Unzipped?

Stylist? The very word sounded ominous to Hal. Expensive and suspicious. “I go to a barber close to my office.”

“Not anymore, you don’t.” She gave him a sunny smile. Then she named a ballpark sum for her services that scandalized him.

Hal’s jaw dropped open. “Do you know how many computers I could buy for that money?”

She met his gaze squarely. “You don’t need any more computers. Do you?”

Hey, a guy could always use more computers. He would admit nothing.

“And you do need a new image, right?”

A matter of opinion.

“So you’re going to need a lot of coaching, good suits for media interviews, new glasses, new shoes—”

“No penny loafers.” Hal laid down the law.

“What?”

“Don’t even try.”

“Penny loafers? No, of course not. Nobody but a dyed-in-the-wool, New England preppy would wear those things. We’re going for a much more hip, intellectual but sexy image.”

Hal almost laughed at the idea that he could ever be hip or sexy. He looked again at Shannon Shane’s Dr. Seuss wall calendar. She was a kook. A gorgeous kook. But she wasn’t going to make him wear penny loafers.

“All right,” he sighed. And against his inclination and better judgment, he placed himself in Shannon’s too-beautiful hands.

5

SHANNON FELT LIKE A FRAUD, a farce and a failure. And all the orange leather jackets in the world couldn’t change the facts: she, a failed actress, was nothing compared to someone like Hal Underwood, a guy so brilliant that he’d not only founded his own software company but was about to take it public.

Sure, she could help him with his public image. If only he could help her with her private one. People never got past her surface. For as long as she could remember, she’d been a victim of stares from both sexes. The stares of men were at best admiring and at worst downright lustful. The stares of women were usually hostile, envious or despairing.

She’d gotten used to being looked at—after all, there was nothing she could do about it—but she’d never get used to the strange emotions her appearance produced in other people. And she’d never grow accustomed to the feeling that nobody ever heard a word she said—they simply watched her lips move. Worse—she now didn’t even know who she was, and therefore what she had to say.

Since her car was flooded, they took Hal’s to see Enrique, her stylist.

His salon was a sumptuous ode to blue velvet. The curved reception desk was upholstered in a deep navy, as was the long sofa. Various chairs and pillows ranged in hue from royal to turquoise to periwinkle. Even the cornice boards were turquoise velvet.

A tall vase of peacock feathers stood in one corner, and on the one wall that wasn’t dominated by gilt mirrors hung every employee’s state cosmetology license framed in monstrously ornate gold.

Shannon had gotten used to Enrique’s royal environment. Hal stood like a deer in the headlights and gazed in stupefaction at the Early Bordello decor while Enrique danced out to greet them.

“’Allo, beeeyoootiful,” he said to Shannon.

“Hi, Enrique.” She kissed him on the cheek. “How are you?”

“Bueno.” A small, vivacious man who barely reached to Shannon’s shoulders, he assessed Hal with great interest. He stroked his chin. He tapped his foot. He walked around him in a circle and peered at him.

“I theenk we have good things under all thees hair, my friend.”

Hal hunched his shoulders and sent a desperate look to Shannon. It clearly said, “Get me outta here!”

She smiled.

“Come!” ordered Enrique. “You seet here, in my chair.” He looped his arm through Hal’s, to the poor guy’s discomfort, and dragged him off to his lair. Shannon repressed a giggle and followed.

“First, we shave, yes?” Enrique tugged on Hal’s beard.

“Ow!”

“Is no a good look for you. Off!” The stylist brandished an old-fashioned razor.

“Uh,” said Hal, fingering his neck. “Why not let me do that?”

“No, no. Is for you to relax.” The little man pushed him into a salon chair and immediately flipped it back to a lounging position. Within moments, he had his victim’s face smothered in shaving cream and was scraping away. Hal looked about as relaxed as a lobster being held over a pot of boiling water.

As Enrique scraped, he hummed tunelessly, achieving a virtually indescribable sound. Shannon concentrated on describing it anyway, so she wouldn’t laugh at the panicked expression in Hal’s eyes, and came up with Ricky Martin meets whale calls.

“Enrique may slaughter a tune, but he won’t slit your throat,” she reassured Hal.

The man who emerged from under all the white lather fifteen minutes later had high cheekbones, a strong jaw and a full lower lip. Paired with those blue eyes, even behind his cheesy glasses, the combination was striking. Shannon couldn’t help staring. Hal didn’t look at all like Saddam. He looked…good. Really good.

Enrique snatched off Hal’s glasses and then took the poor man’s face between his hands and turned it this way and that. He smoothed back the overgrown, shaggy hair, pursed his lips and cocked his head. “Sí!” he announced, to no one in particular.

“Sí?” Shannon asked. “Do you think a Caesar cut, or a little longer on top?”

“Caesar, yes, he has the bones for it.”

“He does?” asked Hal. “I mean, I do?”

“Yes, yes!”

“I’m not so sure about th…” Hal trailed off as great whacks of hair began to fall at Enrique’s feet. “Wait—”

“Be calm. You are in the presence of genius,” Shannon assured him.

“Yes, me! Genius! That ees so.” Enrique practically danced as he worked, fingers flying.

Hal closed his eyes and seemed to be praying. More hair flew as the stylist’s scissors flashed.

When the menacing chops ceased, Hal opened his eyes again and fished for his glasses, settling them onto his nose. He had become a different person, and judging from his expression, he couldn’t quite believe it.

For her part, she was floored. Hal was hot!

