“We just put the sign up and Rhett is the only one we’re going to honor,” Charlotte explained further.
“I’m not sure I understand any of this. I wasn’t at our church on Sunday so I’m in the dark. What’s that sign all about, anyway?” Alma Grace said.
“Nancy put Stella on the prayer list for a husband. She’s the one that the sign is all about,” Piper said.
Alma Grace’s light-baby-blue eyes widened until they were about to pop right out of her head.
“Breathe, girl,” Stella said.
“What did you do, Stella? I’m surprised with your temper that Nancy is still alive. Why would she do that?” Alma Grace asked.
“What could she do? It was already done before she knew about it,” Trixie asked right back. “I heard that she’s got a secret boyfriend but she’s not tellin’ her mama a thing until after the ball because she’s so mad at her, though.”
“I’m standing right here,” Stella said.
Alma Grace’s big eyes got wider and wider. “What ball? Lord, what have I missed?”
“The brand-new marriage ministry that Heather is creating is planning a ball.” Piper went on to tell Alma Grace all about it.
Alma Grace scarcely blinked through the whole story. “Does Agnes know? I’ve been on a cruise this past week with my future in-laws and fiancé. Haven’t been down to Bless My Bloomers until I ran through here. Do Carlene and Jenny know about this? Lord, I thought that thing with Carlene’s divorce was horrible. This has got to be worse.”
Piper finished Rhett’s hair and dusted the back of his neck with a small brush before whipping the cape from around him. “Whole town knows. It’s the newest fodder for the gossip vines. You’ll have to buy a brand-new fancy dress for the ball. Agnes says we all have to go.”
“Well, I’m not brave enough to fight with Agnes for sure,” Alma Grace said seriously. “I bought a couple of formal-type dresses for the cruise. I’ll just wear one of them. When is this ball?”
“Last Saturday night in the month of July,” Piper answered.
“And you all will be there?” Rhett asked.
“Yes, sir,” Trixie said. “Alma Grace spoke for all of us when she said none of us would buck up against Agnes. Are you going?”
“Yes, ma’am. Boone and I’ve already talked about it. I’m shinin’ up my boots and gettin’ my hat dusted off. I wouldn’t miss a good dance for nothing.” Rhett laid the money order on the cabinet. “Thanks, Piper. I appreciate you taking care of my hair. It looks great. Wish y’all weren’t going to stop doing haircuts for men. What made you decide that, anyway?”
“Agnes,” they said in unison.
“Well, FYI, I wouldn’t buck up against her, either.” Rhett laughed.
Stella glanced over at Piper. “Well?”
Piper shrugged as she sank down in the chair where Rhett had been sitting. “I thought I was doing my best friend a favor. Now I think I’ve opened Pandora’s box and I’m not sure how to put the lid back on it.”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Why would you? Peeking inside what Rhett has to offer might be fun.”
Piper threw the back of her hand over her forehead. “Don’t give me that look. This is unbelievable.”
Alma Grace cocked her head to one side. “Do we need to put you on the prayer list?”
“Good God, no!” Piper almost shouted. “Look what happened when Nancy put Stella on that list. The whole town has gone crazy.”
“Crazy is not a new thing for Cadillac,” Alma Grace laughed.
Trixie held up a hand. “This will all blow over after the barbecue ball, and something else will take its place. Gossip creates. Time dissipates. That’s what Mama used to say before she got sick.”
“I don’t know if anything can dissolve the gossip since Heather is in town. Lord, the oil boom way back in the last century will be a drop in the bucket compared to this new ministry she’s talking about,” Piper said.
“And believe me, she is dragging up dirt that I thought was buried more than a decade ago,” Stella said.
“You mean about . . .” Alma Grace slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, yes. Fresh scandal from an old recipe. She figures if she can find some poor old fool willin’ to marry me with my reputation, she will be well on her way to a prosperous career in marriage ministry,” Stella said.
