He stepped around the hedge to see if there was any other vehicle in the driveaway. There wasn’t one. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a client. Uber was used frequently here, and they were also on a major bus route.
“You still there?” Mason asked, the sound of Willow warbling in the background letting him know that his buddy was home with his baby girl and probably his new love, Lowenna.
Scott nodded. “Yeah. But I gotta go.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, man.”
He was already halfway down her driveway. “I’m not Liam.”
Mason chuckled on the other end. “Yeah, but you’re his brother. The dickhead gene might not be as strong with the second born, but it’s still there.”
He was nearly at her back door now. The one she used for her salon.
“I gotta go.”
Mason exhaled, his irritation palpable through the phone. “Okay. Call me back and let me know how it goes.”
“’K.” Then he hung up, tried the door handle and stepped inside.
12
Eva was just handing Vanessa her change when the door to the salon opened. “I’m just closing up,” she said before she saw who it was. Oxygen whooshed from her lungs as she breathed out his name. “Scott.”
She should have known.
He wasn’t going to let her get away with the brush-off she gave him.
Well, you were incredibly rude to him.
“Do you take walk-ins?” he asked, ignoring her earlier declaration that they were closed.
Vanessa, her final client for the evening and a longtime client at that, smiled and thanked her before skirting around Scott’s big frame to leave, but not before giving him a head-to-toe eye fuck.
“Figured this was the only way I could get in to see you,” he said, his voice holding a tight, bitter tone that made every muscle in her heart tighten until her chest hurt. “I need a cut, please.” He wandered around her and then plunked himself into one of the two salon chairs she had. Vanessa’s hair was still on the floor around the other one.
Well, at least if they were going to have the conversation, she might as well keep her hands busy.
His eyes tracked her across the room as she grabbed a black cape off the hook and draped it over his body, fastening it around his neck. The scent of him was already driving her mad, and the feel of his skin beneath hers, even that simple whisper of a touch as she brushed her knuckles across his neck, made her nipples tighten to painful peaks and heat rush into her lower belly.
Their gazes locked in the mirror ahead. His eyes seared her enough to leave second-degree burns. But the look wasn’t entirely anger. No, there was also hurt buried down deep behind the intense brown. He was hurt, he was confused, but he was also really fucking angry.
And rightfully so.
Celeste had told her she’d messed up.
And every time Scott’s messages would pop up or she’d ignore his calls, she knew she was digging herself deeper. She just couldn’t get the image of him and Todd out of her head.
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.