Chapter One

Thirty-four-year-old Bitsy Yarborough’s world had never spread beyond the borders of Lone Bridge, Mississippi, where she was born and raised. It was where she first met Calvin Yarbrough, the boy she’d considered her destiny and had since she’d first laid eyes on him.

When his family first moved to Lone Bridge, he’d been sixteen years old, and full-grown in height. Three inches over six feet tall, chocolate-brown hair with a tendency to curl; he soon became the star quarterback of the football team. She wanted him, but when she found out every other girl wanted to date him, too, she pretended he didn’t exist.

Cal Yarbrough had never been ignored by the opposite sex. Certainly not since he’d turned fourteen, and he didn’t know what to make of Elizabeth Collins—Bitsy, to her friends. When he passed her in the hall and said “Hello,”

she always responded, but she didn’t bat an eye at his attempts to flirt. It became a point of pride to get a date.

Bitsy wasn’t playing his game. She had no intention of being a notch in anyone’s gun and never gave him the opportunity to ask. She just kept dodging and evading him, in the same way he evaded being sacked.

She went all the way through her junior year without much more than a daily hello, or good job when they won a game, but when school began her senior year, the first time she saw him in the hall, she flashed a pearly-white smile and gave him a soft, breathy ‘Hi.”

He’d stumbled.

She’d kept walking.

Within a week, they had their first date, and after that, there was no one else for either of them. Bitsy married him at the end of her first year of college, and today was their fifteenth wedding anniversary.

She’d woken up this morning convinced she was the luckiest woman in the world. For sure the luckiest in Lone Bridge, Mississippi. But that was before she started laundry. Now, she was feeling like there wasn’t enough soap in the world to clean up Cal’s act.

**

It all began as she was going through the pockets of Cal’s clothes before putting them in the wash. She picked up a shirt to check the front pockets, and as she did, saw a lipstick smear on the collar, big as day.

Her first thought was disbelief.

There had to be an explanation.

Her heart was pounding as she reached into the cabinet for the stain remover, knowing she’d never worn a shade of lipstick that color in her life.

Even after she’d applied the stain remover and tossed the shirt into the washer, there was a knot in her gut. A soul warning that it was going to take more than Stain-Be-Gone to make this right.

The washer was already filling with water as she walked back into the kitchen and stopped in front of the three-layer cake she’d just made for their anniversary celebration. The irony of that strawberry-colored lipstick and this strawberry cake was not lost upon her.

Stain remover. I just used up the last of it , she thought, and turned around to look for her pad and a pen to start a new grocery list. That’s when she saw them on the kitchen table where Cal had been sitting earlier.

She could see herself moving, but she couldn’t feel her arms and legs. Please let this be a bad dream.

She reached for the pen to start her list and noticed it was a freebie pen from Rogers Motel. That was weird. Why would he even have a pen from that place? It was common knowledge that place served their guests by the hour. The knot in her belly tightened as she wrote stain remover on the list, then put the pen back on her list pad and took a deep breath.

The floaty feeling was fading, but now she wondered what else she might find if she went looking. She’d never used this particular instinct before—the one they called self-preservation-–but at this moment, it was a big warning flare in her gut.

Cal had gone into town more than an hour ago to get the groceries for her to finish off their anniversary supper, because her car, barely two years old, had been sitting at the dealership garage going on six weeks now, awaiting a part. Or so she’d been told.

The dryer was still tumbling its load.

The washer was still filling with water.

She hated what she was thinking, and to prove herself wrong, she set out on a search, going through all the drawers in the house, looking for things that didn’t belong.

She found grocery receipts, a recipe she’d been looking for, a broken tie pin, an earring missing part of the setting, dozens of gimme pens from nearly every business in town-–from the insurance agency where Cal worked as an insurance adjuster, to the local funeral home, and the feed store. She’d even tossed some of them into those drawers herself.

But it was the pens from six other motels in the surrounding area that didn’t make sense. And every time she found one, she kept trying to think of a reason why Cal would have it-–maybe it was a pen he’d borrowed from someone else and forgot to give back. But six different motels? Locals didn’t stay in local motels. But they did screw around in them. That she knew.

