Page 72

“Do you cut all their hair?” she asks.

Georgie returns before I get a chance to answer, placing Clementine’s iced mocha in front of her. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asks me.

“Can you bring over a color chart, please?”

When Georgie is out of earshot, I answer Clementine’s question. “Jesse calls it an initiation,” I explain. “But I just do the hair of the people who matter to me the most, and I take it personally when they let someone else cut or style it.”

She smirks. “But what happens while you live here and Jesse and Leo live in Seattle?”

I think back to the first time Leo needed a haircut after I’d left, and he said“I’ll fly to you if I have to, but please don’t be upset with me.”

“They can get it cut by someone else, but every time we see one another, they have to need a haircut so I can do it.”

Her eyes are filled with adoration as she digests my words. “So as long as you cut their hair when you see them, it doesn’t bother you if they have to go somewhere else in between?”

“Oh, no, it one hundred percent bothers me,” I confirm. “But it’s the best compromise we could come up with.”

“So, what you’re saying is, you doing my hair is a big deal?”

Our gazes stay fixed on one another through the reflection as I read in between the lines of her question.

“I’m saying that if you need to know how important you are to me, or how I feel about you, then this is a dead giveaway.”

* * *

“Okay, are you ready?” I ask Clementine, holding the black towel on top of her head, the moment of truth about to take place in seconds.

She puts her hand over mine, stopping me from removing the towel. “I just want to say, I know it’s going to look amazing, becauseyoudid it, and that’s really the only thing about this that matters.”

“Are you trying to make sure my feelings don’t get hurt if it turns out you don’t like it?”

“Maybe,” she deadpans before both of us crack up laughing.

“First off, I’m not too concerned,” I tell her, because I’m not, and I know after washing her hair that it turned out perfect. We chose a nice, deep red that was easy to switch to from her natural blond. But whether she likes it or not is really where my worry sinks in. “But if you hate it and don’t tell me, I can’t fix it.”

“Surely, you know me well enough by now to know there’s no way I’m telling you if I hate it.”

I do know that, and that’s why I’m sending prayers out to the universe that she falls in love with it.

I rid her head of the towel and start sectioning her hair so I can blow it out. It’s harder to talk with the sound of the hair dryer between us, so I’m motivated to be done quickly and hopefully have a few moments alone with her before my next client.

Clementine’s fingers are strategically flying over her cracked screen before she looks up at me, a little flustered. I switch off the hair dryer. “Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head. “I asked Lennox to meet me here, is that okay?”

Eager to meet her remaining brother, I nod. “Of course it is.”

Not too long after, I finish the blowout, and show off every angle of her hair through the handheld mirror. I’m entranced by the way her features shift as she takes herself in, green eyes filled with nothing but wonder, almost like she can’t really believe what she’s looking at.

Her gaze catches mine through the reflection, and I don’t miss the slight change in her posture or the way she holds her head a little higher.

She has always been beautiful to me, my attention absolutely consumed by her since that very first night, but now she’s coming into her own, finding herself, emanating confidence that makes my attraction to her run beyond skin deep.

“You look stunning.”

I don’t miss the subtle lick of her lips, the rise and fall of her chest, or the flush that creeps up her neck at my words. She’s speechless, but her body is telling me everything I need to know.

It’s extremely unprofessional, especially in a place as upscale as this one, but I figure I’ll worry about it later. I dart a glance around the place, and while I know my colleagues will notice my disappearance, I make sure I’m not leaving any clients unattended or waiting.