Irrepressible You (4 page)

‘Oh, I don’t know. Something about a cut-throat shave.’ Alex’s smugness was almost tangible.

‘You go instead. I’m tired. I’ve changed my mind. She wasn’t all
that
interesting. I’ll write about something else.’

‘I can’t go. I’m tied up getting ready for my flight. I’m in the kitchen. I’ve made coffee, so get your ass out of bed and come drink it.’

Ben grimaced, rasping his hand across his chin. It was covered in its usual dense, spiky forest of stubble, possibly the only thing he’d inherited from his father. ‘You can drown yourself in that swill you call coffee for all I care. Then after you’ve finished doing that, you can untie yourself from getting ready for your flight and go get a shave. I’m staying here. In bed. Sleeping. Let yourself out quietly when you leave.’

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Alex said with an inhumanly good-natured chuckle. Ben never understood how his friend could be such a cheerful ass in the morning.

‘You were the one who was a prick about making the appointment. I know you’re feeling guilty, or should be feeling guilty, so get out of bed and go apologise to the nice lady.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Can’t get out of bed?’

‘Can’t go. Don’t remember the name or address.’

‘The store is named Babyface in . . .’ Ben could hear paper rustling. ‘Fremantle. Not far from here according to Google Maps. I’ll see you in five minutes, or I’m coming in there, taking a picture of you and posting it online with your address so the paparazzi know where you are.’ Alex hung up and Ben threw his phone onto the unattended pillow next to him.

‘Bastard,’ he mumbled to himself, cursing both Alex’s sense of fair play and his own smart mouth. There’d just been something about the lady that had made him want to push her buttons to see which ones made her go. He knew he should be feeling a little remorse for his rudeness, and he was, but not enough to want to get out of bed. After all, she was only someone he’d offended once. There were numerous people in his life he’d offended on multiple occasions and he’d never bothered to get out of bed early to apologise to any of them.

Although . . . he hadn’t yet come up with any material for his weekly newspaper column in the
London Enquirer.
Maybe the little blonde mistakenly identifying Alex as a sailor
could
be rounded out to produce an entertaining tale. He’d discounted it earlier because that one meeting didn’t provide quite enough material.

Ben’s personal experiences were frequently fodder for his column, albeit augmented with a generous sprinkling of the salt and pepper of literary free licence. That wouldn’t change now that he’d relocated to Australia. In fact, after the recent unwanted media attention he’d received care of an ill-conceived fling with a publicity-hungry reality star, shining the light on someone else’s world would be entertaining.

As much as he didn’t want to get up, he couldn’t pass up this golden–or more to the point, blonde–opportunity.

Forty minutes later, Ben studied the front of an old-fashioned barber salon, its window painted with bold white letters declaring ‘Babyface’ and garnished with a spinning red and blue pole. Next to the barber shop sat some kind of beauty salon with similar bold writing over its window declaring that ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’.

‘Cute,’ he murmured before pushing the door open. A bell rang in the shop next door but the long, narrow space before him was devoid of life. Well, almost. The silence was broken by an antique record player spinning the sounds of an old Muddy Waters classic.

Glancing around with a critical eye, Ben set about mental note taking, registering the dark green walls, scarred, dark wood floorboards and the two plush, deep brown leather barber chairs facing heavy square mirrors. On the wall directly behind one of the chairs, visible in the mirrors, was a large framed print from Marilyn Monroe’s famous 1953
Playboy
spread. It hung next to an equally large black and white print of a young shirtless Rock Hudson, a cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth.
Obviously catering to all tastes
, Ben mused with raised brows.

The room smelled invitingly of coffee and, if he wasn’t mistaken, chocolate.

He turned around, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now, when he spotted a discreet sign by the record player requesting that patrons
take a seat and wait for Amy
. Deciding to do just that, he took the chair affording the view of Marilyn and waited.

The bell rang announcing someone’s presence in the barbershop and Amy paused in applying bleach to Jody Greave’s inch-long hair to make a futile motion for Kate, her only other senior stylist, to take over. When Kate feigned blindness, Amy squelched the urge to throw a hair dryer at the woman’s beautiful, sleek blonde head. She met her nail and beauty technician Marissa’s sympathetic gaze and grimaced, cursing the circumstances that had left her short staffed.