After she’d found the third pen, she began collecting them in a baggie, and every time she found another one, added it to the bag.

In the middle of her search, the clothes dryer stopped. She slipped the baggie into the pocket of her housedress, and went back to the laundry room to switch loads.

She put the dried clothes in a basket and took them straight to their bedroom to hang up before the wrinkles had time to set. It would have been a discredit to her if she sent her man out of their house looking anything but perfect.

Once the clothes were on hangers, she went back to the laundry room to sort out the whites for another load, and once again, began going through all the pockets of his shirts and her shorts, making sure there weren’t any tissues in the pockets. They made such a mess.

Then it happened again. The same shock. The same acrid taste of bile that formed in her mouth before the urge to throw up.

It was the blue pop-off nail caught in the elastic waistband of his tighty-whities that didn’t belong. She stared down at her plain, unadorned nails, and then back at the blue nail and moaned.

First the lipstick.

Then the motel pens.

And now this—the third ‘nail’ in Cal Yarbrough’s coffin, and it had just set Bitsy on a path of destruction.

In her mind, she had two options.

Forget she ever saw it.

Or make him sorry.

Southern women did not lay down for anything but good sex. She would not ignore being cheated on and opted to make him sorry.

But first, she needed a court-worthy verification of her suspicions before she would act. If she was wrong, Cal would never know. But if she was right, she would string the guts of his deceit all over the county.

Bitsy had been raised to be a sweet, amenable southern lady, but like every southern woman, she also had “bless your heart”

and a finely honed cut-your-throat smile at the ready when the need arose. And the longer she thought about it, the more comfortable she became about peeling away the lie.

Bitsy wasn’t just hurt.

She didn’t just feel betrayed in the absolute worst way.

Bitsy Yarbrough was hair-on-fire mad and going to war.

She dropped the blue nail into the baggie with the motel pens, then hid it beneath a stack of quilts in the hall linen closet.

For a few moments, she couldn’t decide how to begin. She didn’t want him to know that she was suspicious, but she needed wheels, and her less than two-year-old car had was still sitting the garage at the dealership waiting on a part.

Then it hit her! The reason why the car wasn’t fixed. As long as she had no car, Cal didn’t have to worry about what she might or might not see should she happen to be in town. Which also meant Bradley Beamer, who owned the dealership, had to be in on this ruse with Cal, or he would never have left work undone.

That made her even angrier, and that stunt was about to come to an end. She had the freedom to be mad at Bradley without raising Cal’s suspicions, and she was going to raise hell at the dealership to make it happen.

She was still standing in the hall when she heard the front door open and close. Cal was home. Her hunk-a-burnin’ love walked into the kitchen with a sack of groceries in each arm, and she found herself staring at him as if she’d never seen him before.

“I think I got everything,”

Cal said, as he put the sacks down on the island and then winked. “Maybe more. You know I like to shop around a little bit on my own, too.”

“So, it appears,”

she said, as she watched him pulling out the items. “Thank you for running that errand, but I miss doing the shopping for us, and I’m sick of being stuck out here on my own. I’ve missed a book club meeting and haven’t been able to do my charity work at the church Clothes Closet. Is there something you’re not telling me as to why my car is still in the shop?”

He blinked. “You know I took it to the dealership. They said they’re waiting on a part.”

“I’m sorry, Cal. I have been patient, and I know Bradley is your friend, but I am also not a fool. I no longer believe that is true. Mechanics can order a part and get it in two days from almost anywhere in these United States. So, for my anniversary present, we are going to buy me a new car.”

“Now, Bitsy . . . we just bought a new car less than two years ago,” he said.

“And look where it is. I believe we have purchased a lemon. I don’t want to drive a lemon. I need it to be dependable. I need safe.”

Cal started to object, and then he saw the look in her eyes and shrugged.

“I’ll go down to the dealer tomorrow and—”

“No. We’ll go down today. And Bradley Beamer, himself, can explain to me why it’s taken so long, and then he will give me the best trade-in deal he’s ever given a customer or know the reason why.”

Calvin stared at his wife as if he’d never seen her before.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?” he said.

“Why, honey . . . whyever would you think something like that?”

