My phone dings with an incoming text. I leap for it.
You can call it a day. See you tomorrow at seven a.m.
It’s only 4:00 p.m.
Do you want me to give you a ten-minute rundown of your revised calendar? I made a lot of changes.
I wait, biting my thumbnail.
I’ll review on my own.
He wants me gone before he gets back, that much is obvious. He sent me back to the cabin as soon as the daily update meeting was over, with barely a glance.
Peeling myself off the couch, I grab my jacket and head out, glad to be free of him and whatever game he’s playing with my head for a night.
~ ~ ~ ~
“You sure are the talk of the town, Abbi,” Tillie mutters beyond the curtain that I pulled around my bunk. I want to hide from the world.
Panic strikes me. I throw the curtain back in time to see her yanking her badge off her neck. “I am?”
She kicks off her loafer shoes. “Sounds like the boss tore a strip off you in the middle of the lodge lobby today.”
I guess that was what it would have looked like to any innocent bystander watching. And there were plenty of them doing that. The gossip queen hasn’t heard the reasons behind it, thank God. I let a small sigh of relief slip. “Oh. Yeah.”
“They say he looked pissed.”
“Yeah. I screwed up.”
“You best be careful.”
I want to pull my privacy curtain closed again and curl up into a ball, but that would be considered rude. As it is, I move my attention back to my e-reader. I’ve been staring at the same page for an hour now, unable to focus on the words. “I’ll be fine. I won’t make that mistake twice.” From now on, my eyes are down and my mouth stays shut. I just want this icky feeling that’s taken over my conscience to go away.
“What’d you do to get his panties in a bunch?”
“A scheduling mistake,” I lie.
“Don’t worry. Guys like him are quick to blow up and even quicker to forget. He won’t even remember it tomorrow,” Rachel offers from her place on Katie’s bed, where Katie paints hot green wax around her brows. “I saw him at the bar about an hour ago, drinking scotch with some suit. He seemed fine.”
“Okay. Stop talking!” Katie demands, pressing a white strip over the spot and then, holding Rachel’s skin taut, pulls it off fast, like you would a Band-Aid.
I wince with the action, but it doesn’t seem to faze her.
Katie grins with satisfaction. “There. Gorgeous, as usual.”
Rachel sits up and peers at her eyebrows in a handheld mirror. They look so thin and neat and tidy. Not like my brows, two caterpillars above my eyes. “They look nice,” I offer with a smile.
Katie holds the little wand up toward me, excitement flashing in her gaze as she sizes up mine. “Please, please, please, please let me do yours?”
“She won’t leave you alone until you do,” Rachel says with a chuckle.
“What? I can’t help it! I like my women to be well groomed.”
Yes, I’ve noticed. It’d be so easy to say yes to her right now. “Aren’t my eyes too big to have skinny brows, though?”
“Trust me. Please!” Katie pleads. “You have such an angelic little face. Let me do it?”
“Okay?” I say before I can change my mind. Maybe this will make me feel better. At the very least, it’ll distract me.
The broad smile on Katie’s beautiful face makes me think I’ve made her day.
And ten minutes and a few moments of yelping pain later, I’m staring at my face in the mirror, awed, convinced that she has made my summer.
“It makes such a difference, doesn’t it?” Katie purrs, admiring her work.
Rachel looks over her shoulder. “Amazing. Seriously.”
“My eyes look so different.” I’m grinning stupidly at myself. “Why have I never done this before?”
“See? Now all you need is a ginger eyebrow pencil to fill them in.”
“I don’t have the first clue how to do that.” My mama failed me in the “being a girl” department, more interested in teaching me about breeding chickens and milking cows.
“I’ll show you,” Katie offers.
“Could you?” I’ve never had friends like Katie and Rachel, so in tune with beauty techniques and style.
She shrugs, as if it’s no big deal, her fingers playing with my braid. “You know what? Silvia over in cabin two is the stylist at the spa. I’d bet she’d love a go at this mane.”
“Like a trim?” That’s all I’ve ever had. I’ve had hair down to my butt for twenty-one years.
She peels the elastic out of my hair braid, letting my long, heavy hair fall down across my back. “More like a shape-up. You have beautiful hair. It just needs to be tamed.” Her lips twist together. “And Tris over in cabin twelve does color. She could throw some lowlights and highlights into it. That sort of thing.”
Color.
“I can’t color my hair. I’m a ginger.”
Katie’s head tips back with her throaty laughter. “Oh, you’re so adorable. You can color your hair, as long as you have someone who knows what they’re doing. Tris knows what she’s doing. She was trained at a top school, too. She won’t fuck it up, I promise.”
“Do you think she’d do it?”
“She will if I ask.” Katie winks.
“I don’t know…” That’s a lot of change all at once. But maybe change would be good.
She sighs, her fingers weaving through my hair. I can’t be entirely sure that it’s innocent but right now I find comfort in the small act of kindness. “I promise you, it’ll make you feel better about whatever happened today with Mr. Wolf.”