On Monday the week before, Amy’s other senior stylist and good friend, Mel, had quit for the third time in the space of a year. As always, Mel had cited personal reasons for leaving without providing any details. She didn’t need to. It was obvious that she and Kate were on a downturn in their perpetual rollercoaster romance.

For her part, Kate appeared largely unaffected by the temporary split. Well, other than exploring her inner bitch and being a total drama queen, but that was kind of normal.

Amy had seen this particular soap opera numerous times now and knew that the two women would patch things up in a matter of weeks. Mel would ask for her job back and Amy would say yes.

As much as Amy knew she shouldn’t forgive and forget, she would. Besides being a sweetheart, Mel was her only member of staff who could do decent weaves for Perth’s growing community of African immigrants, and Amy was losing customers without her. Just once though, Amy wished it could be Kate who quit instead. Kate had only been with Amy for two years and, despite being adored by Perth’s diva set, she was a pain in the arse and temperamental at the best of times.

Luckily, it was the first day of the winter school holidays and the next two weeks would be quiet. The only appointments due in the salon this morning were Jody and a performing arts student, Lilly, who was probably foregoing food for the next month to have an expensive style and colour done by Amy’s junior stylist, Roslynn.

The barbershop was another matter.

The thug from the bar was the only nine o’clock appointment she had scheduled and someone was definitely waiting next door. No matter how much she’d told herself she was used to dealing with difficult people–her industry practically invited it–he left her unsettled. His apparent celebrity status just made her anxiety worse.

‘Kate, can you take care of Jody for me?’ Amy said finally, when Kate continued gazing out the shop window.

Kate heaved an overly dramatic sigh. ‘Yeah, alright.’

‘Thanks,’ Amy chirped with forced cheer for her client’s sake. She gave Jody’s brawny shoulder, hewn on the hockey pitch, a gentle pat. ‘I’ll see you next time, toots. I’ve got a customer in the barbershop.’

‘Catcha, Amy,’ Jody said with an endearingly shy smile as she watched Kate’s approach. Her crush was painfully obvious, and she only ever booked an appointment when Kate was temporarily single.

Amy felt a pang of sympathy over Jody’s futile infatuation. She knew what it was like to be looking for love in the wrong places and, in crushing on a beautiful snob like Kate, Jody had picked the worst spot possible to park her heart. Amy just hoped she’d be strong enough to pick herself up when she realised that her affections weren’t returned. Lord knew, Amy had had to do as much over the years.

Giving Jody one last smile, she braced herself to see to her first barbershop customer for the day.

Ben jolted awake at the sound of a door opening at the back of the barbershop. He stifled a yawn. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping. All he knew was that he now had company. Chatty company.

A slightly breathless, melodic female voice pervaded Ben’s consciousness. ‘Good morning. Sorry to keep you waiting, Ben. It was Ben, right? I was just finishing up with a customer next door. I’ve brought you some homemade chocolate cake to make up for being late. Are we having coffee this morning?’

‘I just woke up. What do you think?’ Ben grumbled, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

‘I think you’re one of those.’

The blonde, Amy if he remembered correctly, approached and placed a tray bearing a steaming mug of black coffee, a small jug of cream and a tiny pot of sugar cubes along with a large slice of chocolate cake on a small inbuilt ledge in front of his chair.

‘Thank you.’ Ben looked up into a pair of brilliant china-doll blue eyes that were watching him warily, despite the smile stretching her fuchsia-painted lips. He paused momentarily to collect his thoughts. The woman was truly a polished piece of work, spectacular in fact.

The fifties pin-up thing was obviously an ongoing theme. Today, her platinum hair was styled in a high, soft ponytail with loose C-shaped curls framing her cute features. The rest of her wasn’t so much cute as ridiculously sexy: a frilly, long-sleeved white blouse tucked into a navy below-the-knee pencil skirt that cupped her curvy little rump lovingly. Ben couldn’t help but notice what her impossibly high red heels did for her calves as she walked away from him to collect a small trolley.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘What do you mean, I’m one of
those
?’ Ben demanded.

