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“Remember the first time you cut my hair?” he asked, his voice softer than it needed to be given that there was no one else in the shop to overhear them. “You’d been practicing on your brothers. You made them sit through three haircuts each before you agreed to work on me. And then you only did it because they took off like rockets the second they saw you coming.”
“Well,” she said, wanting like crazy to back up a couple of steps, but refusing to divulge how nervous he really did make her. “I thought I should practice on family first.”
Though she hadn’t thought of it in ages, the day he mentioned popped vividly to mind. She could picture the way he’d leaned against her mother’s kitchen counter, drinking lemonade and eating shortbread while her brothers squirmed and complained about the dishtowels around their necks and their fear that Gabby might scalp them. Having just turned fifteen, but seeming years older, Cal had stood silently, observing, until finally she’d run out of siblings. Then he’d pushed away from the counter and announced, “My turn.”
Now those strange, translucent eyes of his narrowed slightly, and she realized she might have hurt his feelings by suggesting he wasn’t “family.” Throughout his teens, he’d practically lived at the Coombses’ farm, hanging out with her brothers and being as helpful to her parents as one of their own children. Maybe more. Her mother had lived to feed him, because unlike her own sometimes picky kids, Cal had always eaten two helpings of everything.
Only Cal and Gabby had never quite bridged the gap between friend and family.
“We’re not kids anymore,” he said. “I think we can both handle a haircut. Don’t you?”
Challenge filled his expression.
No. Absolutely not. I am a sissy.
“Of course.”
Cal’s eyes flickered with what Gabby suspected was amusement. Swallowing the last of her reticence, she nodded toward one of the two old-fashioned barber chairs. “Have a seat. You’ll probably want to take off that fancy suit jacket, though. You can hang it on the coat tree by the front desk. I’ve got to go in back to get a cape.”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
Leaving him, Gabby headed to the rear of the shop and the laundry bag she’d brought with her this morning. Extracting a clean stack of neatly folded capes and a pile of white washcloths, she moved with the sureness of someone who had performed this task literally thousands of times. Inside, however, she felt like grape jelly.
How could she casually cut his hair after what had happened the last time they were together?
Detouring into a small restroom with a single overhead lightbulb, Gabby yanked the cord that illuminated the room.
She winced as she peered into the mirror. The red curls she typically bundled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck looked like a nuclear blast in Technicolor. Escaped tendrils provided fallout all around her head.
Setting aside the capes and towels, she quickly reassembled the ‘do, scraping her feral hair into something more managed. She didn’t need to look attractive for him. But she would like to exude confidence and self-possession, two qualities that had been in short supply fifteen years ago. Digging a tube of lip balm from her front pocket, she swiped it over her dry lips.
There was a whole river of white water under the bridges she and Cal had burned, and frankly she hated to churn it up, especially now. On the brink of personal change, she wanted to feel confident and bold—not to be reminded of one of the most awkward moments in her entire life.
It’s been fifteen years, Gabby.
To Cal, what had happened the last summer after their senior year in high school was probably nothing more than a dim recollection. Maybe an anecdote. He was a guy, after all. He’d walked away from Honeyford, from her family and from his best friends that year. One sexually inexperienced young woman desperate to discover what she was missing in life was unlikely to hold a place in his long-term memory.
The fact was that with a father, three brothers and a grandpa who owned a barbershop, Gabby had considered herself fairly comfortable around men (the ones she wasn’t hoping to marry). But Cal Wells, with his silent stares and inscrutable expressions, had always been the exception. Cal had thrown her off-kilter and…that one evening, anyway…excited her.
Hardening her gray eyes at the mirror, she made her reflection a solemn promise. “That was then, this is now. The old Gabby may have been a fuzzy caterpillar, but the new and improved Gabrielle Coombs is a butterfly, graceful and free.
“If he can act as if nothing happened, so can you.” Gabby gave herself a smile. Shoulders back, chin high, she collected her capes and towels and returned to the front of the shop.
Cal stood a couple of feet from her front desk, his suit jacket off, his hands in his trouser pockets. A sober, contemplative expression furrowed his brow as he studied a photo of her grandfather.
