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  Sharon nodded her agreement. It was too bad—if only Amanda’s son were the type that you were inclined to ask “And what prison will you be going to one day, young man?” as opposed to “What college are you planning to attend?” or, if her daughter were the type that it was impossible to predict until the last minute whether she was going to turn out to be a pole dancer or CEO, well, that might scare off a suitor or two. It always helps when the new, hot divorcée in the neighborhood is known to have children who act like they’ve been raised by wolves.

  “After Bible study,” Sharon began, “I went out for coffee with a bunch of the girls, and although they were being very polite about it, you could tell that even the married ones were none too happy about Amanda being back in town. Most of their husbands had huge crushes on Amanda through high school. They’re afraid their husbands are fixin’ to jump on the bandwagon, or at least fantasize about life without them.”

  “You really think there’s going to be a ton of men interested in Amanda—married or otherwise?” Heather knew the answer was definitely yes.

  Sharon waved a hand in the air. “Why not? She’s got the whole package. She’s gorgeous, she’s rich, she’s available, and she’s got time for a relationship because she doesn’t have to work and her children are old enough to be in school all day.”

  Heather stiffened, pressing her lips together.

  “I didn’t mean that as an insult, honey,” Sharon said, quickly taking Heather’s hand. “I have to work, too, you know.”

  Heather rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Forget it, let’s just move on.”

  “But even the best marriages are cyclical,” Sharon continued. “People go through ups and downs—good times and bad. A wife isn’t always emotionally available to her husband. At a time like that, even in a good marriage, a good man might be interested in getting his emotional needs met elsewhere. Not to mention his physical needs.”

  “Where’d you get all that?” Heather asked, surprised at the wisdom of her friend’s psychological observations.

  “Dr. Phil,” Sharon admitted. “But you have to admit it makes sense.”

  “It does at that . . . that it does.”

  They lapsed into silence, both thinking about Dr. Phil. Now, that would be a real catch, if he ever came on the market. And he does spend a lot of time in Dallas, Sharon thought to herself. He may be married, but is he happy?

  “Don’t you think she’d be too traumatized by what happened in her marriage,” Heather mused, “to start thinking about getting involved with another man right away?”

  “You’d think so,” Sharon said brightly, fussing with the sleeves of her blouse. “I hear Bill was an absolute serial adulterer. I hear he was a huge player and got his DNA all over half the women in Southern California.”

  Heather studied Sharon. “Weren’t you and Amanda best friends when you were growing up?”

  “Oh, we’ll always be close and very dear to each other. I just say that out of love and concern for Amanda. There’s a difference between nosy and concerned,” Sharon concluded, feigning sincerity.

  “I thought so,” Heather said. “Anyway, even if she were traumatized, we can’t really count on her to stay traumatized for too long. And then what? She’s just going to take attention away from every available single woman here in Hillside Park.”

  “And maybe from some of the unavailable women too.” They chuckled.

  “Did you hear about Susie?” Heather asked, changing the subject.

  Sharon’s eyes went wide. “I heard she was arrested, if that’s what you mean.”

  “She sure had it coming, you know,” Heather said, squeezing more gooey gloss onto her lips. “After the way she pretty much declared herself Chairwoman for life of the Longhorn Ball. I can’t believe how shortsighted she was.”

  “Who’s going to run the Ball now?” Sharon asked. “I can’t imagine anybody who’d want to go anywhere near the damn thing, it’s so messed up. After Susie, the finances are so twisted, it would take a T. Boone Pickens to save that ship.”

  Heather nodded. “Normally, it’s a full-time job for the Ball Chair, just lining everything up—the entertainment, the donations for the auction, underwriting, and coordinating with the committee chairs. It’s gonna be a minimum eighty-hour workweek every week, just to undo the damage Susie did.”

  “I can’t imagine anybody wanting that job now,” Sharon pondered. “You’re right—it’s a full-time job under the best circumstances, but you’d have no time for anything else all year after this mess.”

