Rachel Gibson - Truly Madly Yours

She’d taken her new independence and she’d run with it. She’d grabbed hold with both hands and taken a great big bite, and she was never going back. She’d lived as if she had to experience everything at once, before her freedom was snatched away from her. Whenever she thought back on those years, she knew she was lucky to be alive.

The last time she’d seen Henry, he’d tracked her down with the sole purpose of dragging her back home. By then she’d dumped Rocky and had moved into a basement apartment in Spokane with two other girls. Henry had taken one look at the garage sale furniture, overflowing ash trays, and collection of empty booze bottles, and ordered her to pack her clothes. She’d refused and the confrontation had turned ugly. He’d told her if she didn’t get in his car, he would disown her, forget she was his daughter. She’d called him a controlling pompous son of a bitch.

“I don’t want to be your daughter anymore. It’s too exhausting. You were always more dictator than father. Don’t ever hunt me down again,” were the last words she’d spoken to Henry.

After that, whenever Gwen called her on the telephone, she made sure Henry was never home. Her mother visited Delaney occasionally in whichever city she happened to be living, but of course Henry never came with her. He’d been true to his word. He’d disowned Delaney completely, and she’d never felt so free-free of his control, free to screw up her life with abandon. And sometimes she really screwed up, but in the process, she also grew up.

She’d been free to drift from state to state and job to job until she figured out what to do with her life. She’d finally figured it out six years ago when she enrolled in beauty school. After the first week, she’d known she’d found her niche. She loved the tactile sensations and the whole process of creating something wonderful right before her eyes. She had the freedom to dress outrageously if she wanted to, because there was always someone a little bolder than herself.

It may have taken Delaney longer than most to settle on a career, but at last she’d found something she was good at and loved to do.

Being a stylist gave her the freedom to be creative. It also gave her the freedom to move when she began to feel trapped in one place, although she hadn’t felt claustrophobic in a while.

Not until a few months ago when Henry had flexed his muscle one last time and left that appalling will, controlling her life once again.

Delaney picked up her boots and headed into the bedroom. She flipped on the light and tossed her boots toward the closet. What was wrong with her? What would make her kiss Nick out on a crowded dance floor in spite of their sordid past? There were other available men around. True, some were married or divorced with five kids, and none of them were as fine as Nick, but she didn’t have a painful past with other men.

Nick the snake. That’s who he was, like that big python with the mesmerizing eyes in The Jungle Book, and she was just one more helpless victim.

Delaney looked at herself in the mirror above her dresser and frowned. Maybe if she weren’t so lonely and aimless she wouldn’t be so susceptible to Nick’s hypnotic charms. There had been a time in her life when aimlessness had been her goal. Not anymore. She was living in a town she didn’t want to live in, working in a salon with no real intentions of success. Her only goals were to survive and aggravate Helen. Something had to change, and she had to change it.

Monday morning Delaney thought about advertising for a manicurist in the small daily newspaper, but she resisted the idea because the salon would be open for only seven months. She’d stayed awake last night thinking of ways to make a success out of the business, even though she would have it for only a short time. She wanted to feel proud of herself. She was going to end her secret hair war with Helen and stay as far away from Nick as humanly possible.

After Delaney opened the salon, she grabbed a poster of Claudia Schiffer, her perfect body squeezed into a lace Valentino, her golden hair curled and blowing artfully about her beautiful face. There was nothing like a glamorous poster to draw attention.

Delaney kicked off her shoes with the huge buckles and climbed up on the window bay. She’d just stuck the poster on the plate glass when the bell over the door rang. She glanced to her left and set the tape on the ledge. One of the Howell twins stood just inside the entrance gazing about the salon, her light brown hair held back from her pretty face by a wide red headband.

“Can I help you?” Delaney asked as she carefully climbed out of the window, wondering if this was the twin who had jumped on the back of Nick’s Harley last Saturday night. If she was, the woman had bigger problems than split ends.

Her blue eyes raked Delaney from head to toe, scrutinizing her green and black striped tights, green lederhosen, and black turtleneck. “Do you take walk-ins?” she asked.

