Tipsy (3 page)

I stepped around to the front and
leaned over him, trying to reach the hair, holding out my
arms.

“
Here,” he said softly,
spreading his knees apart and creating an opening to step between
his legs.

I stepped closer, only because it made
my job easier, and ran my fingers through his hair, pulling it up
to look at it. A soft groan rumbled in his throat and I looked
down.

“
That feels good,” he
murmured, his eyes slipping closed.

Damn if that didn’t make me want to do
it again. The butterflies in my stomach were out of control, and I
knew I was going to be tied up with fluttery energy all day, long
after he was gone.

I kept cutting, running my hands
through his tresses. He didn’t groan again, but I couldn’t help but
notice the way his body relaxed into the seat. Poor guy, he must
have been stressed.

I reminded myself not to feel sorry for
him.

When I was done, I went around to the
back and quickly checked the length all over, making sure it was
even.

Then I ran my hands through it again,
giving it a tousled look. “How’s this?”

His eyes opened and he looked in the
mirror. “Looks really good,” he said, his eyelids slightly
closed.

He wasn’t looking at his
hair.

He was looking at me.

We stood there for long, silent,
charged seconds. It was the same kind of chemistry that sizzled
between us the day we met and then again on our first and only
date. Was I just imagining it? Did he not feel it too?

It was practically
undeniable.

“
So the, uh…” I said, my
words getting lost in his gaze. “Uh, the haircut is to your
liking?”

He finally glanced at his hair and
nodded.

I made it. This was done. “Great,” I
said and set my tools down. I reached for the cape when he stopped
me.

“
Would you mind shampooing
it? I have to go in to work later.”

“
Sure,” I said, mentally
dying. More touching him. With water. And soap.

It made me think of a shower with him.
Naked. I jerked and then braced myself on the side of his chair.
What the hell was I doing having these thoughts? I was at
work!

“
Right this way,” I said,
walking away and not looking to make sure he followed. I knew he
was right behind me. My body was practically humming with his close
proximity.

I led him to an open shampoo bowl and
he sat down. I arranged the cape (figures the pink didn’t make him
look less manly) and then guided him back to rest his neck in the
bowl. I turned the water on, testing it out on my hand until I got
the desired temperature.

Slowly, I let the water cascade over
his head. “Is that water okay?”

“
Perfect,” he murmured, his
eyes slipping closed.

I wet his hair and then pumped some
shampoo into my hand and massaged my fingers into his scalp. The
scent wafted up around us and bubbles coated my fingers. I noted
that he had goose bumps along his arms and it gave me some sort of
pleasure to know it was my touch that did that to him.

I spent a little longer than I needed
bent over him and washing his hair. And then I rinsed it with warm
water and worked some conditioner through the ends (he didn’t need
it, but I sure had a good time). I couldn’t help but give him a
little scalp massage, and then I lifted his head to massage the
back of his neck.

He heaved a great sigh and I noted the
goose bumps on his skin remained the entire time.

After I was done I towel-dried his hair
and directed him back to my station where I combed it, blasted it
for a few seconds with the dryer, and then styled it so it was
effortlessly messy.

“
All done,” I said, peeling
away the pink cape and ignoring the feeling of regret because it
was time for him to leave.

He sat there for long moments, looking
at me like he wanted to say something, but then he got up.
“Thanks,” he said and then went toward the receptionist without a
backward glance.

Clearly the chemistry I felt before had
been my imagination.

I didn’t look his way again; instead, I
cleaned up the hair from the floor and put away my tools. I glanced
at my watch. I still had a couple hours left before I could go
home. I wished this day was over. I was ready to go home, eat a
pint of ice cream, and wallow.

Wallow over one stinking
date.

Yes, I was pathetic.

But it had been a really good
date.

I had several minutes before my next
client arrived so I focused on my reflection in the mirror. My
blond hair was a little longer than chin length and it was styled
in a messy little bob. Some of the strands flipped out around my
face and I had side-swept bangs that drew attention to my blue
eyes—not nearly as deep and blue as his were.

Part of me wondered if the color of his
eyes was what inspired his name.

No thinking about
him!
I told myself and directed my
attention back to the mirror. My cheeks were slightly flushed
against my clear, creamy complexion, my nose was small and
straight, and my full pink lips could use a little lip-gloss. I
bent, fishing the gloss out of my bag, and when I stood back up, he
was there.

“
Blue,” I gasped, pressing a
hand to my chest.

“
For you,” he said, laying
some folded bills on the station.

My heart thundered in my chest, and if
I squeezed the gloss any tighter, it was going to explode.
“Thanks,” I murmured, breathless. Why was he standing so
close?

He reached out and cupped his large,
warm hand over my elbow and stepped a little closer. He brought his
lips right up beside my ear.

“
You’re not so easy to
forget,” he whispered.

I sucked in a breath and my mouth ran
dry. The room actually went a little blurry. I blinked, focusing on
the spot where he stood.

But he was gone.

I stared at the door for a long time,
his whispered words echoing through my head.

2

Blue

I received confirmation today.
Confirmation that she was definitely pissed off at me. I hadn’t
been surprised by that. But I was surprised by the intensity of her
anger. Even after all these weeks, she was still mad I never
called.

That also confirmed something
else.

She still wanted me.

The chemistry between us was
undeniable. From the minute I stepped into that salon, she was all
I could see. All I could feel.