Bitsy drawled.

“I don’t know . . . it’s just . . . you’ve never . . . oh, never mind.”

“You put up the groceries. I’m going to change my clothes,”

she said, and walked out of the room.

The moment she was gone, Cal made a frantic phone call to Bradley Beamer. The call rang and rang, and he was afraid Bitsy would appear at any minute. Then finally he got an answer.

“Beamer Autos, Bradley speaking.”

“Bradley, it’s me, Cal. Don’t talk, just listen. Bitsy finally had a meltdown over the car situation. We’re coming in to buy a new car, and you need to give her the best trade-in deal ever. I’ll make it up to you on the side if I have to, understand?”

“Yeah, buddy. No prob, but what prompted all this?”

“Hell, if I know,”

Cal said. “See you later.”

By the time Bitsy came back, the groceries were put away and Cal was sitting at the kitchen table with his cell phone, sending a text.

“I’m ready,”

she said, eyeing the phone.

Cal immediately stopped what he was doing and got up. Bitsy gave him a sweet smile as she walked past him, then climbed into his truck and buckled up.

As they went up the graveled drive, they left a little cloud of dust behind them to mark their passing, and when they reached the main road, Cal didn’t bother yielding. He just shot out onto the highway like he owned it.

Bitsy rode in silence with the sun reflecting off the hood of the truck and into her eyes, wishing she’d brought her sunglasses. Finally, she pulled down the visor to shade her eyes, and as she did, a waterfall of papers dropped in her lap.

Cal grimaced. “Oh, I’m sorry, sugar. That’s my weekly filing cabinet. I’ll drop them off at the office tomorrow.”

“No problem,”

she said, and unbuckled her seatbelt before bending over to gather them back up. As she did, she saw what looked like a pair of black lace panties stuffed beneath the seat. Like the wrong shade of lipstick, she wasn’t into black lace. Before she could react, Cal cursed and hit the brakes.

“Oh, hell,”

Cal said. “Art’s bull is out again.”

She righted herself and looked up. Sure enough, Art Warner’s huge, white, Santa Gertrudis bull was standing in the middle of the blacktop.

Cal put the truck in Park and got out.

“Be careful!” she said.

He waved and was already pulling out his phone to call Art.

The minute he was out of the truck, Bitsy dug the black lacy bits from beneath the seat, and stuffed them into the bottom of her purse, then she shuffled all of the loose papers back into a stack and opened the glove box to put them inside and got another shock. The pretty pink hairbrush and a tube of lipstick beneath a pair of his work gloves did not belong to her.

She glanced up to see him still on the phone, and another car coming from the opposite direction was stopping as well, pinning the bull between their vehicles. Or, as Bitsy saw it, providing the bull with a choice of targets.

But since Cal was still distracted, she grabbed the lipstick to check the color. It didn’t match the stain on his shirt!

What the hell? Was he cheating with more than one woman?

She shoved the lipstick and hairbrush into the bottom of her purse with the panties. It made her feel like a tech from a forensics lab, gathering evidence at a crime scene. Only the evidence was coming from so many directions it had begun to feel like a serial cheater and his accomplices were on the loose, and she was no longer the cop. She was the unwitting victim.

Finally, Art Warner arrived, pulling a stock trailer. Art, Cal, and the other driver managed to herd the bull inside. Bitsy watched the three men shake hands and wondered if those men knew Cal was cheating?

Moments later, Cal got back in the truck. He gave her a nervous glance, and then seemed to relax when she didn’t say anything. He put the truck in gear and continued the drive into Lone Bridge, but the silence was getting to him, so he reached across the seat and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

“Hey, Bets . . . it’s been fifteen years today! Can you believe it?”

She flinched. He only called her “Bets”

when he was nervous.

She nodded. “Time certainly has flown.”

Pleased that he’d gotten a positive response, he kept talking. “That cake you made looks amazing. I can’t wait to get me a big slice.”

She nodded. “I know it’s your favorite. I have your present, too, but I’m saving it for tonight.”

“Uh . . . I was planning to pick yours up later,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t lie. You didn’t buy one. You never do. You just hand me a hundred-dollar bill and assume that covers anniversary sex. I’m picking out my own present this year.”

