His eyebrows disappeared as they dipped behind his glasses. “Brothers and sisters?”
“I’m an only child.”
“Didn’t you babysit to pad your 401(k)?”
He looked serious. I tried not to smile. “No.”
“Can you get me the wood glue in the bucket over there?” Dex rocked back on his heels. “So how did the nail-sticker war end?”
At last I could redeem myself. “I gave them each another set.”
“No kidding.” Dex pushed a nail between his lips, but it looked like he was trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“That was probably their scheme all along.”
“There was no scheme.” I rolled my eyes again. This time on the outside. “They’re four years old! They were upset. Natalie thought she killed the elephant. I wanted them to stop crying. Case closed.” It suddenly occurred to me that those tears had stopped awfully fast when I’d handed them another set of stickers. The stickers they’d wanted earlier but I’d told them they couldn’t have.
Dex nodded the second I became enlightened. “Uhhuh.”
“They set me up.” I’d been scammed. Conned. Taken advantage of.
“I need some more nails.”
Dex had a courtside seat to view my humiliation and it was clear he was hanging out at the concession stand. This was the upside of conversing with someone who lived in an alternate universe.
While Dex pounded on the chair, I worked my way through half a box of crackers and the three pieces of string cheese I’d found in the fridge.
“You’re eating my lunch.” Dex flicked a glance at me as I inched closer to check his progress. I had less than five minutes to get back to the salon.
“I’m sorry.” I shoved the last hunk of string cheese toward him. “Here.”
“It’s all yours.” He leaned away from me and jumped to his feet.
As good as new. Except for the extra fifty nails that formed an uneven line across the back. But I wasn’t going to be picky.
“Thanks.” I wrapped my arms around the elephant and hauled it toward the door. “You saved my life.”
He shrugged. “It’s your first day. Cut yourself some slack.”
“Yeah, you, too.” I couldn’t resist.
He lifted his hands and studied the Band-Aids. “That obvious, huh?”
I mimicked him and shrugged. Then I waited for him to apologize for falling asleep on my couch and beg me to let him keep his job.
“I better get back to work. I didn’t get much done this morning.” That’s all he said.
“You probably should take it easy fighting those kickboxing kangaroos all night,” I muttered.
“Video games?” Dex’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “I never play them.”
Yeah, right.
Chapter Four
not sure I can make dinr. (Me)
whatsup (Bree)
2 wrds. mrs. kirkwood. (Me)
Recovry group at 7. Wear jeans. (Bree)
Mrs. Kirkwood walked in at four o’clock on the dot and there was no way this pleasant-looking woman could be a high-maintenance customer. She had a soft swirl of snow-white hair that reminded me of the meringue on Mom’s banana-cream pie and her cheeks were as round and smooth as a baby’s. If she hadn’t been wearing a pink cotton dress and dainty sandals, she would’ve looked like a storybook drawing of Mrs. Claus.
She hopped up in the chair and her smile was so sweet it should’ve been accompanied by a warning from the American Dental Association. Maybe Bernice had been right to schedule Natalie and Nicole in the morning, but Mrs. Kirkwood must have been a mistake….
“Aren’t you that girl Bernice gave up for adoption?”
I had turned my back for a second to organize my workspace when her sugarcoated missile struck my starboard side.
“I’m Heather Lowell.” My name was the only thing I could come up with when I spun around and found myself caught in the dead center of Mrs. Kirkwood’s lasers…oops, those were her eyes.
“I suppose that movie star is your dad? You have the same nose.” Mrs. Kirkwood patted my hand. “I’m surprised you have to work after falling into all that money.”
Suddenly I knew why Bernice had scheduled Mrs. Kirkwood as my first appointment. She must have known I’d need the entire day to recover. Lorelei Christy—my original four o’clock—was supposed to be the cheerful memory at the end of my first day. To soothe me after Florence Kirkwood—the nightmare at the beginning of it.
“Bernice and Alex aren’t supporting me…” There were several things I was suddenly tempted to do to Mrs. Kirkwood’s hair but I was pretty sure none of them would have been approved by my parents, the faculty at His Light Christian Academy or—and this is the one that saved Mrs. Kirkwood from waking up bald the next morning—God Himself.
“I saw on the news last week that just about anyone can get a degree off the Internet nowadays. But I’m sure you went to school for this. It’s never bad to have family connections, is it?” Her tinkling laugh sounded just like the bells over the door. Internal memo: Remove bells before post-traumatic stress disorder sets in.
“Shampoo chair,” I managed to gasp. Although maybe asking her to put her head into a deep sink wasn’t a very good idea at the moment.
In the six steps it took us to walk across the room, she told me it was too bad that young women today weren’t concerned with modesty and, just out of curiosity, where had I bought my skirt?
It continued downhill from there. By the time the clock on the wall assured me it was closing time, I’d gotten over my initial shock and in one of those weird out-of-body type of experiences, I was a bit awed at the way Florence Kirkwood could simultaneously smile and cut someone off at the knees. It reminded me of a handy little kitchen gadget Mom had affectionately dubbed “the chopper” because it could take a whole onion and reorganize its molecular structure in seconds. When Florence Kirkwood finally left the salon, I knew exactly what that onion felt like.
Fortunately Dex wasn’t asleep on the couch again when I slunk up the back stairs to the apartment. I could melt into a puddle without witnesses.
“Snap!” I wailed. “I need pet therapy.”
Wherever she was hiding, she wouldn’t come out. Right then I renamed her Miss Fickle. All right, if there wasn’t purring, then there could be bubbles. Or chocolate. Or both.
Except
