Second Chance Summer

by Jill Shalvis

  the entire salon had gone quiet to listen in on this exchange about his manscaping prowess—or lack thereof. “I really need to finish talking to you. In private.”

  “Busy washing and then coloring Tessa,” she said.

  “You can talk over me,” Tessa said quickly. “I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” Lily said. “You hear that, Aidan? She doesn’t mind us talking about how you think I’m sleeping around on you while I do her hair.”

  Jonathan gasped. “What the hell?”

  “I don’t think that,” Aidan said to him, to everyone, and then he looked at Lily. “I don’t.”

  At this point, you could’ve heard a pin drop in the salon.

  Lily just kept washing Tessa.

  Aidan’s jaw was bunching good now as he reached in and turned off her water. He snagged a clean towel, pulled Tessa up to sit, and wrapped her hair in the towel himself—doing a damn fine job of it while he was at it, actually.

  Then he led Tessa to Lily’s hair station, handed her a magazine from the rack—a Cosmo that promised to teach its readers how to blow their guy’s mind in ten moves or less. “Lily’ll be right with you,” he said.

  “Take your time,” Tessa murmured, watching his ass in the mirror as he strode around the chair toward Lily, eyes dark with determination.

  Before Lily could make her escape or so much as squeak, he’d hauled her into the back room again, slammed the door, locked it, and then glared at her. “Bro-zilian?”

  She crossed her arms and said nothing.

  “Hairy?” he asked.

  She looked pointedly at the clock on the wall.

  He dropped his head, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “This isn’t going well, is it?”

  “Well, how did you think it would go?” she broke her silence to ask, beyond pissed. No, make that beyond hurt. She opened the door. “I have to finish Tessa.”

  Which she did in an hour and a half, and then looked up her next client.

  It was Aidan.

  “He waited,” Jonathan whispered in her ear. “He must want to talk to you bad.”

  She turned to Aidan, who was not in one of their comfortable waiting chairs, but instead standing by the door, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Ready?” she asked coolly.

  “Not for a bro-zilian,” he said.

  “What then?”

  He looked resigned. “Anything else.”

  She tried to think of something especially good. “A brow wax it is.”

  He rolled his eyes up as if he could see his own brows. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Bushy.” They weren’t, of course. He was perfect.

  “How about another haircut?” he asked.

  Oh, hell no. He just wanted another scalp massage. “It’s the wax or nothing,” she said. “Yes or no?”

  He chewed on that a minute. “Yes,” he ground out.

  She wasn’t cruel enough to hurt him, or even give him a bad wax. But still, she didn’t realize her mistake until she had him in the private client room and was forced to lean over him very closely to apply the wax to his eyebrows. There was something incredibly intimate about the process, which she’d never given a thought to before.

  His eyes never left hers. “Listen, Lenny was at the offices and he knew about the resort’s financial problems. I assumed—” He shook his head.

  She stared at him, her heart heavy with hurt. She would have rather felt fury, because hadn’t she already done this? Fallen for a guy she thought she could trust? And then found out the truth? Why hadn’t she learned her damn lesson? “You what?” she asked. “You assumed that not only did I betray your trust but that I also slept with him? Are you kidding me?”

  “There you go with the question on top of a question thing again,” he said.

  She applied the strip and carefully ripped it from his skin.

  “Son of a—” He blew out a breath.

  “Another,” she warned, and did his other eyebrow.

  “You know what’s crazy?” he asked after carefully sucking in a breath. “You women willingly do this to yourselves.”

  “Hold still,” she said, and got the last stragglers.

  “I’m sweating,” Aidan said in disbelief. He sat up, making his abs crunch in a very sexy guy way behind his shirt, the bastard. “Holy shit. I’m seriously sweating.”

  “So did you figure it was me because of what happened at my last job?” she asked. “Where I got fired for revealing secrets?”

  “No, I—”

  She decided she didn’t care and started to walk out, but he snagged her wrist. “Lily—”

  “Nope, sorry, that’s all the time I have,” she said stiffly. “Enjoy your brow wax.”

  “We’re not done here.”

  “Oh, we so are. And I have another client.”