  “It’s too bad Amanda couldn’t be Chair of the Longhorn Ball,” Heather said jokingly. “That would certainly take her off the social circuit. She wouldn’t even have time to think about dating, let alone be able to keep a man’s interest.”

  “That would be a great solution,” Sharon agreed. “Keep Amanda all tied up with the Longhorn Ball. Between that and her children, you’re right. She wouldn’t pose a threat to anybody.”

  The women sat in silence for a long while, thinking about how wonderful it would be if Amanda had the distraction of the Longhorn Ball to keep her from developing a social life.

  “Wait a minute,” Sharon exclaimed after a few minutes. She stopped tapping her fingers and laid both hands flat on the table. “Who says she can’t be the Chair of the Longhorn Ball? She’s still a member, isn’t she?”

  Heather thought for a moment. “We’ve gotta find out,” she said, sitting up straight in her chair. “If she’s been on inactive status this whole time, she could certainly go active and Chair the Ball.”

  “We need to get our hands on a member directory. All the members are listed.”

  “There’s one in my office!” Heather said, triumphant. “All the best real estate offices have a copy. Let’s go!”

  “I think we might have just solved a major problem!” Sharon said, smiling. They quickly left Starbucks, dashing across the parking lot toward Ann Anderson’s office. They ran past the surprised receptionist down to Heather’s cubicle. Flipping through stacks of paper—Heather was a “keeper” who tended to hold on to every piece of paper or document with which she came into contact—she found a copy of the Ball directory. Excitedly, with Sharon peeking over her shoulder, she paged to the back, where the names of all the inactive members were listed. There was Amanda’s name.

  The women looked at each other and grinned. “Problem solved,” they chorused.

  “But how do we get her to do it?” Heather asked, glancing at her watch. She had an after-hours appointment with a doc-in-the-box for another prescription of diet pills.

  “Hmmm. You sure this is such a good idea?” Sharon asked, sounding doubtful for the first time.

  “It’s an awesome idea,” Heather replied confidently. “But let’s think for a minute. How can we get her to say yes?”

  Chapter 6

  At a quarter to seven that evening, Elizabeth came downstairs from her bedroom and found, to her great surprise, Amanda making hamburgers for the children, who were watching music videos in the living room.

  “You’re still here!” Elizabeth exclaimed. Amanda glanced at her, as if to say, “You got that right.” Elizabeth eyed her daughter, who was wearing the same outfit as earlier in the day.

  “Surely you’re not going to Al’s dressed like that?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips in emphasis of her surprise and disapproval over her daughter’s wardrobe choice.

  Amanda said nothing, continuing to focus her attention on dinner for the children.

  “Don’t you realize what time it is? If you’re getting to the restaurant on time, or even fashionably late, you better get moving.”

  “I’m not going,” Amanda said quietly, aware of the fact that her decision would set off shock, even outrage, in her mother’s mind.

  Predictably, Elizabeth exploded. “Are you crazy?” Her voice was loud enough for both children to hear.

  Will and Sarah glanced up from the television screen. Will had little
interest in a brewing argument between his mother and grandmother, but Sarah was all ears. Quietly, she crept from the living room couch where she had been sitting to the doorway leading into the kitchen, hoping to eavesdrop.

  “Young lady,” Elizabeth continued, in a tone of voice that instantly reminded Amanda of how happy she had been to leave Dallas with Bill; it brought back the hundreds of run-ins she had had with her mother while growing up. “Do you realize what an opportunity this is? Somebody obviously thinks the world of you! Somebody—and we don’t know who it is—is clearly very financially secure and is clearly very interested in you! And you’re not even going to bother?”

  “Mom, not in front of the children,” Amanda replied wearily. She peeked around the kitchen doorway into the living room, where Sarah stood, listening attentively, not surprising her mother.

  “Okay, guys, why don’t you watch in the media room until your grandmother and I have had . . . had a chance to talk?”

