by Selena Kitt
Emma’s father had followed them back and he stood leaning against the wall behind her, arms crossed, just watching. Rachel nodded to the empty chair at the station beside her. “You can have a seat, Mr. Malden.”
“Jake.” He took her up on her offer, sitting down and swiveling the chair in a circle so he was facing his daughter. “And you are…wait, let me guess. You’re Rapunzel.”
“For all intents and purposes,” she agreed, combing Emma’s thick tresses into her hand and then tying the length of it off with the ribbon. Glancing up at Jake, she saw his teasing smile. His words and expression seemed genuine, but the man had a sharp, rich look about him that most of her clients—and her client’s husbands—exuded. She wasn’t surprised he was Nina Malden’s husband.
“My name is Rachel,” she disclosed, picking up her scissors. She met Emma’s eyes in the mirror. They were big and dark and huge. The poor girl was terrified. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Emma nodded, swallowing. “Do it.”
“Okay.” Rachel held the thick length of ponytail in her hand, glancing over at the girl’s father for one last indication of permission. It was no small thing, cutting off this much hair. There was a great deal of power in it, both in the length of the hair and the act of cutting it.
“She’s getting it cut off for her friend, Liv.” Jake’s gaze went to his daughter and his expression softened.
“Liv has leukemia.” Emma’s eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. “Oh damnit. I said I wasn’t going to cry.”
“It’s a very kind and generous gesture.” Rachel swallowed tears of her own. She hadn’t even considered how difficult this was going to be. The Locks of Love program had, strangely, not even crossed her mind since her own diagnosis and the universe had given her a two-month reprieve from doing this. But here she was.
“Just do it.” Emma closed her eyes and Rachel cut, the sound of the scissors bright and keen, even over the noise of the salon. When Rachel put the thick, dark ribbon of hair on the counter, the red tie trailing down the white countertop, bright as a trickle of blood, Emma opened her eyes and stared at it with surprise, as if it was a finger or a limb instead of a length of her hair.
“I’m so proud of you, sweetie.” Jake reached over and touched his daughter’s hand and the girl burst into tears. He stood and opened his arms and she went to him, sobbing. He stroked what was left of her hair, cut above her shoulders, and looked helplessly over her head at Rachel. “Oh, Em, it’s okay, you’re beautiful—even more beautiful now.”
Rachel felt a lump growing in her own throat. She spoke before it threatened to cut off her voice entirely. “Can you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back.”
She took the opportunity to give them some privacy and left them hugging each other, a few of the patrons watching, curious, but most still chatting and combing and cutting, oblivious. Rounding the corner, Rachel stopped near the lobby, blinking fast and tilting her head back, willing tears not to fall. Not here, not now. Nina Malden was waiting.
“There you are!” Nina slid her phone closed and tucked it back into her purse as Rachel returned. “I was thinking about calling out a search party.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, glancing at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were a little bright, but that was all. No other signs of grief. “We had a little scheduling snafu up front. The new girl isn’t working out so well.”
“Ugh, the help.” Nina shook her head and smiled at Rachel as if they shared something in common. “I know how it is.”
“Well, let’s get you shampooed, shall we?” She’d been in the business so long she never questioned using words like ‘shampoo’ or ‘condition’ as a verb. Nina’s hair was just as lovely as her daughter’s and Rachel washed it, trying to hurry, knowing Jake and Emma were waiting, but it wasn’t easy getting the sticky mass of mousse and hairspray and various other styling products out.
“I’m glad you could get me in today,” Nina remarked as Rachel squeezed the water out of her clean hair with a thick, fluffy white towel. “I’ve got a date tonight.”
“A date?” Rachel’s towel stopped abruptly. “Where are you and your husband going?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Nina raised her eyebrows and lifted her left hand, waggling her fingers. “We’re divorced.”
Well, this was news. Rachel was stunned into silence.
“Has it been that long since I’ve been in? It’s been three months since it was final.” Nina followed her over to the styling station, taking a seat, smoothing her skirt. “We’re both dating again.”
