EveryDayGlam!!BeautyTip
Coconut HairMask
1 egg,beaten
¼ cup oliveoil
1 tablespoon coconut oil,melted
Beat together in a small bowl. Using a brush that you would use to apply hair color. Paint the egg product near the scalp and then spread it to the ends of your hair. Twist your hair up and close to the scalp and secure with a clip. Wrap your hair in plastic wrap and let sit for 4 to 6 hours. Wash, condition, and style asnormal.
* * *
“Okay,friends, so as you can see, I have wrapped my hair in plastic wrap.” Daisy twisted to both sides, keeping her eyes on the camera lens as she did so. This kept her nose from lifting in the air as she turned, and the last thing she wanted to do was look like a snob in front of her 11 millionsubscribers.
Brittany Rothchild, her rival for top MyHeartChannel beauty channel, trolled her comments section regularly. Her comments started all-out wars with Daisy’s subscribers over product selection and brush usage, not to mention the nasty things she said about Daisy herself. According to Brittany, Daisy’s hair was too brassy, her nose was too pert, and her eyes were as dull as what comes out of the backside of ahorse.
Of course, Daisy couldn’t prove that it was Brittany who left those comments, not without a warrant to get her IP address. Mark, Daisy’s lawyer, was on standby to file a libel suit, but Daisy didn’t want to take part in a battle she didn’t start. Brittany could do whatever she wanted on her channel. As far as Daisy was concerned, there was enough success out there for both of them, and wasting her time trying to spread poison wouldn’t do her, or her subscription rate, anygood.
Daisy had dealt with trolls since her first MyHeartChannel post. This was no different. Except that she was hyper aware of her image right now, because she was being considered by KPaka Makeup Company for her own line of all-natural beauty products. Ever since she was a teen with acne and a struggling channel, she’d dreamed of having her own eye shadows, blushes, foundations, brushes, creams, and lipsticks—oh, the lipsticks! She knew how to have a successful MyHeartChannel, but putting together suppliers and manufacturers was like going to the moon. She needed KPaka to make her dream a reality. Building a popular channel was just the first step, and it’d taken ten years to attract enough subscribers to get KPaka’sattention.
Thinking of all the amazing people who watched and commented positively on every episode, she smiled as if they were right in front of her. “I’m going to leave this in my hair for four hours and then I’ll be back to let you know how it turns out.” She gave a happy little wave to the camera and shut itoff.
She scratched her neck only to come up with fingers full of egg and oil. A warm trickle ran down her temple, and she swiped it quickly away with the back of her hand. “Ew.” At this rate, her post would be a commercial for salmonella. She wiped her hands on the towel she’d placed in her lap to catch drips as she applied the hair mask. The plastic wrap was supposed to keep all this on her hair and it wasn’tworking.
…Nowwhat?
She turned the camera back on. “Hi, friends. It appears that the plastic wrap isn’t oil tight.” She swiped at her forehead and brought her fingers to the camera to show viewers the oils. “I could take it off and use an old T-shirt instead of the plastic, but the plastic is holding in heat, which helps the hair to absorb all those wonderful natural proteins and nutrients from the egg andoil.
“I’ve got to come up with something to keep the oil from dripping into my eyes and down the back of my neck. I thought about a pillowcase, but I’d need to cut it and finish the edges so it didn’t unravel.” She bit her lip and looked up, mentally running through the kitchen and the linen closet. The whole idea behind this post was to use household items to repair damaged hair. She needed to come up with something—fast.
“I’m going to go in search and I’ll be back to let you know what I’vefound.”
She clicked the camera off again and sighed. It was six in the morning. While she’d been filming for over an hour, Quinton was undoubtedly asleep, which meant her pillaging was limited and must be done withstealth.
Of course, she wouldn’t have to film so early in the morning if Quinton hadn’t needed a place to stay. He’d used student loans to get through vet school and had taken out a substantial loan to start his clinic. Eventually, he would build onto the clinic and live there, but for now, he wanted to sink everything he made into becoming debt free. Which meant he slept in her studio turned spare bedroom and she filmed in her north-facing bedroom, where light poured in through the bank of windows all the livelongday.
She quietly opened her bedroom door, the plastic wrap crinkling as she poked her head into the hallway. Quinton’s door was shut tight and she let out a sigh of relief. Plodding quietly down the hall in her bare feet, she came up short when she saw an arm hanging over the end of the couch. A strong arm. An arm with dark hair that was most definitely not her brother’s coppery-colored fuzz. She gulped back ascream.
Okay, those are my sheets and pillows, so obviously Quinton knows he’shere.
Her heart beating wildly, she turned her head to glance at Quinton’s door.Crinkle-crinklewent the plastic wrap. She cringed at the noise. Wood floors were beautiful, but they did nothing—NOTHING—to absorb even the smallest sound. She cursed herself for falling into the sales pitch of easy to clean and durable. She’d give anything for wall-to-wall carpet right now. The carpet guy should have brought up the fact that one day she would want to sneak around her own house so as not to wake a sleeping stranger. Hello! She totally would have gone for the Three Bears salespitch.
Daisy crept closer, her hand pressed over her mouth to muffle her breathing, which sounded like a car speeding through a tunnel. Slowly, the top of a head came into view. Brown hair with a slight wave. Long. Much too long and unkempt, but clean. Next came a deeply tanned face shrouded in a beard. She couldn’t make out his features, standing behind him as she was. Two more caterpillar steps and she had full view of a tanned and toned barechest.
Daisy stopped breathing all together as she stared at the wonderfully shaped man on her couch. He wasn’t cut or chiseled, but he was fit and he had a nice upper body and a flat stomach. He shifted, his bare leg sliding out from under theblanket.
She gasped. Was he naked? On her couch?Who…?
Ready to shake him awake and kick him to the curb, she moved around the couch, not even caring that her head continued to crinkle like some bizarre cone-headalien.
She leaned down to poke his shoulder, two fingers at the ready, and paused within a cat’s whisker of touching his skin. The man may have a mane of hair and a beard to match, but there was no mistakingBeckett Kingsley. Her brain took a moment to reboot as she stared down at the face of her brother’s best friend. When it was back up and running, her memory bank released a hard drive full ofmemories.
She could have sworn Beckett was going to kiss her on her sixteenth birthday. He was so dashing that night in his suit and tie, telling everyone goodbye before he headed off into the world on his first humanitarian mission. He kept staring at her mouth as he talked about all the things he was going to do, to see. He lifted a strand of her belt-length hair and twirled it between his fingers, making her whole body tingle inanticipation.
He hadn’t kissed her. Hadn’t even made themove.
And now he was naked on her couch. And he smelled like her mintshampoo.