  Will gave a resigned, uncaring look. “Whatever,” he muttered, turning off the TV and ambling out of the room. His sister gave her mother a pleading look, begging permission to stay for the fireworks, but Amanda would have none of it.

  “Hit the trail, young lady,” Amanda heard herself saying, a phrase that her mother had said to her countless times. That was alarming.

  Reluctantly, Sarah tore herself away from the controversy and followed her brother to the media room.

  Now that the children were out of earshot, at least in theory, Elizabeth cut loose. “Are you insane?” she hissed. “A guy sends you a car—a Mercedes—a black Maybach, your favorite color for a car, and you won’t even go meet him to say thank you? Is that how I raised you?”

  Amanda, about to respond, first marveled at the way her mother could globalize an issue, turning it from simply a matter under discussion into a referendum on her entire career as a parent. She checked on her hamburgers before she spoke. The last thing she wanted was to get into an argument with her mother, especially about her personal life. She knew it would be only a few moments before the subject would turn from the mysterious suitor with the black Mercedes to why she left Bill in the first place.

  “Mom,” she finally said quietly, “doesn’t it seem a little over-the-top to you to give somebody a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car as a way of inviting them out to dinner?”

  Her mother shook her head. “When your father was trying to get my attention, he used to fly me in a helicopter, which he landed at Vanderbilt Stadium, on the fifty-yard line, to take me to dinner with him in Knoxville, where he was working on a project. I was just a college student, but that’s how he did it.” Elizabeth angrily plucked a crumb off the kitchen table and tossed it into the trash can. “What’s wrong with a man trying to impress you or show you how interested he is?”

  “If he’s so interested,” Amanda countered, immediately regretting that she was getting drawn into a discussion she did not want to have, “why is he so interested in keeping his identity a mystery?”

  “You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how men think, and you’ll always be wrong. That’s because they’re so much simpler than we are. They don’t think half the time. They just want what they want and then they go for it. And this guy obviously wants you.”

  “This is too strange,” Amanda said, genuinely perplexed. “Unless he’s been going to women’s Bible study, he has no idea what’s going on in my life. And even if he did, who would want a woman coming off a divorce with two children and a crazy ex-husband? Who’d want to get involved with someone like that?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to get involved. Maybe he just wants to . . . spend some time with you.” She smiled and winked at her daughter.

  Amanda shrugged as she flipped the hamburgers. “If you want to spend time with a woman, you can generally do that for a lot less than the price of a Maybach. Appearances can be deceiving. I think we’ve all learned that the hard way.” She gave her mother that knowing look.

  “That’s just negative thinking,” Elizabeth replied, her tone dismissive. “I’ll finish the hamburgers. Just throw something on, do something with your face and hair, and get your butt on over there.” A crafty smile suddenly broke out on her face. “Unless you’re just playing hard to get.”

  “I’m not playing, and I can’t be gotten,” Amanda said flatly. “I’ve got no interest in this guy, or any other guy. I just want to get my life back together. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

  Elizabeth’s smile slowly faded as she realized that her daughter truly wasn’t going out to meet the mysterious car-giver, whoever he might be.

  “You don’t have to have dinner with the guy,” Elizabeth said, exasperated, making one last run at getting her daughter to rethink her position. “Just have a drink. Thank him for the car. See who it is. Aren’t you dying to find out?”

  “Honestly, Mother, no,” Amanda said, sliding the burgers off the grill and onto buns. “I don’t even want to know who it is. I just don’t want anything to do with the whole subject of men right now.”

  “Well, you’ll have to start thinking about it eventually,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not like you’re getting any younger,” she continued, unwilling to quit. “And, who knows, by the time you decide you are ready, this great catch could be long gone.”

  Amanda was incredulous. By her mother’s standards, all a man needed to qualify as a great catch was that he could afford to give away a Maybach!

  “That may be, but who says it has to be tonight? I’m moving in the morning—assuming that truck shows up. Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my mind without starting a social life? I’m not even legally divorced.”

  “In this town, that’s never stopped anybody.”

