Fresh Ice (14 page)

Holy hell.
That meant Sarah was still M.I.A. If she were here, she would’ve stocked his beer or risked facing the consequences. She wasn’t
that
stupid.

Fresh rage simmered in his blood. Now he was really pissed. That skinny bitch had ran off before, but he’d always found her. And she knew better than to disobey him. He’d threatened her life to make sure of it. Why would she risk it now?

“I take it you didn’t find her?” Dwight called out to Troy, his voice eerily calm.

“Who?”
Troy asked around a mouthful of half-chewed chips.

Dwight sighed and pushed his fingers over his eyelids. “Sarah,” he bit out. He shuffled back into the living room and stared down at his son.

“Nah. She never did come home,” Troy said with a half shrug.

Dwight shook his head in disgust. “If you weren’t my son, I
would…”

“What?” Troy looked his father dead in the eye. “What would you do?”

I’d knock you upside the head and dump you in the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
“Nuthin’,” he said and walked down the hall to take a piss.

Later, he chugged the last of the whiskey and hurled the bottle across the room. His eyes drooped. “We’ll go
find her right after I take a nap,” he slurred the words and collapsed onto the couch.

Chapter Twelve

The Love Seat

Late afternoon on Monday, business started to slow down at the salon. Sarah had just finished organizing the cupboards in the shampoo area and was sweeping around her station when Peach called out to her from the front desk. “Sarah, there’s a client here for you!”

Sarah
propped the broom against the wall and went to the reception area to greet her mystery client.

She froze in the doorway and tried to swallow but her throat dried up.

It was
him
.

Nathan Connors stood in
the waiting room, casually leaning against the reception desk. He and Peach must have been chatting because they were both grinning at each other.

Nathan
looked over and pinned Sarah to the wall with his eyes.

Seeing
him for the first time in two days reminded Sarah just how handsome he really was.

“You’re here,”
Sarah said lamely.

“Y
es.” His voice reached out and caressed her from across the room. “Do you have time to give me a haircut?”

“
Of course.”

“Great.”

They stood there looking at each other until Peach cleared her throat.

Sarah shook herself from the trance of his eyes.
“Well…come on back and we’ll get you shampooed.”

Sarah had cut plenty of men’s hair at
Miri’s beauty school, but none of them looked at her like Nathan did. With such tenderness and the slightest hint of sensuality.

One thing was for sure.
He didn’t look
down
at her. He didn’t rake over her body with glassy eyes. He didn’t say nasty, inappropriate things to her. The only men she’d been around in her life were ones who expected sex, drugs or money from her. She only wished she knew what Nathan was thinking. His eyes didn’t give much away and he didn’t say much either.

She tried to push away the attraction and focus on cutting his hair. He was just a regular, everyday client,
she reminded herself. Not someone she’d been thinking about for days. Not someone who had been kind to her, had rescued her from a druggie on the street and given her a ride home.

After draping a
cape over his broad shoulders, she led him over to the shampoo area. Trying her best to function in professional mode, she shampooed Nathan’s thick, shiny hair. Jeez, what was wrong with her? Sarah had shampooed dozens of heads over the past year. Nathan’s shouldn’t be any different. But it was.

Hmm, he didn’t seem to be fazed at all. He relaxed into the chair
with his long, lean body stretched out in front of him. He closed his eyes as she gently massaged his scalp. Dark eyelashes fanned out against his skin.

She tried to focus on his hair like she would for any other client, but he was so…so close.
There were several erogenous zones right there staring her in the face. The shell of his ear. The slope of his neck.

It was almost impossible to think of him as just another head of hair. None of her other clients made her so… so
aware
of them. His size, his strength, his smell. Everything about him distracted her from the job at hand.

By the time
Sarah rinsed out the conditioner, her heart was beating in her chest like a marching band playing
Smoke on the Water
. Mentally she scolded herself because the shampoo was the easy part. Now she had to keep her composure long enough to cut his full head of hair.

After he sat up, she
gently towel dried his hair.

Nathan took a deep breath and shifted in his seat
. Phew! That was the most incredible shampoo of his life. The entire time he sat in the chair everything had felt too tight. His throat, his skin. His pants. Sure, he’d managed to look relaxed on the outside, but that was the name of a goaltender’s game.

The most difficult thing was keeping from reaching out and touching
her. She’d touched his hair, yet he couldn’t touch her.

It had taken all his willpower to look calm and cool on the outside while on the inside he was a
turbulent bundle of nerves. It was like when an opposing player skated towards him with the puck on his stick during the last thirty seconds of the third period. Exciting, invigorating and nerve-wracking as hell.

At least he wasn’t alone. Sarah
didn’t seem so relaxed either. Nathan could tell she was nervous. Her voice shook, her smile seemed forced and her body language was jerky.

“Okay,” she started to say, but a frog had taken up residency in her throat. She swallowed and tried again. “Okay, we can head back over to
the chair now.”

Back at her chair, Nathan sat down and she avoided meeting his gaze in the mirror.

After combing his hair, Sarah took a calming breath and steadied her scissors. None of her other clients had ever made her breath catch in her throat. Or made her nerves stand at attention. Or caused her hands to tremble.

Before
Sarah made her first snip, she heard Peach’s voice in the background saying something to Tony. Sarah focused on their conversation instead of over obsessing about the man in her chair.

