Marrying The Single Dad

“Grandpa, I’m paying you rent so I have a spot to do women’s hair. I deserve half the space.” Especially since he wasn’t using any. He hadn’t cut one head of hair yesterday and based on the dust on his station, he hadn’t cut any hair in weeks.

“The electrician I know said he’d be here Monday.” Agnes had wasted no time assessing Brit’s needs and wasn’t shy about pitching in. She poked around the supply cabinet and held up an inky black toupee with her thumb and forefinger. “Whose was this?”

“Crandall’s.” Grandpa Phil lowered his paper and his gray eyebrows. “His wife didn’t want him buried in it and thought someone else might use it someday. Why do we need an electrician?” He’d been at Martin’s Bakery when they’d stopped by the first time and wasn’t privy to their conversation.

“I don’t want to blow a fuse and cut the electricity to the entire block when I plug in the hair dryers,” Brit said briskly. “Do you know how much electricity a chair with a hair dryer attached uses?”

Before Grandpa could answer, a figure appeared in the barbershop’s window.

Joe stood outside the glass, looking just as dangerously handsome as he had a few hours before. Dark hair, dark glare, dark outlook toward others. He reached for the door just as his ice-blue gaze connected with Brit’s. His hand paused in midair.

“A customer’s gonna get away.” Grandpa Phil lurched out of his chair and shoved the door open. “Never mind the chitchat. The barber is in.” He stepped out on the sidewalk, letting the door shut behind him.

“It’s one of those Messina boys.” There was awe in Agnes’s voice. “I recognize the long black hair. They were a handful—too much for Tony with his other challenges.”

“They should have gone to prison.” Rose held the broom like a staff. “Painting the water tower green for St. Patrick’s Day. Racing those motorcycles up and down Parish Hill.” She pounded the broom bristles into the floor. “Why, one of them nearly burned the gymnasium down. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill themselves, much less anyone else.”

“I always admired how they drove those motorcycles,” Mildred said, reminding Brit that someone had once told her Mildred raced cars back in the day. “Not everyone knows how to take a corner at speed.” She adjusted her thick glasses and blinked toward the doorway. “They used to be the most handsome young men in town. How does he look?”

“Like he could charm you out of your car keys and you wouldn’t report him for stealing,” Rose begrudgingly admitted. “Long hair. Blue jeans. Boots. All he’s missing is a leather jacket and a motorcycle.”

“There were more like him?” Brit was glad Reggie wasn’t around to hear the wonder in her voice.

As one, the town council ladies nodded.

Brit needed to regain her perspective, focus on the man’s flaws. “Did any of the Messina boys have a good haircut?”

“Nope. Unkempt troublemakers. Every one,” Agnes said with a dreamy sigh.

“I have to admit.” Rose began sweeping, but it was more like a ballroom dance. “Messina men improve with age.”

“Sam!” the object of the women’s infatuation called out loud enough they heard him through the glass. “I’m getting a haircut. Wait for me here.” Joe pointed to the curb.

“Okay, Dad,” came a high-pitched prepubescent reply. A familiar figure—slight, in blue coveralls—appeared on the sidewalk. Sam plopped onto the curb, booted feet in the gutter, slouching and drinking from a Martin’s Bakery to-go cup.

Phil ushered Joe inside and into his chair. “What are you looking for today? Trim? Buzz cut? Mohawk?”

“Trim.” Joe spared Brit a look that was stay-away contemptuous.

Lighten up, dude. It wasn’t as if I made away with anything this morning.

Phil opened a drawer at his station. It took him several tries to clench a folded drape with his age-spotted fingers.

The first inklings of apprehension worked their way through Brit. She’d noticed Phil’s tremulous hands for years, but hadn’t made the leap to what that meant in terms of him cutting hair. She couldn’t let him cut anyone’s hair. At least, not with scissors. “How about a buzz cut, Mr. Messina?”

Phil’s head came up. “Messina?”

“No, thanks.” Joe stared at Brit as if she’d teleported from another planet and offered him a ride on a unicorn.

Phil was stuck on Joe’s last name. “You’re one of those Messina boys who used to live here?”

Joe sighed, as if being recognized was the worst news of the day. “Yes.”

“Is that...” Rose glided gracefully to the window with the broom, which took skill, considering she looked to be nearing eighty. “Is that a girl?”