I guess my misery is visible for everyone to see.
I offer her a tight smile and a weak, “Okay.”
~ ~ ~ ~
I can’t stop staring at the glamorous woman in the mirror, tears welling in my eyes as I meet gazes with the blonde pixie woman’s reflection. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure!” Tris exclaims, her fingers skating through the silky strands, the dull ginger broken up by vibrant chunks of deep red, copper, and auburn. “Your hair is some of the healthiest and thickest I’ve ever seen. And this cut Sylvia gave you is perfect. It gives it bounce without sacrificing length.”
Sylvia only nods in agreement, busy sweeping the mounds of hair piled on the floor around my chair. My jaw hit the ground when she lopped off six inches from the bottom with a single swipe of her scissors, but by the time she was done snipping and edging with her fancy tools and combs, I didn’t care. My head feels about ten pounds lighter.
“Your color took well, but don’t wash it too much, if you want it to last, okay?”
“Yes, okay.” I want it to last forever. Glancing at the clock, I realize that it’s almost nine at night. We’ve been here for hours. “What do I owe you for this?” Worry gnaws at me. This couldn’t have been cheap.
“Nothing. Wolf covered it,” Tris says, tidying the work station.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I guess he felt pretty damn bad about giving you such a hard time earlier today,” Katie murmurs with a knowing grin.
“What?” I glance around, half expecting him to step out of the shadows. “How does he even know I’m here?”
“We had to get permission. Staff technically aren’t allowed to use hotel facilities but I figured, why not ask, seeing as you’re his personal assistant. I mean, come on! That’s got to get you something, right? So Sally called him and got his okay, seeing as we had no appointments tonight, and he told her to charge it to his account. Tip and all.”
I think my eyes are about to fall out of my head. Henry agreed—and paid—for this? “Seriously?”
Katie shrugs. “I guess he can be a decent asshole, too. And seeing as he’s a decent asshole…” She grabs my hand by the wrist. “Come on. There’s one more thing I have to do.” I trail her as she pulls me down the hall that separates the beauty salon from the rest of the spa, past the trendy little all-white reception area. “Stacy, do you have a waxing room ready?” she whispers to the receptionist. “I need it for ten minutes. Fifteen, max. I swear.”
The exotic Asian girl’s eyes flutter toward the three women sitting on a cream-colored leather bench, sipping from their glasses of champagne as they wait their appointments. “They just walked in,” she murmurs, trying to hide it behind unmoving lips.
“Please!” Katie begs in a whisper.
“Number ten. Be quick!” she hisses.
Katie plants a kiss on her cheek. “You’re the best! Abbi, come.”
“What are we doing in here?” I ask as she closes the door and locks it, enclosing us in a small room with a padded table in the center.
“We are fixing that issue down there.” With a long, pointed finger, she gestures toward my crotch.
My eyes widen as I realize what she wants to do. I open my mouth to say no, but she slaps her hand over my mouth. “Have I led you astray yet, today? Don’t you feel a million times better already?”
“Yes, I do,” I admit. “But I don’t see how doing that will help.”
“What if you hook up with a guy while you’re here? Do you want him to be getting down and dirty and choke on a mouthful of hair?”
I cringe and my face burns bright. “Oh my God.”
“Right? Didn’t you already hook up with someone the first night you were here?”
“No!” I exclaim. “Where did you hear that?” The second the question is out of my mouth, I know the answer. “Tillie.”
“A word to the wise, don’t tell that woman a thing that you don’t want repeated. She’s a gossip piranha. She’ll die without her daily dose of it.”
I sigh. “I didn’t hook up with anyone. I made a huge ass of myself.” Big difference.
“Okay, well, whatever. Everyone’s fucking like rabbits around here. It’s only a matter of time before you are, too. So please let me do this for you. I don’t have to do a full Brazilian. We can start with something less dramatic.”
I can’t believe this is happening. “Why do you want to do this?” I try not to sound suspicious, but I can’t help it. Why is my lesbian roommate so adamant to get my pants off and rip my body hair out?
She levels me with a flat stare. “Relax. I know you know.”
My cheeks burn. “How?”
She slips on a pair of plastic gloves and begins stirring the pot of green wax. “Because I caught you watching on my camera the other night.”
Oh my God. I wonder who’s more mortified. I don’t know what to say. She doesn’t seem bothered, though.
“And don’t worry. I’m not into you. You’re not my type.”
Her words prick me unexpectedly. “Why not?”
“You’re too innocent and sweet. I like my women bossy and confident.”
Hmm. Where have I heard that before?
She laughs when she sees the expression on my face. “Come on. Trust me. The last thing you want to be worrying about is poor grooming when you’re about to get it on.”
I look at the table in front of me, at the wax and strips of paper waiting.
A small voice in my head—the stupid, clueless, dreamy, crushing side that can’t help but fantasize—tells me that I wouldn’t want to worry about poor grooming with Henry.
“What do I need to do?”
“Drop your pants.”
