Plain Jayne (40 page)

Sure to brighten any gloomy days are classic romances like Sandra Chastain’s sensuous tales from the Wild West:
The Outlaw Bride, The Mail Order Groom
, and
Shotgun Groom
. Also deeply satisfying is Iris Johansen’s unforgettable
Man from Half Moon Bay
and Karen Leabo’s sexy thriller
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
. Linda Cajio’s
Me and Mrs. Jones
is a passionate tale you don’t want to miss. And you can never go wrong with Andrienne Staff and Sally Goldenbaum: Check out the beautifully rendered
Banjo Man
by these two superstars.

~Happy Romance!

Gina Wachtel

Associate Publisher

“Hang on, Maya, someone’s banging on the door.… Relax, I have Louie right here.” Regan pressed the phone against her left ear and reached for her trusty Louisville Slugger tucked in beside the dryer.

This time of night, with the lights on inside the salon, it was hard to make out the guy on the other side of the glass, especially with his head down like that, but the leather jacket was a dead giveaway. So was the Harley parked behind her car.

Regan swung the bat up to her shoulder as she made her way slowly toward the door. Carter Scott leaned against the door frame outside, helmet dangling from his left hand, his head tipped slightly to the right. His eyes, almost as dark as his hair, crinkled around the edges and his mouth lifted in a cocky little half grin that had her grinning back at him for no apparent reason.

It was better than good, that smile, and okay, those dark eyes were … well …
wow
 … but that hair … good God! Did he cut it with a knife and fork?

“It’s just Carter, Maya … Carter Scott. I have no idea.” She twisted the lock, pushed the door open, then backed up enough to let him in, as Maya all but hyperventilated on the other end of the phone. “Maya … Maya … let me hang up and I can find out … I don’t know, probably. Hang on.”

She shifted the phone a little and tipped her chin toward Carter. “Are you going up to Nick and Jayne’s?”

As his head bobbed in the briefest of nods, Regan smirked against the phone. “Maya? That’s a yes … I don’t know … no. No … I gotta go … Maya … I gotta go … okay … Maya … Maya … I’m hanging up … Nope. Bye.”

Ignoring her friend’s protests, she clicked the phone off, tucked it in her back pocket, and grinned up at Carter. “Hey.”

He raised his brow and gave the bat a pointed look, the grin never leaving his face. “You
gonna take a swing or what?”

Regan shrugged slowly and left the bat resting on her shoulder while Carter stuffed his fingers inside the front pocket of his jeans and shifted on his feet. “I’m here to help pack up whatever’s left.”

“Did Jayne send you?”

He shifted again, this time adding a shrug. “She thinks you’re going to blow off her party.”

That Jayne was like a frickin’ pit bull about the holidays. Wasn’t it enough that Regan had spent Christmas Eve at her place, surrounded by all that festive ho-ho crap? And wasn’t it more than enough that she let Jayne sit her beside Linden Mack, the young new orthodontist Nick’s father had just hired? Nice guy, Jayne had said. Cute, too.

Sure he was nice, if you didn’t mind someone staring at your teeth all night, making you wonder if there was crab dip hanging off a bicuspid or something. And absolutely, he was cute, if you were into the Willy Wonka look. Yes, the Gene Wilder version. And no, for the record, Regan was not into that look. She wasn’t even into the Johnny Depp version.

After that debacle, she’d rather thought she’d earned a pass on holiday get-togethers until next Christmas, but Jayne had been on her since Boxing Day, going on and on about how it would do Regan good to get out, how it was Jayne and Nick’s first New Year’s Eve together, blah blah blah. It was great for Jayne to celebrate every occasion that came along, but Regan would much rather sit on the couch in her flannel jammies and watch the ball drop in every time zone from London to Waikiki. If there happened to be a
Star Wars
marathon on, so much the better.