“I want you to haul it out of here,” Peach was saying.

“Right now?” Tony whined. “But I’ve got the electrician coming.”

“I need it gone
now
,” Peach insisted. “They’re delivering the new one in the morning and I have nowhere else to put it until the new salon is finished.”

New what
? Sarah thought to herself.

Sarah
put her comb down and looked in Peach and Tony’s direction. Peach was gesturing to the wicker loveseat in the waiting room and Tony frowned and defiantly crossed his beefy arms over his chest. Tony shook his head and asked, “Why would you have them deliver the new couch
now
before the new space is even finished?”

“
Because
,” Peach exaggerated and planted her hands on her plump hips. “They had an opening in their delivery schedule. It was either
now
or six weeks from now and I can’t open a salon with no place for clients to sit.”

“Just have ‘
em sit on the
old
couch.”

Peach glared at her husband. “I am
not
even bringing this rickety old thing over to the new salon. I need it hauled away
now
.”

Tony huffed and rubbed his temples. “I don’t have time for this right now, Peach.”

“Will you excuse me?” Sarah asked Nathan.

“Sure,” he said and Sarah walked over to where Peach and Tony were having a standoff.

“Hey sugar,” Peach greeted Sarah, momentarily ignoring her aggravated husband. “The new couch for the waiting room will be here tomorrow. It’s sleek and modern and will match the new salon perfectly.”

Peach’s cheeriness brought another heavy sigh from Tony.

“May I ask what you’re doing with the old one?” Sarah asked apprehensively. The last thing she wanted to do was get in the middle of their dispute but it sure would be nice to make her motel room feel more like home.

“Oh, that old thing?
” Peach waved a dismissive hand at the love seat. “I’m having Tony take it to the Dump
today
,” she emphasized for Tony’s benefit. “I doubt the Salvation Army would even want it, it’s so old and tattered.”

“I’d be interested in taking it off your hands.”

“Really?” Peach scoffed. “That little couch has seen more butts than Santa Clause’s lap!”

Sarah bit down on her bottom lip.
“Would you mind if I took it? I don’t have much furniture.” By not much, she meant
none
but they didn’t know that.

Peach wrinkled her nose
. She still wasn’t convinced. “Are you
sure
you want it?” Peach acted as if Sarah was asking to take home the hair she swept up from the salon floor.

“
I’m sure. I’ll pay you for it.”

“Oh, heavens no!
It’s not worth the cost to haul it away. If you want it that much, it’s yours, hon. Free of charge.”

“I’ve got my truck
,” Nathan said from behind Sarah. “I can drive it home for you.”

Sarah turned and saw that
Nathan had joined the group. He still wore the cape, his hair damp and extra sexy. God, he stood so close to her Sarah could actually feel his body heat.

“You’d better let him
,” TJ told Sarah as he came over to see what the fuss was all about. “Con’s been bragging about his new truck for weeks.”

Nathan opened his mouth to say something to his teammate but shut it again.

TJ grinned and winked at Sarah. “He’d tell me off, but there are ladies present.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind waiting around until my shift ends?”
Sarah asked Nathan. The idea of owning something appealed to her before she could think through how she was going to get the dang thing home.

“Don’t be silly,” Peach jumped in. “You can take off early today. It’s almost closing time anyway.”

“Thank you, Peach.” Sarah turned to go back to her station and then whirled back around to Nathan. “What about your haircut, Nathan?” How could she forget? It was the whole reason he was there.

He shrugged. “We can do it another time.”

Somehow, he didn’t seem inconvenienced at all. No, he actually seemed to
enjoy
the idea of helping her out. Yet again.

Sarah rushed back
to her station to clean up and grab her purse. She said goodnight to her coworkers and thanked Peach again. When she went back outside, Nathan was leaning against his truck. The sun had dried his hair and left it wavier than usual. Copper strands shone in the sunlight. She swallowed down the bundle of nerves threatening to flummox her.

The love seat was already loaded into the back of the truck.

“I can follow you over to help unload it,” TJ offered as more of a joke than anything.

“No, that won’t be necessary,”
Sarah insisted. She didn’t notice TJ’s ornery grin or hear the sarcasm in his voice. “I can help Nathan unload it.” She really didn’t want anyone from the salon seeing where she was living. It was bad enough that Nathan was about to discover she hadn’t been truthful with him.

TJ shook his head and grimaced.
“I don’t know, Con. Are you
sure
you can handle it? We might need to bring in a heavy duty crane to lift that sucker up again.”

Nathan
laughed and Sarah was grateful to TJ for taking the focus off her.

“Thanks for your concern, TJ, but we can take it from here
,” Nathan said.

With a shrug, TJ went back inside the salon and Sarah was left alone with Nathan.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

She nodded
and silently wished he wasn’t moments away from finding out she had lied to him about where she lived.

Nathan
flashed a smile and pushed away from the truck to open the passenger door for her. Wow, he truly was a gentleman. Just like the men in Felicity Johns’ novels.

“Are you sure this is okay?”
Sarah asked for the hundredth time once they were inside the truck. It was still hard to believe how eager Nathan was to do things for her for absolutely nothing in return.

“
No
,” he drew out the word and shook his head. “It’s a
total
inconvenience for me.”