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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Don’t do that one. Turns yellow real quick.”
Heidi put the bottle of white nail polish back on the rack and lifted a nude-tone one. “Any objections to this?”
Her nail tech shook his head and then gestured to her usual pedicure seat in the corner. “I pick for toes.”
“No neon,” Heidi said. “I don’t have the tan for it.”
Xuan clucked his tongue with impatience and showed her to the seat.
She was doing a reasonably noble job of not thinking about the other place she knew him from and the things she’d done to him. After much thought, and many weeks of cuticle-picking, she’d decided he was too good for her to ditch.
And if he never found out on his own that she’d domme’d him into subspace, she certainly wouldn’t be the one to tell him.
She rolled up the bottoms of her slacks, climbed sideways onto the elevated chair, and lowered her weary feet into the hot, bubbling water.
She generally used the few precious minutes of stillness when her feet were soaking to watch the guilty-pleasure trashy courtroom show that always seemed to be playing at the nail spa. For a change, she put her head against the rest and closed her eyes. She couldn’t blame the neighbors for her recent inability to sleep. Despite having washed all the bedding, Carine's phantom scent in her room kept Heidi up all night. She’d finally decided to move into the guest room, but by the time she’d figured that out, three a.m. had come and gone.
Tim had taken one look at her at work, closed his mouth on whatever he’d been about to say, and swiftly departed from her company.
She must have nodded off and lost some time because the next thing she knew, the tech Viki’s voice said near her, “This one all right? Other one, water not as hot.”
Heidi opened her eyes to ensure she hadn’t set her purse on either of the neighboring seats.
She saw her purse dangling from the hook beside her chair.
She also saw Carine, in an apparently unlined maxi dress, climbing into Station Three, holding her flip-flops atop her lap.
Her hair was down, her lips were bright, and she was holding a teal waxing appointment tag.
All at once, jolts of surprise, irritation, longing, and exhaustion grounded through Heidi, liquifying her reflexes, so all she could do was glower.
“Totally fine.” Carine beamed at Viki. “I don’t need a gap between chairs. I know that lady.”
“You know Miss Heidi?” Viki looked wide-eyed to Heidi for confirmation. It hadn’t seemed to dawn on her that two people from the same rural area might know each other.
“Oh, yeah,” Carine said huskily, and behind Viki’s back, her smile fell off. “I’m the redhead she loves the most. By the way, how good is your waxer? I’m looking for a little more precision than I got last time.”
Not doing this.
Heidi gestured to Xuan and grabbed a towel out of the supply bin to step on. “Something came up. I’ve got to reschedule.”
“Nothing serious, no?” he asked.
Plenty serious.
She wasn’t going to sit in a chair next to that woman and pretend everything was fine. It was bad enough that she’d had to sit across from her to close on the Shora property.
Everyone else in attendance may have been oblivious, but the entire time, Carine had chewed lazily on her pen cap and stared at Heidi, and it wasn’t the“Fuck me, I’ve been a bad girl”stare Carine was so good at giving without knowing. Heidi hadn’t figured out yet what it meant. She’d never seen that look on Carine’s face before.
Heidi shoved her feet into her loafers, snatched her keys out of her purse, and dropped ten bucks into the tip jar. “I’ll call you,” she said to Xuan. “Soon.”
“You promise?”
Heidi held her breath and pushed open the door.
He’d asked that on the night she’d been turning his ass into a patchwork of whip marks, and in the exact same tone.
