“She’s the old broad’s daughter. Stop busting my balls and just get me the info,” Duncan growled.

“You’ll have to wait. I won’t call those guys until it’s a decent hour. That’s called common courtesy. Ever heard of it? Go to bed, Dunc. Or better yet, go jack off, and then go to bed. Later.”

His friend hung up, and Duncan let the phone drop and spun the chair back around to read those poems again.

He was unaccountably fascinated. As if some window were opening in his mind, with a view he’d never seen before. He couldn’t understand what the fuck she was talking about, but so what? Who cared? He liked the way the words resonated inside him, like a big, deep bell. He’d never felt like that before. Everything buzzing, humming.

It felt strangely, dangerously good.

Chapter

4

“Stop here,” Nell directed the driver of the car.

The guy screeched to a halt and took the money with a deadpan face. She was spending a fortune on car services, but there was no help for it. At least there were enough people on the streets that she felt safe walking the rest of the way to the Sunset Grill.

She stared at the hair salon as the car accelerated away. She’d been circling this issue all morning, since she’d wound her hair into the usual thick, fuzzy braid and twisted it into a heavy knot. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window, slid her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, and took another good, long look.

She was hiding behind the glasses, the baggy dresses, the dowdy, frizzy hair. She’d hidden behind the cowardly assertion that looking good was all vanity and nonsense. That she was a lofty scholar who was too intellectual and above it all to care.

What total bullshit. After less than ten lust-charged minutes with Duncan Burke in the stairwell, she cared passionately. She needed every weapon at her disposal to deal with him.

The stray thought made her wince. There it was, beauty as a weapon. The association was programmed into her. She’d chosen plainness because she’d wanted to stay off the battlefield.

But the battle had come to her. There was nothing to do but fight.

She marched into the salon, sniffing nervously at shampoo, perfume, and chemicals. A slight, bald Hispanic man with a pearl-drop earring gave her a toothy smile. “What can I do for you?” he inquired.

Nell stared helplessly. “Do you take walk-ins?”

“When I feel like it. What do you have in mind?”

“I, um, don’t know yet,” Nell confessed.

The man rubbed his hands together. “Hmm. You’re in luck. I just had a cancellation. I’m Riccardo, by the way. Let’s take a look.”

Nell soon found herself in a chair, her body swathed in a plastic cape. Riccardo’s expert fingers pulled the pins from her hair, unraveling it and fluffing it up. He made cooing noises of approval. “May I?” he asked, removing Nell’s glasses. The salon became a glittery blur. “Good material here. You really ought to try contacts,” he counseled.

Nell harrumphed. “Can you do something that’s easy to style?”

“Oh, yes. I’m just going to shape this a bit, and thin out all this weight, and layer this…and lighten it, make it more fluffy. See?”

Of course, Nell didn’t, without her glasses, but this was the beauty salon of destiny, so she nodded and consigned herself to Fate.

Some time later, she retrieved her glasses and gasped at the result. Riccardo had layered and shaped her formless, kinky waist-length mop into a shiny halo of black curls that framed and flattered her face and still hung halfway down her back. Nell kept putting an unbelieving hand up, feeling the soft, springy texture of her ringlets, the way it fluffed up on top, perfumed with various salves and waxes and goops massaged into it. The price was staggering, but she passed over her credit card without protest. The only problem was the glasses. With her new do, they looked even more ridiculous than before.

One step at a time, she told herself.

Her hair caused a sensation when she walked into the restaurant. Monica wolf whistled. Norma spun Nell around, looking at her from every angle. “Oh, honey! You look as gorgeous as I knew you would!” she exclaimed. “I just wish your mama could see how pretty you look!”

Nell’s eyes dampened, and she hugged the other woman tightly.

“Enough of the sentimental stuff,” Monica said briskly. “C’mere, Nell. I wanna put some makeup on you.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be prepping for lunch?” Nell asked plaintively, as Monica dragged her to a chair.

“That’s all right, hon. We can open five minutes late,” Norma said indulgently. “How did that job interview go?”

“Oh. The job interview,” Nell hedged, as Monica tilted her face up and outlined her eyes with black pencil. “It was extremely interesting.”

“Oh? How so?” Norma asked, picking the chairs off the tables.

“You will never, in ten million years, guess who it was who interviewed me,” Nell said.

Norma froze. Monica’s eye pencil stopped moving.

“No way, chica,” breathed Monica.

“You don’t mean to say…You’re putting me on, Nelly. I simply don’t believe it,” Norma said.

“Believe it,” Nell said.

There was an incredulous silence. Nell turned around. Norma and Monica were grinning at each other like fools.

“Did he ask you out?” Monica tilted Nell’s head back and brandished her mascara wand. “Did he come on to you? Did you kiss?”

The whole heated sequence in the stairwell played through her mind in a timeless instant, and her face went beet red. “As if,” she lied. “I’ve barely met the man.”

“Well?” Norma said bracingly. “Take the bull by the horns, honey!”

“It’s not that simple,” she hedged. “He’s my boss now, and I’m meeting with him after my shift here to discuss the—”

“My goodness, you mean he hired you? Mercy! Things move so quickly in this world for an old lady. And just this morning Kendra told me that she has Epstein-Barr syndrome. But all’s fair in love and war.”

“Norma, you don’t understand.” Nell wiggled as Monica brushed powder on her face. “Monica, that tickles!”

“Hold still, chica. You’re making me smear. Lemme put lipstick on you, and you can look at yourself.”

Nell headed to the bathroom afterward. Her reflection made her gasp. Her eyes looked big, luminous. The lipstick was a deep, sexy red. With her hair fluffed into that luxurious mane of black ringlets, she looked…

Just like her mother. She stared at herself. Swallowed.

“What do you say, chica? Are you stunning, or are you stunning?”

Nell forced herself to smile at her coworker. “Yes. You’re an artist, Monica. Thank you.” She pulled her glasses out of her apron.

“Do you have to?” Monica complained. “It ruins the effect!”

“I’m blind as a bat without them,” Nell said regretfully.

“Oh well. You look better anyway. Strip Steak’s going to have a stroke when he gets a look at you.”

“His name is Duncan Burke, and it’s not going to happen,” Nell said resolutely. “He’s my boss. I wouldn’t compromise a paying job.”

“Oh, excellent! Taboo!” Norma stuck her head in the bathroom door. “The lure of the forbidden! Look at you, good enough to eat. Strip Steak’s jaw will hit the floor. Have you thought about contacts, Nelly?”

Nell swept past them, chin high. They giggled like ninnies.

Three-fifteen came and went, with no Duncan Burke, and the afternoon fell flat. Hanging in her garment bag was the oatmeal-cream sweater dress she’d bought for Nancy’s engagement party, the prettiest thing she had in her closet. She pictured herself walking into his office in that subtly clinging dress, and shivered.