by Whitley Cox
With just a hint of a tremble to her hands, she lifted them up and pushed them into his hair. God, he had great hair. Dark and thick. Soft and full. She played with it a bit, pulling it out at the sides and on the top to get an idea of how much needed to be taken off.
The groan from the depths of his chest made her pussy quiver, and the way his eyes softened and his nostrils flared as she watched him watching her in the mirror sent her pulse racing.
“We need to talk about Monday,” he said, removing his eyes from her and allowing them to flit around her freshly painted and newly decorated salon and spa. She was proud of all that she’d managed to accomplish, setting her business up so quickly, getting her clients organized and scheduled. Everyone had been so accommodating with her move, most of them saying she was now closer to where they lived than before.
“Do you want your hair washed?”
He grunted, stood up and followed her over to the low chair and basin sink, sinking down and resting his neck in the groove.
She made sure the water was nice and warm before she put the spray over his head.
“I’m not leaving until we talk about Monday,” he said. “You can wash my hair, condition it, shave it all off for all I fucking care, but I’m not leaving until I get an explanation. I deserve an explanation.”
He was upside down glaring at her now, which, she had to admit, looked pretty hilarious. His brows pinched in a way that made him look both menacing but also sexy, and the way his slightly crooked upside-down nose crinkled was not only charming but also kind of cute. The man, for all the ire that swirled around him, was very kissable right now.
“You hear me, Eva? I’m not leaving.”
She gave him one, barely-there nod, pumped shampoo into her hand and began to work her fingers into his hair. He shut up after that. His face relaxed, and his eyes closed.
She didn’t want to make the comparison, but in a lot of ways, men were kind of like dogs. If you rubbed them in the right spot, they usually calmed right down. A part of her expected his leg to start twitching any minute.
She rinsed, then conditioned, rinsed again before wrapping his head up in a towel, guiding him back to her salon chair, his big, solid frame a wall of heat beneath her palm.
With a grunt, he plopped back down into the chair. Even though she was tall for the average woman, he was taller, and she had to hit the bar on the bottom of the chair to drop him down a bit so she could see of the top of his head.
The air grew more and more taut between them as she combed out his damp hair and parted it. She avoided looking in the mirror at all costs, but sometimes she had to, and each time she brought her eyes up, there was the fire blazing back at her.
Swallowing, she brought the scissors up, the shake in her hand still there. She needed to rip it off like a Band-Aid. Tell Scott the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He had been nothing but kind to her. He deserved to know why she was acting like a wingnut. Then he could decide for himself whether she was worth the effort. Whether she was worth the headache.
“Do you know who you were having drinks with?” she whispered, holding his hair between her middle and index fingers and then cutting along the top.
“Todd Fletcher, my client. I told you that.” Impatience was not only evident in his tone and glare, but it was damn near tangible in the air. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I never told you my married name,” she went on, ignoring his irritation. “It’s Fletcher.”
His furrowed brow slowly relaxed as all the color drained from his complexion and realization dawned across his handsome features, fear replacing any last traces of impatience in his eyes.
“Todd Fletcher is your ex-husband?” he whispered so low she was forced to read his lips in the mirror to understand what he was saying. His head began to shake as if he didn’t believe her. Or as if he believed whatever Todd told him about her.
What had Todd told him about her?
A cold numbness tingled in her feet, but finally, she nodded. “Todd Fletcher is my ex-husband, yes. He is Kellen and Lucas’s father.”
Both of his hands shot up from beneath the cape, and he snagged her wrists. Instinct kicked in and she jerked away from him, jabbing the end of the scissors into the back of his hand.
“Ouch!” He yanked his hand back and eyed her like she was a rabid beast that had just gone for the kill strike. “What the hell?”
She swallowed and took a step back, her hand still shaking as she set the scissors down on the vanity. “I’m sorry.” Stepping back toward him, she took his hand in hers to survey the damage. He was bleeding.
Damn it.
Hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she snatched up a tissue from the box behind her and held it to his hand. “I’m so sorry, Scott. You just … you startled me.”
“And your first instinct is to try and sever my hand off?”
She rolled her bottom lip inward and held the tissue tight against his hand. “No … I … just. Instinct. I went into protection mode.”
Once again, he gripped her wrist, squeezing until she lifted her head to look at him. “Am I someone you think you need to protect yourself from?”
No. Not you. Not you ever.
She shook her head. “No.”
“But you’re used to having to protect yourself from someone … from him.” It wasn’t a question.
Her molars slammed together to keep her chin from trembling. “He wasn’t violent with me, if that’s what you mean. Todd, he just … ” She couldn’t maintain eye contact any longer and glanced back down at his hand, lifting the tissue to see if he was still bleeding. He was. “The man has a temper. He yelled a lot, belittled and threatened. And he … ” A tear slid down the crease of her nose. Before he could take her hand, she shook herself free of his grasp, handed him the tissue and moved back around behind him, resuming her station with the scissors and comb.
“Eva … ” His deep voice drew her gaze up to the mirror, where dark eyes, curious and gentle, looked back at her. “What did he do to you?”