  “Mom, I’m not going, and that’s that. And the car is going back to the dealership in the morning. I don’t need anybody’s charity.”

  “I’m not talking about charity—” Elizabeth began, but Amanda cut her off.

  “I seriously can’t believe you,” she said heatedly. “My whole life, I’ve listened to you and your friends gossip about women who accepted or even solicited extravagant gifts from men. You always deemed it inappropriate to accept certain gifts from any man who wasn’t your husband.

  “Whether it was over-the-top jewelry, boob jobs, furs, cars, homes—whatever—you used to say there was a name for girls like that, and it wasn’t ‘sweetheart.’ I remember when Nancy McRae was engaged to, what was his name . . . Derek Tarver. And he bought her a new Mercedes as a wedding gift, but he gave it to her a month before the wedding. And when she called the wedding off at the last minute, her daddy called Derek to ask what he’d paid for that car and then he sent him a check. You and all your friends hailed that as the right thing to do!

  “Now you want me to accept a car even more expensive than that from a complete stranger? I don’t understand what has happened to you since Dad died. You would have never encouraged this behavior before.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Stay out of my damn business! And are you kidding? You’re not keeping the car?” she asked, stunned.

  “Why should I?” Amanda asked, going to the refrigerator and taking out a head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes for a salad. “I don’t even like sedans. I like the SUV I’m driving right now. Even if it is a gas guzzler,” she added, mostly to herself. “In Newport Beach you’d have thought I was a heretic for not having a hybrid.”

  “Trade it in,” Elizabeth implored. “An SUV’s a lot cheaper than the car he gave you, so you could make a few bucks on the deal.”

  “Mom, I’m not looking to make a few bucks.”

  “Well, between the trust your daddy gave you and other investments he made on your behalf, plus the fact that you’re certainly going to make enough off your divorce, it’s not exactly like you’re unwilling to take money from a man.”

  For Amanda, that did it. “Okay, that’s it, Mom. I’ve had it! This discussion is over! I don’t need this a
ggravation from you! It’s not like you didn’t inherit a ton of money from your father and you never worked a day in your life while you were married to Dad!! And we’re talking about my father and my soon-to-be ex-husband here—this guy’s just some random stranger with an inappropriate way of showing he has a crush on me! I don’t know who gave me that car. I don’t care who gave me that car. I’m not trading it in for an SUV, and what I do in my private life is none of your damned business.”

  A thin smile played at the corner of Elizabeth’s lips. She had gotten to her daughter, which, in some ways, was her whole point in having this conversation.

  “You sure you’re not going?” she asked, knowing exactly what the answer would be.

  “Of course I’m not going,” Amanda said, tired of the whole discussion.

  “Well,” Elizabeth said mischievously, “I am.” She scooped the Maybach keys off the kitchen table, picked up her purse, and marched out of the kitchen.

  “Mom, you most certainly are not! And not in his car!” Then Amanda saw Sarah, who had crept back into the living room and who had obviously overheard the entire conversation.

  “Sarah, didn’t I ask you for a moment with your grandmother?” she asked her daughter, irritated.

  Then, to the receding figure of her mother, “Mom, don’t you dare go!”

  “Try and stop me,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. She was out the front door before Amanda could move.

  A moment later, Sarah, Will—who had wandered into the living room to see what all the commotion was about—and Amanda heard the sound of the Mercedes engine starting up. They looked out the window. Elizabeth was on her way. As sweet Mimi used to say, “If the people who love us didn’t love us when we were bad, nobody would ever love us.” She had to have been referring to her own daughter.

  Chapter 7

  At eight o’clock that evening, Sharon Peavy and Heather Sappington arrived at the doorstep of Darlene Cockburn, widely considered one of the most powerful women in Hillside Park. At sixty-seven, Darlene had changed husbands over the previous three decades approximately as many times as the United States had changed presidents, and, just as many Americans had little good to say about their succession of presidents, neither Darlene nor people in her social circle had all that much good to say about her various husbands.