Cal was speechless. Bitsy had always been forthright, but this was out of character. He shrugged and changed the subject. “Don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll find you a good deal. Something sturdy that can take our country roads.”

“Silly boy. We live on a highway. I’m getting myself a girlie car,” she said.

Cal frowned. He didn’t know what had prompted all this, but he wasn’t ready to cede his place as man of the house. “I don’t know about all that. We don’t need—”

Bitsy threw back her head and laughed. “Oh honey, there’s no ‘we’ in this decision. I’m buying it. With my money.”

His eyes widened. “But we put that money aside for our retirement.”

“As the years have passed, it has occurred to me that my elder years are not all that secure. You wanted me at home, so I haven’t been paying into Social Security. You’re the one banking retirement. That’s your money, and the only way I’d ever see that, is if you die. And we don’t want that to happen. Daddy’s money is my retirement . . . just in case,”

she said, and flashed him a big smile. “Besides, I might just find me a part-time job in Lone Bridge. I think it would be fun.”

He blinked. “Yeah, right . . . I just—”

She interrupted with a laugh, pointing at the house they were passing.

“Jo-Jo Walker is half-dressed and mowing her yard in this Mississippi sun. Her double D boobs are bouncing like Jello shots, and her shorts are pretty close to near misses. She does love showing her ass.”

Before Cal knew it, she’d reached across his arm to honk the horn, then thrust her arm out the open window and waved as Jo-Jo turned to look. “Hi girl!”

Jo-Jo looked startled, then waved as they drove past.

Cal’s face was flushed, and now he’d become way too quiet.

She glanced at the side-view mirror, eyeing Jo-Jo’s ass hanging off the sides of the mower seat and mentally added her name to a list of possible suspects.

The sun was still in her eyes, so she pulled the visor down again and turned it to block out the blistering rays.

“Cal, it sure is hot. Please, roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner? I don’t want to arrive at the car dealer looking like I’ve been in a wet t-shirt contest.”

“Yeah, sure thing,”

Cal said, and turned on the cool air as the windows went up.

Bitsy sighed, raised her arms to lift the hair off the back of her neck, which thrust her boobs into full view of Cal’s side-glance.

“Whew, that cool air feels amazing. I need to make some notes about what features I want on the car, so I don’t forget.”

She pulled a grocery receipt out of her purse then kept digging for a pen. “Dang it. I don’t have a pen,”

she muttered, and before Cal knew it, she’d opened the compartment in the console.

She dug through a conglomeration of candy wrappers, a partially smoked pack of cigarettes, a large assortment of pocket change, and finally, a few ballpoint pens. She grabbed one, tested it to see if it worked, and then closed the console and started making notes. She didn’t let on that she’d seen a condom, still in its little wrapper, as well as two more pens from a motel she’d never heard of. She was writing down things like “backup camera,”

and “no leather seats,”

but her underlying thoughts were on replay.

What the hell has happened to the man I married?

As for Cal, he just kept driving. And praying. Praying was good. But he needed some luck to go with it. Something was up with Bitsy, but he couldn’t put his finger on what was off. She was still smiling and teasing, and she’d baked his favorite cake. She’d been fine when he’d left to go to the store for her. She’d even given him a sweet kiss goodbye. Best he could figure, whatever had set her off had happened after he’d left and before he got home. But what the hell?

“I hope they’ve got a red one,”

Bitsy said.

Cal blinked. “Car? You want a red car?”

“I might,”

Bitsy said. “Unless I see something better. You know how it goes. You do the same thing day in and day out. Drive the same car. Wear the same clothes. Cook the same food. Have sex with the same person. I guess after a while, it all gets old.”

Then she giggled. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Sex with you is just fine, honey. Just fine.”

A flush rose up the back of his neck. “Well, I’d hope to hell it’s just fine. I wouldn’t have a wife who fools around.”

“I agree,”

Bitsy said. “Why . . . I don’t know what I’d do if I found out you were cheatin’ on me. I might be led to do something drastic.”

His heart skipped. His eyes narrowed. “Like what? You don’t mean you’d go and hurt yourself?”