Brit’s attention turned to the child on the sidewalk. The child she’d assumed was a boy because of the shapeless, grimy coveralls and an equally grimy baseball cap. Brit had gone through a tomboy phase after the devastation of the Promotion Dance. She, of all people, should have recognized a girl beneath the trappings.

“Hell, yeah, Sam’s a girl,” Joe said defensively. “Anyone can see that. Brittany’s sister just called her by her full name in the bakery.” But this last was said without Joe’s typical iceman tone.

Agnes and Rose exchanged doubtful looks.

“Wow.” Brit should have felt better that other people assumed his daughter was a boy, too, but she didn’t. The little girl had probably been called a boy more than once and she was getting to an age where those remarks would register and sting. “Poor Sam.”

“Poor Sam.” Joe snorted like a bull about to charge. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sam...” Agnes said evenly. “As in Samantha?”

“Yes,” Joe ground out.

“What’s going on?” Mildred asked, squinting toward the window through her thick glasses. “I see someone, but can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.”

“Exactly,” Rose said.

* * *

“SHE’S A GIRL.” Joe kept his voice down, but that didn’t stop his eye from twitching. “What’s wrong with you people? Brittany was wearing coveralls this morning and I didn’t mistake her for a man.” Granted, Brittany filled out her clothes differently than his daughter did.

The barbershop had fallen silent. Uncomfortably, painfully silent. And he guessed it wasn’t because Phil was trying to remember if Joe was the Messina who’d taken his ex-wife’s car for a joyride.

Joe refused to turn and look at Sam, unwilling to validate their perception. Lung-deflating doubt—that he wasn’t a good father for a girl—tried to suffocate him.

“Hard to tell gender nowadays,” Phil said, interrupting Joe’s panic attack. He flung a plastic drape over Joe’s lap. It smelled musty and unused, kind of like the garage apartment’s shower curtain. “If she’s a girl, you might want to buy a pair of pink coveralls.” He fumbled with the drape snap at Joe’s neck. “Which Messina are you?”

“The only Messina in your chair,” Brittany said, moving behind Joe so she was visible to him in the mirror. She widened her eyes and waggled her eyebrows at Joe in some kind of undecipherable car-part-thief code. “Anyone can wear pink or coveralls nowadays, Grandpa.”

Grandpa? The Lambridges were among the most upright, uptight citizens in town. Was Brittany a beautician with an innocent hobby? A woman willing to pay for car parts like a law-abiding Lambridge? Or was she cut from the same cloth as Uncle Turo? The kind of person who cut corners. The kind of person Joe couldn’t afford to have in his life anymore.

“It’s common to mistake gender at that age. There’s no bumps or curves or whiskers to go on.” Phil’s hands fumbled in a drawer for something. “Plus there hasn’t been a Messina girl in town. Ever.”

“That’s not exactly hard science, Grandpa.” Brittany gave Joe an I can’t believe you don’t understand me look.

“You still haven’t told me.” Phil picked up a pair of scissors with hands that shook. A lot. “Which Messina are you?”

“I’m Joe.” Finally, possibly too late, he’d cracked Brittany’s code. Her brown gaze reflected his worry about scissors and unsteady hands. Joe shifted in the chair and moved his gaze in the mirror to the antique bicycle on the wall behind him, the one ridden by a playfully curved, brightly painted, aluminum mermaid. It was nothing he’d expect to find in a barbershop. But then again, he’d expected a barber with a reassuring hand. “Hey, Phil...um...are you okay?”

“He’s quick, that boy.” The woman sitting in the walker chuckled. “Took me another five minutes in that chair before I panicked.”

“I’m fine,” Phil said cheerfully, as if he hadn’t heard Mildred. “Never better.”

“Your hands...” Joe met Brittany’s gaze again. He’d never admit it, but his gaze might have been pleading.

Brittany laid a hand on Phil’s forearm. “How about I give Shaggy Joe a trim?”

“You?” Joe choked out. What did this wrench-wielding woman know about cutting hair? Maybe Joe should take his chances with Phil.

“Yes, me. I’m licensed to trim.” Brittany gestured to a framed certificate on the wall.

If Brit was a beautician, her appearance shouted thirty-five-dollar haircut. She may have worn coveralls earlier, like Sam’s, and her dark brown hair was mostly hidden under a cap, like Sam’s. But that’s where the similarities ended. Phil’s granddaughter had rhinestones on her baseball cap, sparkling threads in her thin pink sweater and in her black leggings.

Truthfully, he didn’t mind the leggings. Brittany had a nice pair of legs. But he did mind the salon-like sparkle if it meant he’d pay more for a simple haircut.

