Page 1 of Bombshell

Prologue

Dolly Belle Dixon

Twelve Years Ago

It had been two days, and Momma hadn’t come out of her bedroom. Once the church folks and neighbors stopped coming by with casseroles, cakes, pies, and their condolences, she’d shut herself off in her room. The only sound I heard from her was the crying. Her door was locked, and I couldn’t get her to answer me when I knocked.

I sat outside her room in the hallway. My arms wrapped around my knees as I rocked back and forth. “One hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two.” I whispered the number over and over again, trying to block out the sounds of her sobbing.

My own eyes burned with unshed tears, and I feared the lump in my throat had become permanent. It had been there since the moment I’d found Daddy. It had thickened as I made the way from the garage, where he hung—his neck bent at an odd angle, face blue, and body limp—to find my mother in the kitchen.

“One hundred twenty-two,” I said louder this time through clenched teeth, trying to keep from remembering.

Nothing truly helped though. That day had been burned into my brain. I couldn’t get it out. Not the way Daddy looked or how Momma had run past me to the awful scene in the place where our car should have been parked. The horrific sound that had torn from her chest when she saw him in there. Hanging from the ceiling. The green rope—the one he used to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of the car every year—around his neck.

The smell of his favorite meatloaf in the oven would always haunt me. Momma had been making Daddy’s birthday meal. We were gonna celebrate it after church. She’d even invited the reverend and his family to join us. I had been looking forward to the buttercream cake she’d made fresh, sitting on the cake plate.

I never wanted to see buttercream cake again. I didn’t want to smell it. I hated the idea of meatloaf.

“One hundred twenty-two.” My voice cracked this time, and I closed my eyes tightly.

Momma’s crying turned into wailing. She hadn’t eaten since the funeral. I looked down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had made her yesterday, still sitting outside her door. The bowl of peaches and cream oatmeal I had brought her earlier today was cold now and looked unappealing. The fridge was full of casseroles and pies, but the idea of eating any of that made my stomach turn. That was sad food. It meant my daddy was gone. That he was buried deep underground. That I would never hear his deep laugh, that he would never call me Twinkle Toes again.

“One hundred twenty-two. One hundred twenty-two. One hundred twenty-two.”

Momma needed to eat. I should call someone, but who would I call? No one had called the house. I wasn’t sure who could help me get Momma out of her room. I wished Daddy were here. When he had been alive, he’d handled all our problems.

“One hundred twenty-two. One hundred twenty-two. One hundred twenty-two.”

1

Dolly

The band was playing our song—or the song I had decided was ours since it had been playing the first time we kissed. Canyon pulled me tighter to him, and I closed my eyes and relished the moment.

Once upon a time, I hadn’t imagined a man like him would ever notice me. In fact, I was sure I was going to die alone with an apartment full of cats as my only companions. Not that I even owned a cat, but I had seen it looming in my future once.

Thankfully, time had been good to me—or like Momma said, I had been a late bloomer. A really late bloomer, if you asked me. Canyon had been my first kiss, which was sweet and all, but I was also twenty-one years old. It touched on embarrassing. What girl was twenty-one when she got her first kiss? It was just pathetic.

I wouldn’t think about that right now or perhaps ever again. I was on the arm of a handsome man who smelled of cologne and leather—maybe a slight stench of cigarette smoke, but I could overlook that. He overlooked my complete lack of experience with all things sexual. But I knew tonight was the night. We were going to finally have sex. It was about time too. The only thing worse than dying alone with an apartment full of cats was to die alone as a virgin with an apartment full of cats. That had to be remedied.

I’d been waiting patiently because Canyon had said he wanted me to be sure. My comfort was important to him, and that was the sweetest thing I had ever heard. However, today, when he’d picked me up, he had said something about taking me back to his place, and I had known then that this was it! I would no longer be a twenty-one-year-old virgin.

“Fuck,” Canyon muttered as his body tensed up.

For a brief moment, I worried that I had stepped on his toes. I wasn’t the best dancer, but then when had I been given much time to learn to dance? When one did not have a boyfriend, they didn’t get to dance very often.

He stopped dancing, and my eyes flew open to stare up into his rugged, chiseled face. Even the burn scar on his neck, which looked like someone had tried to brand him, was sexy. There was that swagger that few men had, but Canyon had managed to be blessed with it in abundance.

His jaw was clenched tightly as he stared over my head at someone or something behind me. I started to turn around, but his hands grabbed my shoulders and held me in place. He barely glanced down at me, but the brief moment that he did, I saw the apology or perhaps concern in his hazel eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as his grip began to hurt me somewhat, not that I would complain.

I wasn’t one to draw attention to myself. I preferred not to annoy anyone. My best friend, Pepper, had said that she was going to shake that out of me one day. She hated that about me, but it was just because she loved me and felt as if I let others walk all over me.

“You need to go to the back, call your momma to come get you, and leave,” he said in a low voice.

“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion.

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