“Natalie’s right. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. It’s just another day.”
Brit’s eyeballs practically bugged out. “Just another day? Justanotherday?!” She tipped back her head and released a loud breath. “Why do you send me the difficult ones?” she asked the ceiling. Then she straightened and lifted a single finger, her long fingernail sharp and pointy. “No.”
She waggled her finger from side to side, and Lucy followed it in the mirror like she was being hypnotized.
“This is not just another day. This is your day. This is the beginning of a new era. An era where you are a queen and you look like one, talk like one, and live like one.”Brit’s voice rose above the other noise in the salon. She waved her hands animatedly, putting most of the Italians Lucy had ever met to shame. “Bestie, look at me.”
Lucy’s gaze snapped up, obeying Brit’s commanding voice.
Colin murmured under his breath, “Here she goes.” Then he squeezed Lucy’s shoulder in a supportive gesture.
Natalie came around on her other side to hold her hand. Brit straightened to her fullest height behind the chair, filling the whole space of the mirror. Lucy felt like she was in the presence of a genie who’d been released from a thousand years trapped in a bottle.
“I’m telling you that you are going to manifest your greatest self. You will manifest queen energy, aura,andhair fit for royalty.” Brit snapped her three-inch nails with a loud resonatingsnap.
Two women appeared beside her.
“Jess, Lynn, this is Queen Lucy. We are doing full hair and makeup today. Think big, think power, think badass bitch who makes a man the kind of Mister who wants to spend the rest of his days worshipping the ground she walks on.”
Jess and Lynn started arranging trays with brushes, color palettes and hair styling supplies.
Brit raked her nails under Lucy’s hair, gathering the mass and propping it on top of Lucy’s head. “Think goddess who owns her fine-ass curves. Who drinks champagne and eats charcuterie. Who wears Dolce and Gabbana like it’s herjob. We’re gonna immerse her in beauty Queen energy so thick her man and every other person in the room won’t be able to look anywhere else.” Brit met Lucy’s gaze in the mirror. “Are you waxed or lasered?”
“Uh…” She was pretty sure thatneitherwas the wrong answer.
Sure enough, Brit closed her eyes and gave a small shake of her head, then turned to the stylist on her right. “Jess, clear your afternoon, looks like we need the works.”
Lucy looked helplessly at her cousin, who shrugged.
“This is why I give her a chair, hon. She works magic like no one in this city. By the time she’s done with you, you’ll see a version of yourself you never knew existed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lucy spent the next four hours under Brit and Natalie’s complete mercy. After Brit, who was an award-winning colorist, had her in foils for a good chunk of the afternoon, Natalie snipped Lucy’s hair with precise confident clips, while chatting casually about family, weddings, and how grateful she was that at least now the limelight was deflected off her for another few months. Lucy sat in her chair, mute for the most part, as the flurry of salon activity buzzed around her.
Later, she emerged from a little room down the hall after being well and truly tortured by the aesthetician named Jess, whom Lucy was pretty sure had waxed every single hair off her body, except that on her head. Lynn handed her a thin flute of golden bubbly liquid as she walked back into the main salon, and despite herself Lucy had to admit, she could get used to being pampered this way.
Brit was right. It did feel good primping and preening, to be given the permission to look and feel your finest. For the first time, she understood why her sister invested all the time and energy into her looks. It feltgood.
Thinking about Vanessa brought the usual pang of longing and worry. She’d wished her sister could see her now. When they were little, Vanessa always begged to do makeup on Lucy. Sometimes she’d cave, and they’d sit in Vanessa’s bedroom, on the bed littered with tubes of concealer and palettes of makeup.
They’d had some of their best conversations during those times, commiserating over family dramatics and their dreams for the future. Vanessa had always supported Lucy’s wish of taking over Barone & Sons, even if she hadn’t understood it. Much like Lucy supported Vanessa’s thirst for adventure and fame—even if she didn’t always think it was what was best for her.
“Shut the front door.” Vanessa’s voice echoed through the salon like Lucy’s nostalgia had conjured her. “Nat, who is this stunning creature who looks like my sister, walks like my sister, but has the freshly shaped eyebrows of a goddess?”
Lucy blinked in the direction of the voice. Vanessa stood by the front door, suitcase in hand, hair in a sleek high ponytail, immense black sunglasses pushed down her nose as she peered over top with wide, expressive brown eyes, rimmed with thick dark lashes. Her cherry-red lips glistened in the bright light of the salon. A twenty-first century picture of Audrey Hepburn.
“Vanessa?” Lucy shot from her chair, shock and elation catapulting her toward her younger sister, who met her halfway and jumped into her arms, nearly bowling her over. She inhaled Vanessa’s expensive, signature scent and tried to absorb the shock that she was in her cousin’s hair salon. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Vanessa reared back and whipped off her sunglasses to shoot Lucy a look she’d seen many times in her life. Partaffronted, part pout. “What am I doing here? Where else am I supposed to be when my big sister sends me atext message,” she said these two words in a deeply accusatory tone, “telling me she is engaged to the Western Hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor, followed up by a super melodramatic call from Mom telling me there’s an engagement party in Portland on Saturday for my sister, and I better not embarrass the family by missing it.”
“Mom made you come here?” Lucy’s gaped because, heck, that was unexpected.
“Made me? Sissy, she threatened to disown me. But I have to say she didn’t have to work too hard to convince me. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Something about that statement didn’t ring right to Lucy, since Vanessa had expertly avoided her messages the last few days. But Vanessa hugged her again, wrapping her arms around Lucy like a bow—so Lucy pushed the inkling that something didn’t feel right aside and hugged her sister back fiercely.
She’d missed her sister, and knowing the craziness that would be coming up this weekend for the engagement party, she felt instantly better knowing Vanessa would be by her side. Her sister lived for the limelight, knew how to work magic in it. Lucy avoided it like the plague.