Enrique allowed the spectacles back on with a frown. He still snipped and fussed and compared lengths of hair in his fingers, but he seemed pleased. Hal stared at the stranger in the mirror.

Shannon stared, too.

“Bueno!” Enrique exclaimed. “Behold Caesar!”

Shannon doubted that the great Julius had ever worn a polyester-blend plaid shirt or hideous glasses, but she didn’t contradict the stylist, who was clearly proud of himself.

Hal, still squinting into the mirror in disbelief, muttered something about the Ides of March.

Enrique made a dive for his glasses again, but Hal blocked him.

“Off!” the little man insisted. “These must go goodbye-bye. They ruin my brilliance. You get the contacts, eh?”

Shannon nodded. “Next stop, Fashionocular.”

Hal began to protest but was soon felled into silence by the magnitude of Enrique’s bill. Shannon hid another smile as he goggled at the charge.

“You’re kidding me,” he croaked. “This is robbery!”

Enrique drew himself to his full height of five foot nothing and puffed up like a blowfish. “Perdón?” His tone was ominous. “Rrrrobbery?”

Hal stood his ground. “Larceny.”

Enrique tilted his head to the side and narrowed his black eyes. “Eh? I no familiar weeth thees word. But is obvious rrrrude.”

Hal looked again at the charge slip and didn’t deny it.

The stylist whirled on one foot, his chest heaving, and glared at Shannon. “He takes back thees insults, or—” he stooped to the salon floor and gathered up two fistfuls of hair “—I glue back thees hairs to his face!”

Shannon laid a hand on the enraged man’s arm, but he shook it off, casting the hair clippings into Hal’s open mouth.

While he blinked, shocked, and spat them out, she said quickly, “Enrique! He didn’t mean it. Robbery—it’s just a turn of phrase. Cute. You know, ha-ha! Hal here was making a joke. Weren’t you, Hal?”

“Uh, no,” he said, blue eyes stormy. He pulled more hairs off his tongue and lower lip. “No, I was not making a joke.”

Enrique hissed like an angry Latin goose.

“Hal!”

“What?”

“You’re not making this situation any better.” She dug into her hobo bag for her wallet, pushing him out the door of the salon. “Wait for me outside while I pay him and try to salvage my relationship with the only top stylist this side of New York!”

AS HAL WATCHED through the glass door, arms crossed and foot tapping, a silent Shakespearean tragedy unfolded inside. Shannon’s lips moved earnestly while Enrique’s back remained steadfastly turned to her. She kept speaking until his shoulder eased a quarter turn in her direction, and he finally nodded.

She waved an obscene wad of cash at him, but he shook his head and made her talk to The Hand. Patiently she entreated his palm until he apparently got tired of extending it, since he rubbed at his bicep.

Hal snorted.

Shannon next said something to Enrique that actually made him smile, though his lips turned downward again and his nose went up as soon as he beheld Hal through the glass. She added a phrase.

Enrique gestured at him in obvious disgust and then nodded. The stylist finally snatched the cash, kissed Shannon’s cheek and strutted off, this time like an insulted rooster.

She opened the door, emerged, and then sagged against it, eyeing Hal with severity.

Uh-oh. He didn’t care much about Enrique, but he’d gone and pissed off the Goddess. Would she zap him with a moon ray, or something? Turn him into a fire hydrant frequented by neighborhood dogs? He squinted balefully at her jacket, at the way her glossy blond hair slid over it and beckoned his gaze to exactly breast level. He looked away from the forbidden zone.

“Tact, Hal. I know it’s a four-letter word, but you need to get some. You put me in a really bad position with Enrique, back there.”

Hal could practically feel his jaw jutting out in stubborn righteousness.

“He’s very proud of his work, and he’s cut the hair of a lot of bigwigs, no pun intended. You can’t tell him that what he charges is robbery!”

“But—”

“It would be like one of your clients saying you overcharge. That your software is garbage.”

Hal chuckled. “Never. That just wouldn’t happen.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I don’t think Enrique’s ever had it happen, either. Have you looked at yourself, by the way? He’s worth every penny!”

“So he cut a few inches off my mop. And what is this Caesar crap all about? Please tell me you’re not hauling me off to be fitted for a toga and ankle-wrap sandals next?”

Shannon’s lips twitched. “No. But believe me, Enrique did a lot more than chop a few inches. He’s truly an artist.”

Snort. “I still don’t see why he’s worth six times what my regular barber charges.” Hal raked his fingers through the new Caesar cut, frowning. “I should charge him—he kept a lot of my hair! He probably runs a good racket selling the stuff for toupees out his back door.”

Shannon closed her lovely green eyes briefly. “Enrique does not sell clippings for hairpieces, I can assure you….”

Though he saw annoyance sparkling and radiating from her irises, he also discerned amusement. Was this Amazon sex goddess laughing at him again, on top of everything? The situation just sucked, plain and simple. He was going to wring Peggy’s neck for getting him into this.

They reached his Explorer and Hal walked around to the passenger side to unlock and open Shannon’s door for her. He supposed it was one of those things a goddess expected. She climbed into the truck one long leg at a time, and he tried not to notice the delicate musculature revealed under the leather pants. Tried to ignore the more interesting creases and crevices where the lucky pants rode her hips and thighs. He failed.

He gave himself a stern internal lecture.

This woman is nothing but a torment sent by my sister and a scourge upon my bank account. I am not interested in her pants or anything inside them.

Like most lectures, it went ignored. Not only was he lying to himself, but he was hard again.

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