The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop (Cadillac, Texas #3)(76)

Piper squeezed the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb. “I love you and I want to know who your boyfriend is, but right now I wish I could have what Ramona got—a fresh start.”

“Please don’t leave Cadillac,” Charlotte whispered.

“I couldn’t leave my friends, and the boys have roots here, but it don’t keep me from wishin’ I could do something different.”

“You could sell your house and buy another one. Leave his ghost there and move on for real,” Stella said.

Piper dropped her hand. “Now that sounds like something we should talk about.”





CHAPTER TWENTY

The phone was right beside her on the end table and Piper was stretched out in the recliner under the air conditioner vent. Charlotte and Stella shared the sofa, one on each end with their legs stretched out across the middle. Piper’s favorite movie, Something to Talk About, was in the DVD player.

“I can so relate to this movie, only Gene isn’t as nice as Eddie Bichon. By the end of the movie I’m hoping that he and Grace get back together, but I never want to look at Gene again. If I poisoned him like she did Eddie in the movie, I’d add enough that he’d be in the morgue, not the damned emergency room,” Piper said.

“Hey, anybody in here want a cinnamon roll right out of the oven?” Nancy yelled as she made her way to the living room. She set the pan on the coffee table. “Your daddy is fishin’ and hey, I like this movie. I am Georgia King, the mother. I’ll get some paper towels to use for napkins from the kitchen.”

Stella reached for a warm roll. “Daddy never did flirt with another woman, did he?”

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?” Nancy ripped two paper towels from the roll and handed one to Stella. “Gossip has it that Gene’s girlfriend came into the shop with a gun and threatened Piper today. I was there for part of it so I know it’s not true, but it does make for a juicy story.”

“That ought to be real good for business,” Piper groaned.

“Gossip also says that you are thinkin’ about a fresh start and you are moving to Harlan County, Kentucky.” Nancy put the rest of the towels on the coffee table and then pulled a wooden rocking chair closer to the end of the sofa.

Piper ripped off two towels and reached for a cinnamon roll. “It would be nice if everyone could get the story right if they were going to tell it. We’re going to send every two-timin’ husband to Harlan County, not the poor old wives who get their hearts broken.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe they could have a season on their sorry asses, kind of like deer season. Two weeks out of every summer women could buy a license to hunt them down,” Nancy said.

Piper smiled. “I’d have to take shootin’ lessons.”

“I could teach you,” Nancy said. “I’m a fair shot with a pistol and I can take the eyes of a snake out at fifty yards with a good rifle. Which brings me to a proposition I got for you, Piper. I got to thinking about you sellin’ your house and startin’ fresh. I went home and talked to Everett about it first and he agreed that would be a good thing for you to do.”

Piper picked up her second sweet roll. “It would be nice, but the market is down right now, especially in a small town like Cadillac. We only bought it five years ago, so there’s not much equity. I doubt I’d get enough to put a down payment on another place.”

Nancy kicked off her sandals and drew one knee up in the chair. “I don’t want your answer tonight. I want you to sleep on it first. As you know, my mama refused to move in with us when she got to where she really shouldn’t be livin’ by herself. Wouldn’t be a burden, she said. So we put a trailer on the farm about a quarter of a mile back behind our house. Fenced it in so she could have her dog and the cows wouldn’t eat her roses. She said she couldn’t live in a place where there wasn’t roses, so Everett planted ten bushes in front of her trailer.”

“I remember that story.” Piper smiled.

“What if you was to move in that trailer and let us watch the boys for you? It would give Everett something to do. I don’t know what I’ll do with him once he gets tired of fishin’. Wouldn’t cost you a dime for the trailer or the babysitting, unless you want to charge me for the boys keepin’ Everett. You could rent your house out here in town. We got some new teachers comin’ in that’s already lookin’ around for houses to rent so it shouldn’t be hard to do. Of course, you’d have to pay your own utilities, but there is a good clean well that provides free water,” Nancy said.

Tears streamed down Piper’s cheeks and dripped onto her shirt.

“Now, don’t bawl like a baby. You can tell me to butt out and mind my own business,” Nancy said. “I just figured since I don’t have no grandbabies that me and Everett could kind of adopt yours. And since Gene can pop into Lorene’s anytime and be hateful to the boys, then maybe it would be best if they only saw him on his weekends.”

Piper popped the leg rest of the chair down and crossed the room in three long strides, knelt in front of Nancy, and put her head on her lap. “That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever offered me. You are an angel straight from heaven. Do I have to wait until morning to give you my answer?”

Nancy patted her on the shoulder. “I just figured that it would give me and Everett more time to hope you’d say yes. Don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner. He really loves Luke and Tanner.”