The Lodge on Holly Road. Sheila Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ unfair. She loved doing hair and helping women look their best, but sometimes she hated this job.

      “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll look nice.” Well, the cut would, anyway. If Mrs. Steele had listened to her advice, the color would have been perfect, too. After a certain age, raven’s-wing black didn’t do a woman any favors.

      Fortunately for Mrs. Steele, Missy knew what she was doing. She’d find a way to blend in this little slip of the scissors. She snipped some more and then put in some of the salon’s hair root lifter. This really was going to look nice...if only Mrs. Steele would stop frowning.

      But all the product in the world, all the careful styling, couldn’t redeem the fact that Missy had failed to be psychic and know what Mrs. Steele had really wanted, which was probably to look like Jennifer Lawrence or some other movie star. (Good luck with that.)

      Mrs. Steele glared at herself in the mirror, her thin lips pressed together in an angry line. Then she glared at Missy. “My God, but you’re incompetent.”

      She was not! She did hair, not plastic surgery. If Mrs. Steele wanted a miracle, she should have gone to church. Missy bit her lip to keep in the angry words.

      Now everyone in the salon was staring, all the other last-minute holiday customers no doubt thanking God that they hadn’t gotten stuck with the incompetent stylist, all the other stylists thankful that they hadn’t gotten stuck with Mrs. Steele. Missy could feel the heat of embarrassment over this undeserved criticism from her collarbone to the roots of her powder-blue dye job.

      “I’m sorry you’re not happy,” she said.

      “I’m certainly not. The color’s wrong and the cut is awful. I’m not paying for this.”

      Oh, great. Mrs. Steele was going to walk, and that meant it would come out of Missy’s paycheck.

      “And I’m not coming back here,” she added as Missy removed the plastic cape.

      “Good riddance,” muttered the stylist next to Missy as Mrs. Steele stormed out the door.

      “I thought her haircut was pretty,” said the woman sitting in the chair.

      It was, darn it all. Well, never mind. In another hour she’d be done and out of here and on her way to having the best Christmas ever. She got her broom and swept up the raven’s-wing black locks left behind by the old crow, all the while hoping that a big tipper would come in before they closed.

      The door opened and in came—oh, no, not this guy. Again, all the other stylists started cutting in slow motion. Nobody wanted Larry the lech.

      “Welcome to Style Savings,” sang out Shiloh, their manager. She went to where their cash register and appointment schedule sat to get old Larry checked in.

      Larry was somewhere in his forties and, more than anything, he resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy. He was the king of the boob grazes, and there wasn’t a stylist in the salon he hadn’t hit on, including Missy. And she’d bet that today he was going to be all hers. Goody.

      Sure enough, Shiloh was giving her The Look. She set aside her broom and came over to conduct Larry to her chair. She could practically feel his pervy stare burning her butt as they crossed the salon. Ugh.

      She settled Larry in his chair and fastened a cape around his neck. “What would you like today, Larry?”

      “You,” he said with a wink.

      Gag. If she was married she could flash him her ring.

      But marriage had never happened for her. Men had happened, two to be exact, one for each kid. Man Number One had been what some might have considered a youthful mistake, but she’d loved him like crazy. And when she got pregnant, they’d planned on getting married...until he tried to break up a bar fight and got killed for his trouble. Right before he’d been about to enlist in the army, too. Even though she’d had a child with him, his parents hadn’t bothered to make a connection with their grandchild. Hardly surprising considering that they’d pretty much written off their son.

      That was sick and wrong if you asked Missy. People could change. She would never write off her kids. They were the best part of her life, even if things hadn’t worked out with their dads.

      And boy, things really hadn’t worked out with Man Number Two, who was also out of the picture but for a completely different reason. She’d jumped into that relationship, driven by loneliness, anxious to find a father for Carlos. Man Number Two had been separated from his wife. They’d been ready to get a divorce...until wifey informed him she was pregnant. He told Missy just as she was about to break the news of her own pregnancy to him. (She’d read somewhere that condoms were 98 percent effective. Leave it to her to land in the 2-percent category!) His family was happy that he’d finally “come to his senses” and was reuniting with his wife. They’d never said anything to her face but she knew they’d never approved of her. She wasn’t about to stay around and be accused of screwing up the man’s life. So, figuring a pregnant wife trumped a pregnant ex-girlfriend, Missy had decided to let him go and stick with single parenthood. She was already raising a child on her own. What was one more? By Man Number Three, she was using more reliable birth control, but she wasn’t making smart choices. He hadn’t been good father material. He hadn’t even been good boyfriend material, the cheating rat.

      After a couple more short-lived love attempts, she wised up and realized it was better to be alone than to settle. In fact, better to live up to her own potential as a woman than to worry about meeting a man who’d make everything fall into place.

      Still, every once in a while she’d see a happy couple strolling the mall and sigh. Why were there so many Mr. Wrongs out there and so few Mr. Rights?

      That wasn’t all she wondered. Sometimes she wondered how she was going to give Carlos and Lalla the kind of life they deserved.

      But when those grim thoughts came along she pushed them firmly away. Yes, she’d made some mistakes and not everything had gone according to plan, but she had two great kids and she’d manage somehow. She was only twenty-six. She had time. Someday she was going to work at a fancy salon and be successful. And someday maybe her prince would come, ready to exchange his Corvette for a minivan, and carrying a wedding ring in his shirt pocket. Meanwhile she had...Larry.

      “Larry, you know I’m not into guys,” she lied.

      “I think lesbians are sexy,” he said.

      “Let’s soak your head, er, wash your hair,” she said.

      Larry always wanted his hair washed. That gave him a close-up view of the boobage.

      She got him all washed up, trying to keep her boobs out of range. (Larry often had to scratch his nose during the process and his hands usually got lost on the way there.) Then it was time for a cut. His hair was thinning so he kept it long and shaggy in an attempt to compensate. He always reminded the stylists that he only wanted a little trim. After the incident with Mrs. Steele, Missy was going to take off barely anything.

      She began, oh, so carefully, snipping.

      “Could you take a bit more off here,” he said, pretending to reach for his ear. Before she could dodge his pudgy paw he’d scored his first boob graze. “Oh, sorry,” he said.

      Yeah, that was why he was leering.

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