“I didn’t know,” Rachel murmured, squirting thick white lotion into her hands and kneading it through Nina’s hair. It was shorter than her daughter’s, only shoulder-length, more appropriate for a woman her age, but still long and thick. She required a lot of the conditioner.
“Well, we didn’t tell anyone until it was final.” Nina cleared her throat and Rachel saw her looking at her left hand as if there was still a ring there to admire. She remembered the thing—three carats, platinum, so shiny it could have blinded any magpie coming to steal it.
“You have a daughter, don’t you?” Rachel gathered Nina’s hair up with clips and covered it with a plastic cap.
“Emma?” Nina smiled, relaxing a little. “She’s with her father this weekend.”
Well that explained it. Rachel listened to Nina talk about her date—an Illinois congressman. That was a step up from a corporate lawyer, wasn’t it? Nina’s eyes seemed to ask. Rachel didn’t say anything, she just led her client over to the dryer and handed her a stack of magazines.
“Okay, I’ll be back in ten minutes. You stay here and get conditioned.” Rachel smiled and turned the blower on, raising her voice so Nina could hear her. “Your hair will look ten years younger when the heat treatment’s done.”
“Ten years?” Nina touched the plastic cap tentatively. “Can we do twenty? Then Emma and I could be twins.”
Rachel laughed, setting a timer for ten minutes and putting it on the counter behind Nina. “If I could do twenty, I’d be a magician, not a hairdresser.”
“I’m sentimental about hair, I admit.” Nina flipped through the magazines, choosing a People with a smiling Brad and Angelina on the cover. “I haven’t let Emma cut her hair since she was ten.”
“It must be very long.” Rachel swallowed, remembering that a decidedly less hirsute Emma and her father were waiting for her to return.
“It’s gorgeous.” Nina flipped the magazine open, situating herself in the chair. “She wanted to get it cut for some charity. I told her I’d write them a ten-thousand dollar check before I let her cut her hair.”
“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Rachel said faintly, really realizing for the first time just how big of a deal it was going to be when this woman found out what she’d done to her daughter’s hair. Maybe she won’t have to know it was me personally, Rachel thought as she swept past the stations and rounded the corner. Then she saw Emma, sitting back in the chair, laughing at something her father had said.
You’re a coward, Rachel Lange.
She was. Here was this young girl who had given up her mane of beauty as a sacrifice for a friend, who was going to have to face Nina Malden at the breakfast table every day with that fact, and Rachel was worried about one little confrontation with the woman?
She touched her wig, checking the adhesive—she did this obsessively all day long—and put on a professional smile. “Are you ready to get your style on?”
Emma’s returning smile was radiant, making her even more beautiful, and Rachel got to work, spraying her hair down to wet it and picking up her scissors. The girl’s hair was a joy to cut, thick and healthy and truly, as her mother had remarked, just gorgeous.
“I bet you feel lighter,” Rachel remarked.
“Loads. For so many reasons,” Emma agreed, glancing over at her father. He sat back in the stylist chair, arms crossed, just smiling. Rachel wonder
ed if he was gloating, if this was some sort of payback to his wife. Ex-wife, she reminded herself.
“Your mother is going to kill me,” Jake said, crossing one very expensive Prada shoe over the other as he watched more of his daughter’s hair fall to the floor. “But I’m pretty sure my life insurance is all paid up, so you’re set, Em.”
“Very funny.” Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m almost seventeen. It’s my hair. It’s my life.”
“In theory, that is correct.” Jake grinned and looked at Rachel. “Hey, I bet you know my wife. She comes in here to get her hair done.”
“Really?” Rachel’s scissors only stopped for a moment before she decided to continue to play dumb. “What’s her name?”
“Nina,” Emma piped up, holding her head straighter when Rachel gently tilted her chin.
“Same last name?” If she was going to play dumb, she might as well play really dumb, Rachel decided.
“Yes. Malden,” Emma offered again before her dad could speak.
