by Jill Shalvis
Jonathan smiled at Char. “For a feeble old woman, she sure does.”
“Jonathan,” Lily gasped in horror.
Char laughed and spoke in the soft Southern accent she’d never lost, not even after living in Colorado for forty years. “No, he’s just making fun of my boys because that’s what they think.”
Lily stared at her. Char was in her late fifties and trim with lovely chestnut-colored hair and warm chocolate-brown eyes that matched Aidan’s. She walked with a cane, but otherwise seemed fine. “They think you’re feeble?”
Char laughed. “Well, to be fair to them, you’re seeing me on a good day. I’ve had some hip trouble again. Took a fall and needed surgery. But I’m on the mend. Unless you ask Aidan and Gray. I tripped last week and they nearly sent for an ambulance. They worry like a couple of grannies. Baby,” she said to Jonathan, “would you mind if Lily fixed me up today?”
“Not even a little,” Jonathan said.
Lily smiled as she went to work on Char’s hair even as a part of her ached. The Kincaids stuck together through thick and thin. For the last ten years she’d been independent. On her own. No one counted on her, and she didn’t count on anyone either.
It was best that way.
Or so she’d told herself. But she couldn’t deny just a little bit of envy at what the Kincaids had in one another. “They worry because they love you and want you to be happy and safe,” she said.
Char nodded. “I know, and of course I feel the same way. It’s just that it’s all amping up again—the resort, the past, and I can’t stop it or help them. I worry, too, about them.”
Lily met Char’s gaze in the mirror. “What’s amping up again?”
“Oh, never mind my ramblings.” Char waved her words off like she regretted uttering them in the first place. “It’s just me being silly. You’re doing a great job on my hair, honey.”
Lily took in Char’s expression, carefully blank now. Clearly she’d said more than she’d wanted. Lily wanted to push, wanted to … what? Help? She could barely help herself.
And then there was Aidan.
She didn’t need to know what was going on in his life. She was here to earn some money until a real job came through.
That was it.
She was not here to reminisce or daydream about Aidan. Besides, if she was going to think about him at all, it was to hope that he’d taken one look at her and was even now pining away for what he could’ve had all those years ago.
Later, when Char left, Lily took a walk-in customer. She was finishing up the cut when the door opened again, to another woman.
“The special please,” she said, waving a coupon from the week’s paper. “The young rejuvenating facial. I want to look thirty.”
“Mom,” Jonathan said. “It’s a facial, not a magic wand.”
She rolled up the paper and swatted him with it. “Fine. I’ll take forty.” She gave Lily a hug. “And you! How lovely to see you again!” She turned to Jonathan. “So … you can make me look forty, right?”
“How about gorgeous?” Jonathan asked his mom. “Does gorgeous work for you?”
“Aw.” She grinned at him. “Always can count on you. Love you, baby.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “That won’t get you out of leaving a tip.” He nodded at Lily. “You want my specialist to do this. She’s the best woman for the job. Plus, I hate giving facials.”
Lily loved skin care. Actually, she loved all the different aspects of what she did: cutting and coloring hair, skin care, all of it. There was just something about making people feel good that made her feel good. She loved the easy, fast people connections, too, especially since in her everyday personal life she didn’t tend to make such easy, fast connections at all.
She never had.
She gave Jonathan’s mom a facial that did indeed make her look gorgeous. Then she did an eyebrow wax for a woman who’d worked for Lily’s dad years ago.
“Such a shame how he went,” the woman said, her eyes closed while Lily worked. “That heart attack. So sudden. And in his prime too.”
Lily stilled. “Yes,” she managed. “A shame.”
“He was a good man,” the woman said, not noting Lily’s discomfort since her eyes were still closed. “And your sister too,” she went on. “Such a tragedy. You okay with being back, honey?”
Lily was still having trouble finding her words. But her client had opened her eyes now and was looking at her expectantly, so she put on her best “I’m good” expression and nodded. She even added a smile, which she thought was a good touch.
“Are you?” Jonathan asked quietly after the woman had left. “Good with being back?”
“Don’t start,” she said.
“So you’re not. Damn, I knew it.” He slid an arm around her and pulled her in for a hug. “What can I do, Lily Pad? Anything for you, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.” She hugged him back, drawing on some deeply needed strength. “I’m working on being okay, I promise. I think I just need some more time to adjust.”
A truck drove up. The man driving it parked right out front in the no-parking zone like he owned the place and ambled into the shop.
