Keith’s glorious grin warmed his entirely gorgeous face. “Funny, that’s exactly how I remember it. You want to meet at the Italian place at six, or…should I get your number and we can discuss it, or…?”
“Yes. Yes, all of that. Good. Sounds good. That yes. Sounds good yes. Oh my god.” Stacy was going to crawl under one of her salon chairs and hide forever. She thrust a hand out and whispered, “Give me your phone, I’ll put my number in. Or, you know, maybe I’ll die of embarrassment.”
“Do the first one, not the second.” Keith came back to her with his phone, and stood distractingly near while she, with shaking hands, put her number into his phone and hit ‘call’ so his number would be in hers.
A few seconds later her phone rang and she startled a little, mumbling, “Oh, dammit, I’m sorry, someone’s calling me,” before she realized what was actually happening. Her face went hot, and, mortified, she handed Keith’s phone back to him.
His grin hadn’t faltered at all. “Better answer and see who it is.”
Stacy, feeling like a prime idiot, did, and he lifted his phone to his ear, voice warm and deep both on the phone and two steps away from her. “Hey, is this Stacy Carbone?”
She squeaked, “Yes,” and his grin broadened.
“This is Keith Raleigh, from the hair salon? Mr. Million Miles Of Hair Man? You gave me your number, so I was just calling to make sure we were on for tomorrow night. Dinner at the Italian place at six? I’ll make reservations.” He sounded like it was a perfectly common thing to have a phone conversation with someone close enough to feel their body heat.
“That sounds great,” she whispered. “I’ll see you there?”
“Well, it is Sunday,” he reminded her. “Maybe we’ll run into each other at the holiday bazaar in the square.”
Stacy had never gone to the bazaar on purpose in her life. That, she guessed, was about to change. She smiled up at him, feeling oddly shy. “Maybe we will. Thanks for calling, Keith. I’m glad you did.”
“I am too.” His dark eyes shone with pleasure. “See you tomorrow, Stacy.”
He hung up, winked, and walked out of the salon.
CHAPTER4
You didn’tposefor her,his stag said in terrible disappointment as Keith left the salon.How can she understand our BEAUTY if you don’t pose for her?
Keith, who had been feeling rather pleased with himself, briefly wished he could kick his stag. “Posing isn’t everything, bud. She thought I was cute. Or charming. Something like that. She liked me enough, anyway, okay?”
The stag sniffed dubiously.There is no enough when it comes to our fated mate. Except for me. I’ll be enough. No one can resist my BEAUTY.
It was a wonder, Keith thought, that he had gotten this far in life without at least one woman punching him in his fairly perfect nose. He tried. He reallytriedto keep the stag’s vanity under control, but it was like trying to keep a runaway train under control.
More like that, in fact, than seemed fair. In stag form, he was kind of huge: shifter animals tended to be larger than their true counterparts, and a true red deer buck could weigh almost six hundred pounds. Keith hadn’t ever stood on a scale in his stag form—heaven forbid the beast should develop a weight complex, which he was pretty sure it would embrace wholeheartedly—but he was reasonably confident he weighed in around seven hundred pounds, maybe even seven fifty.
Having a seven hundred pound deer rampaging through his head was alotlike dealing with a runaway train. Keith had no idea how even larger shifters managed at all. Maybe their shifter animals weren’t as…
Beautiful? the stag inquired, and Keith, trotting down the salon steps, had to laugh.
I’m sure they’re not,he said fondly. He did love the big silly creature, even if it drove him crazy a lot.
His stag, startled, said,It’s cold!and Keith, flipping the collar of his coat up, shivered an agreement. He hadn’t known how insulating all that hair was. “I’m going to have to buy a hat.”
But ourhair!If the stag could frown, it would have as it remembered the reason he was cold was because of the haircut. After a moment’s pause, though, it recovered.A hat will mash our new hair and that will not be HANDSOME.
“Well, take your pick, buddy. Cold, or slightly less beautiful than usual.”
The poor stag stared at him in horror from inside Keith’s own head, and fell silent to contemplate which of those two terrible options was worse. Keith, grinning, fell in with his family, who were all determined to say the most cutting thing—as it were—about his new hair, and to be as loud as possible about it. Secure in the knowledge that he had a first date with his fated mate lined up the next evening, Keith didn’t even mind.
He especially didn’t mind when Noah, seeing the whole group of them working their way across the square, broke off playing and came over at a run. The kid skidded to a stop a few yards in front of Keith and spun an imperious finger, indicating Keith should turn. The stag brightened: it liked anything that involved posing and showing off for people.
Keith, grinning, spread his hands a little and turned slowly, letting Noah get the full effect of his haircut, until the kid stepped forward to offer a fist-bump and a solemn, “Lookin’ good, Mr. Raleigh. How much did you get cut?”
“Apparently twenty-seven inches.”
Noah’s eyes popped. “Atfive dollars an inch? That’s…” His eyes stayed wide, but he ducked his head and started counting on his fingers, audibly whispering, “If five times twenty is, uh, a hunnred, and five times seven is, uh,” his whisper dropped, “five ten fifteen twenty twen—THIRTY FIVE that’s A HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS EACH.”
