Serious Cowboy (Cowboys of Duncan Ranch #2)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

It felt oddly like relief to have her fingers woven into other people’s tresses again. Wash, rinse. Cut, color, style. Just a little off the top, please. Can you make me look like fill-in-the-blank celebrity? Over and over.

Something about the physical activity mixed with the repetition of it all came so naturally to her that her mind almost went into a meditative state. When the client played on their phone or fell asleep, Joy herself felt at her most Zen.

But that didn’t ever have the chance to happen at Salon 406.

“Whitney Duncan is having twins. Have you heard?” Bonnie chattered to either Christine or Christine’s customer, she wasn’t sure which.

She knew her cousins had married into the Duncan family, but she couldn’t remember who this Whitney was.

“Yes, and now she’s on bedrest, poor thing. My little sister had to be on bedrest for all three of her pregnancies. It’s horrible. She about went stir crazy laying there. There’s only so much TV you can watch and sleeping you can do, you know? This was back before everyone had the internet at their fingertips, though. I can scroll on those reels sometimes and hours go by.”

Joy had seen it. Joy had done it. On those rare occasions when Kara would be at school while she’d been off from work, she’d scroll through social media site after social media site, but she’d been searching for her husband.

Maybe it wasn’t quite the same.

For that first six months of Wayne’s absence, she’d been religious about checking every place she could think of. She’d walk up and down any streets she knew he frequented, would people watch on the beach or in shopping centers, and would check in with the LAPD so often she grew to know several of them on a first-name basis.

Since then, however, much of that vigor had dissipated. As much as she craved the knowledge of what had actually occurred, if he had passed away in some sort of violent manner or if he couldn’t contact her for some reason, she didn’t think she could cope. That had been one of the most painful parts of this, how her imagination had tossed her a bunch of worst-case scenarios.

Although in those cases, he might not be such a reprehensible husband or father.

Maybe.

“Girl, you are just whipping that hair into a frenzy,” Christine remarked, and Joy blinked, realizing she’d been referring to her. She’d been teasing the ends of her customer’s bob haircut and gotten absolutely carried away.

She incorporated a few more minor moves and called her done, letting the lady go.

“That was amazing,” Bonnie agreed. “You make it look effortless.”

“Just plenty of experience,” Joy downplayed it. “I could probably curl, braid, and blow-dry people’s hair in my sleep.”

“You’re awfully young to have ‘plenty of experience.’ Not to pry, but how long have you been doing this?” Bonnie asked.

“A while,” she blew her off until Christine doubled down.

“You’re so young. Where were you working where you got that much experience?”

She braced herself. People had different reactions when they found out who her last employer had been. “I had to prep a lot of people every day. I had to be both swift and meet everyone’s exacting requirements.”

“You still haven’t explained where you worked,” Bonnie pointed out. Figured she wouldn’t let that one fly under the radar.

“I worked with actors and actresses on a set.”

“You mean like for a play?” Bonnie asked.

“More like a daily show.”

“For streaming? Or YouTube?”

“For television, actually.”

For once the entirety of the salon fell silent. “You worked on a television show?” It was Christine asking this time.

Joy nods. “It was a soap opera. Ever heard of Futile Passions ?”

“Heard of it? I grew up watching it,” Christine cried. “You did hair and make up for a real, live soap?”

“Just the hair. Unless there was some sort of emergency.”

“So who all did you work on?”

That next topic of conversation went on for the next hour. Joy had worked on the hair, weaves, or wigs of dozens of famous people, from the stars of the soap itself to the many guest stars and even sometimes the extras who filled up the background of a scene.

“Having you here is the best thing ever,” Bonnie exclaimed, evidently one hundred percent won over by this latest nugget of intel.

“I have to agree,” Christine stated next, and it was times like this when Joy thought of herself as being a part of some entertainment news show.

They were enthralled, though. Her boss. Her coworker. Her customers and theirs. She’d feared that admitting the truth might limit the number of tips people would give her believing her to be well off. But that wasn’t what happened. If anything, the more celebrity names she dropped, the higher the amount of cash filling her jar.

That afternoon the salon received an influx of ladies all at once, and for several hours, the place was bustling with activity. Joy had long been accustomed to such spurts and could handle them without issue. She moved from one head to the next without stopping or slowing down.

Also, no one seemed to be exceptionally picky about what she was doing. Sure, many people came in with an idea in their brains, but none of them left unhappy when the reality didn’t quite line up either. At least no producer, showrunner, director, or actor breathed down her neck about whether to cut bangs or to not cut bangs.

As if such things really mattered.