“I’ve missed a lot. It’s going to take a whole week to catch up,” Alma Grace said. A short blonde who was almost as religious as Heather, she and her two cousins ran Bless My Bloomers, the plus-size lingerie shop in town. At least, it had started out to be a fancy panty place for the curvy women, but these days it catered to any size. After all, women deserved to have sexy undies, no matter if they were a size 3 or needed three X’s on the tag.
Stella finished cutting Trixie’s hair and motioned toward the shampoo sink. “Maybe, just maybe, somebody will get married out of the deal even if it’s not me. I only want to get past my birthday; then Heather can do whatever she wants. She can re-create the Sadie Hawkins idea if she wants to—as long as my name isn’t attached to it.”
The front door let in a burst of hot air and there was Agnes looking like she should be pushing a cart filled with great Dumpster-diving bargains.
“Hell’s bells, but it’s goin’ to be a hot one. How many men have you turned away?” She pulled a chair under the air-conditioning vent and slumped into it.
“None. Piper cut Rhett Monroe’s hair because he didn’t see the sign,” Trixie tattled.
“But that’s the only one that’s getting a money-order haircut,” Piper said quickly.
Agnes pulled a blue bandanna from her hip pocket and mopped sweat from her face. “You want to cut your boyfriend’s hair, that’s all right, but do it at your house. Hell, girl, it would be more fun to cut his hair naked than in a beauty shop filled with women, anyway. And I mean both of you naked, not just him.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Piper blushed.
“Bullshit. He cooked on your grill last night. That’s more solid than sharing a hymnbook with him in church. And you’re all dressed up fancy in them tight things on your legs and that shirt today, so I bet you was hopin’ you’d see him. He’s a fine-lookin’ man. If I was twenty years younger, you wouldn’t have a chance with him,” Agnes said.
“Agnes Flynn!” Trixie exclaimed. “You old coot. You’d have to be fifty years younger and you know it.”
Agnes narrowed her eyes at Trixie. “You should know better than to mess with me, girl. I’ve put you in your place often enough that you ought to have learned your lessons by now. And FYSA, I was plenty spicy enough to chase down men prettier than Rhett Monroe twenty years ago. Hell, slow as all y’all move, I might still outrun you. I’d done been married more than ten years by the time I was y’all’s age.”
“It’s FYI. The initials mean ‘for your information,’ ” Charlotte said.
“I don’t like your alphabet soup world, but maybe I meant for your stupid ass when I said FYSA,” Agnes smarted off.
“But you are an old dinosaur and you would have been sixty twenty years ago and that would have still been too old to unzip Rhett’s pants. What does your snitch say today?” Trixie deftly changed the subject.
“That Piper done read the cards wrong when she thought Rhett was interested in Stella. And that her ex-husband, Gene, already knows that she’s got a boyfriend who is taking her boys to New York City to see the Yankee Stadium. Do you need a chaperone, Piper? I always wanted to watch a ball game in that stadium. Y’all got any more of that chocolate cake in the back room?” Agnes headed off in that direction.
Piper gasped. “I’m not going to New York City with Rhett or anyone else. And yes, there’s cake in the back room.”
“And hot dogs,” Stella said.
“Your mama’s baked beans?” Agnes looked at
Piper.
She nodded. “You can eat whatever you want if you’ll tell us who your snitch is.”
“I intend to eat some of them beans but I’m not telling you jack shit about my snitch. The FBI or the NASA would come haul my skinny ass off to jail if they knew who I had in my pocket.”
“NASA is the place that sends spaceships to the moon and Mars.” Trixie laughed.
Agnes waved her hands around. “Well, if they’d stop using letters instead of names, I wouldn’t get confused. The FBI or the CBS or one of them god-awful places that listens in on my phone is who I’m talkin’ about. Hell, the NASA might be involved. You think they’re sending them rockets up there to see if little green men live on Mars? Hell, no, they’re sendin’ them up there to spy on us. I watch NCIS. I know all about that shit.”
Trixie paid Charlotte and whispered, “All us at Clawdy’s are dropping down on our knees and givin’ thanks that y’all got a hornet’s nest stirred up down here at the Yellow Rose. Agnes was about to wither up and die. If she and Violet aren’t into it about something, chocolate cake can’t even make her happy. Now tell me the truth—is that baby stuff really for Cathy?”