  Thankfully this was true. She had a quick haircut and afterward started to go into the back because she badly needed a break from work.

  Actually, she needed a break from her life.

  This wasn’t in the cards for her. Halfway to the back, Jonathan called out for her. “You’ve got another one, Lily Pad. A blow out.”

  Later she would marvel at Jonathan’s straight face. She moved to the front and came face-to-face with Aidan.

  “Oh, for the love of—” She shook her head. “You don’t need a damn blow out—”

  “The client is always right,” Jonathan said.

  She turned to glare at him. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours,” he said, which slightly mollified her. “Always. But I think we— I mean you should listen to him. I mean maybe he has a really good reason for being a bag of dicks.” He looked at Aidan hopefully.

  Aidan turned and walked to the hair-wash station.

  Lily followed. She was tempted to use icy-cold water but she couldn’t bring herself to act any more unprofessionally than she already had.

  “So,” Aidan said while she waited for warm water. “Where were we?”

  “With you accusing me of sleeping with Lenny and also saying something I didn’t. Because of what happened in San Diego.”

  “No,” he said. “This had nothing to do with Lenny. Or San Diego—at all. San Diego was the last thing on my mind, actually. It was about my family and how hard I’ve had to fight to keep them from falling apart. And sometimes it makes me go stupid. Seriously, I’m a complete dumbass, okay? I shouldn’t have come in here hot like I did. I’m sorry, Lily.”

  She felt herself soften a little bit in spite of herself. But only because she got it about his family. “I don’t know much about being a part of a family unit anymore,” she said, “but I can still understand that part.” With the water warm now, she went to work washing his hair. He sighed and closed his eyes, like he couldn’t help himself.

  Which made two of them because she couldn’t help but run her fingers through his hair for far longer than required.

  Which changed nothing. She’d long ago learned there were things she could control and things she couldn’t, and whatever Aidan thought of her, that fell into the latter. She had to let go of the things she couldn’t control. It hurt too much otherwise. When she finished washing his hair, she moved him to her workstation and met his gaze in the mirror.

  He opened his mouth to speak and she turned on the blow-dryer. She really did get that he hadn’t meant to hurt her. She even got that he felt bad about it.

  But though she could forgive, she couldn’t quite forget. Not this.

  “I’ll book you for another hour to keep you talking to me,” he said, as soon as she was done blow-drying his hair. “Hell, I’ll go along with whatever torture you’re dealing out, even a”—he shuddered—“bro-zilian.”

  He was teasing, but she couldn’t turn it off like that. Maybe she couldn’t make him take this seriously, but she was serious—she couldn’t forget. Not this. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

 
“I’m done,” she said very quietly. And with that, she walked away, heading to the back.

  He got there first, placing one of his big hands flat on the door above her. She dropped her forehead to the wood.

  “You’re done?”

  “As in stick a fork in me,” she said tightly. “Are you going to go or should I?”

  He turned her to face him and looked down into her eyes. “Let me get this straight. I have a question, I come to you, you get pissed about it, and you what, just walk away again? Is that it? Is that how this is going to work, Lily?”

  “Yes, and speaking of work,” she said past a burning throat. “I have to go. Or am I fired?”

  He stared at her. “I’m not your boss. And I’d never fire you. Lily—” His radio beeped. He turned it down but she could tell by the look on his face that he was up.

  “You’d better go,” she said, weary from the fight. Weary and surprised at how sad she felt that something she couldn’t even name was truly over. She headed back to the front.

  Rosa was waiting for her. They’d arranged for Lily to cut her hair when she had a break. “You okay?” Rosa whispered when Aidan had left, her gaze searching.

  “Never better,” Lily said with a calmness she absolutely didn’t feel.

  Rosa reached out and patted Lily’s hand. “Men can be so stupid, but in his defense I don’t think he meant to be stupid.”

  Lily choked out a laugh. Better than crying.

  “No, really,” Rosa said. “I mean honestly, they think with their wrong head when they think at all, but he looked pretty devastated. What happened?”

  “He asked me if I was sleeping with someone else. And he also thought maybe I’d said some private stuff about him.”

  Rosa bit her lower lip.

  “What?”