“He always liked you,” Gabby offered, knowing it was true. Max had considered Caleb Wells an old soul. “He said you had integrity.”
Slowly, Cal turned his head. Something that looked like pain flashed through his eyes. “I liked him, too.”
Crossing to the leather-cushioned barber chair, Gabby waited for Cal to follow. His serious expression was beginning to border on grim. The thoughts that hid behind his eyes seemed particularly alive and active now, even more so than when he’d first walked through the door.
For a moment she wondered if he’d changed his mind about the haircut, but then he moved, seating himself and patiently allowing her to adjust a paper collar and white towel around the neck of his dress shirt.
In their senior year of high school, Gabby’s best friend, Lesley, who had started dating her oldest brother, Eric, by that time, had claimed that Cal possessed “mystique.” Also, that he had lips made for kissing. Gabby, who, tragically, had yet to experience her first kiss at that point, could only wonder.
Lesley should see his lips now.
Matured, Cal’s features looked as if a master sculptor had carved them in a burst of love for the human race. His lips had clearly defined peaks, their fullness perfect for photographing and…other things. Lesley had married Eric shortly after college, eventually providing two adorable nieces for Gabby to spoil, but she was still willing to discuss a man’s kissing potential…for Gabby’s sake.
Best friends, sisters-in-law and confidants, she and Les had shared a lot of info with each other over the years, but not even Lesley knew that the kissing potential of Cal’s lips was no longer a mystery to Gabby.
“Something wrong?”
“Huh?” she answered stupidly, jerking to attention and watching the very lips she was pondering rise slightly—right side only, as usual.
His translucent eyes narrowed. “You seem…ruffled, Gabby. Something bothering you?”
“No. I’m not ruffled. Just deciding what to do with your hair. How much do you want off?”
“Enough so that I won’t need another trim for at least a month. I’m heading into a busy time. Afraid I may not get to a barber again for a while.”
“Okay.” Flipping open a cape, she settled it around him. Treat him like any other client. “So, Cal, what brings you back to—”
“How’ve you been, Gabby?”
They spoke over each other.
Clipping the ends of the cape together, Gabby reached for a comb and spray bottle of water and forced herself to smile. “Me first.”
“All right.”
“What brings you back to Honeyford? No, no, wait. First why don’t you tell me where you’ve been all these years?”
“Chicago,” he answered, accommodating her. “I went to the University of Illinois for graduate school, got an internship position in my field then stayed on with the company.”
Gabby spritzed his hair. “Graduate school.” She was impressed. Glad for him, too, because she understood the significance of his earning a master’s degree. No one else in his family had completed high school. Alcoholism had taken its toll on his relatives, diminishing their ability to work or parent in anything more than spurts of sobriety. Cal had spent most of his teen years trying to establish a clear difference between himself and the rest of the Wells clan, and it looked as if he’d accomplished his goal. “What’s your field?”
“Environmental engineering.”
Okay, she was really impressed. “Sounds like a good fit. You always loved the outdoors.”
Cal shrugged his broad shoulders. “I got a great job offer. The kind a kid who never had two nickels to rub together couldn’t pass up. As for being a good fit, I worked in a high rise, as a corporate consultant.”
Which explained the expensive suit, she supposed.
Setting the spray bottle down, she picked up her comb and scissors. Lifting the first hank of hair she planned to snip, feeling the thick silkiness, her fingers buzzed with the sudden, unexpected memory of the last time she had touched his hair.
Back then, her touch had been tentative, her fingers clumsy. Definitely more fuzzy worm than graceful butterfly. When he’d touched her, however, there had been an undeniable moment of exhilarating flight….
“So—” she cleared her throat, trying to change the channel in her mind “—you said, ‘worked.’ Past tense?”
“Very past tense.”
Forcing herself to focus on the actions that gave her confidence, Gabby took the first cut. Keep talking. Talking relaxes the client…and the barber. “You’re changing fields, then?”
As she began to work in earnest, snips of shiny brown hair floated to the cape like confetti. “Positions,” he responded. “I found a job that pays less, but I’ll be working on the land.”
“Where will you be—”
“Nope.”
“What?”
He looked up through the hair she’d pushed over his forehead. “How long have I known you?”
