Say You'll Never Love Me (36 page)

“No! Don’t come . . .” It was too late. The line was dead.

She sank deeper into the couch. The good Lord knew she loved her two friends, and they were great to want to offer comfort. But she wanted to be alone, in her miserable apartment, with her thrift store furniture, binging on French desserts, and taking pure pleasure knowing the money she’d forced Brad to spend, had his butt hole clenched so tight, he wouldn’t be able to crap for a week.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V5M007A

Think you might enjoy some small town sass, sizzle, and suspense?

Check out Ann’s Tizzy/Ridge Trilogy

Here’s a sneak peek at each book.

LAID OUT AND CANDLE LIT

Not only did Tizzy Donovan think her cup was always half empty, she was pretty sure someone had spit in it.

The last leg of her daily jog took her through Jenkins Cemetery. She stopped and inhaled the scent of freshly mowed grass and the musk of fertile earth. It was spring, and she should have a bounce in her step. But the approaching anniversary of Boone’s death pushed any sense of renewal away. To become a widow and single mother before the age of twenty-five, had not been in her plans.

Closing her eyes, she willed the notions away. Many thought her ritual morbid. Except to her, it remained a chance to start the day among people she had loved most in her life. She didn’t consider the departed as eerie or macabre. She thought of them as peaceful. All the pain, suffering, disappointment, grief and demands of living were over. Granted, so was the
earthly
joy, but she believed the afterlife held much greater happiness. That is, unless you ended up in hell.

She inhaled, feeling strangely alive among those who were no longer of this world. Her muscles eased as she reverently moved past the headstones. Just as each morning during her run, childhood memories flashed through her mind. Hours she’d spent with her grandmother in the kitchen learning how to cook, her grandfather McAlister taking time to teach her to drive. The recollection of steering his old jeep over a vacant field of bumpy cornrows made her laugh out loud. She stopped to catch her breath.

Even though many of the dead had spoken to her for years, not one had ever
appeared
to her. But this morning something caught her eye. Something different. At first, she thought the spring haze created an illusion. But, as she blinked and looked again, she spotted someone kneeling at the foot of Boone’s grave,
praying.
Apparition or not, she got a full blown, head-to-toe case of the heebie-jeebies. Every hair on her body snapped to attention. She rubbed her arms. Squeezed her eyes tight.
Okay. I’ll count to ten and they’ll be gone . . . nine . . . ten.
She opened one eye. Damn!

“Hello? Can I help you?” The words trembled across her tongue.

She moved closer, brain scrambling to understand the scene. With each step her heart pumped faster. Knees grew weaker. The figure was not so much kneeling as it was slumped, and not so much praying as staged. Its head rested limp against its chest and its lifeless arms spread wide. Tizzy’s scream came out as a weak yelp.

She staggered and struggled to keep her balance, but it was no use. Falling against a tree, she retched and slipped downward until her butt hit the ground with a thud. Like a dog, she panted, then leaned forward, hugged her belly with both arms, and fought to make sense of things. Who could it be? Edging two steps closer, recognition sent Tizzy’s stomach into a death-spiral. She gasped, wiped her lips, reached inside her bra and pulled out her cell phone. She punched in the numbers. “Hello, Dan? Dan, there’s a dead body in the cemetery!”

Her brother laughed. “Ha-ha, very funny, Tizzy. I get it. April Fools!”

“Dan, I’m not kidding. There really is a dead body in the cemetery, and I think it’s Marlene.”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYGGW1Y

BOOK TWO

YOU’RE BUSTING MY NUPTIALS

Twenty-four hours ago Tizzy Donovan was naked in Ridge Cooper’s bed, screaming to get God’s attention. She loved everything about Ridge. How his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck when he needed a haircut. Steel blue eyes set against the hard lines of his face. Broad shoulders, thick chest, the way he held the steering wheel of his truck. She pictured him, standing straight, thumbs hooked in his front jeans pockets, cowboy hat settled just right. The more vivid the image, the hotter she got.

A knock at the door snapped Tizzy from her daydream. She twirled from the window as Matron of Honor, Rayann Tatum, peeked into the room and held out a mug.

