looked at her sideways, those fine, sculpted lips curling in obvious suspicion. “Molly.” He muttered her name, making a warning of it.
“I’m sorry, Tate. You’ll just have to wait.” She pointed at the one free chair—right next to Donetta. “Go on. Sit over there.”
It worked. He wasn’t happy about it, but he strode over to that chair and dropped into it.
Donetta kind of craned back away from him, gulped and tried weakly, “Well, hi there, Tate. How’ve you been?”
“Hello, Donetta,” he growled. He picked up a magazine, looked at the cover of it and tossed it right back down.
“How is that brother of yours?” asked Donetta. “I haven’t seen him in years. He’s been missing longer than the Bravo Baby, and that’s a fact.” She was grinning by then, as if she’d said something really clever.
Tate didn’t seem to see the humor. The Bravo Baby—no relation to Tate or his brother—had been kidnapped years and years ago. Coast to coast, everyone knew the story of how he’d vanished from his crib in his wealthy parents’ Bel Air mansion. A huge ransom had been paid, but the baby was never returned. He’d been found, a grown man, alive and well, a few years back, after going missing for three decades.
Tucker hadn’t been gone nearly that long.
Tate, however, had sense enough not to point that out. He probably knew it would only encourage Donetta. Instead he replied stiffly, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Tucker, myself.”
Donetta tried again to get a little more information out of him. “Loves to travel, doesn’t he?” she asked brightly. “I hear he’s been all over the world.”
Tate looked at her, dead on. “That’s right,” he said. The set of his shoulders and the icy look in his eyes clearly indicated that the conversation was concluded.
Donetta took the hint. She raised her magazine and pretended to read it with all her might.
Tate gave up looking for reading material. He sat in the red chair and stared straight ahead. For a while, the Cut was way too quiet. In time, though, the women did begin talking again—but furtive and soft, the way people whisper at funerals or in church.
Molly finished putting the solution on Emmie, set the timer and moved her to another chair. She took off her plastic gloves. “Donetta, let’s have Charlee get you shampooed.”
Donetta eagerly put down her magazine and headed for the sinks where Charlee, the shampoo girl, would take good care of her.
Tate stood. The place went dead silent again.
Molly shook her head. “Sorry. No can do right yet.” She beamed him a big, fake smile.
Tate glared—but he did sit back down. Molly went over and made a show of checking on Emmie, though really there was nothing to check on as yet. Then, since it would be a few minutes until Charlee was done with Donetta, Molly headed for the back door. Out in the alley, she crouched behind the big shop Dumpster and waited for enough time to pass that she could start on Donetta.
Five minutes later, she reentered the shop. Tate was right there waiting by the door. “Where did you get off to?” he demanded.
She edged around him. “Excuse me. I’m working, here.”
Charlee had already led Donetta to the chair and put the cape on her. Molly set to work on Donetta’s hair. Tate, who had followed behind her from the back door, hovered a few feet away, looking dangerous. But after a few minutes of that, he gave up and went back to sit down.
Molly cut and blew Donetta dry. By then, Emmie was ready for the setting solution and the rinse. Molly put her gloves back on and took care of it. Then Emmie had to be dried and combed out.
By the time she whipped the cape off of Emmie—about an hour and a quarter after Tate had first entered the shop—he was getting pretty edgy. Molly kept sending him careful sideways glances.
Uh-uh. Not good. He wasn’t giving up and going away as she’d secretly hoped he might—and he wasn’t sitting still for this waiting game much longer.
Just as she’d expected, two or three minutes later, he stood. “Molly, I’ve had it. Either you talk to me in private—now—or we will have our little conversation right here with all these lovely, interested ladies listening in.”
Molly looked in his eyes and knew she couldn’t stall him another minute longer. So all right, she thought. She would take him into her office and tell him all over again what she’d told him last night.
How many times was she going to have to tell him? Judging by his mulish expression, too many.
Or maybe he actually had something new to say. It could happen. After all, anything was possible.
“Emmie, you can settle up with Darlene and she’ll get you scheduled for that color—next week?”
Emmie nodded and moved to the reception desk. The place had gone deathly quiet again. And though Donetta had already had her cut, she hadn’t left. Oh, no. She’d plunked herself right back down in that red chair and picked up the same magazine she’d already read at least twice.
A feeling of equal parts bottomless dread and glum resignation dragged on Molly. Those two scandal-free months she’d been anticipating were starting to look more and more unlikely.
She turned to Leslie Swankstad, her next customer. “Sorry, Leslie. I’ll be a few minutes.”
“Oh, no problem,” Leslie said, sounding breathless. “No problem at all.”
“This way,” Molly told Tate and turned for the hall at the back of the shop.
She led him through the last door on the right before the exit door at the end. Inside she had her desk and computer, a couple of four-drawer file cabinets, some display shelves with various hair-care products on them and two red plastic guest chairs. She signaled Tate toward the guest chairs and shut the door, closing them into the small space together, instantly feeling that there wasn’t enough room.
In an effort to get as far away from him as possible, she went around behind the desk and dropped into her swivel chair. “All right. What?”
“You know what. Marry me.”
Oh, wonderful. Of course. More of the same. “Tate. We’ve been through this.”
“Marry me.”
Just great, she thought. He had one tune on this subject and by golly, he was going to play it until he drove her out of her mind. “Listen. Please.” She really was trying to be gentle, to be reasonable. “Be realistic.”
“I am. You’re having my baby. The way I see it, that means you and me are getting married.”
“No, Tate. We’re not.”
“Oh, yeah, we are.”
Calm, she thought. Stay calm. Be reasonable. “I want you to just think this over a little. Think about how poorly suited we are to each other, how marriage