Until Carter showed up, she had every intention of calling Jayne later and lying through her teeth about how she’d lost track of time with all the packing she’d been doing and how she still had so much to do. But now, thanks to Jayne’s sixth sense, the truth sat stacked right in front of Carter. Half a dozen boxes were all that was left, and once those were put in her car, she really wouldn’t have any reason to hang around the salon.

Still, given the choice, she’d much rather hang around her empty salon than go anywhere on New Year’s Eve.

Carter’s grin faded. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She’d gotten so good at the lie it just rolled off her tongue now, and
adding that smile was a stroke of genius. Why wouldn’t she be fine? Her business, the place she loved more than anything else, was closing, and instead of going home to mope, she was being guilted into slapping a smile on her face and ringing in the New Year at Jayne’s like everything was just sunshine and umbrella drinks. Yup, things were fine as frog’s hair.
Whatever
.

“Look, Carter, I appreciate Jayne volun-telling you to come down here, but as you can see, there’s not much left to do, so thanks, but I think I can manage.”

Why was he looking at her like that, with his head tipped to the side, and his eyebrow lifted, like he knew she was full of it? After a second, he lifted his shoulder in a half shrug and raked his fingers back through his crooked wild mess of dark hair.

“I’m here anyway, so you might as well put me to work.” He jabbed his thumb toward the boxes. “Want them in your car?”

She should have said no. She should have thanked him for his offer and then sent him on his way,
but that hair
. Did the man not own a mirror?

“Fine, yeah, okay, thanks.” She pulled the top box off the pile and set it aside. “Gonna need that one.”

“The rest can go?”

“Yup, but lift with your legs,” she warned with a snort. “Those towels can get pretty heavy.”

A flash of even white teeth smiled back at her. It obviously paid to have an orthodontist for an uncle. While he was busy with the boxes, Regan slit the tape on the box she’d kept and started pulling items out.

“What about the big stuff?” Carter bobbed a nod toward the black hydraulic chairs and the dryers.

“A guy’s coming to get them in the morning, so that’s it. Have a seat there at the sink.”

“What for?”

Regan tried not to snort, really she did. “My salon might be closing, Carter, but I still have a reputation, and there’s no way I can let you leave here with your hair looking like that.”

“What d’you mean?” He ran his hand along the side of his head and chuckled, deep, throaty, and sexy as hell. “It’s not that bad.”

“Seriously?” She set the electric razor on the shelf and plugged it in next to the hair dryer. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, if your skinny blonde friend thinks it’s sexy, then by all means,
leave it alone. But I gotta tell ya, in my professional opinion …” Regan hesitated, chewed her lip for a second then snorted again. “It’s God-awful.”

“God-awful?”
He must whiten his teeth, too. Either that or he’d never had a cup of coffee or a blueberry muffin in his life. “Okay, first off—ouch! And second, what skinny blonde friend?”

“That bottle-blonde giggler who followed you around the Stomp last summer like you were Colin Farrell or something.”

She dug around inside the box until she found the comb and scissors she wanted, and when she looked up, he was staring back at her with a raised brow and a smirk.

“You got something against bottle-blondes?”

“Not at all; they’re the bread and butter of any salon, but that one …” Too late, Regan clamped her mouth shut. How did she even remember that girl? The Stomp was almost five months ago, the arena had been packed with people doing their most embarrassing drunken renditions of the Achy Breaky line dance, and she’d been there with Todd. Needy, annoying, glad-to-see-the-back-of-him Todd.

“Just let me do this, Carter. It’ll be like my final hurrah.”

“Jayne’s waiting for us.” Even as he spoke, he slipped off his jacket and tossed it over the far sink.

“Yeah, well, She-Who’d-Be-Late-For-Her-Own-Funeral can just hold her water for a few minutes; we’ll be quick.”

His white long-sleeved T-shirt vee’d at the neck, revealing a silver medal hanging from a thin leather strap, and as usual, a jumble of bracelets wrapped around his right wrist, from thin braids of multicolored cloth strips, to plain stretchy craft cord with plastic beads, to crocheted string tied up with fraying knots.