Aidan. The only man she didn’t want to see, wearing sexy jeans faded in all the stress spots that she absolutely wasn’t noticing and a T-shirt that said KEEP CALM AND SKI ON.
“Mm-mmm,” Jonathan murmured for her ears only. “I tell you what. Channing Tatum and his gorgeous wife both own my heart, but Aidan’s a close third. The girls are going to be bummed. We love it when Gray sends Aidan to fix stuff.”
“Not this girl,” Lily said. She blamed the kiss. “And this place is falling apart,” she said, trying to redirect. “You should be as irritated with him as I am.”
“No can do.” Jonathan was not only an equal opportunist when it came to sex, but he was also eternally optimistic. “I’m a lot of things, but irritated isn’t one of them.”
“But he—”
“Shh.”
Oh, for God’s sake.
“Hey,” Aidan said in greeting to Jonathan before his gaze then slid to Lily.
She stood her ground instead of running in the other direction as her feet wanted.
“Lily,” he said with a nod and absolutely no indication that he’d played tonsil hockey with her just yesterday. “One of you called?”
Lily glanced over at Jonathan, who was very busy looking at Aidan like he was the sun and the moon and maybe also a lemon meringue pie. She gave him a nudge that was really a shove and then spoke for both of them since apparently she was the only one of them immune to Aidan’s dubious charms. “We need some renovations,” she said.
Aidan raised a brow. “We.”
“Jonathan,” she corrected and then shook her head. You know what? She worked here too now, and so far she liked it, dammit. It’d been weeks since she’d liked where she was. More than weeks. Way too much more. “And okay, me too,” she said, claiming the place in spite of herself.
Jonathan grinned and blew her a smooch.
“There’s a problem with the electrical,” she told Aidan. “We can’t run two blow-dryers at the same time. A pretty big problem for a salon.”
“Absolutely,” he said easily. “What else?”
“Nothing,” Jonathan said, pulling three sodas out of the mini fridge they kept stocked for clients. “We’re good.”
Lily glared at him. “The private patient room needs some plumbing help. The sink drips.”
“Drips,” Aidan said, taking one of the sodas and popping it open.
“Yes. It’s annoying.”
He smiled. “Annoying.”
“To the client, yes,” she said. “It’s annoying. They’re here to relax and be pampered. A dripping faucet isn’t relaxing.”
“Understood,” he said. “Anything else?”
Huh. She didn’t remember him being this agreeable. “And the lighting. It’s not bright enough in the client room, and too bright and harsh out here
.”
Jonathan choked on his soda.
But Aidan just looked at the overhead lighting and nodded. “You also need a new paint job.”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. Huh. Maybe this was going to go a lot easier than she’d imagined. “Thank you,” she said genuinely.
Jonathan was smiling at Aidan like he’d just brought Christmas. “She’s something else, right?” he asked Aidan.
Aidan looked at Lily. “Definitely something else.”
She gave him a long look that made him grin.
Jonathan too. “I’m thinking of putting her in charge just so I don’t have to be.”
Aidan nodded. “I’m sure you’ll be in good hands.”
Well dammit, it was hard to hold on to a good mad with a compliment like that, but she gave it the ol’ college try.
“Get me a list of the work you need done,” Aidan said. “I’ll talk it over with Gray and see what we can do.”
“Maybe we could just deal with Gray directly,” Lily said.
He gave a slow shake of his head. “Why?”
She tried not to notice how his T-shirt had stretched itself nearly beyond its limits to cover his broad shoulders. Or how the shirt was only partially tucked in at his abs. Or that he smelled fantastic. “It’d make things easier,” she said.
“For who?”
She stared at him. Was the air suddenly too thick to breathe or was that just her? “Me,” she admitted.
He cocked his head. “Maybe I’m not interested in making things easier for you,” he said so casually that it took a moment for the words to process. By the time it sank in, he’d changed out the blown fuse and was gone.
Jonathan was still grinning.
“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked, irritated.
“Because this is going to be fun.”
Lily was pretty sure this, whatever this was, was going to be the exact opposite of fun.
Thanks to some idiot throwing a lit cigarette out his window on Highway 74, Aidan and the entire fire department spent the next three days fighting a blaze fifteen miles away on Mt. Rose.
Finally a violent rainstorm rode in like a tumbleweed and saved the day, helping them beat the fire into submission.