She tried to act like she didn’t care,
like I was just some guy she met once. But she couldn’t fool me. I
caught the way she would look at me and then force away her eyes.
The way she took extra care with her tools and scissors before
getting started.

God, I could still smell her
honeysuckle scent that practically wrapped around me every single
time she leaned so close. Thank God for that stupid pink cape. It
covered up the parts of me that had trouble hiding my strong and
lusty reaction to her.

I’d been getting my hair cut all my
life, but never, not one time had it ever given me a hard-on. I
thought back to the way her perky, full breasts brushed against me
when she sometimes moved. The way her black top clung to her narrow
hips and her black and white skirt flirted with her ankles and
hugged her tight ass. It made me itch to grab her, to pull her into
my lap…

She looked as good as I remembered.
Better, in fact. Her hair was golden blond with streaks of very
light blond. The way it flipped out around her face drove me crazy.
It was like she walked around with permanent bedhead, and all I
could think about was what she would look like spread out across my
sheets.

Her lips were full and ripe, like a
juicy peach, and her blue-gray eyes were muted like the sky on a
cloudy day. She seemed smaller than I remembered, though she wasn’t
wearing high-heeled boots like the time I took her out. Right
before I left, I actually had to lean down to whisper in her ear,
and it made me want to curl around her protectively.

But she didn’t need protection. Julie
was a girl with a set of claws on her. I noted today that they were
painted a very eye-catching pink. I wondered how much work it was
going to be to get her to retract those claws.

Would it even be worth the headache I
knew she would cause me?

Maybe I should let it go, chalk it up
to bad timing, and ask someone else out.

Even as I thought it, my body revolted
against the thought. Yeah, I could ask someone else out, but it
wouldn’t be the one I really wanted. I had spent weeks, months
even, thinking about her, drawing up her face and the sound of her
laugh whenever life got too dark or too stressful for me to deal.
Without even knowing it, she’d quickly and irrevocably became the
place my mind drifted whenever I needed some sort of
comfort.

Even her spiteful and sarcastic
behavior today wouldn’t change that. If anything, it endeared her
to me more.

I shook my head.
Blue, a high-maintenance woman is the last thing
you need.

Still, the thought of driving her to
the brink of madness and then kissing her back had an intense
appeal to me. Life with someone like Julie would definitely not be
boring. She would likely drive me insane, make me curse, and
torture me in ways no other woman would.

What was wrong with me that made me
want to move closer instead of farther away?

It’s just stress. It’s just
you getting back to reality,
I told myself.
My job, my work life was full of drama. My home life needed to be
calmer, more steady.

I sighed and took another wrong turn. I
kept turning and driving in all different directions just to be
sure that I wasn’t being followed. I wasn’t. I was told that I was
safe. I liked to take precautions.

‘
Course, I already knew it
was safe. If I hadn’t been sure, I wouldn’t have gone to her to get
a haircut.

I guess some habits are hard to
break.

I sighed when the station came into
sight. I slowed and pulled into the lot, grabbing my duffle out of
the back and jogging to the entrance.

What I needed to do was get back into
the swing of things. Focus on the job. Always the job.

But it wasn’t the job that I kept
thinking about.

It was her.

3

Julie

My last client of the day was a
walk-in. Technically, my day was done, but she was here and I was
free so I extended my hours. I was exhausted. Seeing Blue again had
pretty much made me feel like I had a gigantic shot of adrenaline
straight to the heart, and when it drained away, I was left feeling
like a wobbly noodle.

The woman in my chair was probably at
least seventy years old. She had short curly hair, a rounded
figure, and light wrinkles on her pale cheeks. Her eyes were bright
and kind and she smiled a lot, which is probably the reason I
offered to stay.

She leaned her cane against my
workstation—which was a white built-in against the wall, with
drawers and cubbies reaching to almost the ceiling on each side of
the large rectangular mirror. There were bright lights overhead and
in front of the mirror was a bar that ran across that held my blow
dryer and styling tools.

She lowered herself down
into the black chair, and I pulled out the black cape (okay, so
maybe I
didn’t
spill something on it) and draped it around her
shoulders.

I pumped the chair up with my foot,
bringing her to the correct height for me to work. “What can I do
today for you, hon?”

The woman’s hands moved around
underneath the cape, and I watched as she drew out a folded-up
section of a magazine. She’d brought a picture. I liked when
clients brought a picture because it gave me an exact idea of what
they were looking for so I didn’t have to try to interpret what
they tried to tell me.

“
I want to look like this,”
she said and unfolded the paper and held it out to me.

It was Halle Berry.

I looked at her and then back at the
paper. I tilted my head. I squinted my eyes. I shut one eye and
looked at her that way.

Yeah, it was just as I
thought.

Hopeless.

I sighed. “Hon,” I began, trying to be
sweet as I could. “I can absolutely cut your hair this way.” It was
the cut that Halle had made famous around the world. The
ultra-short one with tasseled layers at the top. “But you do know
that even if I cut your hair like this, you’re not going to look
like Halle Berry?”

Why must people always think they need
to look like a celebrity? The good thing about people and hair was
that you had the immense opportunity to define your own style, to
be creative. Why look like someone else when you could look like
you?

She laughed. “Oh, dear, yes, I know
that.” She smiled and pointed. “But I do love that cut. I was
thinking it would be easy to get ready for church on
Sundays.”