Gabby blinked at the unexpected question. “Well, technically we haven’t seen each other for—”
“Forget ‘technically.’” His gaze toughened. “Here are the stats. Years we’ve known each other—twenty. Times you’ve allowed conversations deeper than a puddle—fewer than a handful. Why is that, Gabby? I never noticed you skirting meaningful conversations with anyone else.”
Gabby faltered, blindsided, and loathing the feeling of being transparent. Yes, she had avoided deeper conversations with Cal. She’d put on a pretty good front with others, but Cal had read her too easily for her own comfort.
Sending her scissors skimming across the ends of his hair, she murmured, “I’m happy to have a conversation on any topic you like, but I want to finish your trim before my morning rush starts, so—”
“Let’s start with the topic of this barbershop,” he interrupted. “Why you’re selling it, for example. And whether it has anything at all to do with Dean Kingsley.”
Chapter Two
The scissors slipped, knicking Gabby’s knuckle. “Damn,” she swore, shaking the pained hand. After checking for blood (hardly any), she gaped at Cal in the mirror. “How do you know I’m—”
The answer came to her before she completed the sentence. She glanced toward the coat tree, where she’d told him to hang his jacket, then to the desk sitting right beside it, and her gape turned into a glare. “You snooped around my desk? When I went in the back? You read my private papers!”
“I glanced over,” he admitted. “Your ‘private papers’ are sitting out where anyone can see them, Gabrielle.”
“Anyone who leans over to read the fine print,” she snapped. Leaving him, she rushed to the desk to conceal the real-estate document. Good gravy, she didn’t need any of her other customers to walk in, read the papers and realize she was selling the shop—before she broke the news to her own family! Shoving the papers into a drawer, she slammed it shut…along with the scissors and comb she’d brought with her. Realizing her mistake, she yanked the drawer open, pulled out her tools and rounded on Caleb. “You couldn’t have known what those papers were about at a glance. You were snooping.”
As cool as ever, he shrugged. “I spent the morning at Honeyford Realty. I recognized their paperwork. Are you selling because of Kingsley?”
Resentment, hot and humid, filled Gabby from the stomach up.
Even though she’d tried to keep her infatuation for Dean under wraps, she knew Cal had figured out her secret.
Now his supernatural eyes pinned her to the spot. He looked like a boa constrictor laughing at a mouse.
“News still travels fast in Honeyford,” he said. “I bet I wasn’t downtown more than an hour before I heard that Kingsley got married a couple of months ago.” Cal’s head tsk-tsked slowly from side to side. “You’re not just selling the shop, are you? You’re running away.”
“Beep, beep! Comin’ through!”
Before Gabby could respond to Cal, Henry Berns, owner of Honey Bea’s Bakery across the street, opened the barbershop door. Pressing one scrawny shoulder against the glass, he bustled over the threshold, his knobby hands occupied with a pink pastry box. “Gotta set this down before I drop it. Don’t have the muscle strength I used to.”
Gabby watched Henry as if she were standing outside herself, a tight band of emotion constricting her breath so that she felt incapable of heaving a single word into her mouth.
Nearly a foot shorter than Cal, Henry nodded at the much younger man, whom he gave no indication of recognizing, then placed the string-wrapped box on the desk and winked at Gabby. “It’s a Dobish Torte. Two pounds of dark chocolate for my best girl.” Toddling happily to the vacant chair, he told Gabby, “You go ahead and finish up. I’ll grab a seat before the morning rush.” With a spryness that belied his seventy-five years (and the claim that he lacked muscle strength), Henry hopped into the chair next to Cal’s, helped himself to a comb and worked it through the gray waves he kept stiffly pomaded.
By sheer force of will, Gabby managed to murmur her thanks for the cake.
“Why, sure. Sweets for my sweetheart!” The old man winked into the mirror.
A knowing smile spread across Cal’s face, and Gabby blushed.
All her life she had felt a little more awkward, a little less beautiful than the girls around her, which was probably why the thought of Dean Kingsley had filled her with such joy. Dean had seemed so golden, so rich with gentlemanly grace, an innate country suave that had afforded Gabby countless hours of pleasure fantasizing about becoming Mrs. Country Suave.
