Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (27 page)

“Yes…I know.”

“I know what I said, when we started,” he
said, taking a deep breath. “And ethically, I’m bound by that
contract.”

“Right.”

“But Rose…” He pulled her in tight, his gaze
sharp and desperate as their eyes met. “I can’t stop thinking about
you. I can’t stop wanting you. Every time I imagine you getting on
a plane and leaving, everything in me goes cold at the
thought.”

“Oh Matt…” She kissed him. She didn’t care
if they weren’t in a session, that anyone who glanced out of one of
the windows in the facility could see them. She kissed him with all
the force and emotion she had, feeling him acquiesce, his body
giving her all the answer she could ever want.

They broke apart, gasping, and she smiled.
“Why do you think I sent Sam away?”

“Because all of the work we’ve done has
given you enough self-worth to realize he’s nowhere near good
enough for you?”

She laughed. “Besides that…”

“Tell me why.”

“Because I love
you
,” she confessed,
knowing it was the truth. “I don’t want
Sam
. I want
you
.”

He kissed her again, this time softly,
sweetly, his lips accepting her admission and giving it back
without a single word. She had once thought that she couldn’t live
without Sam, but she now knew that wasn’t true. Now she had a man
in her life who, although she knew she
could
live without
him—she didn’t
want
to. It was a vast difference.

“Matt, please tell me we can be together,”
she whispered, kissing his cheek, the hard line of his jaw. “I
don’t know how it’s going to be possible. I don’t want to
jeopardize what you have here, your work, your whole career…”

“Maybe my mother’s right.” He was only
half-joking, she could tell. “Maybe I should apply for jobs in New
York.”

“I just told Sam that sometimes love just
isn’t enough.” She felt tears welling. “Maybe that’s the truth for
us too.”

“Rose, listen to me.” He held her by her
upper arms, urgent, almost pleading. “My contract says that we have
to end our therapeutic relationship for at least six months before
we can… you know…”

She grinned. “Date?”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Date.”

“So…maybe we should make a date for six
months from now?” she suggested.

“Can you wait for me?”

“Forever,” she assured him, sealing the
promise with a kiss.

RAPUNZEL

“Are those extensions?”

Nina Malden noticed everything and Rachel’s
new hair was no exception. None of her other clients had said a
word—they talked about vacations in Cabo and how difficult it was
to get dinner reservations at
Tru
while Rachel mixed color
and folded foil for highlights and the sharp snip of her scissors
accompanied the endless chatter—but no one had mentioned her
hair.

“It’s—” Rachel glanced in the mirror over
Nina’s perfectly coiffed head. She’d never understood the
phenomenon—who went into a salon for a cut with their hair already
styled? But every client at
Rapunzel’s
showed up made-up,
even dolled-up, for their appointment. As a stylist, she had to
un-do before she could re-do, and sometimes up-do, the hair in
question.

Rachel fingered the hair on her head, thick
and long, as close as she could get to natural, a trifecta of
color, brownish-red with bright golden highlights that no one could
ever define. It fell past her shoulders to the middle of her back
in luxurious, beautiful waves. She couldn’t admit the truth, not
even to herself, let alone to Nina Malden. Telling her it was a wig
would open a door she preferred to keep firmly closed.

She was thankfully saved from responding by
a crisis up front. The raised voice of one of the stylists—she was
sure it was Joshie—caught her attention immediately. She made sure
Nina was seated and comfortable before she excused herself to go
handle the drama, which involved two appointments—one cut, one
perm—scheduled at once for the same stylist. Her new receptionist,
just twenty-six and a graduate of NYU, had proven to be a disaster
so far. Rachel was usually such a great judge of character, but
she’d been distracted when she hired Carly. Unfortunately, Carly
didn’t work Saturdays, so Rachel couldn’t scold her. Instead they
were taking turns between appointments manning the phone.

“I can’t do them both at once!” Joshie’s big
brown eyes, rimmed with silver eyeliner, actually filled with
tears. He was wringing his delicate, ring-adorned hands as if he’d
dipped them in something very unagreeable and couldn’t get it off.
“It’s impossible!”

