Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  And he remembered she’d had a great smile, big teeth that were so white, if the healthy whites of her big eyes and mass of her big hair didn’t accompany them, they might seem unreal.

  But when she smiled and really gave it to you, her pretty, rosy lips spread wide, exposing two rows of the most perfect teeth he’d ever seen, that smile could blind you.

  Though, she wasn’t smiling then.

  She looked frozen in time.

  “Greta—” he started just as the door clicked shut behind him.

  At the sound of his voice, she jerked out of it and took two wide steps, right into his space.

  Tipping her head back, she whispered heatedly, “What are you doing here?”

  “Something’s happened and I need to share.”

  Her head tipped angrily and her mass of hair went with it.

  It lasted less than a second.

  And it was a spectacular show.

  “Yeah, like your ex calling Lou and telling her to erase all her and your daughters’ appointments from her books forevermore and to be ready because her posse are going to be calling in and doing the same?” she asked tersely.

  He looked to her shoulder and whispered, “Shit.”

  “Lou’s not friends with your wife, she’s friends with me,” she went on. “She’ll hold strong. But I reckon, your ex follows through with what she isn’t hiding is her plan, only so much Lou can take. What with the fact that Bill sometimes forgets that marriage is a partnership and his part of the partnership includes letting his family share in his paychecks instead of them going right to the Outpost to pay his tab every month.”

  Fantastic.

  “I’ll have a word with Bill,” he told her.

  Or another one.

  “Don’t have a word with Bill, Sheriff, have a word with your wife.”

  “She isn’t my wife, Greta.”

  “Not sure she’s been fully notified of the status change.”

  “She has, and if she hadn’t, we had words this morning.”

  Her brows drew together as she slid an inch back. “Words that might drive her to make a few calls to her posse so all of them could check off their to-do list canceling those pesky hair appointments?”

  “Words like that, yeah,” he ground out.

  She stepped a step away and looked to the floor at her side, murmuring, “Damn.”

  “Greta.”

  She looked to him and he had to take pains to ignore the fact that one look from those eyes in that face made his entire focus center on the itch in his hands urging him to touch her.

  And the feel of his crotch.

  “Have your clients been canceling?” he asked.

  “Not yet but it’ll happen and that won’t be too good. But now it’s happening . . . to Lou. And she needs asses in her chair, Sheriff, not cancellations seeing as she has two daughters to feed, and oh . . . I don’t know, she might want some ramen noodles for herself and maybe to be able to throw some scraps at Bill every now and again.”

  “This will blow over,” he said.

  And he hoped like hell he was right.

  She studied him saying a dubious, “Right.”

  “It will and you and Lou will be good,” he assured. “It was a one-time thing, people will see that and then someone else will do something that’ll take their attention and they’ll forget all about it.”

  He powered through her wince when he said it was a “one-time thing” and she powered through the rest of it, declaring, “You clearly don’t know women very well. When the sisterhood gets activated, they’ll train their daughters to pile bitch hatred on their mark to insure it won’t die when they kick the bucket.”

  His gaze moved to her hair before it went back to her eyes. “Don’t know, but my guess is, you’re talented. Closest hair salon is twenty miles away and someone might make that trek once or twice to make a point, but then it’ll get old. But regardless, Hope has an elevated idea of her pull in this town. You do your job well, I’m sure your clients will be loyal to you.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re sure.”

  He moved into the space she’d put between them.

  It was a mistake.

  Added to all the rest that was her, her perfume hit him.

  He did his best to ignore that too and murmured, “It’s gonna be okay, Greta.”

  She held her ground even if she did it holding her body stiffly and returned, “It’s not gonna do the cause of communicating ‘it was just a one-time thing,’ you showing here, Sheriff.”

  It hit him then she was calling him “Sheriff,” not Hixon or Hix.

  He didn’t comment on that or think about the fact he didn’t like it all that much.

  He said, “I wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “Well, thanks. You’ve done that. You have another heads up to give me, come in disguise or better yet, try smoke signals.”

  Shit, she was going to make him laugh.

  He couldn’t laugh. He had to get this done so he wouldn’t experience something else that drew him to her.

  “While I’ve got you—” he started.

  At that, she moved back two steps into the cramped space, nearly running into the shelves, rolled her eyes to the ceiling and declared to it, “Oh boy, here we go.”

  He felt tightness hit his neck. “Here we go with what?”

  She looked to him. “I jumped the gun, sorry, bud.” She circled a hand at him. “Carry on.”

  “Here we go with what?” he repeated.

  “You want the multiple choice?” she asked.

  He rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms on his chest.

  As he did, she watched him do it, her gaze dipping to his chest, and something came over her face that looked a lot like she’d looked the first time he’d touched her hand resting on the table between them at the Dew Drop.

  She wiped that clean when she refocused on him.

  For his part, he took pains to ignore that too.

  “A, you can try to make yourself feel better for treating me like a piece of ass by apologizing again.”

  Damn, that was what he’d been about to do.

  “B,” she went on, “you can treat me like the piece of ass you think I am by angling for a little nookie in Lou’s back room, or perhaps showing me to the alley.”

  Okay.