‘A grumpy bear in the morning. I’m used to your type.’

‘You’re not one of those disgusting morning people by any chance, are you? I heard you were a dying breed.’ Ben reached for the coffee, added a dash of cream and took an experimental sip. It was good. Very good. Much better than Alex’s dismal efforts, to say the least.

‘Better?’ she asked, draping an olive-green cape around his shoulders and tying it behind his neck.

‘Marginally. This is good coffee.’ Ben took a larger sip, feeling the caffeine zapping his neurons to life and kickstarting his charisma. He risked cracking his first smile of the day and was rewarded with one in return. No dimples though. It was obvious he’d have to try harder for those after his behaviour the other night.

‘I know. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? It comes from a little place down south in Margaret River. I order it especially.’ She smiled again, this time bringing out one dimple. For some inexplicable reason, the sight brought Ben out of his early-morning malaise like no coffee ever could. He couldn’t quite fathom the why of it, but he was experiencing the first rush of purely physical attraction he’d felt in years.

Sex and relationships had come so easily to him for the past decade that he thought he’d long since graduated from the rampaging hormone-driven lust of his teens. Obviously he’d been wrong. That he felt it with this woman was perplexing and somewhat alarming in light of his recent disastrous, highly publicised affair. Been there done that, wanted a refund. But still . . . he hadn’t managed to earn both dimples yet.

He broke off a chunk of cake and took a bite, moaning in pleasure the minute it hit his taste buds. ‘I take back the dying breed comment. There needs to be more of you. This is amazing.’ He reached for another piece, resisting the urge to lick his fingers.

Her eyes twinkled. ‘Thanks.’

‘Is this for a special occasion or just because you knew I was coming?’

She laughed and the sound coursed through Ben’s system like quicksilver.

‘No special occasion, but if it helps we can pretend. Is your birthday any time soon?’

‘Birthday. No, that was a few months back. I don’t celebrate those anyway.’

That earned him a shocked look. ‘Never?’

Ben shrugged, running his finger across the plate to pick up the last of the crumbs. ‘Never have. Not my thing.’

‘What about when you were a kid?’

‘Cake didn’t feature high on my parents’ list of priorities. Is this the scene of an inquisition specialising in torture through cake and coffee, or a barbershop?’ His words came out sharper than he intended and he covered his gaffe up with a grin, running his hand over his jaw. ‘Because as you can see, I currently resemble an extra in a low-budget detective flick.’

Other than an almost imperceptible pause, Amy didn’t seem affected by his bad manners. ‘Yeah, you do. What can I do for you today? I’m guessing just a shave since you keep this so short.’ She ran her hand over the top of his head, regarding him in the mirror, her head cocked to one side.

Inexplicably, Ben fought the urge to purr. ‘A shave please. As long as you can assure me I’m safe.’

‘You ever hear the one about the fool who made fun of his barber?’ She arched a blonde eyebrow.

‘No, is it funny?’

‘You’ll laugh your head off,’ she retorted. ‘Now finish your coffee while I get the torture implements ready.’ She met his eyes briefly in the mirror and he was struck once again by how blue hers were. They had to be contact lenses, surely.

‘Order received and understood,’ he said dryly, draining his cup while surreptitiously watching her work.

Amy went about the usual routine of heating water and collecting towels, shaving soap and her razor, trying her best to appear calm and professional. A tall order when her hands were faintly shaking and her insides felt jumbled.

She’d never had such a mixed reaction as this to a customer before. She didn’t know what it was about this one. Well, maybe she did. The past two nights had brought bloody awful nightmares about him, and even though he wasn’t making fun of her or laughing at her like he had in her dreams, she had the feeling the potential was there. His compliments over the coffee and cake, given in that icepick-sharp English accent, had given her a warm fuzzy moment, but he still looked like a thug – a handsome one with soft hair who reminded her of a big cat.

As she rested a hand on the top of his head and began lathering up his cheeks, she could’ve sworn he made a faint purring noise.

‘What is it you do?’ she asked, hoping he’d shed light on who the heck he was.