manager for a construction company? Not me. Certainly not my appalled and deeply disappointed parents, not my ex-husband, Mayor Brad Watson, and not this town that thinks I don’t have a brain in my pretty little head.
I trace the letters of my name with an index finger. Tiger Lyons, not Tiger Watson. That woman is dead and buried … well, mostly dead. Sometimes Tiger Watson still rears her ugly head. There are times I still worry about what people think of me and doubt I’m good for anything but being arm candy. On occasion I’m concerned my parents were right, and men don’t like women who are strong-willed, opinionated, and who think they deserve to be valued for who they are and not what they look like. And that men really don’t want a woman who’s broke. Which I am because I gave away every last penny of my trust fund earlier last year. That’s really why my parents are appalled and have very little to do with me. And why Mayor Brad Watson is no longer my husband.
Thankfully, my family is so secretive about everything, no one in town knew I had a trust fund coming to me. And my parents sure as hell made sure no one knew that I divested myself of the inheritance, going so far as to insist I put a clause in my divorce agreement that Brad cannot speak of it to anyone for fear of litigation. Good thing too, or I’d still be answering questions from the residents of Ryder about why I gave away my money.
But I have no regrets. That money had so many strings attached to it that I couldn’t keep it. All of those threads tethered me to a life I no longer valued or wanted, and the three charities I gave it to desperately needed the money.
Tiger Watson was my beauty queen self, most beautiful in high school, and a sparkly accessory to my ex-husband. And if Brad is any indication of what men want, then my parents were 100 percent right.
It was made very clear that if I didn’t bring anything to the table—see money and prestige—then I was of no use to him. He craves both, but prestige is his real drug of choice. He’s also vindictive. That’s why he put up that god-awful billboard at the Ryder city limits, and why he won’t take it down, even though my image is regularly defaced.
I can’t judge Brad too harshly because I used to care a lot about prestige and notoriety too, but that was mostly because the people in my life loved me best when I was in the spotlight. Tiger Watson would’ve been horrified at the humiliation of the billboard vandalism.
Tiger Lyons, on the other hand, is a project manager for the biggest construction job of her life. She wears overalls and steel toe boots to work and hasn’t looked at herself in a mirror in six months.
How does a former beauty queen who’s only ever been valued for her appearance take back her life? She stops obsessing over how she looks by getting rid of every mirror in her house.
Drastic? Maybe.
Dramatic? Definitely.
Necessary? Most assuredly.
I braid my hair into a long blonde plait, grab my Lewis Construction baseball cap, and stick it on my head backward. I like wearing it this way. It gives off the signal that I don’t give a crap about my appearance, and I don’t.
Not anymore.
Not much anyway.
“You’re a work in progress, Tiger.” It’s the pep talk I give myself every day, especially on the days when I’m tempted to backslide and obsess over how I look, or care about what people think of me, or I’m tempted to call my parents and beg to be taken back into the fold.
My phone rings, and I grab it on my way out of the Wayland Estate pool house where I’ve been living. I check the screen and see that it’s my boss, Donny Lewis, calling. “Morning, Donny.”
“Morning.” His tired voice barely makes it through the phone line.
“Late night?” I make my way around the pool and into the back door of the main house.
“Yeah.”
“We’re not as young as we used to be, huh?”
Donny’s been in South Florida working on a renovation job for one of our biggest clients. That’s why I’m overseeing this project and why the pressure’s on. He’s given me more and more responsibility over the last year, and I really want to do a good job for him. Especially