  “Well, I’m not an expert on the good guys,” she said. “But I am somewhat of an expert on the rotten ones. And they never ask. They tell, or worse yet, they don’t ever call or text. They take what they want and then they vanish. No talking at all. Seems to me if Aidan was asking, that’s better than nothing, right? Maybe he wanted to make sure. Or maybe he just wanted to hear how you feel about him. I mean, I know we think we’re obvious with our feelings, but we’re not.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Please don’t give me a bad haircut.”

  “Lily Pad,” Jonathan said. “You did tell him about Lenny being here intoxicated like I asked you to, right? And the way he spoke to you? You told Aidan all that?”

  “No. I didn’t want to be the rat fink.” But she stared at them as their words sank in, especially Rosa’s. Because Rosa had been right. Aidan had never made it a secret how he felt for her. He’d been open and frank. Always.

  And in return she’d … been neither of those things. “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “What?” Alarmed, Rosa looked around. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s me,” Lily said, turning to look at Jonathan. “It’s all me,” she said to him.

  “Finally.”

  “This doesn’t change the fact that he was an ass,” Lily said to the room at large.

  “Absolutely not,” Jonathan’s client said. “But just so you know, they all have their asshat days.” She smiled at Jonathan. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said demurely.

  Chapter 25

  Aidan got stuck on a ranch fire that went long into the night. By the time he got back to the station, he was losing his shit and not in the mood for anyone. Especially not Gray, who stopped by at six in the morning with some papers for him to sign before Gray went in to the office.

  At least he remembered that he had something to make Gray as grumpy as he was.

  “While you’re here …,” Aidan said, and went to his locker to pull out a brown bag, which he tossed to Gray.

  “Shit,” his brother said. “What is it?”

  “Plain black boxers.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” Aidan said.

  Gray peeked into the bag with trepidation. “Shit,” he said again, and gingerly pulled out a small neon-yellow package. “What the hell?”

  “It’s called a Man Sack,” Aidan said. “Pretty self-explanatory.”

  Gray swore colorfully and shook his head. “Penny’s going to love this.”

  “I thought she didn’t know.”

  “Turns out she knows everything about everything.”

  “Just don’t show her then,” Aidan said.

  “I save my secrets for the important stuff.”

  “Like when you come down to our place to eat our junk food?”

  “Whatever, man. At least one of us is getting laid every night.” Gray met his gaze, and his prissiness vanished. “What’s wrong?”

  This was the problem with having a brother who noticed every little thing, every single last detail, not to mention the fact that he knew Aidan like the back of his own hand. “Nothing.”

  “Try again,” Gray said.

  “I’ve got gear to clean.”

  “So talk while you do it.”

  “You’ve got a bunch of shit to do too,” Aidan said. “Go be someone else’s pain in the ass.”

  “Is this about you getting dumped after you accused Lily of giving out secrets like she did at her last job?”

  Aidan narrowed his eyes.

  “Hey, you’re the one who picked a fight in a damn hair salon,” Gray said. “You might as well have posted it to Facebook.”

  “Jesus,” Aidan said, and shoved his fingers into his hair.

  “Listen,” Gray said. “Lenny’s a dick and was wrong to approach her at all knowing that you had interest in her. And because I’m your brother, I’m going to assume she was wrong as well. That’s just loyalty. So that makes you right.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Gray said slowly, like he was speaking to an idiot. “The question now is, do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”

  “Shit.” Aidan liked being right. Hell, let’s face it, he loved being right.

  But he couldn’t remember being happier than he had since Lily’s return. Aidan knew that his brother and Penny had their ups and downs like most couples. When they fought, the whole building shook with it. But then there was the good stuff. The other night Aidan had been standing in his kitchen grabbing a late night snack and he’d looked out the window to see his thirty-one-year-old brother and sister-in-law running around outside in their pajamas and bare feet with water pistols, soaking each other and laughing so loud their joy permeated the entire place.

  Aidan realized he’d wasted a lot of time waiting for the perfect woman, when all he really wanted was someone to laugh with him for the rest of his life.

  So yeah, if it came down to a choice between happy and right, the truth was that he knew exactly which one he wanted. “Okay, I