“Yes, it is. But Violet isn’t stirring up stuff. It’s Heather,” Charlotte said.
“Heather is her niece, so it’s practically the same thing. Agnes will have something to keep her from sinking into depression,” Trixie said.
Agnes yelled from the back room, “Hey, did y’all hear that Violet is getting a new knee? Won’t be the same without her at the ball, but I’ll bet that she manages to show up and make an appearance if they have to push her in there on a hospital bed. Heather is so green that she won’t be any competition.” They could hear Agnes opening the refrigerator door.
“What competition? Is Heather competing with Violet for the queen bee of Cadillac crown?” Stella asked.
“Hell, no! They’ll have to pry that out of Violet’s cold, dead hands. The competition is between me and Violet, and if she ain’t there, then Heather will be standing in her place and I could outsmart that young’un standin’ on my head in hot ashes. It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”
Stella laughed out loud.
“It’s not funny. I’m bein’ serious,” Agnes called out. “Now, where’s them baked beans, Piper? I can’t find them.”
“Do you have any idea who her snitch is?” Charlotte asked Trixie in a low whisper.
Trixie shook her head slowly. “We have no idea. She just started talking about her contact or her snitch when all this about Nancy putting Stella on the prayer list came up. I thought it might be Kayla, but then the snitch knows things that happen in places where Kayla doesn’t go.”
Alma Grace handed Stella a check and said, “I’ll walk up the street with you, Trixie. You can tell me all about that doctor you are keeping company with and fill me in on the rest of the gossip before I go to Bless My Bloomers. That way Carlene and Patrice won’t have to play so much catch-up.”
Agnes came out of the back door with two plates. One held a hot dog, beans, and potato salad, the other a chunk of chocolate cake. “Hey, Trixie, you’d best be engaged or married to him by the time the barbecue ball takes place. I learned this morning that there’s going to be three fishbowls. Heather is putting the gents’ . . . and that is her word not mine. Sounds kind of sissified, don’t it? Anyway, she’s putting the men’s names in one bowl and the ladies’ in the second one. She’ll draw out names from each one and that’s who will partner up for the first dance. I hope I get a sexy cowboy.”
“The third bowl?” Charlotte asked.
“Will have the names of couples on one piece of paper. Like you and Boone since y’all are already engaged, or Sugar and Jamie Magee since they’re already married, and they can dance together for the first dance. I hear it’s some shitty old waltz instead of a hoochy-cooch song. Leave it up to Heather to try to turn a barn into a castle and make us all dance like we’ve got corncobs up our asses.” Agnes set about eating the chocolate cake.
“You are supposed to eat your food before dessert,” Piper said.
“At my age, you get to eat whatever you damn well please first. I’m proud of your mama, Stella. She stood up to Heather this morning in their meeting. For the first time ever, she didn’t let anyone run over her. Your daddy is cookin’ and she and the Fannin girls are fixin’ the side dishes and that’s all she’s doin’. I heard that she’s quittin’ the Prayer Angels soon as this ball is over.”
“That’s nice, but I’m still mad as hell,” Stella said.
Agnes started toward her mouth with a forkful of potato salad. “You’ll get over it.”
“I’m not so sure. That damned sign is still out there for the whole world to see. That cake looks good.” Stella headed to the back room under the pretense of getting a piece of it, but what she really wanted was a moment of peace and maybe to make a phone call.
She poured a cup of coffee and carried it to the small table that they used as a place to eat as well as a place to spread out their papers for business. She pulled out a chair and sat down. Piper and Agnes were arguing about Rhett in the other room. Charlotte, the peacemaker, was trying to change the subject, bless her heart.
There was no way Nancy would ever quit the Angels. She’d be one of those who stuck with it until the day she died. And then the members would all gather in Nancy’s kitchen to heat up casseroles and help Everett get through the tough time. Floy and Heather would boss everyone else who stopped by to comfort Stella and Everett.
