Steal Me, Cowboy by Kim Boykin Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t mean I didn’t check it every five seconds. Still no word from Adam. I knew he was pouting, and that was fine. He’d get over it, just like I always did the minute I laid eyes on him.
    Nell gave me her only two appointments of the day and sat in Earline’s chair barking out directions while I washed and set her people. They didn’t looked too thrilled to have me fixing their hair, but they could see as well as I could that the business was wearing on Nell.
    By lunchtime, I’d made twenty-two dollars and a dollar seventy-five in tips. I sat down at Nell’s station, knowing this wasn’t the kind of place that had folks walking in off the street like the trendier salons I’d seen in town that cater to the tourists. I had to do something.
    I found a sandwich sign chalkboard in the supply closet and went to the little drug store on the corner for chalk. WALK-INS WELCOME. IMPORTED STYLIST. The imported stylist part was Nell’s idea, she said it would sound classier than NEW or SOUTH CAROLINA STYLIST. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I put the sign out front on the sidewalk.
    A tourist from California came in to get her bangs trimmed up. I put the cape on her and started chatting her up about her hair and her life, which when you get right down to it are oftentimes the same. Apparently, she’d been thinking about a change for some time, and she let me layer her long locks a bit. She liked it so much she honored me with the question that often comes from winning a client’s trust.
    “So, what else do you think I should do?”
    I picked her hair up and let it fall, analyzing how the light played on it. “Your hair is a little bleached out from the sun, but it’s a gorgeous color. How about some subtle low lights to really make it pop?” Her family was on a rafting trip for the day, so she was free and jumped all over that.
    Then Nell pulled me aside. “I don’t have foils, never had any call for them.”
    How do you exist without foils? “I have some but they’re at the motel. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s going to sit around and wait for me to go get them, but I don’t want to lose the sale.”
    “Tell her to come back tomorrow,” Nell whispered.
    The woman was so sick of all the touristy stuff her husband always made her and the kids do, she was eager to come back. “I don’t see foils on your price sheet.” Thank God. “How much do you charge?”
    With her thick head of hair, normally a hundred and fifty dollars or more, but I was afraid she’d walk. I held my breath. “Eighty? Five? Dollars.”
    “Wow. That’s cheap.”
    I made her an appointment for three o’clock the next day and the minute the door closed behind her, Nell said, “Make good and damned sure she sees that pickle jar.” I laughed and counted my take for the day—only $661.21 to go.
     

     
    Tonight was an expensive non-date. Beck had canceled all the reservations, closed the restaurant, and had paid the crew to take the night off. Some of them looked glad, some seemed a little worried. He assured them everything was fine, but that was all the explaining he intended to do. He didn’t want the buzz of the place or the occasional tourist wandering around back to see his view to distract him tonight.
    He wasn’t sure what to wear, since it wasn’t supposed to be a date. But it was a date. He put on his favorite pair of jeans and looked through his closet for the shirt he’d most like to see Rainey in tomorrow morning. Not that he thought that might happen, but hell, he was an optimistic son of a bitch. He chose a turquoise colored butter-soft cotton one and rolled up the sleeves.
    Not only was he optimistic, but he was also nervous, which wasn’t like him at all. Beck had had plenty of women. They’d always seemed to be a whole lot more interested in him than he was in them, but Rainey was different. That sassy southern mouth, that face, that perfect body, the gleam in her eyes that