Sheer Bliss (5 page)

Quickly checking the lobby
once more, she saw Caleb had settled down to read an entertainment
magazine, apparently oblivious to their conversation.

Right
. Calla
couldn’t feel secure in divulging anything if Caleb’s sharp cat
hearing might pick up a few words he would interpret on his own. So
she worked quietly, adding the occasional “uh-huh” and “yeah” while
Maya and Trisha gossiped about their small town and the more
interesting inhabitants worthy of gab. Before long the woman traded
places and Maya lingered while Calla worked her magic to give
Trisha a model-worthy style.

When the topic steered
toward Trisha’s future plans, though, Calla couldn’t help but
detect how the younger girl faltered and shrugged off any
affirmations about college. “I know it’s getting down to the wire,”
Trisha said, “but I’m thinking I can talk Mom into letting me go to
Europe first. I really want to travel, live a bit on my own before
I get tied down to something.”

Tied down to an arranged
marriage, Calla knew, but she kept her mouth shut. Nonetheless, the
insinuation hung in the air, scented by the mist from Calla’s pump
bottle of hairspray as she finished.

She spun the chair around
so Trisha could see her reflection. “Okay,
chica
. What do
you think?”

“
I love it! Thanks.”
Trisha gingerly bobbed the swaying top knot and twitched to allow
the cascading curls covering her ears to swing. “I just hope it
holds up through the rest of the day.”

“
You need some hairspray?
I have an extra hold formula that will—”

Maya broke in, “What? No,
she doesn’t need any shellacking. You’ll be fine, Trisha.” Waving
the young woman out of the chair, Maya then tucked her purse
underneath her arm and leered at Calla. “We’ll see you at the big
party, then?”

Maya’s proximity
discomforted Calla, but if the lady wolf hoped for a reaction to
confirm any sexual attraction, Calla knew she disappointed her.
Beautiful though Maya looked, Calla felt nothing anymore. “Still
thinking about it,” Calla finally answered with a shrug. “Depends
on how business goes today.”

“
Yeah, I imagine the eight
PM crush for cuts and curlers is unbearable. You really need to get
another stylist in here to handle it with you.” Maya snorted, her
gaze flicking up and down Calla’s height. “Okay,” she said to
Trisha, “if you still want to borrow my earrings you can stop by my
place on the way over. Just call first so I’ll know when to be
home.”

“
Thanks.”

Both women paid with
generous tips, and Calla saw them away with mild pleasantries.
Trisha had walked to the door in front of Maya, waiting for her
cousin. “Caleb?” she called.

Caleb, still sitting,
closed the magazine and tossed it aside. “What?” he asked,
stretching so that the hem of his t-shirt popped out from his jeans
waistband.

Trisha huffed. “I’m
leaving, duh. You said you needed to go to Trader
Joe’s?”

“
Oh, yeah.” Only Caleb
looked at Calla the whole time he talked. “Actually, why don’t you
go on ahead with your stuff,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his
roughened chin. “I’m thinking I need a makeover.”

Chapter Six

Totally worth it to see
the looks on Calla’s and Maya’s faces.

The wolf shifter only cast
a curious yet skeptical smile at Caleb before leaving the salon
with a healthy guffaw. He suspected Calla rightly interpreted
Maya’s mirth—that the woman would enjoy a hearty laugh at the
thought of Calla awkwardly maneuvering through a haircut and shave
for a former beau.

Calla, meanwhile, froze in
place and looked back at him with wide, frightened doe eyes. His
inner cat purred with a strengthening urge to pounce and cover her
body with his own, but Shear Bliss was hardly the place to execute
a successful, explicit seduction. He didn’t know who else had a
hair appointment today who might witness a private
moment.

Yes, a seduction. Seeing
her last night as she pleasured herself had caused dormant feelings
to resurface, and had rendered him unable to sleep last night. It
didn’t matter to him that her DNA proved compatible with his for
the perpetuation of the panther race, he wanted Calla now…period.
He realized, too, he may need to ease his way carefully back into
her good graces.