But Jake was quick to point out, “We’re divorced.” He glanced at his watch and then back at his daughter. “How much longer, do you think?”
“A few more minutes, not long,” Rachel remarked. She was cutting Emma’s bangs.
“Dad, you’re not missing anything.” Emma rolled her eyes again. She was quite good at it, but most teenagers Rachel knew had perfected the gesture. “The game will be on DVR when we get home.”
“But it’s the finals, Em!” Jake looked at his watch again.
Rachel perked up. “Hockey?”
“Yeah.” Jake looked at her speculatively.
“Game one.” Rachel positioned herself in front of Emma, checking the sides of her hair, pulling them forward to see if they were even. “Blackhawks and the Wings.”
“You like hockey?” His voice had changed entirely, Rachel noticed. It had gone from that formal chit-chat tone she heard all day to something more rich and warm, like chocolate.
“Love it,” she agreed, picking up the blow dryer.
“Me too.” Jake looked a little blindsided, like he’d rarely come across a woman who loved hockey before.
Well, she supposed that might have been the case, but she’d grown up with it. Her father had been a huge hockey fan and she’d gone to all the games with him. It was his one indulgence. He had been Rachel’s whole world, but he’d been gone two years now. Cancer. Ah, life’s little ironies.
Jake’s words brought her out over her reverie. “I’ve got season tickets.”
“Don’t tell me that.” Rachel sighed. “I tried to get tickets to game two. I even went to the scalpers on Craigslist, but no luck.”
“I’m not surprised.” Jake shook his head sadly. “They’ve been sold out for a month.”
“I know—the Blackhawks and the Wings—such a big rivalry.” Rachel turned on the blow dryer and talked over it, using a rounded brush to style Emma’s hair. “They’re two of the original six.”
Jake sat up, looking incredulous. “I know.”
“I think my dad has a death wish,” Emma remarked, a little non sequitur. Rachel gave her a puzzled smile. “He’s a Red Wings fan living in Chicago,” the girl explained. “And, you know, then he takes me to get my hair cut…” She shrugged in that awkward way teenagers had, so caught somewhere between adult and child, knowing it but not quite sure what to do about it.
“Well, if that’s the case, then you are brave, Mr. Malden,” Rachel teased.
“Jake,” he insisted, shrugging. “And I’m not all that brave.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Rachel turned off the blow dryer, combing out the girl’s hair. “I’ve met your wife.”
Jake laughed. “You have a point.”
Rachel grabbed the hand mirror off the counter and turned Emma around in a circle in the chair. “But I have to admit, I’m secretly rooting for the Red Wings myself.”
“Do you have a death wish too?” Emma asked, looking at the back of her hair in the reflection of the hand mirror.
“Hardly.” Rachel swallowed the irony of her response and changed the subject. “How do you like it?”
“It’s so short!” Emma ran a hand through her hair, fluffing it and cocking her head to the side. Her bright eyes met Rachel’s. “I love it!”
“Truly lovely, Em.” Jake stood, pulling out his wallet. “What do we owe you, Rapunzel?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow at the platinum Visa in his hand. “Come on up front. You can pay there.”
This was the dangerous part. Nina was still under the dryers in the back, facing the front of the salon, and she could probably see the lobby from where she was sitting. If Rachel didn’t want a big scene, she was going to have to get them out of there—fast. She wrote the ticket up quickly and gave him the total.
Jake gave a low whistle, handing over his Visa. “And that was just a haircut. No wonder Nina spent a mint here every month.”
“The price of beauty can be very high.” Rachel smiled and ran his card, glancing over her shoulder. Nina was still reading, that was good. But ten minutes was almost up and the timer she’d set would be going off. She didn’t want the woman to come hunt her down, that was for sure.
“Well it must be some sort of sign, both of us being Red Wings fans in Blackhawks country.” Jake leaned on the counter as Rachel waited for the authorization. Emma wandered through the lobby, picking up a bottle of styling product and reading the back.