  Right.

  He’d been a dick, but even so, he was there, she knew why so she had to know that shit was not on.

  “Greta—” he began on a growl.

  “Then there’s C,” she rolled over his word with some of her own. “You starting the conversation that you think might win you a piece of ass whenever you get the itch by ascertaining if I’m open to be your booty call.”

  He closed his mouth and felt his lips thin.

  “Or D, a combination of the above,” she concluded.

  “A,” he bit off.

  “Right,” she mumbled.

  “I’d also like to offer you an explanation,” he continued tightly.

  “Well, I’d say I’m all ears, but hopefully I have a client coming in T minus right about now.”

  Damn, she was infuriating and hilarious at the same time.

  She hadn’t been hilarious at the Dew Drop.

  She just sang like a dream, looked like a wet dream, and listened while he talked like she gave a shit what he had to say.

  Christ.

  And dammit, he hadn’t asked her a thing about herself.

  Christ.

  “I got divorced very recently,” he informed her.

  “Considering I’m learning the hard way that you’re a public personality, Sheriff, I know that. But just to say, I’ve been in Glossop awhile now so I knew it already, which makes me the idiot.”

  “You aren’t an idiot.”

  “I am,” she whispered.

  All of a sudden, Hix grew still.

  And he did because just as suddenly, she’d changed. The whole of her changed. Hell, the air in the room change
d.

  “You’re not an idiot,” he whispered back.

  She said nothing.

  “It was good, all of it, not just what happened in your bedroom.”

  He watched her swallow but she didn’t reply.

  “I’ve been married for nineteen years. I signed my divorce papers three weeks and three days ago,” he finally shared.

  “You’re counting the days,” she said softly.

  “Yeah,” he replied the same way. “And now I think you get me.”

  She nodded, lifting her hands to cup her elbows in a defensive posture that, strangely, Hix felt a trace of pain just at witnessing it.

  “If it had happened in a few months . . .” He trailed off.

  “I get it.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “So, the time isn’t right, for me, I got kids, for them, so also for you.”

  She nodded again.

  “And now I’ve screwed it up,” he said. “Acted like a dick. Made you feel—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “It’s okay, Hixon.”

  She called him Hixon.

  The tension went out of his neck.

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel what I made you feel and I’m sorry for that. So sorry, Greta. I had a lot messing with my head. Too much. So much I shouldn’t have taken it there between us. You got no reason to believe me but I’ll say it any way. I’m not that guy.”

  “I believe you.”

  He studied her. “Yeah?”

  She nodded.

  And it was then she started unraveling him.

  She did this letting her face get soft.

  “You’ve been married nineteen years. Unless you stepped out on her, it’s impossible for you to be that guy.”

  “I never stepped out on her.”

  “I believe that too,” she whispered.

  And she did. He saw it in her eyes, in the softened line of her body.

  Jesus, she was a woman who could communicate with every inch that was her.

  No figuring out Greta.

  She gave it all with everything she had.

  He had to ignore that too.

  “Right, good,” he muttered but held her gaze. “But it isn’t okay. I was the ass in all that. You didn’t deserve that. I should have explained it then. You were . . . you are . . . great.”

  “Thanks,” she said quietly.

  He drew in breath and said gently, “I’m glad we got that sorted, Greta. With the way I treated you, I don’t deserve it but it means a lot you took the time to listen so I could give it to you.”

  “Well, uh . . . thanks for taking the time to give it to me.”

  He wanted to smile in order to see if she’d give him that back.

  But he didn’t deserve that either.

  “Now you’ve got a client,” he prompted.

  She lifted her chin. “Mm-hmm.”

  “So I’ll let you go.”

  She unhooked her hands from her elbows to throw an arm toward the door at the back. “That leads out into the alley.”

  “I’m walking through the salon.”

  She stared at him.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” he stated. “We’re adults. We connected. We enjoyed each other. I’m not attached anymore. You aren’t either.” He lifted his brows. “I assume.”

  She shook her head, her hair brushing all over her shoulders, something Hix had to avoid watching.

  “I’m not.”

  She wasn’t.

  A woman who could sing with that honesty, listen with it, talk with it and make love with it, of course she wasn’t.

  He forged past that too and carried on talking.

  “So we have nothing to be ashamed about. Nothing to hide. Hope can get ugly. That’s her prerogative. We don’t have to give people reason to believe she has that right because she doesn’t. She’s a forty-one-year-old woman throwing a tantrum. The folks in this town are close-knit and loyal. They’re also sensible. They’ll see things as they are and move on. If Hope doesn’t, it’s not my problem anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t yours.”

  “Okay, Hixon.”

  He looked into her big eyes.

  And he wanted to ask her to lunch at the Harlequin.

  He wanted to see if she was free some evening next week to take her to a movie.

  He couldn’t do that.

  Because his ex-wife was who she was, and things were how they were, Hope was giving him reasons to fall out of love with her.

  But that was where he was at now.

  Falling out of love.

  He knew Greta intimately. He knew she was funny and honest. And he knew there was a vulnerability to her the cause of which it wasn’t his right to have.

  That was all he knew.

