The third book in the Lovett, Texas series, 2012

Lily Darlington hated being called crazy. She’d rather someone call her a bitch-or even a stupid bitch-because she knew she was neither and never had been. Not on purpose anyway. But put the c-word in front of bitch, and Lily was likely to go all crazy bitch on someone’s ass.

At least she had in the past, when she’d been more impulsive and let her feelings and emotions control her. When she’d gone from zero to ten in under five seconds. When she’d dumped milk on Jimmy Joe Jenkin’s head in the third grade and let air out of Sarah Little’s bike tires in the sixth. When she’d thought that every action deserved a reaction. When she’d been reckless and occasionally over the top-like when she drove her Ford Taurus into her ex-husband’s front room.

But she hadn’t done anything over the top recently. These days, she was able to control her feelings and emotions. These days she was a respectable businesswoman and mother of a ten-year-old son. She was thirty-eight, and she’d worked hard to get the crazy out of her life and off the front of her name.

Lily grabbed her tote and rushed out the back of Lily Belle’s Salon Day Spa. Her last cut-and-color appointment had taken longer than expected, and it was already past seven. She had to drive sixty-five miles, make dinner for her son, help him with his homework, and force him into the tub. Once he was in bed, she had to put together all the gift bags for her spa event next Saturday night.

A single bulb glowed above her head as she locked the door. Cold night air touched her cheeks and a slight breeze caught the tails of her wool coat. It was late March in the Texas panhandle and still cold enough at night that her breath hung in front of her face.