Swallowing, she began to cut his hair again. “A few years ago, when things with Todd really started to get bad but I was too scared to leave, I moved into the guest bedroom. I wasn’t interested in being his wife anymore, at least not behind closed doors—and certainly not in the bedroom. I knew he was cheating on me anyway, so I figured he didn’t care that I wasn’t interested in sex. He didn’t make much of a stink about it, thankfully, until one night … ”
His nostrils flared, and even in the mirror, she could see his pupils dilate. The hair on the back of his neck pricked up too. “What. Did. He. Do. Eva?”
“He came home after a work function, and he’d been drinking. He came into my room and tried to have sex with me. I pushed him off, but he became persistent, and then he … ”
“Eva … ”
She shook her head and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek until the metallic taste of blood spilled across her tongue. But not even that could keep the tears from flowing freely down to her chin, spilling over to her purple tennis shoes. “I didn’t know that marital rape was a thing.” Her laugh at her own stupidity was brittle. “Can you believe that? Celeste had to inform me that a husband can rape his wife.” She continued to cut his hair, using the sleeve of her white T-shirt to blot at her eyes. “He hurt me … during … it. He was rough, and I had bruises and pain afterward. I ended up running out and getting the morning-after pill the next day because I wasn’t on any birth control, and as much as I love my children, I couldn’t imagine having another child with that monster.”
“Did you report the bastard to the police?” Anger infused every one of his words, and his fists were now bunched and white-knuckled on the arms of the chair.
She shook her head again. “No. I didn’t know that I had any kind of a case. And even so, it would have been his word against mine. I told you how much he lied about me to try to get custody of the boys. He would have
lied about that too. After he … ” She couldn’t even say it, not again. “After he did that to me, I had a long, hot shower and scrubbed myself. I wanted to rid myself of his smell, of his sweat, his spit and his semen. I washed away anything that could have helped a police investigation, had I known I even had a case.”
Scott’s eyes flared, his cheeks reddened and his mouth opened on a gasp at the same time he pivoted in his chair to face her. Thank goodness she wasn’t mid-cut, otherwise she could have done some serious damage to his gorgeous hair. “He lied about you to me too.”
A pit the size of Jupiter opened up inside her gut. Just like she feared, Todd had mentioned her to Scott. Oh God, what had he said? What lies had he filled Scott’s head with? How many other people had he lied to?
“He told me you were an alcoholic, a pill-popper and a kleptomaniac,” he said, more and more rage filling not only his tenor, but also the air around him. “And he was convincing enough that as much as I dislike the guy, I believed him.”
Of course he did, because Todd was a charmer. He was a pathological liar, a vapid narcissist, a psychopath and the devil’s spawn. But he was also incredibly convincing when he lied. It was part of the reason why she’d stayed with him so long. Each and every time she thought she’d worked up the courage to leave him, he’d go and convince her that he was a changed man, or that he would change, that he would do better by her and the kids. Or he’d convince her that somehow his anger was justified, that she deserved his ire because of her stupidity and poor choices.
She trimmed more of his hair, this time off the top. It took everything she had to keep her hands steady. “Now do you understand why I couldn’t come inside the bar? Why the thought of you two chatting it up like a couple of frat bros made my anxiety go through the roof?”
He nodded slowly.
“I couldn’t face you after knowing you’d just spent several hours with my ex-husband. It made my skin crawl just seeing you sitting that close to him, smiling and laughing.”
“Well, all my laughter was forced. The man is a crude pig.”
Now that was just an insult to pigs.
She combed her fingers through his hair, tugging slightly until he turned back around and faced forward. Their eyes locked in the mirror. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I … ” She wiped the back of her wrist beneath her nose again and sniffled. “I just needed some time to think. Some space and to talk things over with Celeste … and my shrink. I saw her yesterday too.”
“Did it help?”
“It did. I was planning to come over and talk to you tonight after my client, actually. Clear the air and apologize.” Her bottom lip wobbled, and she shook her head, her lashes now spiked from all the tears. “I’m really sorry, Scott.”
Before she realized she was moving, she found herself hauled around the chair and in his lap. As she opened her mouth, he smothered her response by taking her lips roughly, plunging his tongue in and taking control. One hand fisted her ponytail, while the other held her jaw, angling her neck back so he had greater access and could push his tongue deeper into her mouth.
She melted against him, her body going lax and letting out its own sigh of relief now that she was back and safe in his arms. Where she was meant to be.
Her body temperature ratcheted up the longer they kissed, the more he pulled on her ponytail, and his pinky finger rested against the rapidly beating pulse in her neck.
She’d been so worried that she’d blown it with Scott, that her going all freaky-AWOL on him Monday night had ruined their chances. She knew he was mad by his last voicemail and text message, but at that point she still hadn’t been ready to talk to him. She needed to see her therapist, get some coping tools and figure out the next steps. Todd was, after all, Scott’s client—a big client, at a new job no less. It would be deleterious to his career to lose Fletcher Holdings.
But she also didn’t want to lose Scott.
How could she keep him and he keep Todd?
Was that even possible?