“The man sat in my chair.” Phil raised his scissors like they were the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. Unlike Lady Liberty, Phil’s hand wavered, bringing Joe back to his original dilemma.

“Phil, I...uh... I’m Joe, the bad Messina you remember.” In truth, Joe’s two older brothers had probably raised more hell than Joe, but a man had to bail when sharp objects were near arteries. “I’m the one who took Leona’s car for a joyride.”

“Joe, Joe, Joe.” Phil tsked, lowering his unsteady hand. “Leona said she’d given you permission.”

Only after Uncle Turo had talked to her.

“Don’t be nervous,” Phil said. “I used to cut your hair all the time when you were a kid. And I don’t hold grudges.”

“True,” the old woman in the walker said, leaning forward and peering at Joe through bottle-thick lenses.

Joe caught Brittany’s gaze in the mirror once more.

“Don’t look at me.” Brittany held up her hands. “I tried to save you.”

“My hands have been like this for years,” Phil said, a twinge of annoyance in his voice.

“True,” the rail-thin senior by the window said, pounding the bristles of her broom on the floor.

Phil stared at his scissors. His wrinkled features maintained a tentative hold on defiance. “And I haven’t cut a client yet.”

“Also true,” said the short old woman with the boyish haircut.

As if to prove a point, snip-snip went Phil’s scissors in the air. Except Phil nearly poked Joe’s eye out with the sharp blades.

“The operative word being yet,” said the lady with the broom. “Don’t young people film disasters nowadays? Who has a camera?”

Joe eased forward in his chair, the words I’ve changed my mind forming on his lips.

“Let me do this one, Grandpa.” Unexpectedly, Brittany ran her fingers through Joe’s hair.

Joe stopped thinking about leaving.

Brittany’s fingernails skimmed across Joe’s scalp, lifting his hair and letting it fall back down. Her touch was mesmerizing.

The last person to mesmerize Joe was Uncle Turo, suspected felon.

“After all,” Brittany said, “starting Tuesday, I’ll be doing pin curls and petal teases.”

“I wanted a dye job,” the broom lady said in the tone of the misunderstood.

“You can cut my hair for ten bucks,” Joe said gruffly. He could barely afford that.

“Joe makes it sound as if you should pay him for the privilege, Brittany.” The woman sitting in the walker chuckled. Behind her glasses her eyes were starting to look like something you’d see in a fun-house mirror.

Or maybe that was because Joe’s eye was twitching again.

Phil tossed his scissors back in a drawer. “Outmaneuvered by my own kin.”

Joe might have breathed easier if not for the realization that Brittany was as wily as Uncle Turo.

“I’m going to Martin’s to play checkers.” The man walked with an uneven gait as shaky as his hands. Somehow he managed to hold the door open for Sam to come inside.

Brit’s fingers were still working their thirty-five-dollar haircut magic on Joe’s mane, making him wish he had thirty-five dollars to spare on a regular basis.

“I’m Agnes.” The diminutive older woman came closer to get a better look at what Brittany was doing to Joe’s hair. “Are you the only Messina opening up the garage?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He and his brothers had inherited the garage and house when his father overdosed, but they’d done nothing with it beyond paying taxes. He’d bought out his brothers with every penny in the bank the FBI hadn’t seized.

The thin, regal woman with the broom swept closer. She looked like a grandmother of one of his classmates. The woman who volunteered every year to help with the class play as long as it was a musical. And her name was...Rose.

“No Mrs. Messina?” Rose asked. She never seemed to stop moving.

“She’s dead, ma’am.”

Sam sank into a chair beneath the mermaid, glancing at a stack of magazines on a low table. She didn’t react to the statement that her mother was dead. She’d spent half her life without a mother. Almost all her life without a caring grandparent. And now, no Uncle Turo.

If Sam didn’t react, Brittany certainly did. Her fingers stopped exploring the texture of his hair, making Joe remember how everyone in Harmony Valley was in everyone else’s business.

“You know...” Joe slid forward in the chair, away from Brittany’s magical touch. “The haircut can wait.”

Brittany’s fingers brushed over his shoulder. “The town bad boy could use a haircut to look respectable.”

He agreed. Why did she have to be right? It was going to take another decade for the older residents to forget what he’d done. “For ten dollars.” Not a question. Not negotiable.