She slowly shook her head. It wasn’t happening like that when her mother passed. No, sirree! She and her father would lock the doors and tell the whole bunch of them to go straight to hell. If it became an issue, they’d post Agnes Flynn on the front porch with her shotgun. She’d gladly take care of turning Violet away if Stella asked her.
After all, redheads stuck together.
A blast of hot air shot across the back room when the door into the alley opened. Only the girls, Agnes occasionally, and the delivery guys came in that way, so Stella didn’t even look up. But when Jed wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed her on that soft part of her neck right under her ear, she jumped like she’d been caught making out on the back row of church during services.
“I’ve got a free haircut ticket in my pocket,” he whispered. “I came to collect.”
“Sign on the door says we don’t do men’s haircuts anymore.” She turned enough that she could tangle her fingers in his hair and bring his lips down to hers for a long, lingering kiss.
“Then I guess I’ll have to collect on it in private. Maybe tonight at the parsonage?” He picked her up and sat down in the chair with her in his lap. “Or maybe we’ll meet back here. Have you ever had sex on the sofa in the shop?”
“No,” she gasped.
“Then we’ll have to try it out.”
“Is someone back there?” Piper yelled. “If it’s the delivery guy from the beauty supply, I need six extra perms this next week.”
“It’s not him, but I’ll leave a note.”
“Who are you talkin’ to? I swear I heard you talkin’ to someone.” Piper’s voice was louder with each word.
Jed quickly set Stella off his lap and stood up. He met Piper halfway across the floor. “Why, hello, Piper. I hope it was all right that I used the back door. I had this ticket for a free haircut but Stella just told me that y’all aren’t cutting men’s hair anymore.” He brushed past her and went into the shop. “Hello, Miz Agnes.”
“What are you doin’ here?” she asked.
“Free haircut, and I was walkin’ down the alley so I used the back door. Looks like you’re havin’ a fine lunch there.” Jed flashed his brightest smile.
“I sure am and I’m right sorry to turn down the preacher, but these girls ain’t cuttin’ men’s hair no more. You’ll have to take the ticket back
to Heather and tell her to shove it—”
“Agnes!” Charlotte exclaimed.
“Shove it where the sun don’t shine. There, does that make everyone happy? I didn’t use a single cussword.”
Jed patted Agnes on the shoulder. “You did real good, Miz Agnes. See y’all in church on Sunday. I’ll be goin’ since I can’t get a free haircut. You ladies have a wonderful day.”
Stella made it to the front of the shop in time to see the door close behind Jed’s cute butt, clad in tight-fitting jeans. Stepping out on the sidewalk, he stopped and winked at her and she quickly glanced at everyone else to see if anyone saw it. Thank God, they were all busy either with work or, in Agnes’s case, stuffing the end of a hot dog into her mouth.
She glanced at the sofa and high color filled her cheeks. Sex with Jed in all that buttery softness, then cuddled up with him afterward real close because the sofa wasn’t all that wide, brought visions to her mind that would shock the cussin’ out of Agnes.
“What are you blushin’ for?” Agnes asked.
“I had to turn down the preacher. Reckon that will be a scandal?” Stella answered.
“Honey, if it ain’t a scandal in the Yellow Rose, then it’ll be one at Clawdy’s or at Bless My Bloomers. Ain’t nothin’ Cadillac likes better than a nasty old scandal.”
“Ain’t it the truth.” Stella sighed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The aroma of lasagna and hot bread met Stella that evening when she opened the door to her house. Her last appointment was a permanent that had kept her in the shop until six thirty, so she was hot, sweaty, and hungry.
Jed leaned against the doorjamb in the kitchen, his barbed-wire tat shining beneath the tight muscle shirt. He looked like sex on a stick and she didn’t know whether she wanted a shower, sex, or lasagna first.
He made the decision for her. “Bread has ten more minutes. Go grab a quick shower and then we’ll eat.”
With a couple of long strides he crossed the room and kissed her on the tip of her nose. He smelled like Stetson, soap, and that scent that was all his own, and she had to fight with herself not to drag him down on the floor right there and forget food and a shower.
The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop Page 11