First, as a returning
customer and friend. Later, hopefully, as a lover.

He prayed, though, Calla
wouldn’t take the opportunity to go all Sweeney Todd on
him.

She appeared to recover,
and shook her head to return to normal. “Sure, I’m free right now,”
she said, and reached for a white towel which she bunched tightly
in her hands. “If you’ll give me a few minutes I’d like to sweep up
my area…”

“
Go on. I’m in no hurry.”
Caleb smiled to ease her nerves, then wondered what good it did.
Calla only clutched the white cloth tighter—her skin drained of
blood to the point that her hands practically disappeared. “Uh,” he
rejoined, “do you need help?”

“
No,” she answered quickly
and put distance between them. Using the towel, she swiped at the
barber chair and flecks of dark hair flew briefly into his vision
before fading. “Sit. This will be a few minutes.”

“
Actually, I’d like a
shampoo first, if that’s okay. I’ve been feeling a bit scruffy
since I left New York—”“

“
Why are you here,
Caleb?”

“
Huh?

Calla reached for the
broom near her station and stabbed the straw needles against the
floor. “You come in here as though nothing ever happened all those
years ago…it’s like you’re expecting to pick up where we left off.”
She shook her head, gaze fixed on the hair and dust she swept into
a pile. “I don’t even get a formal hello, or a ‘how you’re doing’?
Did you think enough time had passed that I’d
forgotten?”

“
No.” Caleb’s voice took
on an annoyed tone he hadn’t intended, and he spoke quickly when
Calla’s head shot upward with an arched brow. “What I meant to
say,” he added, “was that I’d hoped you’d realize how difficult it
was for me to come here. Despite what went down, you’ve remained
friendly with my family, especially Trisha. I appreciate
that.”

Calla shrugged. “Trisha
didn’t dump me.”

“
You think I took pleasure
in that? I went home and cried my eyes out that night,” Caleb said.
“We were kids, and I thought I was above panther law and could
marry whomever I wanted. When, my uncle put the kibosh on that, I
had no choice.” Years later, Caleb recalled with vivid memory the
violent tussle that ensued as he and his uncle, Sheila’s
husband—both in cat form—fought over his obligatory
mating.

“
I didn’t know this.”
Calla stopped sweeping. “You were actually going to defy your pack
and your traditions for me?”

Caleb jammed his hands in
his jeans, glancing nervously around the salon. “For you, partly.
Mainly for me. If you and I hadn’t worked out, I figured I at least
had asserted myself enough to have the freedom to choose my own
wife.”

“
I wonder if Trisha will
fight.” Calla nodded. “She doesn’t seem too happy about this party,
despite wanting to look nice for it.”

“
If I could get Trisha out
of this I would, but trust me: Sheila’s ten times worse than my
late uncle.” He laughed, and to his relief Calla responded in kind.
He felt the tension between them dissolve a little, enough to allow
Calla to take his hand when he offered it.

“
How are you doing?” he
asked as they shook.

“
I am not
unwell.”

He rolled his eyes. “You
never were one for giving a straight answer.”

“
Yeah, well, I suppose the
last few years have left me crooked in parts.”

Caleb wondered if that
remark had anything to do with what he saw at her house the night
before, when Maya came slinking up to her in nothing but a smile.
His attention quickly shifted, though, when Calla grabbed a dustpan
and bent over to finish cleaning her station. This afforded him a
nice view of Calla’s lovely, rounded behind.

“
Are you serious about
getting a cut?” she asked. “Because your hair looks
fine.”

“
How about just a shave
then? I meant to get all metrosexual in New York, but never found
the time for it.”

Calla laughed again. “Sure
thing.” She gestured to the sinks. “Pick one. I’ll be right
over.”

Two minutes later, while
Caleb tried to get comfortable in the shampooing chair, Calla
brought over her shaving supplies and a long vinyl bib to cover
him. “Hang on,” she said, and reached for the cabinet over his
head. Caleb noticed the shape of her breasts against her blouse,
and how they dipped low when she retrieved a towel.