“Is he here?” Tizzy accepted the drink.

Rayann flipped her long blonde hair back and widened her green eyes. “Not yet.”

“He’s not coming.” Tizzy put the cup to her lips and gulped. “Holy crap!”

“Sorry, I should have warned you, that’s tequila, not punch. I thought you needed something stronger by now, but go easy on it because I don’t think you’ve eaten since yesterday.”

“Wonderful, now I’m going to hell for drinking in the Lord’s house. Not to mention all the fornicating I’ve been doing with Ridge, and today he doesn’t show up to make an honest woman of me.”

Tizzy knocked back the rest of the drink and thought of every possible scenario for her groom’s absence.
Wrong church? There was only one Methodist Church in town. Flat tire? He lived close enough to walk to the ceremony. Cell phone dead? Two land lines were at his disposal. Heart attack? The chance of that couldn’t be high, but it would be the best excuse.

“It’s been over an hour. He isn’t answering his phone. Daddy went to his house. His truck’s gone.” She paced. Her bare feet sank into the deep carpet, a small comfort against heartache. “What’s wrong with me? Boone joined the Marines to get away and now Ridge doesn’t show up for our ceremony. Am I that bad?”

Rayann fell in beside Tizzy and matched her pace. They zigzagged across the room like a band formation during a half-time show. “C’mon, Tiz. It has nothing to do with you. Boone enlisted to avoid Marlene. You know better than anybody what a witch his sister was. He didn’t want to spend his life working with her at the bank.”

Tizzy stopped at a small table and picked up her engraved invitation.
James Ridge Cooper and Marjorie Louise “Tizzy” Donovan, request the honor of your presence.

Until an hour ago, it had been a perfect day. The sun shone across a heaven of endless blue, and the temperature hovered in the upper sixties. It held promise of being one of the best days of her life and now might be one of her worst. “Ridge told me he fell in love with me at first sight.
You
knew I was in love with him before I did.”

“Oh, honey.” Rayann embraced her. “You’d been a widow and without a man for five years. To say you were horny would be an understatement. You named your vibrator.”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N06XZPS

BOOK THREE

TIED WITH A BOW AND NO PLACE TO GO

Jay Roy Hobbs held the county record for talking women out of their panties. At least that’s what Tizzy Cooper had heard. Rumor said ladies ignored his lack of good looks and fell for his quick wit. Now, staring at him through binoculars, she wasn’t so sure humor was his main appeal.

She swallowed the lump that’d been lodged in her throat since arriving on the scene. It wasn’t the sight of a dead body that bothered her. She’d seen plenty of those over the years. Her talent for talking to the dearly departed made it a frequent occurrence. But while the rest of Brownsboro’s citizens were having their first cup of coffee, she was five miles out of town, at the edge of a field, swatting mosquitos. Not the way she intended to start her day.

Sunlight filtered through naked limbs of an old tree and cast shadows across colonies of Bishop’s Weed standing tall like lacy parasols. The only thing ruining the spring array—Jay Roy’s lifeless body.

At first, Tizzy considered he might be asleep or unconscious, but after calling out to him with no response, and given the color of his skin, along with the buzzards overhead, she decided on a third choice.

Stepping onto an old stump to get a better view, she focused the field glasses. About fifty yards away, the man lay naked, except for boots and a bow, on a patch-work quilt, face toward Heaven, arms outstretched. Something twisted in Tizzy’s chest. Jay Roy and her mom had graduated high school together which made him much too young to die.

A few feet to the right, Tizzy’s friends, Synola Harper and Rayann Tatum, shaded their faces and squinted toward the dead man. Tizzy stepped off the stump, adjusted the straps of her sundress and decided they must be as surprised as she by the sight because neither of them uttered a word until she passed the field glasses to Synola.

“Lord, can you believe the size of that thing?” Synola let the binoculars dangle around her neck. She tugged her red tank top against warm mocha skin, tucked it into the slender waist of her jeans and smirked at Rayann. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen anything that big.”

Rayann tossed her head, blonde curls bouncing with the movement, then narrowed her green eyes and frowned. “Of course I have. I watch HBO.”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYG811I