“Haven’t seen you since the wedding; are you just up for the holidays?” He hadn’t been at Nick and Jayne’s Christmas party, and if either had mentioned him coming up for New Year’s, Regan hadn’t heard. Of course, she hadn’t paid much attention to anything besides her own problems the last few months. For all she knew, Jayne may well have said the Dalai Lama was coming to her New Year’s party.

“Didn’t Jayne tell you?” He slid into the chair and leaned his head back over the sink, his wary eyes following her every move as though she could possibly do any worse to him than what
had already been done. “A couple friends I went to med school with took over Morty and Peskett’s old clinic space, so I’m helping them get the place fixed up before they open.”

“Jayne never tells anyone anything.” Regan turned on the water and held her hand under the stream as it warmed up. “Are your friends podiatrists, too?”

“What d’you mean ‘too’? I’m not a podiatrist.”

“But you … I’m sure Nick said …”

“Pediatrician.”

Regan’s hand jerked under the water, sending the spray splashing over his face. Quick pat-down with a towel and he was good as new. “Pediatrician?
You?
”

“Okay.” Carter’s breath came out in a short wary chuckle. “So we’ve covered my hair and my career. What’s next—you going to take a shot at my mom?”

“No, I didn’t mean …” Regan stopped, clamped her mouth shut over a laugh and tried her damndest not to blush. “You just don’t look … I mean … I guess I expect a pediatrician to look more …”

“More what?” He grinned slowly, those eyes mocking her with every blink. “More
Marcus Welby
?”

“No.” She eased the nozzle around his head, careful to keep the water out of his face, and smiled down at him. “Well, yeah, okay, sort of.”

“So … old.”

“No, not old.
Older
.”

He didn’t say a word, just laughed up at her with another one of those low throaty chuckles.

“Give me a break,” she laughed. “How many doctors do you see riding Harleys? You’re supposed to drive a Mercedes and walk around in a white lab coat or green scrubs like they do on TV.”

“I’m not on TV.”

He could have been. God help her, he could easily out-hot any of those other TV doctors without even trying.

“Out-hot?” Carter’s shocked snort made her jump. Crap—did she say that out loud? “This from the same mouth that just told me I looked like shit?”

“I never said that! I said your hair was—”

Damn!
As if it wasn’t bad enough she’d just stuck both feet in her mouth, the heat racing up her face could only mean one thing—her freckles were going to stand out like Pippi Longstocking’s, and that was always so very, very attractive. Not.

“God-awful.” If he was trying to sound hurt, he was doing a pathetic job of it, especially with that grin plastered across his face.

“Sorry,” she laughed. “Ego took a bit of a hit on that one, did it?”

“Li’l bit, yeah.”

Was he ever going to look at something else? Anything? Maybe he’d like to count the ceiling tiles.

Shampoo, rinse, condition, rinse, just like she’d done thousands of times before. It sure as hell wasn’t the first time she’d had a good-looking guy in her chair, or the first time she’d had a guy gawk at her as she leaned across to rinse his hair. But it
was
the first time she’d ever had Carter in her chair, and that grin of his made her stomach flutter just like the time Jon Bon Jovi smiled at her.

Yes, he did
.

Sure, there’d been twenty thousand other people at the concert, and sure Regan had been way up in the last row of the nosebleed section with the rest of her thirteen-year-old friends, but right in the middle of “You Give Love a Bad Name,” Jon-Bon looked way up, pointed, and smiled. No matter what her friends said, it happened. The Jumbotron didn’t lie.

“So back to my original question. Sit up.” She pressed a towel against his hair slowly, then wiped the back of his neck to catch the drips. “Are the other docs
pediatricians
, too?”

“No.” Carter took a second to clear his throat. “Rossick’s a cardiologist and Julia’s an OBGYN.”

“Nice.” She draped the towel around his shoulders and pointed to the closest chair near the mirror. “Can I get you something to drink?”