  Except for the fact that he knew without doubt she didn’t need to be like his apartment.

  The in-between while he was sorting out his life.

  She deserved more.

  He just wasn’t in a place he could give it to her, and with the wounds Hope had inflicted, at that time in his life, he wasn’t sure he could give it to anyone again, at least not for a long time.

  In that time Greta could find her more and she didn’t need a man with his head a mess standing in her way.

  “I gotta get to my client,” she said.

  He stepped out of the way and jerked his head to the door. “Go.”

  She moved to it and put her hand on the handle but turned to him.

  Then she ripped his heart clean out of his chest, her big, beautiful, blue eyes staring right into his as she said, “She’s a complete fool.”

  With that, she opened and walked through the door.

  Hix pulled air into his nostrils.

  And smelled hints of her perfume.

  Shit.

  He gave it a beat.

  Three.

  And after that he followed her, dipping his chin to the women in the salon, a number that had grown more than double to when he’d walked in, murmuring, “Ladies.”

  But he caught Greta’s eyes, tipped his head to the side, his lips up, and then without looking back, he walked out the front door.

  And he did it not having that first clue that, with a tip of his head and a small curl to his lips, he shifted the axis of Glossop, Nebraska in a way anyone who knew either of them, which was most, started to believe dreams could come true.

  All I Need

  Greta

  THE DOOR TO the salon opened and Lou called out, “Greta is not talking about Sheriff Hixon Drake!”

  I sighed and looked from the sink, where I was doing a rinse, to the door to see my next client, Shari, hurrying through, her gaze on me, eyes huge.

  She was twenty minutes early.

  She was usually ten minutes late.

  “So it’s true!” she cried.

  Wonderful.

  This was what it had been like all day.

  To say I was relieved that the salon hadn’t been firebombed after word got out the Princess of Glossop’s ex-husband had slept with its resident easy-trick hairdresser-slash-lounge singer (that being me) might be a high-drama understatement, but it was true.

  To say that relief was tempered by the fact I’d learned Hixon Drake was a good guy, he just was never going to be the guy for me, was just an understatement, but a sad one.

  “Greta has enough to worry about without every female walking in that door asking her for the lowdown about our sheriff,” Lou declared.

  Shari kept her eyes on me. “I know. I’ve heard. I think Hope Drake activated the PTA phone tree to rally the girls to come to your house tonight, drag you out and tar and feather you.”

  Wonderful.

  “Stupid woman does that,” Joyce, sitting in Lou’s chair with Lou’s shears working at her head, chimed in. “I’ll get Jim’s shotgun, sit on Greta’s porch and offer the medical professionals opportunity to explore the concept of finally extricatin
g her head out of her behind by aiming some buckshot at it.”

  “Me too!” Mrs. Swanson, who had her head back in the sink, shouted out.

  Mrs. Swanson was eighty-two and sadly had such bad arthritis, her weekly wash and set wasn’t a luxury. It was a necessity since she couldn’t do her own hair.

  She certainly couldn’t pull the trigger on a shotgun.

  She might not even have the strength to hold one.

  Though Joyce did and she was also ornery enough to do exactly what she said.

  “We’re not talking about Hope Drake,” Lou announced. “Greta’s got problems comin’ out the ying-yang, starting not with Hope but with the fact her momma threw down.”

  Shari’s still-huge eyes turned to me and she pushed out a long, “No.”

  I nodded to her then turned back to finish up Mrs. Swanson.

  “Oh my gosh!” I heard Shari exclaim. “I hope she comes today. I want it to be a day I have an appointment. I don’t want to miss out on Greta’s mom making a scene, cursing and blinding. All this town’s been talking about is Hix and Hope Drake for months. It’s getting boring. We need something new to talk about.”

  We really did not.

  Especially if it was about me and my mother.

  “She really say the F-word out loud and in public?” Mrs. Young called out from under the dryer.

  I hadn’t only told Lou about my mom. You did hair, you chatted. So my regulars knew too.

  So did Lou’s.

  I grabbed a pink towel off the shelves behind the sinks, shook it out of the precise roll Lou and I folded them in and started to wrap Mrs. Swanson’s head in it, saying, “The F-word, B-word, H-word, D-word, and she’ll probably sprinkle in the P-word and even the C-word.”

  Mrs. Young, rightly, looked horrified.

  “That’s it,” Joyce stated. “She strolls in here and does any of that, it’s gonna be me goin’ to your momma’s house and dragging her out to take her to one of Pastor Keller’s revivals. He’ll dip her in the river and hold her down until she sees Jesus. And if she doesn’t, he’ll hold her down until she sees Jesus.”

  I helped Mrs. Swanson to sit up with my gaze on Lou, both of us visibly trying not to bust a gut laughing.

  “I know we’re talkin’ about your momma now, Greta, but just to ask, are people cancelling because of Hope?” Shari queried worriedly from where she’d sat herself in one of the dryer chairs with its bonnet turned up.

  “Hope cancelled her and the girls’ appointments with Lou. And Julie Baker cancelled her appointment with me next week,” I answered, walking Mrs. Swanson to my chair. “But other than that . . .” I shook my head.