Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
She used but a few spritzes of water to get his hair damp enough for her satisfaction before using a stainless-steel comb and a sharp pair of shears to trim his length between two fingers. Other than a bit of safe small talk, like learning his age and letting him complain about his tiring week, she put all of her focus into keeping his hair even. His style was a short, simple crop that was easy to maintain and didn’t take more than fifteen minutes to upkeep in a stylist’s chair.
So, as Delaney approached the end of the trim, cleaning up the strays around his ears before changing out the comb and shears for the small trimmer, to do the edges of the back of his neck, he prodded her into talking once more.
“Someone likes Valentine’s,” he noted.
Delaney laughed, turning the buzzer on and giving him a look in the mirror. “You think?”
Yeah, one could guess, eh?
“What about you—do you have one?”
Maybe asking a question like that as she was leaning in to keep the edge of his hairline straight while the clipper almost touched his skin wasn’t good timing. He could have thought it through better, but Delaney just pulled back the clippers to give a bit of buffer room.
“A Valentine?” she asked.
“Mmhmm. Do you have one?”
He became hyper aware of the salon at that moment. All the time she worked and while they chatted, he paid no mind to the women with clients in their chairs, or the ladies packing up their stations to head out for lunch. They weren’t exactly alone. This was her place of employment, as well. He’d not considered that there should be a proper time and place for everything, but the two of them weren’t exactly afforded a different meeting.
Lucas would work with what he had.
“Delaney?” he asked quietly.
The buzz of the clippers continued, but he could tell when she squeezed them harder because of the muted noise. Her smile grew wide even though she tried to rub her lips together to melt it away. He took it as a good sign that she smiled, at least.
“Is there a reason you’re asking me?” she returned.
As fast as she asked the question, like perhaps she was scared of what his answer would be, Delaney bent down to get back to work. He felt the clippers at his hairline on the back of his neck, but he also noticed her gaze darting to him in the mirror.
She arched an eyebrow at him.
Waiting.
“Would you be interested in dinner—if you don’t have someone making you their Valentine, of course,” he tacked on at the end.
“Of course,” she echoed. “Hold still for a sec.”
Her steady hands worked across the back of his neck. Lucas had never been more nervous waiting for someone’s response. It made sitting still for her to get that straight edge right particularly difficult.
Then, Delaney straightened up, her attention zoned in on the back of his neck to determine whether or not she was satisfied. He couldn’t figure out if her parroting of his words had been a confirmation to his request for a date, or not.
Nor could he make himself ask.
“A little on that side …” Delaney muttered to herself.
At the same time his phone beeped where he’d sat it beside hers on the workstation before they sat down to begin. Well, he thought it was his phone until he reached forward to grab it, leaned back into the seat, and tapped the screen to light it up.
The image that popped up in the text banner on the locked home screen of the phone corrected his initial thought—it was not, in fact, his black phone. At a quick glance, it could be.
The clippers touched the back of his neck on the right side at the same time Lucas asked, “Is someone having a baby? That is a sonogram, yeah?”
He held the phone high enough that he thought Delaney could see, but at the same time, felt the slip.
The way the buzz of the machine revved slightly as it went higher on the back of his neck than it was supposed to. Apparently, he had not learned his lesson about keeping his mouth shut while she worked.
“Oh, my God,” Delaney breathed out, yanking the clippers back before her palm cupped the back of his neck. Immediately, the clippers shut off. Her horrified stare found his blank face in the mirror before she closed her eyes shut and bit her lip, muttering, “I am so, so, so sorry.”
He knew what she did.
He didn’t need her to say it.
Lucas tried his hardest to even be annoyed that she’d let the clippers slip up the back of his neck, but it had been partially his fault, too. All he could do was shake with his rumbling laughter that he desperately tried to hold in to keep from alerting the rest of the people in the salon.