He imagined her sans
clothing now, leaning down further so he could take a sweet nipple
into his mouth and suck until she moaned. The mere thought left him
squirming to mentally tamp down an erection while she readied for
the shave.

“
Can I ask you something,
Caleb?”

“
Shoot,” he said, then
suddenly felt uncomfortable. Once upon a time, he imagined she had
been angry enough to do just that.

She fastened the neck of
the cloth and arranged it so it covered him completely. The cloth
came down to his knees. “What you were saying about pack mentality,
where mating is concerned, I’d read that panthers—actual
panthers—are pretty much loners. They’re not like lions or tigers
that would have a pride. You know what I mean?”

“
I do, and you want to
know why it’s different with panther
shifters
.”

“
I guess you just answered
my question. It’s because you all aren’t true panthers.”

Caleb bent his head
forward to let Calla place the towel on the lip of the sink. The
cushion greatly reduced the pain shooting down his back. “There
really isn’t a pat answer to that question, and some of us have
wanted to know for a while, too. What I
can
tell you,
though, is that as far back as we have recorded our existence,
panther shifters did survive without the benefit of group support.
The theory is we’d spent so much time looking for others of our
kind, that our elders figured keeping to a pack mentality was the
only way to preserve our race.”

“
That makes sense.” Calla
ran water in another sink to prepare the suds. She opened a fresh
bar of shaving soap, and the scent of bay rum teased Caleb’s
senses. “Caleb, I have to confess something.”

He swallowed hard. “You
are
going to go all Sweeney Todd on me, aren’t
you?”

“
If you mean, will I
torture you by singing Broadway tunes while I shave you, perhaps.”
She smirked. “Give me some credit, now. If I killed you, Trisha and
Sheila would know where to look first.”

“
And take you to dinner
afterward,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

Calla wet a washcloth,
which she then positioned over Caleb’s mouth and throat. “Hold onto
that, while I get the shaving cream ready,” she said. “Perfect
timing, too, because now you can listen to what I have to say
without interrupting.”

Caleb frowned, and Calla
laughed at the picture he presented. Seeing her this happy, and in
his presence to boot, warmed him and quickened his
pulse.

“
You know,” she said,
taking a chair, “not long after we split, I used to sit at home and
wish I had some kind of panther shifter DNA so I could break up
your wedding.”

If you only knew
.
Hell, if only
he
knew as well. The ugliness and years of
awkward silence could have been prevented. Of course, that
discovery would have served to hurt another innocent who had fewer
choices than he.

“
Then Teresa and her
family came to Bliss, of course, and all that anger went away. I
think what I hated most about breaking up with you was that I could
not stay mad at the situation. Just my luck that you left me for
the sweetest girl in New Jersey, too,” Calla said. “I watched my
mother fix her hair for the Indian Summer Ball—never met anybody so
poised and polite.”

Caleb saw Calla pull
out—of all things—a potato peeler from the shaving mug. She must
have noticed his confused expression, because she then interjected
with, “This was how Mom did it, and she got few complaints. Why
mess with a good thing?”

He nodded under the
washcloth and Calla commenced scraping thin shards of soap into the
shaving mug. “Anyway, Teresa seemed lonely. A bit scared, too, I
think. She didn’t have any friends and she was going to marry some
stranger…when her mother suggested to mine that the two of us hang
out I wanted to bolt from the salon. I suspect Mom believed I’d
have gotten over you eventually, and pressed me to take Teresa out
to a movie.”

Caleb remained silent, yet
ached to speak. He hadn’t known any of this.

“
Don’t worry. I didn’t
ditch her on the side of the road or anything like that. I suppose
I went along with the ‘play date’ to scope her out.” Calla shook
her head, staring into the mug. “I wanted to discover that she was
the biggest bitch on the planet, so I could live the next several
years with the comfort that you’d end up miserable after making me
feel that way.”