But as interesting and fun as Salon 406 turned out to be, her house hunt wound up being the opposite. It was seemingly impossible to rent somewhere to live no matter what she tried. That was why Joy decided to tap into the hivemind with her quandary. Might as well use the grapevine for good as much as evil.

“Christine, you or Bonnie familiar with the housing market around here?”

“Call Raymond Piazza. He’s been a realtor here forever. If anyone has the insider knowledge you need, it’s him.”

She made a mental note to see if he might be able to help.

Every time an apartment or rent house had popped up so far, by the time she’d call, it would be gone. Since she didn’t have enough money for a down payment, that left her with rental options only. And since she hadn’t managed to secure anywhere else yet, that meant she and Kara had been forced to stay with her parents for the past handful of weeks.

It’d been far longer than she’d intended, and due to the strain, it’d been uncomfortable from the get-go.

Neither she nor her parents had brought up the massive elephant in the room, which meant every meal was filled with these awful and awkward silences.

At long last, a full month after her arrival, the Raymond Piazza guy located an apartment above a garage right across from the elementary school. Joy had been ecstatic. It wasn’t fancy, but it was more than suitable for her and Kara’s needs. She’d been overjoyed to move her and her daughter into a place that was their own.

The timing turned out to be perfect, too, because school started that next Monday. Joy’s days off were on Sundays—the salon was closed—and on Tuesdays, which gave her enough time to get their meager belongings at least partially situated.

On Wednesday as she finished up a customer’s cut and color, the three other women who worked there went quiet. Joy glanced over at them to see the last person she’d expect stepping through the door.

Aaron.

He literally had his hat in his hands, his face set in this sheepish expression. She couldn’t say why for sure, but she suspected that this was due to the salon having no men clientele.

“How might we help you, sir?” Christine asked him.

“Uh…” He peered around as if waiting for some giant bouncer to toss him out on his ear. “My barber couldn’t get me in, and I really need a trim,” he admitted, blowing his bangs out of his eyes.

All the ladies tittered. Joy almost did, too. For a moment, her memory took her back in time to when she was twelve again. She remembered a similar movement of his from their childhoods.

“Joy…” The shock in his tone was obvious. “You work here?”

“I do.” She felt surprised to see him in here at all considering how much shorter his hair was now. So much shorter than it had ever been then. “Are you looking for maintenance or something more special?”

“Maintenance,” he laughed self-deprecatingly. “And please skip all the facials and hair masks or whatever.”

“Facials and hair masks?” Christine ambled over, laying a hand on one of his broad shoulders. Had they been that broad prior to now? That wasn’t something Joy remembered, him looking so… sturdy . “You, Aaron Hunter, have no clue what stylists actually do, do you?”

Joy’s boss regaled him with the terminology of her career, and the glazed expression that roved over his features was pretty hilarious. Yet Christine and every other employee would be tied up with clients. Every other employee but Joy.

She didn’t have anyone else in her line. Nor did anyone have an appointment with her over the next hour. It would be plenty of time to trim a guy’s hair. The problem was that it was this guy. Even so, Joy couldn’t say no.

So, despite the inherent weirdness of the moment, she waved Aaron over. It wasn’t like he was some mass murderer or something. Besides, if she couldn’t rise above and take care of the man who used to be her best friend, what business did she have taking care of anyone?

“Planning to go platinum blond?” Christine teased him, and Bonnie jumped in on that, too.

“Or fuchsia? Such a bright pink would be gorgeous with your skin tone.”

A burst of laughter escaped him, revealing his straight white teeth, before settling into a smile. Joy knew that smile. It was the same always ready one he’d worn ever since she’d first met him, and it was so familiar that her heart ached. Still, to keep the mood light, she joined in with the rest of the ladies.

“Or if you want to stick with your original color, you could go with some golden highlights and tips. It’ll bring out the color of those dark eyes of yours and be flattering with the unusual shape of your nose.”

When he actually reached up a hand to test the shape of that nose, Joy lost it.

“I have an unusual nose shape?”

All four of them exploded into cackling howls of laughter, and what Joy feared might be an awkward encounter became something that brightened her mood considerably. Once they calmed back down, she took out her scissors and eyeballed his reflection in the mirror.

“My guess is that you want a short half-inch trim with a little more off the top, am I right?”

“Bingo. It’s my mom’s birthday party this weekend, and I can’t go in there looking like a shaggy dog.”

There was nothing whatsoever shaggy about him, nor anything that resembled any sort of canine. In fact, he smelled fresh and woodsy. But she played along.

“Then, let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” And after that, the silver of her scissors flashed.