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daughter.” Priscilla Randall leaned forward to check her hair and lipstick in the rearview mirror before opening the door and giving him a look of concern. “And Bobby Jack, you better watch that temper of yours. High blood pressure can certainly become an issue at your age. I mean who would take care of poor Florence if you up and left us?”
    “I’ll worry about my own damn blood pressure,” he said, even as he felt his face redden. “Try and stick to the subject if you can.”
    “And what was the subject again?” she asked, sliding one curvy leg from the car and then the other, before closing the door and executing a Supermodel catwalk to the beauty salon, not even bothering to check to make sure he was following. Men had been following Priscilla since she’d first learned how to blink her big baby blue eyes, and she’d never once questioned the continuing success of her efforts. Certainly not where Bobby Jack was concerned.
    “Our daughter. See if you can hang onto that thought for the next ten seconds.”
    “Now, see, Bobby Jack, that’s where you get your backwards reputation. It’s hardly politically correct to make fun of those of us afflicted with ADD.”
    Bobby Jack resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Somewhere along the way, Priscilla had found a doctor who had diagnosed her inability to stick with one man, one project, one interest as symptoms that fell under the latest disorder umbrella. He didn’t doubt that for some people the problem actually existed. But for Priscilla, it made a handy hat rack on which to hang a lifetime worth of excuses.
    Having been married to her, Bobby Jack would have fine-tuned the diagnosis to a severe case of bored-too-easily, aggravated by a never-ceasing need for the new and different. New shoes. New car. New husband. But then nobody had asked him.
    “All aspersions to your affliction aside, why can’t you encourage Andy to put her efforts into something that might actually lead somewhere?”
    Priscilla turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, flicking on a light and dropping her purse on the receptionist’s desk. “Well, I think a shot at becoming royalty would qualify as somewhere, don’t you?”
    Florence plopped down on the tile floor, as if she thought this might take a while.
    Bobby Jack stared at his ex-wife for several long moments, completely at a loss as to where to take the conversation from here. How he had ever imagined the two of them compatible enough to actually marry was beyond him. But then he’d had a different rating scale back then, the basis of which had little to do with lifelong compatibility.
    “Do you for one minute actually think that hoax is for real?”
    “Why, yes,” she said, splaying a hand on one hip. “Yes, I do.”
    “Are you still trying to tell her the tooth fairy’s for real, too?”
    This got him a look of real annoyance. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bobby Jack.”
    “The tooth fairy’s ridiculous, but this isn’t?”
    “Not when it has an honest-to-God TV network and a well-known image consultant backing it.”
    She made the pronouncement as if the President himself had signed off on the whole proposal. Bobby Jack shook his head, speechless. “She’s a straight A student, Priscilla. She could go to any Ivy League school of her choosing if she keeps her grades where they are now, and you think this is how she should be spending her time?”
    Priscilla circled the salon, flipping on lights. “She’s also a girl, Bobby Jack. Something I think you’d do well to notice once in a while.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Exactly what it sounds like. You take her out working with that obnoxious crew of yours like she’s just another redneck with a hammer.”
    “That ‘obnoxious’ crew of mine happens to be a good bunch of guys, so I’d appreciate it if you’d table the slander. And Andy helps out because she wants to.”
    Priscilla picked up a brush, began pulling out excess hair and