WREN STOOD FROM THE COUCH AS ALEX ENTERED THEroom. For a moment, she simply gazed at him, blank-faced.
Then her Santa Ana voice made its dry-as-fuck return. “When you said you were getting your hair cut, I didn’t realize you meant that literally. As in, one hair.”
“It was more a shaping than a cut, you follicular philistine.” He stroked his beard fondly, then ran a caressing hand through his hair. “Now I’m the best-coiffed and -bearded Viking in the village. Peasants will be lining up to be plundered by me.”
Her extraordinary eyes flew to his. “Please tell me you didn’t make your haircut decisions based on my input.”
Having been told mere hours earlier that he too was a terrible liar, he didn’t answer. Instead, he merely opened the door and waved her ahead.
Once the valet brought his car around, they climbed inside, and he paused before putting it in drive. “Anywhere else you want to stop?”
“I think we’ve had enough excitement for the day.” Her lips were tight again. Pinched. “Let’s go home.”
From that expression, he could only assume her patience had run out.
Sure enough, she was silent only a minute before stating firmly, “I’d like to talk about what happened outside the salon now, if that’s acceptable to you.”
Fortunately for them both, the scalp massage during the shampoo had lowered his blood pressure to a nearly normal level again.
“If it weren’t”—he slipped on sunglasses to combat the glare—“how exactly would I stop you?” When he contemplated the issue, only one good solution came to mind. “By kissing you?”
Her silence seemed to expand, filling the entire car.
When he chanced a glance over, she was staring at him, open-mouthed, cheeks pink.
“You could stop me byasking me to stop,” she said slowly, pronouncing every word with crystalline clarity.
Oh. Right.
With an especially casual shrug, he turned his eyes back to the traffic. “Fair enough. Anyway, it’s fine. Chastise away, Nanny Clegg.”
The roads seemed particularly clogged today, even for L.A., and he resigned himself to a long, boring lecture about professional conduct and legal consequences. Nothing he hadn’t heard a thousand times before, but for Wren, he’d at least pretend to listen.
She didn’t say what he expected, though.
What she said was worse. Much, much worse.
“People say terrible things to me all the time.” Her voice was entirely matter-of-fact, free of both anger and self-pity. “They have since I was a child. At some point, I just stopped telling my parents or anyone else, because it upset them so much, and there was no point.”
No point to telling her parents she’d been hurt and insulted?No point?
Because her feelings were less important than protecting theirs?
She was still talking, even as his pulse rocketed back to near-stroke territory. “It’s not right, but it’s also not important, as I’ve told you before. Reacting to insults directed my way isn’t worth your time or energy, and it’s certainly not worth your job or professional reputation. I appreciate your instinct to defend me, more than you know, but you have to learn to let it go, Alex, the same way I have.”
By all rights, the car should be festooned with the exploded remains of his head.
“What?” Somehow, that was all he could articulate.“What?”
“Thank you for caring about me.” She cleared her throat. “But retaliating against people who insult me isn’t necessary or wise, and you shouldn’t do it again.”
For some reason, his poor, exploded brain filled with her expression the night he’d returned from visiting Marcus and April.
He and Wren had been standing just inside the doorway of the guesthouse, where he’d escorted her after their late dinner together. Before they parted, he’d offered her the huge plastic bag he’d kept protectively tucked in the carry-on bin the entire flight.
For some reason, he was nervous, his hands not entirely steady.
She’d blinked at him, confused, her own small hands motionless at her sides.