Unfazed, Brittany drew her ponytail over her shoulders, revealing a purple streak amid the rich brown. Coveralls and colored nails? Shop tools and beauty techniques? She was a tangle of contradictions he had no intention of unraveling. “I’d trim your hair for the grille.”

The verdict was in. Brittany was more like Uncle Turo than a Lambridge. “I don’t barter.” Especially when he wasn’t sure who owned the car.

The woman in the walker scooted forward. “Are you talking about a barbecue grill?” He recognized her now. Mildred Parsons. He used to cut her lawn every summer. That is, until Uncle Turo came to town. “Every man needs a barbecue.”

“Dad doesn’t grill. He uses the microwave and a Crock-Pot.” Sam giggled like a girl! “Brittany wants a car bumper from the field near our repair shop.”

“Whatever for?” For once, Rose stopped moving.

“I incorporate old bike and car parts into art.” Brit gestured to the mermaid riding the bicycle on the wall. “Things people no longer want can be made into something everyone can enjoy.”

Joe looked at the sculpture more carefully, finally recognizing the bike for what it once had been—an early motorbike, probably from around 1920. It had rims, but it was missing tires and an engine.

“That motorcycle was worth a lot of money.” Before it’d had all that curling aluminum welded to it, it’d been worth more than a new roof for the garage. What Brittany had done to that antique was blasphemous to a motorcyclist. To him. In fact, to anyone who revered the past, and wanted to restore and protect it. Uncle Turo may not have a good moral compass when it came to the law, but he revered the art of a good machine.

“It’s still worth a lot of money,” Brittany said crisply, spritzing Joe’s hair with water.

Two of the old ladies went to stand beneath Brittany’s creation, admiring it. After a moment, Sam joined them.

“I’d like to upcycle the BMW grille.” Brit began snipping Joe’s hair in back. “A contractor in Malibu hired me to create a driveway gate with a vintage automobile look. The grille would be perfect cut in half. When the gate is closed, it’ll look like a car is coming out at you.”

“Cool,” Sam, the traitor, said. She was young and susceptible to bad influences.

The anger he’d wadded into his chest for the past few weeks tried to break free. He couldn’t save Athena. He couldn’t save Uncle Turo. But he could definitely save his daughter and that car. “I won’t let you ruin it. I won’t let you put a grille on a gate with your arts and crafts glue gun.”

“I’d weld it.” Brittany fixed him with a hot stare that could have welded Joe to his seat. “I’d use a blowtorch. Same as I did with my mermaid, Keira.”

She’d given her creation a name. Sam would find that fascinating. Next thing you know, Sam might find picking junk on someone else’s property without permission fascinating, permissible even. Joe’s need to keep his daughter grounded had him lashing out. “Girls who cut hair and paint their nails don’t use blowtorches.”

Caught in the cross fire, the three old ladies fell silent, watching their exchange with interest.

“That’s a little sexist.” Brittany sounded unruffled. She continued to fluff his hair. But the heat remained in her gaze.

Despite a healthy dose of self-loathing—what kind of dad said things like that in front of his daughter?—Joe leaned into Brittany’s touch. It was a dare. A stupid dare. But he’d spent weeks keeping his emotions in check. It wasn’t fair that this woman—this trespassing thief—undid the links anchoring his equilibrium.

Brittany didn’t back down. She held his gaze in the mirror. And then she firmly tried to tilt his head into his chest. “Look down.”

“No,” he rasped, holding his head up.

“It’s okay to be scared, Dad.” Sam misread Joe. She came to stand next to him and found his hand beneath the drape. “He doesn’t get his hair cut often.”

A riot of feelings burned their way through his chest and churned through his stomach. He was a bad dad. He should be protecting his daughter, not the other way around. He should have realized sooner what was going on at Turo’s garage. He should have known the money he’d been earning the past few years from Turo was too good to be legal.

“Don’t cut off much,” Sam said to Brittany, still holding his hand, still too trusting. “My dad’s never had short hair.”

“I’m not shearing him like a sheep.” Brittany snipped away, her touch less than gentle. “I’m just giving it shape.”

“No,” Joe protested, sounding less like a man resentful of the corner he’d been trapped in. “I want it short and respectable.”

“I’m not sure you’ll ever pull off respectable.” Brittany’s chin nearly touched his crown as she pulled the hair above his ears along his cheekbones. “With a face like that...” Her cheeks turned as ripe as a Red Delicious apple. “Well, anyone can see you’re not a banker.”

The older audience’s chuckles locked Joe’s frown in place tighter than a wing nut on a long screw.

