. But this morning everyone is speculating about why you need a husband, and if it’s safe to breathe in all these fumes if you are pregnant, and who the father is.”

Stella leaned against the counter. “Oh. My. God.”

The business. Dammit! The beauty shop would fold. They’d only been open a year. “Everyone in town knows?”

“Probably. Didn’t you drive past the church on your way to work this morning?”

Stella shook her head.

Trixie flipped open her phone. “I took a picture.”

“Of the church?” Stella asked.

“Of the sign. See.”

There it was, right on the big white wooden sign located at the edge of the church lawn in black lettering: “Pray for My Daughter. She Needs a Husband.”

Stella blanched then blushed.

“It doesn’t say whose daughter or why, but someone put it out there for the whole world to see. I bet the church is packed this next Sunday so everyone can see for sure who is at the top of the list. Preacher Jed reads it every Sunday before the sermon, remember?”