Rachel glanced at the lobby where the first
client, a model in need of a spiral perm, checked her perfect
profile in a compact. The other patron was just a young girl, maybe
fifteen, bright and freshly pretty. Rachel envied her. The man
beside her had to be her father—
better be
, she thought,
taking in his age and demeanor, or else he was in danger of serious
prosecution under pedophile laws, the way he was holding her hand
and whispering into her ear.

“Oh I think you’ve done two at once before,
Joshie,” Rachel murmured, shocking her stylist into a choked laugh
and letting him know his salon gossip hadn’t escaped her ears. “You
take the perm. I’ll take the cut.”

“But you’ve got the dragon-lady,” Joshie
mock-whispered, glancing over her shoulder toward Nina Malden who
was flipping through a
Cosmopolitan
, her lips set in a grim
line. She wasn’t going to be happy.

“Well, this might be news to you, but I can
do two at once too.” Rachel winked and Joshie’s cackle followed her
into the lobby.

“Just a cut today, sweetie?” Rachel saw the
girl’s nervous glance, first at her, then at the man beside her. He
squeezed her hand encouragingly but the girl just blushed and
didn’t speak. Rachel laughed lightly. “Not your first, I hope?”

The girl’s hair was very long, to her waist,
a thick black curtain. Her father—Rachel was sure of it now, they
had the same dark, wide eyes, and his hair was just as thick and
black, although much shorter and curlier—cleared his throat and
gave Rachel an apologetic smile.

“I think she’s in shock.” He shrugged one
shoulder in Rachel’s direction. “But it was all her idea!”

“Something drastic?” Rachel guessed,
glancing over as Joshie brought a cappuccino out for the model and
took her back into the salon. She turned to check the appointment
book and saw the girl’s name—Emma Malden—and then saw the note
written beside it, just as the girl’s father offered the
information.

“She wants to get her hair cut for
Locks
of Love
,” he told her, looking a little sheepish at his next
admission. “Her mother doesn’t want her to, so I brought her.”

The two facts hit her simultaneously. This
was Nina Malden’s daughter—the name and dark tresses were far too
much to be coincidence—and she wanted to get her hair cut off for
charity. As a hairdresser, Rachel was familiar with
Locks of
Love
and had collected a great deal of hair for the
organization over the years so they could make it into wigs for
disadvantaged kids whose medical diagnosis left them humiliatingly
without any, either temporarily or permanently. She’d done it with
a vague sort of sensitivity in the past, but never with any real
empathy. Not until now.

“How much do you want taken off?” Rachel
inquired, glancing toward the back and catching a glimpse of Nina
Malden in the mirrors. She was swinging one very expensive Jimmy
Choo pump at the end of her silk stocking foot, a black stylist
cape draped around her neck, obscuring her Vera Wang suit. She was
thankfully still perusing a magazine, still distracted. Good.

“All of it.” The girl finally spoke up and
Rachel heard the steel in her voice. Must get that from her mother,
she surmised, seeing the dark flash of Emma Malden’s eyes, the hard
set of her jaw.

“Well, I don’t think we have to shave you
bald.” Rachel smiled and went over to where they were sitting,
touching the girl’s hair. It was beautiful, healthy, and she’d been
growing it out a long time. “You have a good eighteen inches here
at least, even if we just give you a cute little pageboy cut.”
Rachel used her hands to indicate the line at the girl’s jaw.

Emma frowned, looking over at her dad. “Are
you sure that’s enough?”

“Ten inches is the minimum,” Rachel
explained, this time looking at Emma’s father. She wondered what
kind of hot water he was going to be in when his wife found out
he’d taken their daughter to cut off most of her hair. Well, that
was his business, right? Besides, it was for a good cause. “You’ve
got plenty to spare.”

“That’s almost double, Em,” Emma’s father
offered, nudging her. “That’s a lot of hair.”

“Okay, let’s do it.” Emma stood, swinging
the dark curtain of hair over her shoulder, possibly for the last
time.

“Come on back.” Rachel put them at a station
up front but around the corner, out of the way. Somewhere they were
unlikely to run into Nina, unless they had the unfortunate
synchronicity to pass on the way out. Of course, having them all
there together was a bit of coincidence to begin with. Joshie was
two stations down with the supermodel and he waved at her and
winked.

