Oh, feisty. She looked beautiful with flushed cheeks and sparks in her eyes. Nick kept that to himself.
“Let’s get to it. I want to blow this place quickly so we can grab some breakfast and be at the park by ten.”
Sasha pried open the box, then removed two bottles and a tube. The last item she took to the shower. Then she unfolded the instructions, peeled off a pair of flimsy, clear gloves, and shoved them into his chest. “Put these on.”
He barely had time to stare at the small plastic trappings and wonder how he was going to get his hands inside them when she brushed past him and started digging through her bag. A moment later, she came back with some claw-like clips. With the new brush, she sectioned off her hair into four quadrants, secured three of them in knots on her head, then mixed the two bottles together.
“I’m going to start with my hairline and the parts I just made. Watch. I’ll squeeze the bottle gently. After that, you have to do the same all over to cover my roots and scalp. Once we’ve used all this up, I’ll mix the other box so we can coat my hair all the way to my ends.”
Nick really didn’t understand much of what she said, but he shrugged as he wedged his hands into the gloves. He’d figure it out as he went along. “Sure.”
Wordlessly, she pulled the other pair from the matching box and began applying the dark mixture at her widow’s peak, working her way around her head and smoothing the dye back into her hair. When she reached her nape, she handed him the bottle with a sigh. “You’ll have to get the back.”
Wouldn’t all the inmates back at the big house get a good laugh out of him playing hairdresser? Not that he gave a shit. He hadn’t been there to make lifelong friends. He could do without a sliver of his man card for the morning if it avenged Mike and helped Sasha stay alive.
He did exactly as she asked, grabbing a hand towel when some of the goop ran down her neck. “Got it.”
“Now you have to cover the majority of the roots and scalp.” She demonstrated with the unbound section of her hair, taking small rows, applying a line of dye, working it in, then moving onto the next.
“That’s it?”
She nodded. “It’s easy. I used to do this for my mother. Even a kid can manage it.”
In other words, so could an insensitive idiot. Nick wished he could apologize for last night. But he wasn’t really sorry for touching her. And if she softened toward him, that would be dangerous. Him in her pants was the last thing Mike would have wanted, and Nick knew he was bad for Sasha. She deserved a man who could provide the best of everything, would love her gently, and didn’t have a record he could never shake.
In the silence, he took the bottle and repeated everything she’d done through the remaining sections of her hair. By the time he was squeezing air from the bottle, she was already mixing up the next and shoving it into his hands.
“Work this through to the ends.” She plucked up the shower cap from the little display of toiletries next to the sink. “Then I’ll wrap it up for twenty minutes.”
He nodded, working the rest of the gooey mixture into her strands until they were glossy and drenched. Normally, he’d take any opportunity to put his hands in her hair but this crap smelled somewhere between nasty and toxic. He was glad this would wash out in twenty-eight shampoos.
“Good enough,” she declared as she snapped on the plastic shower cap. “Set a timer, please. Knock on the bathroom door when twenty minutes have passed.”
The second he agreed, she grabbed her duffel and shoved him out. Moments later, he heard the shower running.
At the twenty-minute mark, he pounded on the door, but the water still ran for another ten.
Another thirty minutes after that, Nick was glancing at his watch, wondering what the hell she was doing in there. Suddenly, she opened the door.
His jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”
She looked delicate and ethereal as a blonde. As a brunette, her eyes sparkled green, her skin glowed, and he’d have sworn she was one of the sexiest women he’d met in his fucking life. She’d applied the makeup with a light hand and dried her hair into an easy, tousled style.
Nick would bet twenty bucks Mike wouldn’t even recognize this woman.
She peered at herself in the mirror. “I’ve never been anything but a blonde. But I don’t hate this color.”
Clearly, that surprised her.
“It’s—wow. You’re beautiful. Then again, you’d look pretty if you were bald and wearing a garbage sack.”
Sasha turned to him, hand on her hip. “I don’t understand you. One minute, you’re supportive, helpful, protective. The next you’re an absolute bastard. Then you flip-flop again. When you say things like that… Are you just trying to confuse me?”
He could say yes. He could lie to her. But he saw the hurt on her face, the confusion. She’d been through so much, and the last thing she needed to be worrying about now was what the hell he thought or wanted or felt. And all right, he didn’t like having her pissed off at him.
“The truth?”
She nodded. “That would be great.”
