Cover

One

Marjorie Majors’s deep brown eyes widened as a flash of burning pain shot through her side. Feeling hot and flushed again, she guessed she was running a fever. Her smile was decidedly forced as she walked across the showroom floor, weaving her way around the shiny new Mercedes while lightly pressing her hand against her hipbone. She’d thought that if she ignored the throbbing ache, this unexplained malady would vanish on its own. So far her reasoning hadn’t worked, though, and the mysterious discomfort had persisted for days.

“Is your side hurting you again?” Lydia Mason, the title and license clerk for Dixon Motors, called from behind the front counter.

“A little.” Now, that had to be the understatement of the week, Marjorie mused. The shooting pain had been coming and going all day with no real rhyme or reason. She should have known she wasn’t going to be able to fool Lydia. Her friend had a nose for news. Little transpired at Dixon Motors without Lydia knowing about it.

“Honestly, Marjorie, why don’t you just see a doctor?”

“I’m fine,” she protested. “Besides, I don’t have a doctor.”

Lydia, who stood barely five feet tall and wore heels that increased her height an additional two inches, moved around the counter. Her mouth was pinched into a tight line of determination. “But you haven’t been feeling good all week.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Longer, I suspect,” Lydia murmured, shaking her head. “Listen, no one is going to think less of you for needing a doctor, for heaven’s sake. Just because you’re one of only three female salespeople here, that doesn’t mean you have to behave like Joan of Arc.”

“But it’s just a little stomachache.”

“What did you have for lunch?”

Marjorie shrugged noncommittally, preferring not to lie. A wry smile lifted the corners of her full mouth as she pretended to survey the parking lot, hoping a prospective buyer would magically appear so she would have an excuse to drop the conversation. She didn’t want to admit that with her stomach acting up, she hadn’t bothered to eat lunch. And now that she thought about it, breakfast hadn’t appealed to her, either.

“You didn’t have any lunch, did you?” Lydia challenged.

“I didn’t have time, since—”

“That’s it, Marjorie—that’s the final straw. I’m making you an appointment with my gynecologist.”

“You’re what?”

“You heard me.” Lydia didn’t wait for an argument.

With her manicured fingernails, she flipped the hair that had fallen across her cheek to the back of her shoulder and marched around the counter with the authority of a Marine drill sergeant.

“Don’t call a gynecologist! That’s crazy. I don’t need a woman’s doctor—an internist, maybe…”