Delaney was desperate for clients, desperate for anyone who didn’t qualify for a senior citizen discount, but she really didn’t care for the woman’s close examination, as if she were looking for faults. Delaney didn’t care if she lost this potential customer, and so she said, “Yes, but I charge twenty-five dollars.”

“Are you good?”

“I’m the best you’ll find around here.” Delaney shoved her feet into her shoes, a little surprised that the woman wasn’t already out the door, running down the street toward a ten-dollar haircut.

“That isn’t saying much. Helen sucks.”

Perhaps she’d rushed to judgment. “Well, I don’t suck,” she said simply. “In fact, I’m very good.”

The woman reached for the headband and pulled it from her hair. “I want the bottom trimmed and layered up to here,” she said, indicating her jaw-line. “No bangs.”

Delaney cocked her head to the side. The woman standing before her had a great jawline and nice high cheekbones. Her forehead was in proportion to the rest of her face. The cut she wanted would look good on her, but with her big blue eyes, Delaney knew something short and boyish would look stunning. “Come on back.”

“We met briefly at a party on the Fourth of July,” the twin said as she followed Delaney. “I’m Lanna Howell.”

Delaney stopped in front of a shampoo chair. “Yes, I recognized you.” Lanna sat and Delaney draped the woman’s shoulders in a silver shampoo cape and white fluffy towel. “You have a twin sister, right?” she asked, when what she really wanted to know was if this was the sister who’d glued herself to Nick the other night.

“Yeah, Lonna.”

“That’s right,” she said as she analyzed her client’s hair between her fingers and thumb. Then she adjusted the cape over the rear of the chair and carefully eased Lanna back until her neck rested comfortably in the dip of the shampoo sink. “What did you use to lighten your hair?” She grabbed the spray nozzle, then tested the water temperature with her hand.

“Sun-In and lemon juice.”

Delaney mentally rolled her eyes at the logic of some women who spent big bucks at the cosmetics counter, then went home and dumped a five-dollar bottle of peroxide on their heads.

With one hand she protected Lanna’s face, neck, and ears from the spray while the other saturated the hair with warm water. She used a mild shampoo and natural conditioner, and as she worked, the two women chatted idly about the weather and the beautiful colors of autumn. When she was finished, she wrapped Lanna’s head in a towel and led her to the salon chair.

“My sister said she saw you the other night in Hennesey’s,” Lanna stated as Delaney blotted the water from her hair.

Delaney glanced in the big wall mirror, studying Lanna’s reflection. So, she thought as grabbed her comb, it was the other twin who had been with Nick. “Yeah, I was there. They had a pretty good R &B band up from Boise.”

“That’s what I heard. I work in the restaurant at the microbrewery, so I couldn’t make it.”

As Delaney combed out the tangles and secured the hair into five sections with duckbill clamps, she purposely moved the subject away from Hennesey’s. She asked Lanna about her job, and the conversation turned to the big ice sculpture festival the town held every December. According to Lanna, the festival had turned into quite an event.

As a child, Delaney and been shy and introverted, but after years of attempting to put her clients at ease, she could shoot the bull with anyone about anything. She could moon over Brad Pitt as easily as she could commiserate over cramps. Stylists were a lot like bartenders and priests. Some people just seemed compelled to spill their guts and confess shocking details of their lives. Styling chair confessions were just one of the many things she missed about her life before she’d accepted the terms of Henry’s will. She also missed the competition and camaraderie between stylists and the juicy gossip that made Delaney’s life look tame in comparison.

“How well do you know Nick Allegrezza?”

Delaney’s hand stilled, and then she blunt cut a section of hair at the center of Lanna’s nape. “We grew up here in Truly at the same time.”

“But did you know him very well?”

She glanced into the mirror again, then back down at her hands, snipping a guideline from left to right. “I don’t think anyone really knows Nick. Why?”

“My friend Gail thinks she’s in love with him.”

“Then she has my sympathy.”

Lanna laughed. “You don’t care?”

“Of course not.” Even if she thought Nick was capable of loving any woman, he wasn’t her concern. “Why should I care?” she asked and removed the clip at the back of Lanna’s head and clamped it on the bib of her lederhosen.

“Gail told me all about Nick and you and what happened when you lived here.”