In the barber chair to Cal’s right, Henry Berns hummed happily while perusing the latest copy of The Honeyford Buzz. All her most serious suitors were over seventy. Nothing had changed, and Cal knew it. As the curve of his lips bloomed into a full grin, Gabby felt once again that uncomfortable, haunting sense of déjà vu.
Reaching into his back pocket, Cal withdrew an expensive-looking leather wallet as he crossed toward her. Withdrawing a bill for the trim she hadn’t completed, he laid it on her desk. “See you around, Gabrielle.”
The door clicked softly shut behind him, and suddenly Gabby remembered exactly when she’d last seen his grin—full of enjoyment and humor and mischief—prior to today.
It had happened fourteen years, ten months and three weeks ago. The summer they’d graduated from high school.
Dean had come home from college to work in his father’s pharmacy, and Gabby had decided the time had come: She was going to tell her beloved exactly how she felt so they could begin their life together. Her courage stoked, her expectations huge and glorious, she waited for Dean to arrive at the Fourth of July celebration downtown. But when he showed up, there was a girl clinging happily to his arm, a lovely girl he introduced to everyone as the woman he hoped to marry.
Numb at first, feeling frozen inside, Gabby somehow managed to smile and congratulate Dean along with everyone else. Two hours past the fireworks display, however, her emotions thawed and the misery poured out in waves so overpowering it was difficult to breathe.
She had expected to become a woman in Dean’s arms. The best moments of her life were supposed to have happened with him. At eighteen, she had yet to experience her first kiss. Suddenly, it all seemed like such a horrid waste.
That was when Gabrielle Coombs decided enough was enough and threw herself at a boy for the very first time.
And Cal Wells took pity and made love to her.
Cal slipped on a pair of ridiculously expensive sunglasses, a gift from his ex-wife, who had never met a label she didn’t like. The dark glasses gave him the comforting illusion of privacy. He preferred not to make eye contact with others this morning. Not that many people in town were likely to remember him or would rush to welcome him back even if they did, but Cal’s emotions were running so high at the moment that he didn’t want to make small talk.
Gabrielle Coombs. She was still here, in their hometown. Still single from what he gathered. And, even though she hadn’t admitted a thing, he’d bet his last paycheck that she was still in love with Dean Kingsley.
Beneath his breath, Cal muttered a word that would cost his ten-year-old daughter a dollar if she said it.
“I acted like a jackass.” He spoke out loud to himself, a habit he’d gotten into since his marriage disintegrated. He’d gone years during which his lengthiest adult conversations occurred as he looked into the mirror while he was shaving. “Gabby never got over him,” he muttered.
Fifteen years ago, when Cal headed back to college after what had amounted to the best and worst summer of his life, he’d assumed that if he ever returned to Honeyford, he’d find Gabby married with kids, a home, a PTA membership. Her husband, he figured, would love her, but would have no clue as to how lucky he was to be part of the Coombs clan.
Cal would have known.
For five years—from the time he was thirteen until he’d gone off to college—Cal had spent every minute he could on the Coombses’ farm, making himself too useful for anyone to complain about his constant presence, studying every detail of normal family life as if there’d be a pop quiz at the end of each week.
He’d met two of Gabby’s brothers in wood shop at school, and they’d invited him home one afternoon to hang out. Their mother, Nancy, had made an enormous platter of sandwiches as a snack—not even for dinner, which had astounded him. At that time in his life, he was lucky to scrounge up enough food for a single daily meal at home. Nancy had insisted they all wash their hands before they touched a bite. While her sons had rolled their eyes and protested, their perpetually smiling mother had kept up a running commentary about the baseball jerseys she had mended that day, the old clothes she’d boxed and wanted her sons to drop off at the church, and the barn dance she would like them to attend, because “Lord knows your wives will thank me someday.” Cal had listened to the woman’s every word and followed her instructions without a peep.
For years he had wondered whether such a family existed outside of television reruns. After he’d found them, and even though they hadn’t belonged to him, he had known instantly that he wanted to be asked back again and again. And he had been. To this day, he counted what he had learned in the Coombses’ old farmhouse to be one of his greatest blessings.
Maybe you wanted Gabby so you could become a permanent part of the family. Maybe that’s all it ever was.