When he finally got home, he felt disgusting. He stripped on the way to the bathroom and then stood beneath the showerhead for a full thirty minutes—the best thirty minutes he’d had in days.
He’d no sooner turned off the water and wrapped himself in a towel when his phone buzzed an incoming Facetime call from Gray. He hit ACCEPT and when Gray’s face appeared, Aidan went on the immediate offensive. “No,” he said, before his brother could speak.
“I didn’t even ask you anything.” Gray looked at his bare torso and grimaced. “And Christ, put on some clothes.”
“I just got out of the shower. And you didn’t ask me anything—yet,” Aidan corrected. “I’m just warding you off at the pass.”
“I don’t only call you to get you to do something,” Gray said.
“Yes you do.”
Gray opened his mouth and then shut it. “Shit,” he finally muttered. “Fine. I need you to do something.”
“If it doesn’t involve a beer and then an entire night of sleep, forget about it,” Aidan said.
“It’s Mom.”
The only two words that could have Aidan rustling through his dresser for clean clothes instead of hanging up on his brother. “What is it?” he asked. “She didn’t fall again—”
“No,” Gray said quickly. “Healthwise she’s fine.”
Neither of them liked to talk about Char’s physical limitations. On the night that their father had left, they’d had a big fight. She’d hit him with a frying pan, but then he came after her, and she’d fallen and broken her wrist and hip. They’d both been arrested for battery and assault, and his father had taken off afterward, never to be seen again.
His mom had healed, at least physically, although her hip had never been the same. After she re-injured it last week, the doctor said she was supposed to limit her physical activity for the next month.
“She’s … on a date,” Gray said.
Aidan blinked. “What?”
“Yeah, she’s wearing that blue dress she saves for weddings and everything. I tried to talk her out of it and she …”
“She what?”
“Laughed at me,” Gray said, looking butt-hurt. “Gave me some line about how our generation has lost all sense of romance. She said she was like a fine wine and deserved to be uncorked and aired out.”
Aidan stared at him.
“I know, dude, my ears are still burning too. So you’re up. And don’t even try reasoning with her. She’s completely unreasonable and illogical. She says she’s going dancing.”
“Dancing?” Aidan repeated. “She’s supposed to be taking it easy. She can’t go dancing.”
“Thank you,” Gray said. “Penny thinks I’m being overprotective.”
The phone was suddenly wrestled away from Gray and then Penny’s face appeared. She took a good look at Aidan and smiled.
Aidan cursed, tossed the phone aside, and ditched the towel for a pair of jeans.
“Gimme that,” Gray said to his wife. Then he reappeared, though he was still glaring at Penny, who was laughing.
“Does he have clothes on yet?” she asked.
“Yes,” Aidan said, buttoning his jeans and grabbing a T-shirt. Jesus.
“Too bad,” Penny said, and got serious. “Now listen to me—both of you have to leave your poor mom alone. She’s going out to The Slippery Slope tonight with Marcus Dolby. She’s a grown woman who’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”
“Wait a minute,” Aidan said. “Marcus?” He couldn’t think of anyone less likely to go dancing than the resort’s equipment manager.
“Yep,” Penny said. “He asked her out. She thinks he’s cute. She said that since she hasn’t gotten any action in a few decades, she wants to get back into the game before her womanly parts wither up and die from misuse.”
Both Aidan and Gray winced.
“Your turn,” Gray whispered covertly to Aidan.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”
“Good,” Gray said, and disconnected.
Shit. Aidan jammed his feet into shoes, grabbed his keys, and headed out into the rain to drive to The Slippery Slope.
He checked the bar first and damn. Yep, there was his mom at the far end, hair done, siren-red lipstick on, and laughing at something Marcus had just said to her.
Aidan snarled and headed over, stopping short when Jonathan stood from a barstool and offered a hand. “Hey, man, heard that last fire was a bitch. Join us? Drinks on me.”
Aidan turned to Jonathan’s companion and froze.
So did the companion.
Lily was sitting there in a little black dress, looking like a million bucks, even if her eyes were telling him to just keep walking.
And of course his mom took that exact moment to lift her head, and with the uncanny instinct that could only come from a mother, leveled her eyes right on her son.
Chapter 10
Aidan spared the brief thought that he’d rather be back on Mt. Rose trapped by the fire than sandwiched between his mother and Lily. One was the only woman on earth whose wrath scared him, and the other was the sexiest pain in the ass—er, blast from his past. While he stood at the bar in rare indecision, he felt someone at his back.