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But she hadn’t heard about this. She stopped going to the meetings once they started construction on the new gym. “Why is the fund-raising committee still trying to raise money? The high school is paid for.”
“Well, where there’s one tornado, there’s always another,” Miss Vera said with sage wisdom in her voice. “From what I heard, they’ve decided to continue planning community events to raise money for the future.”
“I think it’s just a good excuse to throw some parties and make money in the process,” Sarah said. “Although, when another tornado comes through—and one will—it might be nice to have some money put away for emergency relief.”
“But a bachelor auction?” Pepper said. “That’s just so . . .”
“Tacky?” Miss Francine offered.
“Yes, tacky, thank you. What single woman with any dignity is going to go to a party and buy a date for Valentine’s Day? Especially when you can have most of the men in town for a plate of fried chicken and a Bundt cake.”
“I don’t know,” Miss Vera said thoughtfully. “Depends on who’s for sale. If Grant Chamberlain is on the auction block, I might have to dip into Herman’s life insurance money. You know, for a good cause.”
Using her dead husband’s life insurance money to rent a boy toy seemed all kinds of wrong. Pepper doubted Miss Vera would go through with it, though. She talked big in the salon, but it rarely actualized in the real world.
“Might be fun to watch,” Sarah said. “They’re selling tickets for the event, so everyone contributes to the cause, whether or not you bid.”
Pepper got out her scissors and started trimming the ends of Miss Francine’s hair. Morbid curiosity might get her to the auction, but she wasn’t bidding. She was saving every penny she could for renovations to her house. A date for Valentine’s Day was fleeting. Her home was forever.
It had taken her five years to save up for a down payment on the tiny house just off the square in the historic district. Unlike many of the other houses in that area, it was just in her price range, but unfortunately, that was because it needed a lot of work. Since she’d moved i
n last summer she had gotten it to mildly livable.
If she was going to drop a couple hundred or even a couple thousand dollars for a man’s time, he would have to be an electrician or a plumber. Maybe a drywall guy. She certainly wasn’t going to waste her money on a hard body and a pretty face.
Besides, she’d already had Grant Chamberlain for free.
It had been an amazing night, one she would not soon forget, but she wasn’t stupid enough to repeat it. Grant was like one of the decadent fudge cakes in the windows of the bakery next door. You want a slice even though you know it’s bad for you. If you finally break down and tell yourself you’ll just take one bite, you find out it’s better than you ever imagined and you moan with the pure pleasure of the experience. You take another, and another, then you find you’ve eaten the whole damn cake. And when it’s over, all you’re left with is a righteous stomachache and pants that are too tight. From now on, temptation be damned—Pepper was on a diet.
“Pepper,” Sarah said. “I forgot to tell you. Ivy’s coming home in a few days to spend Valentine’s Day with Blake. She said she’ll be in town for a few weeks before she kicks off her North American tour. Maybe you two can go to the auction together?”
Pepper missed her friend since she went back to California last fall. Even though Ivy’s fiancé lived in Rosewood, they hadn’t figured out the logistics yet and were still living on opposite coasts most of the time. “That would be nice. Especially since I wasn’t able to see her when she came home over Christmas.” Ivy had come home to spend the holidays with her fiancé, Blake Chamberlain, and her family, but Pepper had spent every spare moment dealing with her father’s failing health.
The day after Thanksgiving, her father had a stroke. The weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s were spent in hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, and rehabilitation clinics in Birmingham. They’d finally gotten Dad home and able to get around, but he wasn’t 100 percent yet.
“How is your dad?” Sarah asked.
“Better. We’re still not sure if he’s ever going to be able to run the garage again. One of his mechanics has been helping my mother run the shop, but if he doesn’t make significant progress in the next few weeks, we might have to sell it.”
She’d hate to do that. Her father had worked his whole life to make his way up from a gas station attendant to running the family auto shop. Having their own business had allowed her mother to quit her job in the elementary school cafeteria and work as the receptionist for the garage. It had paid for them to move from their trailer into a real house. They’d do everything they could to keep the shop open as long as possible.
“That would be a shame,” Sarah said, echoing Pepper’s thoughts.
“I’m still hopeful. My brother just moved home from Huntsville, so that should help.”
“I thought I noticed someone renting the house on Morning Glory where the Rosewood Realty offices used to be. Is that where he’s setting up his practice?” Miss Francine asked.
“Yep, that’s Logan. That house allows him to live and work in the same building, saving him a lot of overhead. Plus it’s across from the garage, so he can run over there if he needs to.”
Speaking of Logan, she had to remember to take dinner over to his place tonight after the salon closed. She’d volunteered to help him unpack and get settled in his new place. Setting down her scissors, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket to set a reminder to call in an order to Pizza Palace.
“A pretty gutsy move opening a law practice in Rosewood,” Miss Vera noted. “The Chamberlains have had the monopoly on that for seventy years.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of business for everyone,” Pepper replied before going back to trimming Miss Francine’s hair. Her brother practiced family law and could handle some minor civil or criminal cases if he needed to. Small-town lawyers had to be a jack-of-all-trades. She anticipated he would do good business here. There were certainly families in Rosewood that couldn’t afford the Chamberlains’ exorbitant hourly rate.
Like her own. She’d had her brother put together a will and living directive for her father after he fell ill, but other families didn’t have that luxury of a lawyer in the family. The Chamberlains’ firm charged prices that had made her head spin. The average family couldn’t afford fees like that, and yet, they couldn’t afford not to have the protection and peace of mind that a will or directive provides.
Pepper tried not to get pleasure from the idea of her brother chipping away at the Chamberlains’ turf, but it was hard not to hope for Logan’s success. Not everyone in town thought the Chamberlains were southern royalty. In her household, the name was rarely even spoken without her mother getting agitated and changing the subject.
