It had all gone without a hitch. And everyone was treating J.J. like she’d just won an Oscar herself. She kept pushing the compliments aside.It’s a salon. A nice one, sure, but it wasn’t curing cancer, for crying out loud!
Libby caught up with J.J. as she was overseeing her niece Lila on the credit card reader and scheduling software.
“You’re going to pretend to charge, run credit cards but refund. We just want to be sure it all works. Just do that for the Sandbar Sisters. They’re aware we’re going to use them as guinea pigs.”
“Got it.”
Lila had decided to jump from Hope’s restaurant to the duties here at the salon. J.J. hadn’t wanted to raid her friends’ businesses to staff this one, but Lila was family, after all. Also, the pace at Hope’s had picked up so much Lila said it was feeling like real work: “Here, I can sit sometimes.” That said, Hope didn’t seem to have a problem finding young culinary students and foodies who wanted to work at her oh-so-trendy bistro.
Libby waited until J.J. finished coaching Lila.
“You did it,” Libby said. “This place is stunning. So gorgeous.”
“Thank you. Is it too much?”
“No, you had the budget of a small city, thanks to Stone, no way too much.”
“No, I mean, well, it’s so posh.”
“I think Irish Hills has got enough posh summer clientele these days to warrant a little putting on the dog, as Emma would say.”
“True.”
“I wanted to check in. You seem, well, distant. Are we okay?”
“Oh, me, yes, I just was, you know, doing all this.” J.J. waved her arm around to the now-completed salon.
“Gotcha, so, what’s your take?”
“On?”
“Stone. Is he okay? He never tried to undermine or undercut or, I don’t know, bring in an out-of-town investor we don’t trust?”
J.J. thought about Stone, and her changed feelings for him. She wanted to give Libby her thoughtful and measured opinion of the man. But the words in her head were all superlatives. She realized that thinking of Stone made her happy. But she stopped short of sharing that.
“You know I wanted to hate him; I did hate him. And I’ve done exactly what I thought needed to be done here with zero undermining. If anything, he pushed me to make it nicer, not cheaper. Not sure how you stay a billionaire spending like this, but I guess this is still small potatoes.”
“It seems like you’re not giving me the full story. You didn’t catch him trying to sabotage this in any way?”
“Ha, no. Not at all. He just wanted this to be another great place in Irish Hills. The guy learned to use an Allen wrench, for crying out loud. He’s come a long way.”
“Thank you. I’m so glad you got this going and kept an eye on him. I’ve had my own plates spinning. I wonder, in the next few days if we could talk, just us. For coffee.”
Something made J.J. hesitate. She didn’t want advice from Libby on how to be a mom. The conversation she’d heard between Libby and Viv still stung when she thought of it. She’d kept her mouth shut and suppressed her desire to go to battle for her kids. The last person in the world she wanted to battle was Libby.
That said, she wasn’t sure if she could trust herself to get coffee with Libby. And put things on the table.
She’d get over it. They’d get over it with a little time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, a quick word!”
Stone was standing in the middle of the salon. Luckily, J.J. didn’t have to answer Libby’s coffee question. Stone was going to make a speech or something.
“What’s he up to?”
Libby shrugged in answer.
The assembled, well-coiffed, and juicily moisturized guests were all handed flutes of champagne, courtesy of a wait staff that materialized out of nowhere. There was also cheese and little sandwiches. J.J. hadn’t ordered any of it. Stone sure knew how to do it up.