“So your mom doesn’t want you to get a
haircut, huh?” Rachel opened the bottom drawer and took out a
packet. Inside was a certificate from the
Locks of Love
organization and a long red ribbon they used to tie the hair.

Emma’s father had followed them back and he
stood leaning against the wall behind her, arms crossed, just
watching. Rachel nodded to the empty chair at the station beside
her. “You can have a seat, Mr. Malden.”

“Jake.” He took her up on her offer, sitting
down and swiveling the chair in a circle so he was facing his
daughter. “And you are…wait, let me guess. You’re Rapunzel.”

“For all intents and purposes,” she agreed,
combing Emma’s thick tresses into her hand and then tying the
length of it off with the ribbon. Glancing up at Jake, she saw his
teasing smile. His words and expression seemed genuine, but the man
had a sharp, rich look about him that most of her clients—and her
client’s husbands—exuded. She wasn’t surprised he was Nina Malden’s
husband.

“My name is Rachel,” she disclosed, picking
up her scissors. She met Emma’s eyes in the mirror. They were big
and dark and huge. The poor girl was terrified. “Are you sure
you’re ready for this?”

Emma nodded, swallowing. “Do it.”

“Okay.” Rachel held the thick length of
ponytail in her hand, glancing over at the girl’s father for one
last indication of permission. It was no small thing, cutting off
this much hair. There was a great deal of power in it, both in the
length of the hair and the act of cutting it.

“She’s getting it cut off for her friend,
Liv.” Jake’s gaze went to his daughter and his expression
softened.

“Liv has leukemia.” Emma’s eyes filled with
tears and she blinked them back. “Oh damnit. I said I wasn’t going
to cry.”

“It’s a very kind and generous gesture.”
Rachel swallowed tears of her own. She hadn’t even considered how
difficult this was going to be. The
Locks of Love
program
had, strangely, not even crossed her mind since her own diagnosis
and the universe had given her a two-month reprieve from doing
this. But here she was.

“Just do it.” Emma closed her eyes and
Rachel cut, the sound of the scissors bright and keen, even over
the noise of the salon. When Rachel put the thick, dark ribbon of
hair on the counter, the red tie trailing down the white
countertop, bright as a trickle of blood, Emma opened her eyes and
stared at it with surprise, as if it was a finger or a limb instead
of a length of her hair.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetie.” Jake reached
over and touched his daughter’s hand and the girl burst into tears.
He stood and opened his arms and she went to him, sobbing. He
stroked what was left of her hair, cut above her shoulders, and
looked helplessly over her head at Rachel. “Oh, Em, it’s okay,
you’re beautiful—even more beautiful now.”

Rachel felt a lump growing in her own
throat. She spoke before it threatened to cut off her voice
entirely. “Can you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back.”

She took the opportunity to give them some
privacy and left them hugging each other, a few of the patrons
watching, curious, but most still chatting and combing and cutting,
oblivious. Rounding the corner, Rachel stopped near the lobby,
blinking fast and tilting her head back, willing tears not to fall.
Not here, not now. Nina Malden was waiting.

“There you are!” Nina slid her phone closed
and tucked it back into her purse as Rachel returned. “I was
thinking about calling out a search party.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, glancing at
herself in the mirror. Her eyes were a little bright, but that was
all. No other signs of grief. “We had a little scheduling snafu up
front. The new girl isn’t working out so well.”

“Ugh, the help.” Nina shook her head and
smiled at Rachel as if they shared something in common. “I know how
it is.”

“Well, let’s get you shampooed, shall we?”
She’d been in the business so long she never questioned using words
like ‘shampoo’ or ‘condition’ as a verb. Nina’s hair was just as
lovely as her daughter’s and Rachel washed it, trying to hurry,
knowing Jake and Emma were waiting, but it wasn’t easy getting the
sticky mass of mousse and hairspray and various other styling
products out.

“I’m glad you could get me in today,” Nina
remarked as Rachel squeezed the water out of her clean hair with a
thick, fluffy white towel. “I’ve got a date tonight.”

“A date?” Rachel’s towel stopped abruptly.
“Where are you and your husband going?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Nina raised her
eyebrows and lifted her left hand, waggling her fingers. “We’re
divorced.”