The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop (Cadillac, Texas #3)(6)

“You wouldn’t dare.” Nancy took a couple of steps back and gasped like a fish out of water. After a long pause, she whispered, “I guess it’d be too much to ask to get my hair trimmed this morning?”

“I wouldn’t trust her with scissors if I was you,” Piper whispered.

“Then you cut my hair,” Nancy said.

“Not on your life. I wouldn’t touch anyone’s hair who’s prayin’ for a marriage to take place. I wouldn’t wish a damn husband on my worst enemy, and Stella is my friend.” Piper followed Trixie back to the chair to do her highlights.

“Charlotte!” Nancy yelled.

Charlotte poked her head out of the door to the supply room. “No, ma’am. I have to work every day with Stella. If I cut your hair, she’ll think I’m on your side. I wish Stella could find someone to love her like Boone loves me, but it would be wise if you’d take her name off the list and let her do her own husband hunting.”

“This isn’t the only beauty shop in town,” Nancy said.

“No, it isn’t. You go on down to the other one and take your doughnuts with you,” Stella said. “I’m going to be mad for a long time, Mama. You should have thought about the consequences of what you were doing. We’ve got a business to run, and you know how people gossip in Cadillac.”

“Sunday dinner?” Nancy narrowed her eyes.

“Won’t be at your house,” Stella said bluntly.

Nancy picked up the box of doughnuts. “What will I tell your daddy?”

“Tell him he’s not going to be a grandfather on Mother’s Day. Tell him that he might never be a grandfather if someone doesn’t take that shit off the church billboard and my name off that list.”

Piper waited until Nancy was gone to light into Stella. “I’m your friend and this is embarrassing, humiliating, and horrible but Nancy is your mother, girl. You only get one mother in this lifetime. Think about it before you cut off your nose to spite your face. I don’t want you to get married. Hell, I don’t want any woman to get married after what I’ve been through, but don’t blame Nancy for all of it. Heather is in charge of the church sign.”

Stella’s eyes went to Charlotte, who said, “Don’t look at me. I’d probably burn my mama alive if she did something like that.”

Stella tucked her chin into her chest. “Charlotte, you are pure genius. We could get some kindlin’ and tie Heather to the sign before we set it on fire. Burn the witch at the stake. Maybe that would make everyone who is gossiping at least think about what they’re saying.”

“Witch!” Charlotte said. “You got that wrong. She’s not a witch. She’s a full-fledged, card-carryin’, bona fide bitch.”





CHAPTER TWO

Southern women do not sweat. They get dewy, or in very hot weather they might perspire, but that was said in whispers. It was too damn hot for Nancy Baxter to be getting dewy or perspiring. It was too damn hot for an angry, chubby fifty-plus-year-old woman to be trotting across an asphalt church parking lot. She was downright sweating and that was all there was to it. But there wasn’t a single parking spot on either side of the street at Ruby’s Beauty Shop, so Nancy had to park a block away in the CNC church parking lot.

Her thighs stuck together but she wasn’t about to reach up under her skirt and swipe that away with a tissue. Gossip would have it that Nancy had lost her mind and was wiping her ass right there in the church parking lot because her daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Who in the hell had authorized that damn sign, anyway, and why hadn’t they called her before they did it? She wanted to cry or kick the hell out of something or maybe both.

Heat and fighting with Stella had always jacked up her blood pressure. Stella knew that and she should know better than to argue with her when the day started off at ninety degrees with the possibility of triple digits before noon. It would be all Stella’s fault if Nancy crumpled in a heap of sweat and bones right there on Main Street in Cadillac, Texas, before she ever got a grandchild.

Her ears buzzed and her pulse raced. Hot salty tears stung her eyes. That damned Heather had sweet-talked the last preacher into letting her take care of the church sign when she first came to Cadillac. When he retired and Jed took over, it was like that sign about guns—until they pried it out of her cold, dead hands, no one was getting the box of letters to make words on the sign.

Figuring she’d just about taxed her body to the last degree, Nancy climbed the steps to Miss Clawdy’s Café and sat down in the porch swing to catch her breath. Thank God, the Andrews girls had left the porch swing up when they’d turned the old house into a café after their mother died.

How would Stella feel if she just keeled over right there on that swing? Fell forward with her eyes rolled up in the back of her head and her hair needing fixed.

She frowned as she dabbed at the moisture running down her neck and beading up under her nose. She smeared makeup over a tissue when she ran it over her face and across her eyelids. She was not going to apologize to Stella for something she hadn’t done, by damn. But she would turn that damn sign into splinters if it wasn’t down by noon.

That was, if she lived until noon. Was everything truly ready for her to pass on to eternity? Her hair was a fright but the undertaker could call in Ruby to fix it. She’d rise right up out of her coffin if they let Stella anywhere near her after the way she’d carried on about the prayer list.