“Oh, no way! But I’d sure as hell do some damage to you,”

she said, and then laughed.

Cal suddenly lost his desire for conversation and turned on the radio.

Bitsy loved to sing. Normally, she would have started singing along with whatever song was on the radio, but she was too close to mayhem today to start bursting into song.

A few minutes later, they crossed the bridge for which the town of Lone Bridge was named and drove straight to Beamers’ Auto Sales.

Cal parked in the shade, but before he could get out, Bitsy was already walking to the showroom. That’s when he noticed how short the skirt was on her yellow mini-dress and how high her heels were. Her shoulders were soldier-straight, and she wasn’t walking, she was stomping toward the showroom.

He thought, Yep, she is mad at Bradley Beamer , and Cal ran to catch up.

**

Having been forewarned, Bradley came out of his office with a smile on his face, caught the panic on Cal’s face as he was coming up behind his wife, and wondered what kind of trouble Calvin had gotten himself into now.

“Bitsy! How nice to—”

She rolled her eyes. “No, Bradley, it’s not nice. Nothing is nice about this visit. I brought a nearly new car in to get fixed, and six weeks later, here it sits, and you think just because I’m a woman I won’t know when I’m being played. Whatever your reasoning, this nonsense is over, and I am going to do you a favor. Rather than report you to the Better Business Bureau and then tell everyone in Lone Bridge that you are running some kind of scam, I will be buying myself a new car here today, and you will take the car you are unwilling to fix as a very nice trade-in.”

Bradley was stunned. “Now, Bitsy, you misunderstand the difficulties of—”

She sniffed. “I don’t have difficulties. Men have difficulties they bring upon themselves. I want a sports car. Not a used one. A new one. Like that red one on the other side of your showroom.”

Calvin gasped. “Bitsy, that’s a thirty-thousand-dollar Camaro!”

“Oh, but it’s not going to cost me thirty thousand dollars. I have a lovely, already paid for, nearly new car sitting in Bradley’s shop with less than nine thousand miles on it, worth about twenty-two thousand, allowing for depreciation. Don’t I, Bradley?”

Bradley stifled a gasp and wouldn’t look at Calvin.

Calvin was looking at a spot on the wall just over the top of Bitsy’s head.

“Well, I guess that’s right,”

Bradley said, and made himself smile.

“Then it’s done,”

Bitsy said, and giggled. “Isn’t this fun? A little anniversary present to myself. Go start the paperwork. I brought the title to the dead car sitting in your garage.”

“Don’t you want to try the Camaro out?”

Bradley asked.

“I know how to drive. I’ll ‘try it out’ on the way home. Do the paperwork, fill up the tank, and I want all the guarantees and that hundred-thousand-mile warranty, too, please.”

“Some of those costs are extra,”

Bradley said.

“Just consider it what part of what you owe me for lying and leaving me stranded out in the country for the last six weeks.”

Bradley had already lost control of the situation and knew the charade he’d been allowing Cal to pull was his fault, and it had come to a rather abrupt end.

“Then come into the office, and we’ll get you fixed right up,”

Bradley said.

Bitsy started walking, heard Cal behind her, stopped, and turned.

“Cal, honey. You don’t need to wait. Y’all go on home. I’ll be along soon enough. I want to get the insurance switched before I leave town. Can’t be driving around with no insurance, can I?”

“But I can tend to that insurance first thing tomorrow. After all, I work there.”

“But there’s a whole day between now and tomorrow, and I don’t want to drive my new car without it. I’ll stop by and let Paul switch it over for me, and that will be that.”

Cal blinked, and made himself smile. “Right. Just don’t forget we’re having steaks and celebrating our anniversary,” he said.

She heard the whine in his voice and wanted to slap him into the middle of the next week, but she just blinked her eyes and smiled at him instead.

“I am unlikely to forget what day this is. I just spent three hours in the kitchen making your favorite cake, like I always do, but when a woman has needs, they need be met, too.”

Cal felt like he had in first grade, when the teacher put him in the corner, and he didn’t know what for. As he watched her walking away, he realized it was still her mad walk, and he wasn’t certain that the red sports car was going to make a lot of difference in whatever it was that had set her off.