“A sign of what?” She glanced over her shoulder again, trying not to be too obvious. This time Nina saw her. Damnit. She moved a little left, hoping to block her view of Jake. “The apocalypse?”
“Could be.” He laughed. “Hey, I have an extra ticket to game two…if you’re interested.”
Rachel handed his card back as the authorization came through on the machine. “How much?”
“Free. You’d just have to put up with my company the whole time, if you could stand it.” He took his card back, slow, his fingers brushing hers and Rachel looked up in surprise. His eyes were smiling but he had a nervous sort of look, an expression she didn’t expect to see on his confident face.
She stared at him, forgetting everything, including the receipt in her hand and the fact that this man’s ex-wife had been sitting in the back of her salon while Rachel had just willy-nilly lopped off a foot-and-a-half of her daughter’s precious hair. “But that would be like…a date.”
“Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking.” His whole body posture spoke anxiety. If he’d been a teenage boy, Rachel swore he would have been hopping from one foot to the other like a two year old who had to pee. His nervousness appeared more subtle—a shift of his weight, the way his card missed the slot when he was trying to slide it back into his wallet—but to her, it might as well have been a neon sign.
“Oh.” Rachel swallowed, considering the offer. She hadn’t been out on a date in…god, she couldn’t remember when. Two years? It wasn’t that she hadn’t had opportunities. And she couldn’t be considered on the rebound anymore, since she and Stephen had been broken up for five. He’d married a woman ten years younger than they were and had moved to Georgia to be near the girl’s family, last she heard. And it wasn’t that she didn’t like men, because god knows, she did.
It was mostly work at Rapunzel’s that had her so busy, keeping her from starting or, god forbid, maintaining a relationship. At least, that’s what it had been before she got sick. Now she had even more reasons for her self-imposed exile.
But what harm was there, really? And this was game two of the Stanley Cup Finals! The Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings! Could she really turn that down? All these thoughts ran through her head in an instant—but it was long enough for her to hear Nina Malden calling out her name from behind and Jake’s head to snap up in surprise.
“You’ve got a deal.” Rachel handed over his receipt with a business card stapled to it. She’d quickly scrawled her name and cell phone number on the back. “Call me.”
Jake
took the paper and folded it, putting it into his wallet. He opened his mouth to say something but Rachel cut him off, speaking in a harsh whisper. “Your ex-wife is here. I suggest you take Emma home. Now.”
Jake’s eyes widened and they both heard Nina this time. “Rachel! My timer went off!”
“I’ll call you.” Jake grabbed Emma’s hand and he practically dragged her out the door. She protested but they were gone before Nina made it to the front of the store, looking very put-out.
“My time’s up!” Nina announced.
Mine too, Rachel thought, watching Jake’s retreating back. He was still holding Emma’s hand but they were walking at a more normal pace through the mall, heading home. Rapunzel’s was located on the lower level of a high-rise apartment complex in downtown Chicago, just one shop in the midst of many. The residents didn’t have to go anywhere if they didn’t want to. They had all the amenities located on the bottom floor.
“Okay, let’s get you rinsed.” Rachel touched Nina’s shoulder and turned her away from the store front, nudging her down the aisle. “Sorry I missed the timer, I had to ring up a customer.”
“Do you do everything around here?” Nina inquired as she settled herself into a chair at a sink.
“Pretty much.” Rachel turned the water on and began to rinse Nina’s hair. The woman started talking and Rachel just listened—this time it was Hollywood gossip, something about Charlie Sheen and a meltdown. That was easy to say “uh-huh” and “oh really” to without too much effort, and that was a good thing, because it took Rachel an hour to finish Nina’s hair to the woman’s satisfaction and the entire time, she was thinking about Jake.
That, and wondering what was going to happen when Nina found out her daughter’s hair had been cut off—and that Rachel had been the one to do it. While Nina herself had been sitting at the back of the salon drinking cappuccino and reading Cosmo. Of course, that was probably nothing compared to what the dragon-lady would do or say if Nina had known her hairdresser was going to go on a date with her ex-husband.