“She’s right.” Sam grinned.

“Cut it short,” Joe said through gritted teeth. “I need to be respectable.”

“Why?” Mildred said from her walker. “I’ve always thought respectable was boring.”

“And people don’t come to Harmony Valley to be boring.” Rose moved about with the broom as if she were waltzing.

“That’s right.” Agnes placed her age-weathered hands on his daughter’s shoulders, although she was barely taller than Sam. “People come here to be true to themselves.”

Joe knew being true to himself wouldn’t get him any customers. But when Brittany finished his haircut, Joe had to admit he felt more like himself—a man who didn’t second guess himself, a man who dealt with life head-on.

“About that grille...” Brittany began.

“I might have sold it to you if you planned to put it on another BMW.” Joe stood, digging in his back pocket for his wallet. “Clearly, you don’t understand its value.”

“Clearly—” Brittany glared at him “—you don’t understand the value of art.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“JOE THINKS YOU’RE a stripper.” Mildred nodded to Brit after Joe and Sam left the barbershop.

One moment, Brit had been fine. Satisfied Joe left looking better than when he’d walked in. Relieved that he and his closed-minded attitude were gone. And the next...

Brit did a quick check of her cleavage and backside in the mirror above her station. Nothing was exposed, but she felt as if she’d shown something. Her hands shook as much as Grandpa Phil’s. “I am not a stripper.”

“Of course you are,” Mildred said matter-of-factly, tugging at a stiff curl. “A stripper divests cars of their parts. Joe’s a purist. He’d rather preserve the entire car.”

“He’d rather spin his wheels and go nowhere.” Brit bit her lip to keep from saying more. She knelt and rummaged in an unpacked box of her salon equipment, unable to stop herself from adding, “The cars on his property will never run again.”

“Never say never.” Rose swept Joe’s cut black locks into a pile. “I heard the Messinas were running a repair shop for famous folks and their fancy cars.”

“Those Messinas have motor oil running through their veins.” Mildred sounded wistful. “If they had the right parts, they could fix anything. Trouble was, we couldn’t always get the right parts out here.”

“Oh, come on.” Where had Brit put her teasing combs? “There must be twenty cars in that field. If they were mechanical savants, I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find parts for that many vehicles.”

“Well...the Messinas aren’t responsible for all those abandoned wrecks.” Agnes returned to poke around the supply cabinet. “I hate to admit our constituents are irresponsible, but—”

“Our constituents are irresponsible.” Mildred ran her fingers through curls on the other side of her head, making her hair look as if she’d been electrocuted. “Ten years or so ago, when the garage closed, there may have been one or two cars in that field. But ever since then—”

Agnes raised her voice like a teacher trying to regain control of her class. “I won’t name names—”

“Crandall Barnes. Haywood Dillinger.” Rose was more than willing to call her neighbors out.

“But—” Agnes ignored Rose “—when you’re old—”

“Don’t make excuses for them,” Mildred said.

“—it’s easier to just give something up!” Agnes was practically shouting now.

Brit found the plastic box of combs, chose a pick and stood, her shoulders stiff with almost-too-good-to-be-true hope. “So they aren’t all Joe’s cars? What about that BMW?”

Rose and Agnes looked to Mildred.

“A BMW? That would be... It was driven by...” Mildred closed her eyes and clamped her mouth in a squiggly line. “Why can’t I remember who owned that car?”

“Because you’re old,” Rose said baldly. “I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.”

Would a registration card have survived in the BMW’s glove box? Could Brit sneak out there again and check?

An image of lowered brows over glaring blue eyes loomed before her, more off-putting than a beware-of-dog sign. But she wasn’t much good at heeding warnings.

Take cutting Joe’s hair, for instance. Those thick midnight-black locks were perfect for styling. A beautician’s dream. She’d ignored his bluster and steered through the storm even when his frigid eyes warned her away.

Thank heavens Reggie hadn’t seen her while she was working or she’d have called her out—there’d been too much unnecessary touching going on. The man had an energy that spoke to her. She just didn’t want to learn his language.

Yeah, cutting Joe’s hair had been sweet torture. She hoped she never had to do it again.

Right now, she had a different cause for itching fingers—Mildred’s unfinished curls. “Can I tease out your hair, Mildred? On the house.”

“Oh, dear.” Mildred hunched in on herself. “Are my curls that bad? Why didn’t someone tell me before Hiro saw me at the bakery?”