After a few moments, he broke the kiss. His lips traveled down her cheek and over her jaw. “Eva.” Her name on his lips was a plea. It cracked her wide open, causing her emotions to clench tight in her throat. “What are we going to do, Eva?”
She had no idea. No clue.
It was all so messed up now.
Even when she tried to start a new life with her sons in a new neighborhood, with a new man, Todd Fletcher still haunted her. He was a true demon, and if Allison DeWitt’s books had taught her anything, the only way to kill a demon was to rip off its head and burn its body.
Tempting, but she’d never been one for bloodshed.
Against everything inside her that protested, she pried herself up off his lap and walked back around the chair. “I should finish your hair.” Her voice was hollow and not at all sounding like her own. She resumed her job, the feel of Scott’s silky hair between her fingers and the cool steel of the scissors in her hand reassuring and grounding. She loved her job. All she’d ever wanted to be was a hairdresser. Since the age of three, she loved playing with people’s hair. She’d learned to braid and plait hair at a young age, and by the third grade, girls were lined up at recess waiting for her to braid or style their hair.
Aesthetician school had been a bit of a no-brainer after she finished hairdressing school and started working in a salon and spa. She knew she wanted to keep educating herself in the field of beauty and pampering. She wanted to have more to offer people, add more skills and expertise to her CV. So she worked her way through aesthetics school while cutting and coloring hair at The Yellow Owl Hair Salon in downtown Seattle.
Man, she missed it there.
The Owl had been a hip, fun place to work, and she’d made some incredible friends.
But Todd had done his job as an abuser and alienated her from all those friends. She didn’t speak to any of them anymore. At one point she would have gone so far as to call them her extended family, and now? Now she doubted any of them would throw a bucket of water on her if she were to spontaneously catch fire. Todd had caused her to burn a lot of bridges and hurt a lot of people.
“That’s what abusers do,” her therapist had said. “They isolate their victims from friends and family so that all the victim has left, the only person they trust is their abuser.”
And that’s exactly what Todd had done. And he’d done it so well.
Thank God, Celeste hadn’t given up on her and refused to leave Eva alone, no matter what Todd said about her sister. She was still working on repairing her relationship with her parents. Todd had destroyed the once close and loving relationship she had with them. There was a chance they hated her ex-husband more than she did.
She grabbed the razor off the vanity counter and tidied up the back of Scott’s neck and his sideburns. The silence between them began to grow thick in the air. Their passionate moment from earlier already seemed like a lifetime ago. Now all that filled the room was the buzz of the blade and her thundering pulse in her ears.
Once she was finished, she circled around in front of him and hunched down a bit to make sure everything was even. Her fingers found their way back into his hair, and she flayed them out over the sides of his head, pulling the hair out to double-check the length.
Everything looked good.
Scott looked good.
It was habit that had her reaching for the soft, fuzzy brush from the vanity and brushing it over his neck and shoulders, sending the small hair clippings to the tile floor. Then she removed the cape from him and stepped back to grab the broom, but she didn’t have the chance to reach it before his arm snaked out and he grabbed her around the waist, drawing her once again onto his lap.
Her chin trembled as he settled her into him. Heat poured off him like a nuclear reactor. If she wasn’t careful, he was going to send her into a full-on meltdown. “I thought that Todd might have convinced you I was all those terrible things,” she whispered, her finger
s twisting around the hem of her white T-shirt. She was in her comfy but professional attire. Stylish dark wash denim capris, a plain white V-neck T, purple tennis shoes and funky, sparkly chandelier earrings. It was an outfit that said she tried, but she wasn’t trying too hard because she was also a mother of two boys and it was a daring enough move for her to wear white, let alone get all glammed up.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Too many thoughts and emotions swirled inside her that the strength to lift her head, to look him in the eye failed her.
Luckily, it was Scott to the rescue. His knuckle found her chin, and gently, he tilted her head up. “I believed him about his ex-wife when I didn’t know who she was. But now that I know it’s you, that I know you, I don’t believe a single word out of his lying, bastard mouth.”
Relief flickered inside her. “Thank you.”
“Haven’t you figured out by now that we’re inevitable, Eva? I don’t know how you can’t see that.”
The flickering relief morphed into hot, licking flames of need. No man had ever been so patient and caring with her, while at the same time making her swoon and think a million dirty thoughts.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” he said, clearing his throat. “I went through a lot of emotions when you ghosted me like that. First, I was worried. My overactive imagination had you upside down in a car, pinned inside as the engine caught fire and the fire department was unable to reach you.”
“Well, that’s rather detailed and morbid,” she muttered.
“Blame Allison DeWitt and her epic attention to detail.” He chuckled before his smile faded and his tone grew serious once again. “I was worried. I was scared, and I was sad. I really wanted to go out with you. Yes, the book signing of my favorite author would have been awesome, but that was just a bonus. Dating you was the real prize. And then when Mr. Gallagher said you ran home and then packed the boys up in your van, I started to think that maybe you were all at the hospital. Like everyone had come down with food poisoning or had ingested bad pork or whatever. I started to fear for your kids. Then I thought maybe Todd had kidnapped all of you.”